Big Sky Brooklyn

BayFest

2011-12-25T16:34:00.015-05:00

Sunday, May 15 . . . It rained all morning and there was a 60 percent chance of rain throughout the day. I would not be deterred—this had been on my calendar for months, plus I needed a respite of the kind only BayFest could deliver. So I made the trip (and it stayed dry).

En route to BayFest 2011 . . .

Someone threw out a record collection (under the overpass)

Emmons Ave., Sheepshead Bay

"J-Pop sensation Reni Mimura came to the U.S. to Share LOVE and JOY!”

“The Xylopholks play novelty ragtime music of the ‘20s dressed in fuzzy animal costumes.”

“The Shots & Friends: Rock ‘n’ roll bagpipe band”

“3:15pm: FDNY Marine Unit Fireboat Demonstration”

The band played the Marine Corps theme as the hoses gushed

A taste of nature, at nearby Plumb Beach

Grassy knoll beside the highway, past the crab house parking lot

SLIDESHOW – Brooklyn by the Sea (Flickr)

Ikea in Red Hook: Once Was . . . (Street Art from the Construction Site)

2011-12-25T15:54:00.006-05:00

Vestiges (color coded): The top of a yellow bollard, from the shipyard that once stood at the site, peeks out from the fence.

Former site of Lilly’s Bar

Brooklyn Decrepit fills the void before Swedish Modern steps in

Foundation Rising: Birth of a Big Box

Home is where the art is

What good are old walls for?

Related Post: Ikea in Red Hook: Globalization Comes to Brooklyn

Industrial Memory

2011-12-11T20:05:00.012-05:00

Derelict factory: Testament to ruin

Etched in the skyline

Layers of history

Red Hook is permeated by a ghostly aura—the spirit of industry. Decades of productive energies linger there with a heavy, elusive presence, like something far-off and epic. Relics from Brooklyn’s industrial prime are visible everywhere: derelict factories—cratered, garbage cramming their rusted lesions; cobblestones and trolley tracks peeking up through tattered streets; faded letters on buildings announcing long extinct companies—layers of time etched into the skyline.

The landscape of working factories and copious decay intermingled heightens the aura. There’s an intimacy at street-level, an immersion of the senses. Passing through industry’s vestiges, the environment expands. The soundscape grows more distinct, especially on warm days . . . the exuberant sounds of hammering, sawing, humming motors pour out from open doors, trailing you down the street . . . glow of a torch in a factory window a half-block away.

Phantoms of industry

The smell of petroleum by-products signals your entrance into the southeastern corner of Red Hook—the Industrial Zone. Steel, brick and concrete hold sway here, surrounding you with a monolithic palette of black/red/gray, as if all of sudden you’re in the bowels of the city. Elemental. You feel it in your gut. There’s a strangeness that engulfs you.

Thunderhead smokestack

The urge to produce or create is part of our genetic memory—a deep-rooted tendency, encoded in our DNA over time. Underlying all that is manmade—every plastic trinket that rolls off an assembly line, every painting, pop song, and opera—is the imperative to create. This is the true “meaning of life,” in all its primal, amorphous power. The industrial zone, out in the open, monolithic in scale, embodies this instinct.

On the waterfront

Brooklyn was once the fourth largest industrial center in the U.S, after World War II, employing about 600,000 people in manufacturing jobs. Today it’s less than a tenth of that number. Still, industry lives in Brooklyn. Any weekday stroll through Red Hook or Gowanus or Greenpoint confirms that artisans, tradesmen, and laborers remain in force.

Inevitably, though, in all such quarters, the artists come. They see possibilities where others see only squalor and oblivion. Artists are the vanguard of gentrification. In their wake come the galleries, boutiques, and bistros, signaling a new horizon, a decade or less in the future, when most of the borough will not exist in its present form.

Vintage decay

The specter of industry will always linger in former hotbeds of production, ensuring a legacy to build on, expanding Brooklyn’s uncanny interchange between past, present, and future.

SLIDESHOW – Industrial Brooklyn (Flickr)

Transit Limbo: Car Service Waiting Rooms

2011-12-01T13:01:00.000-05:00

I need a car . . . “Five minutes”
no matter what
it is always five minutes

The car service thrives on door-to-door business. The walk-in passenger is like a stepchild, tolerated but never coddled.

