The cover of this week's New Yorker magazine shows a couple sipping wine on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. Artist Adrian Tomine drew the picture. View Full Caption Adrian Tomine

The city's most buzzed-about Superfund site is having a moment — although it may not pass the smell test.

The Gowanus Canal is on the cover of The New Yorker magazine this week, making its first-ever appearance on the front of the storied weekly.

The image shows a couple sipping wine while gazing at the polluted waterway. Bags from the neighborhood's Whole Foods grocery store and a baby are at their feet.

In the background a bulldozer picks at what appears to be a pile of scrap metal, possibly at Sixth Street Iron & Metal.

Artist Adrian Tomine told the magazine that it's "beautiful and hilarious to see people eating their organic kale and quinoa salads while gazing across the opaque, fetid water."

He added, “I guess it proves that there’s no part of the city that can’t be revitalized, recontextualized, or ruined—depending on your point of view.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next year will begin its $506 million Superfund plan to clean up what it deems "one of the nation's most extensively contaminated water bodies." Built in 1869, the banks of the Gowanus Canal was once lined with gas plants, mills, tanneries and chemical plants and other businesses that routinely dumped waste into the channel.

The industrial neighborhood is now changing at light speed: a store selling $96 stuffed animals opened recently, and a high-rise luxury housing development is under construction on the banks of the canal.

Correction: A previous version of this story said the metal yard depicted on the cover was possibly Benson Scrap Metal, but Sixth Street Iron & Metal, which is closer to the Whole Foods than Benson, is the more likely inspiration.