Archive for the ‘Queens Boulevard’ Category
saucily cocked
The boulevard of death.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Boulevard has the single greatest appellation of any street in New York City – the “Boulevard of Death.” The thoroughfare has earned its nom de plume via the ridiculous number of people who have been smashed to death by automotive traffic along its length over the years, and as is the case with most things municipal, the elected guardians of the citizenry have enacted various programs and campaigns to safeguard against future tragedy. None of these well meaning efforts have been terribly successful.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The failure of “traffic slowing” or whatever they call it this week or year is generally not being caused by inherent flaws in municipal design or logic, instead, it boils down to the same thing that a corporate IT officer will blame 90% of their computer problems on – user error. As a dedicated pedestrian, I see this happening all the time, and I’m not really sure how much “cherishing of life” nor “sense of self preservation” is possessed by someone who tries to cross Queens Blvd. diagonally and from the middle of the block has, nor how you can codify or legislate that sort of stupidity away. In many ways, its Darwinism at work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Remember “public service announcements”? PSA’s used to admonish against littering, or starting fires, and instructed on proper etiquette when onboard bus or subway. The PSA’s also used to inform newcomers on how to safely cross the streets and follow the rules. If you follow the street rules, odds are that you won’t end up as a greasy smear on the streets on Queens. Cross at corners, wait for the walk/don’t walk sign to flash white, look both ways before entering the vehicle lane. A humble narrator advises standing behind something like a street lamp when waiting to cross a high speed eight lane street, out of an abundance of informed caution.
This sort of conventional wisdom seems out of style at the moment, and Queens Blvd. remains the “boulevard of death.”
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up, one in LIC, Queens and one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Glittering Realms, with Atlas Obscura, on Saturday May 17th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor, with Brooklyn Brainery, on Sunday May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
nervous element
Cutting up Queens Blvd. in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bigger and quite a bit badder than the masonry saw witnessed in last week’s posting “dusk comes,” your humble narrator recently spotted a crew on Queens Blvd. creating a street trench using a 155 HP Vermeer CC155 Concrete Cutter. The gizmo uses a giant (84 inches in diameter) wheel, one that sports carbide tipped teeth, to chew into the asphalt and underlying cement of the so called “Boulevard of Death.”
from vermeer.com
Cutting streets for utility installation or pothole repair is no problem for the Vermeer CC155. With the sustained torque output of its Tier II 155 hp/115.6 kW Cummins engine and a microprocessor to manage load control, the CC155 is a smart choice for interstate and highway repair, airport lighting projects, and demolition work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Quoting my union laborer buddy who lives upstairs, whom I casually mentioned encountering this device to – “Bro, y’know how much time ya save with a trencher? Pssshhhht. (he demonstratively lit a Marlboro Red at this point) Bro, I friggin hate jackhammers, screws up my back every time I use one bro, gotta have a trencher Bro, ya gotta.” One couldn’t help but notice that the signage adorning the traffic bollard which the crew had set about indicated that they were working on a Verizon project, which is presumptively the roll out of FIOS in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Let’s face it, everything sucks, but nothing outside of government sucks more than Time Warner Cable. That organization represents such a high level of suck that they should be sent to Albany and turned into a branch of State government whose singular mission is “to suck,” and become the official state agency in charge of obfuscation and incompetent management – the OIM. Your humble narrator welcomes anyone who will provide competition to those clowns, even if its “Ma Bell,” and if it means attacking the boulevard of death with a giant saw then so be it.
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up, one in Queens and one that walks the currently undefended border of the two boroughs.
DUPBO, with Newtown Creek Alliance and MAS Janeswalk, on May 3rd.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor, with Brooklyn Brainery, on May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
by surprise
Cool atmospherics in Sunnyside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of those periodic blasts of duty has been upon me for the last week or so, a lot to do with little time to do it, and the rain last week didn’t help. Got in the way of one project, delayed two others, and obliterated any semblance of free time when precipitants fell not. Accordingly, rather than walking everywhere, as I just did not have the time, mass transit was utilized.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unlike several of my friends, especially that walking encyclopedia of regional transport options – Kevin Walsh of Forgotten-NY, I generally don’t familiarize myself with transit lines that I don’t frequent. Limited space available on my internal hard drives, and the needs of the now often crowd out things I don’t need to use often. However, I was quite proud of myself while improvising a bus and train path on the fly, just the other day, which is how I ended up on the 7 train.
Normally, I’d just walk from Greenpoint to Flushing, as it’s only a few miles and carries one across a staggeringly interesting cross section of Brooklyn and Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news is that the first walking tour of 2014 is now accomplished, on Saturday I did the “13 Steps around Dutch Kills” tour with Atlas Obscura, which was one of the many things I had to do last week. Next tour with the Obscura Society will be “The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek” on April 26, tickets are available here.
The reason I was heading to Flushing, and lucky enough to catch these cool atmospherics and lighting in Sunnyside, was to get some shots of the Unisphere for my Brownstoner column – check them out here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Project Firebox 102
An ongoing catalog of New York’s endangered Fireboxes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Perpetual darkness is the lot of this lonely firebox, found over on the outskirts of Woodside. Apartment monoliths on one side, highways on the other, it seems to be in a delitorious state of repair as evinced by the way its alarm handle is deployed. Better days await us all, my friends, better days spent gamboling about in the sunny corridors of Queens.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
regular pulsations
In today’s post, more cast off clothing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst enacting my seemingly penitential and quite obligatory weekly walk to Greenpoint, this time for a Newtown Creek CAG meeting last week, a humble narrator was on the lookout for more examples of the “single shoe phenomena.” Oddly, one hasn’t witnessed a distaff member of a mated pair adorning the roadside middens in a few weeks. Back during the summer, it was difficult not to trip over one of them every time one left the illusion of safety offered by ones own rooms.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Opposite Calvary, this item was spotted instead, which appears to be a ladies undergarment, cast off to the mercies of Greenpoint Avenue. This is strange to me, as Our Lady of the Pentacle has explained to me on numerous occasions that such garments are quite costly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The manner in which my brain functions demands that I attempt to explain things away, automatically generating a logical progression of probable events to explain the things I see.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Adolescent revelry comes to mind, with images of some freewheeling band of loose women and liquor fed boasting. Alternatively, darker scenarios form, but this is a family blog and salacious speculation is not the Newtown Pentacle way.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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