The moment you take a seat in a car service waiting room, you enter transit limbo—hovering between stasis and mobility.

The occasional attempt to enliven the space, by adding plants or pictures, is well-intentioned but wrong. It yields the opposite effect. In this setting art and nature sadly remind you of the world outside, driving home the truism that waiting is the hardest part.

If you’re lucky, though, during your time in limbo you might see a few Greek drivers playing backgammon in a way that’s so loud and animated as to change your view of what you had always thought was a tedious game. Or maybe you’ll get to hear the strains of Arab music filtering in from a sleek Town Car parked outside, as the Jewish owner of the car service proudly shows you the Muslim prayer room in the back of the office.

At any rate, it’s never long until your car pulls up and sets you in motion, toward your destination, which if you’re really lucky, is back where you started: home.

One of the Most Dangerous Jobs in New York: Gypsy Cab Driver

SLIDESHOW – Castles of Limbo: Car Service Waiting Rooms (Flickr)

Dead Horse Inn

2011-10-07T04:28:00.008-04:00

Plumb Beach, Brooklyn (History of Plumb Beach)

More Brooklyn by the Sea

Ode to the Humble Footbridge

2011-09-23T18:08:00.011-04:00

The highway stops for no one
over traffic stream
the car-less trudge

Bridging the gash (Hicks St. nr. Summit St.)

Above it all

The footbridge across the highway is a pedestrian refuge in the midst of the autosphere. The Summit Street Pedestrian Bridge in Red Hook spans the sunken BQE down below (the “Ditch”). When you’re on the bridge, you’re above the traffic, above the noise from the ditch below—that surf-like roar, with the blaring horns and screeching brakes. It drifts up to where you are, filtered by distance and tamed into a calming drone . . . Rush hour seen through the chain link fence is a panoramic glimpse of the city full on. Sunbeams reflect off glass and chrome, darting across windshields and spinning hubcaps—that mad kinetic frenzy! Looking over the Ditch, you feel like you’re commanding a perch all your own, above it all—ruthless velocity, concrete and steel.

Over and under (Hamilton Ave. nr. Henry St.)

Date with a highway (feel the vibrations)

Tunnel to purgatory

Another footbridge in Red Hook cuts across a 10- or 12-lane stretch where the Gowanus Expressway, the Battery Tunnel, and the BQE converge. It’s a jerry-built structure that goes over multiple roadbeds and under two others. Usually it’s bereft of pedestrians, except during certain parts of the day. When it’s empty, it’s bleak, a slab of concrete strewn with empty beer cans and who knows what—maybe a filthy pile of clothes or the odd used condom, everything coated with a dusting of exhaust fumes. It’s a blighted place, like a tunnel to purgatory. At one point, though, you pass under a road just a few feet above. You can feel the swarming traffic, the mechanical flow. The vibrations engulf you, allowing you to become intimate with the highway, perhaps more than a (living) pedestrian ever could be.

Walking on traffic

Any feelings of intimacy or omnipotence that may strike on the footbridge are usually fleeting, a result of lightheadedness perhaps. Back on the ground, one can see clearly that the footbridges of Red Hook symbolize the dominant place of highways in the neighborhood. They’re enduring reminders of the violence done by Robert Moses to expand his auto-centric vision into Red Hook and all over Brooklyn.

Moses was the Stalin of concrete, the “Master Builder” who built the BQE, and so much more. The Ditch, like many of his projects, involved massive displacement—about 500 houses were demolished in the early 1950s. More significantly, it cut Red Hook off from the rest of south Brooklyn. It left a Mosaic landscape—a legacy of truncated avenues and bisected streets, more foe than friend to the walker trying gamely to navigate the broken topography.

SLIDESHOW – Footbridges & Pedestrian Tunnels (Flickr)

Patinas of Decay (Spring Comes to Brooklyn)

2011-09-10T21:45:00.010-04:00

Rhythm is the basis of life, not steady forward progress. The forces of creation, destruction, and preservation have a whirling, dynamic interaction.

—Kabbalah

Writing on the wall . . . ?

