Archive for the ‘Queens’ Category
iron gray
More meeting reportage, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recently, I joined up with another community group – Access Queens – an organization which got its start as a Facebook group called the “7 Train Blues.” I’ve been invited onto the steering committee of Access Queens, which seeks to improve communications between the communities found along the “international express” and the MTA, and to advocate for the riding public. All the history projects I’d been working on in 2014 involving the Sunnyside Yards, and Queens rail in general, has gotten me pretty interested in the Subways.
A recent meeting – on Tuesday, the fifth of April, in fact – was organized by Access Queens in conjunction with Councilmember Van Bramer’s office over at the Sunnyside Community Services facility on 39th street, and the MTA sent out a group of its officers for an “Ask the MTA” session wherein the ridership of the aforementioned IRT Flushing Line could express their frustrations and interact with the agency.
Since I’m the new kid on the block, I kept to the sidelines and took pictures rather than running my mouth for a change. Access Queens had a seat at the table with MTA, in the person of one the group’s leaders – Sunnyside’s Melissa Orlando – and believe you me, I don’t have to say a word when Melissa is present – she’s the real deal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An interesting facet to this effort, one that I found particularly novel and kind of fascinating, was that both Van Bramer and Orlando were advancing questions to the transit officials which were being live posted on Twitter and on the 7 Train Blues Facebook group. MTA assured all present, and those in other realms, that their “CBTC” switching conversion work was on schedule. Completion of the project would ultimately allow them to increase the hourly frequency of trains on the already “at capacity” line. Overcrowding on platform and train alike were described by the petitioners from the community. There was also a shed load of media in the room.
A recurring theme emerging from the community was that given the ridiculous amount of real estate mega development occurring all along the Queens side of the 7 – Flushing Commons, Willets Point, and Hunters Point were mentioned in particular – NYC’s infrastructure is being badly strained and pushed to the breaking point.
One of the more interesting things that emerged from the community comments was a request to synchronize the timing of the bus system to coincide with the 7 train delays so as to avoid the “wagon train” phenomena of one full then two empty buses all traveling together. A sight commonly observed by Queensicans.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator, of course, seldom has the “7 Train Blues” given that one dwells upon the IND R line along Broadway in Astoria rather than the IRT 7 along Queens Blvd. and Roosevelt Avenue. The case has been made, however, that when the 7 is delayed, the masses of Flushing, Roosevelt, and Corona use the IND lines (R, M, E, F) instead of the IRT one. This results in quite a situation during morning commutes, and dangerous overcrowding. This is a borough wide phenomena, and is forecast to get worse before it gets better as the population continues to expand along the already overbuilt transit corridors.
Guess that the folks on my side of Northern Blvd. have the “R train blues.”
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April 16th, Obscura Day 2016 –
“Creek to Creek Industrial Greenpoint Walking Tour” with Mitch Waxman and Geoff Cobb.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance historian Mitch Waxman and Greenpoint historian and author Geoff Cobb for a three-hour exploration of the coastline of Greenpoint. Click here for more info and ticketing.
black coat
Back in session.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news about my recent two week break is that it allowed an interval in which a humble narrator could really drill down and focus in on how lousy a human being I am. Lots of 3 a.m. staring into the bathroom mirror, accompanied by vast introspection and self loathing, has been accomplished.
Unfortunately I didn’t get much done, in terms of getting “out” and doing my “thing” for a variety of reasons. A few Newtown Creek oriented meetings were attended, however. Notably, I was at one with some high ranking DEP officials at the sewer plant in Greenpoint, where presentations on the final stages of construction of that mammoth facility were offered (I also went to the Bronx Zoo, but that’s a different story).
It seems the Nature Walk phases two and three, which will create a corridor between Kingsland Avenue and the current entrance to the NCWWTP Nature Walk on Paidge, are slightly delayed but funded.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The DEP reported to the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee – which I’m a member of – that “NCMC” (as it’s called), will continue to exist throughout these final stages of Nature Walk construction and that DEP has renewed the contract for our technical advisor and community liaison – a wonderful and quite clever guy named Steve Fleischacker. This is great news. The DEP then moved on to report on the “Waste to Energy” project they’re doing with National Grid.
