Holland Tunnel Ventilation

Nothing like a good looking, useful building.

9th Ave. & 42nd St.

Plenty of red, yellow & blue...


...near the Port Authority, past the blasted flag below left.

Queens Plaza Untamed

I guess it's obvious I think Queens Plaza is one of the most photogenic places on earth.  Too bad the city's "improving" it with rock gardens and bike lanes for the plastic condo class; hopefully it's just too nasty to tame.

Above, at Northern Blvd.  Below, on the Queensboro Plaza platform looking west.

Roosevelt Island Tram Test

Looks like they are test driving the new Roosevelt Island Tram cars.  The three photos of the tram car, above and below left, are from this morning; the car pulled slowly up to the Manhattan tower, just above, and stopped.

The other two photos, of the platform at 2nd Ave. & 60th St., at the bottom, and the Roosevelt Island tower, below right, are from last week.

Pink & Green in Queens

Even though I know the real BP is still living fat as a Colombian drug lord, the vision of a broke-ass BP, above and left, living like a troll under the tracks coming out of Queens Plaza, makes me feel better.

And after experiencing NYC as Target Train Toy Town, the way the photo to the left suggests a circular Queens Plaza train set makes me feel better too.

Meanwhile on the other side of the LIRR tracks on Skillman, below, an unusual juxtaposition of vehicles on the left, and an Acela locomotive on the right.  (I had no idea the Acela ran on these tracks; is the locomotive being punished for going too slow?)

4th of July Toy Town NYC

Not a creature was stirring... well, maybe a mouse.
It was nice and empty out in Queens on the 4th of July.  Quiet, inviting spots under shade trees (below left); limp, tattered real flags (below right) that remind us why zero-maintenance bumper sticker flags were invented; and the LIRR commuter train tracks stretching into the overheated distance (above), so still and empty I could hear a worn part tick every so often, like an insect in rising desert heat.


Meanwhile, back in town, the Target Train (formerly the 6 Train, below) brought me back to reality and the real NYC -- once labeled Satan's Workshop, now become Santa's Toy Town -- where public space and infrastructure is sponsored by the highest bidder, those wonderful corporations that furnish what we share...

...with "street furniture" ad platforms that show us how to decorate our emptiness and keep ourselves occupied as the clock ticks down, as our supposedly sacred freedom seeps through our fingers because we can't decide how to spend it, because choosing one thing shuts out all the others.

We let con men sell us one self-serving Theme after another to fill the void, and it was only a matter of time before their sponsors became our sponsors.


And here we are, living in their Theme Park surrounded by ads for things that feed our insatiability and rob us of contentment, that lure and agitate us with pointless noise and movement, until we really believe freedom is the ability to update Facebook while lounging at the park, surrounded by thousands of shiny plastic reflections of ourselves doing the same thing.

Wasting our freedom on baubles, signing our world over to the highest bidder, so sold-out that -- like a small dog whose owner dresses it in a tiny sailor suit -- we don't even notice we've turned into clowns, into Barbie & Ken dolls riding toy trains, the playthings of sponsors whose only interest is keeping us hypnotized and nursing at their machines until they've sucked us dry.

They got rid of graffiti on trains so this could happen!

Wired LIRR Queens

Looking north toward Queens Plaza across the LIRR tracks in March.  Feeding the shiny streamliner above and the locomotive at the bottom, the mass of wires in between.  Note the 7 Train descending toward the Plaza, below right.

A Tale of Two Entrances

A few photos that demonstrate the priorities of the building, above the Food Emporium at Union Square, that continues to cheat the city out of a subway escalator.

Above, the plush comfort of the building's auto entrance on 15th St., a pleasant place to burn some exhaust.

Meanwhile below, on the 14th St. side of the building, the fat escalator casket that clogs the subway entrance -- more than two years after the escalator died -- is still forcing rush hour crowds through a dark, narrow cattle chute of a stairwell.  And to add insult to injury, some worthless entity has turned the casket into a money-making billboard, below left.


Why does it take the city and MTA years to make the scofflaws pay up?  Forget the unmaintainable escalator, just put in some stairs.  And fine the building enough to make them gold plated.