The “Waste to Energy” thing, in a nutshell, boils down to DSNY collecting organic (food waste) garbage then delivering it to a waste management facility over at the tripartite border of Greenpoint, Ridgewood, and Bushwick for processing into a “macerated slurry.” This slurry will then be trucked over to the sewer plant, where one eighth of the total capacity of the sewer plant has been committed to the production of methane gas – which the National Grid people will incorporate into their system and then sell to their customers.
Of course, that’s when the lying started, but if you walk out of a meeting with DEP and they haven’t fibbed at least once – then you know something is really wrong. DEP claims that there will only be six truck trips a day between the Waste Management facility and their own, but didn’t count the DSNY truck trips through Greenpoint. When I asked them to define “truck,” they all started leaning in and whispering to each other, and finally admitted that by “truck” they’re mean a semi tractor trailer pulling a massive 50,000 plus gallon tank through mostly residential streets.
That’s for Month one of the “waste to energy” project, by month twelve, they anticipate doubling the number of truck trips. They also haven’t done the math on months thirteen to twenty four yet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
NYC DEP, which manages both the sweet (drinking) and tainted (sewerage) water systems for the megalopolis, is the very definition of the “permanent government.” There’s a hidden world of “lifers” and bureaucrats who actually run the agency, but the commissioner levels of management are directly tied to the political vagaries of NYC. In the last ten years, I’ve seen four executive teams come and go. They all make promises and commitments to the community, but when a new political order is decided on at City Hall and the Mayor moves someone new into the job – they are not obliged to honor the commitments of their forbears.
The DEP officials assured me that as long as the current Mayoral administration is in place, their promises are exactly that. For what DEP’s promises are worth and the realities of a “politics first” approach to municipal management, and an interesting look at the expediencies of City Hall – I suggest a read of this recent whistleblower NY Times article describing the “Water Tunnel #3” scandal.
Also, tour season is upon us again, so if you want to actually get a read on how repellant a human being I am in person – click the link below and come out to Greenpoint next Saturday for “Obscura Day.”
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April 16th, Obscura Day 2016 –
“Creek to Creek Industrial Greenpoint Walking Tour” with Mitch Waxman and Geoff Cobb.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance historian Mitch Waxman and Greenpoint historian and author Geoff Cobb for a three-hour exploration of the coastline of Greenpoint. Click here for more info and ticketing.
outer banks
Flushing Cemetery, in Today’s Post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that, back in 1853, the 20 acre Purchase Farm was bought and repurposed for usage as Flushing Cemetery. In 1875, the Whitehead Duryea Farm’s 50 acres were incorporated into the property, which more or less created the modern shape of the institution (there were a few minor additions added here and there). Flushing is a bit of the “unknown country” for me, and I usually just refer people to Queens Borough Historian and Flushing native Dr. Jack Eichenbaum when the subject arises.
Not too long ago, my pal Cav and I jumped into his “automobile” and went to check Flushing Cemetery out as the best curative for ignorance is investigation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cursory research reveal there to be around 41,000 people whose last address is here. There are several notables, including musicians, actors, and revered statesmen interred in Flushing Cemetery. The place was in a VERY good state of repair during my visit to the place during the last weeks of 2016’s winter.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The plots and sections we visited revealed a large number of German sounding names on them, and the dates on the monuments ran a gamut from the middle 19th to early 21st centuries.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The marble monuments showed the “rotting” sort of decay that is caused by acid rain and subsequent water infiltration, causing their carven screeds to be obscured, unreadable, or lost. You see this sort of thing in a more advanced form at Calvary Cemetery in Blissville, where certain monuments have the appearance of melted ice cream. Observationally, granite monuments seem to endure longer in NYC’s peculiar and polluted atmospherics.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fellow who plotted out the cemetery back in 1853 was a Civil Engineer named Horace Daniels, and he seems to have embraced using a lot of curving paths. It’s likely there’s a ton of original design elements missing from the scene above – railings, statuary, plantings, etc.
Flushing used to be known for horticulture, “back in the day.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Bowne plot was stumbled upon, specifically the Walter Bowne one. Yes, Bowne House, Bowne Street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I won’t attempt to tell you anything else about the Bownes, as Flushing is outside of my area of expertise.
I just came here on a day trip, and would advise that you seek out and chat with Dr. Jack Eichenbaum. Dr. Jack can discuss the Bownes in greater detail and scope than I can. The East River and Newtown Creek coastlines are where my knowledge of Queens history is both detailed and well studied.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Quite Lovely” thought a humble narrator, upon noticing a surviving iron railing on the Bowne Plot, with its cast iron chains designed with the appearance of a tasseled rope.
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mapped egress
The horror, in Today’s Post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My post last Friday about the 7 line got me thinking about the Subways of Western Queens, which are referred to as “the horror” in conversations with Our Lady of the Pentacle.
It was the 3rd of April, in 1913, that the City of New York purchased the (Steinway) tunnels utilized by what would become known as the 7 line from August Belmont, and in 1915 service started on June 22. They didn’t know it at the time, but those old timey types were creating the most photogenic of all of New York City’s subway lines.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Even when it’s underground, such as the busted ass Vernon Jackson stop, the IRT line’s 7 looks good. It’s when it moves into Sunnyside and Woodside that the 7 looks best, of course, but there are few stops in Queens where it doesn’t look pretty cool to this itinerant photographer – notably the stop pictured above and the last one in Flushing are comparatively kind of “meh.”
Everything looks terrible in Manhattan, and nobody would go there if they weren’t paid to do so.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In comparison, the R – which travels on the IND – is the reliable but visually uninteresting line. It didn’t reach Queens until 1920, but back then it only went to Queens Plaza. The modern route, which goes all the way to Forest Hills, was established in 1949 – but back then it was known as the “RR.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The interesting thing about the Court Square station, to me at least, is that – at least these days – it offers a free transfer between the IND and IRT systems. Downstairs, you’ve got the G, M, and E lines, and upstairs the 7. To continue with the arcane Subway knowledge – the G line became active in 1933, but it was known as the GG back then. The E also came online in 1933, and it is one of the Subway lines that never sees the light of day operationally as its entire route is underground.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The M is something of a newcomer to the IND Sixth Avenue tracks, although the line was officially designated as early as 1914. It wasn’t until 2010 that the line was routed into its current path mirroring the R service. It actually pisses me off, M wise, that if I wanted to go to Ridgewood – a mere five miles from Newtown Pentacle HQ on Astoria’s southern border – I would need to endure an hour and change long journey through the Shining City to get there.
Before you inform me – yes – I know all about taking the R to Newtown Grand Avenue and catching the bus – I do it all the time.
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contracted chill
Nothing like an adventure, MTA style.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found me leaving HQ just after the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself had begun its journey across the sky. A humble narrator’s intention was to have been out and about for a couple of hours in the pre dawn part of the day, but one overslept and left the house just as dawn arrived. My eventual destination was in lower Manhattan, and my plan was to be mid span on the Queensboro Bridge when dawn occurred, but as mentioned – I rolled over and kept on sleeping rather than springing out of bed when the alarm sounded at four in the morning. It wasn’t until about 5:30 that I stumbled out into the staggering realities of Astoria.
A brief scuttle across Northern Blvd. and the Sunnyside Yards ensued, and bored with the idea of walking across Queensboro at this point, it was elected that I would catch the most photogenic of all NYC’s Subway lines – the 7 – at 33rd street and cruise into the shadowed corridors of midtown Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “international express” as it’s known, arrived in the station accompanied by announcements that due to construction there was no Manhattan bound service at 33rd street. Having set aside literally five hours for the walk, I figured I’d just play along and see where the MTA wanted to take me.
As a note, with the exception of the F line, on the weekend of the 5th and 6th of March – there was “no way to get there from here” without playing the game laid out by the MTA.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 7 carried me to the 61st Woodside stop, where Manhattan bound service could be accessed. Off in the distance, at what must have been the 69th street station, there were crews of laborers and what seemed like a crane busily at work. The normal “Manhattan bound” side was entirely subsumed by their activity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 7 train, with its multitudinous delays and seemingly constant construction, has spawned a bit of activism. My pal Melissa Orlando, and others, formed first a Facebook group called “The 7 Train Blues,” and have since begun the formation of an organization called “Access Queens” with the intention of acting as advocates for the ridership community along this “international express” traveling between Flushing and Manhattan’s west side.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the subject of the 7 train, my immediate response is to discuss its immense photogeneity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is virtually impossible to point a camera at the 7 and not get something interesting. Maybe it’s the low lying nature of Western Queens, with the elevated tracks running at rooftop level… can’t say. After running through the MTA’s perverse hoops, a humble narrator found himself in the Shining City, and what was encountered at my destination will be discussed in a post presented next week at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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The Newtown Pentacle 