A late April stroll through Red Hook confirms that spring is nearing full bloom. The streets are alive with revelations . . . Sun-dappled and shadow-drenched, patinas of decay adorn the landscape in varied patterns. The decay seems less a manifestation of rot within than a veneer signaling the growth below; not a state of ruination, but a state of becoming—the surface giving way to sprouting vitality.

The roots of a small tree, like convoluted tentacles, burrow under a factory gate . . . The grit from a crumbling window ledge melds with buds from tree branches lodged in the grating above . . . Shrubbery grows along warehouse fences, interwoven with chain link holes . . . And ivy, supple, wondrous ivy—the way it snakes all over and throughout and between everything natural and man-made . . . Vegetation growing among the built world’s detritus heightens the sense of nature’s rebirth—a fresh, underlying force come to light, engulfing the sullied environment (if given a chance).

Home is where the heart is

A sunbeam shines through the latticework of a crane boom draped over the highway—a glittering symbol of the horizon/the future/growth. Jackhammers ring in the distance; destroying in order to create, pummeling the old to make way for the new.

In architecture and landscape design, it is now de rigueur to incorporate vestiges of the past into brand new projects. Often these elements are inoperative or “distressed”—decayed if you will; used for adornment (a nod to history, a wink to the cognoscenti).

In the scrap business/recycling in general, old, nonfunctioning objects are transformed and reintegrated into the new landscape. In the existence of every such object, though, between its demise and rebirth, there is a singular moment. It occurs at the scrap yard, in a state of transition. In that moment the object, once a uniform piece off an assembly line, is like nothing else—the way it rusts, the gouges and the dents. It is unique, like a snowflake, a metallic snowflake.

Vegetation growing among the built world’s detritus heightens the sense of nature’s rebirth.

Majestic Decay

Unique to Brooklyn, especially Red Hook, the decay is up front—not behind a sunny façade (a la LA/suburbia). This rawness induces a more probing truth; it is soulful and inviting—a spur to wonderment. That’s the allure of Red Hook, in essence.

Bedtime for Maritime

2011-08-10T03:29:00.012-04:00

Nautical detritus (Maritime vestiges). . . Once functional, now decoration

Anchor: March 2007

Anchor: April 2011

Erie Basin (terminus of Erie Canal)

Sheepshead Bay/Manhattan Beach (Brooklyn by the Sea: Part 1)

2011-07-20T23:49:00.007-04:00

Cross the slatted wooden footbridge that spans Sheepshead Bay and enter Brooklyn’s most picturesque quarter. (Some call it the Brooklyn Riviera.) The bay is a concrete rectangle, a man-made concoction, but there’s a storybook aura here, with swans and ducks and gulls and pigeons galore (and more bird shit—some of it in mounds, mixed with pieces of mollusk shells—than you’ve ever seen in one place, spread like a patina over the concrete piers and bulkheads.)

Stroll through Holocaust Memorial Park in Manhattan Beach, then down Oriental Boulevard to the beach, where on hot days the adjacent park is dense with picnickers and you can almost float out to sea on clouds of fragrant smoke wafting up from the assemblage of grills. Then head over to scenic Kingsborough Community College, where another, more private beach reminds you of some place far from Brooklyn, maybe down south or across the country. Walk the campus perimeter, hugging the shore, passing shoals and seaweed, even a lighthouse (which doubles as an academic building).

Walk up Shore Boulevard, a long stretch of nouveau riche temples, and back across the footbridge. Then walk down Emmons Avenue, where the fishing boat touts beckon with blunt offers of ocean excursions: “All night blues, porgies, bass . . . Half-a-day or all the way.” No poetry from them (that last one’s mine), or nautical lore. And the Randazzo’s waitresses are hardbitten too: What’ll it be hon, please eat and run . . . to the train back to elsewhere, someplace more accommodating, but certainly less picturesque.

SLIDESHOW – Brooklyn by the Sea (Flickr)

Up From the Subway

2011-04-14T00:48:00.002-04:00

Condo Churches (Sacred Sites Transformed)

2011-01-18T11:02:00.014-05:00

The condo church is now a convention, a "sign of the times" . . . A version of progress(?): The material replacing the spiritual . . . the contradictions of America/capitalism, an object lesson: A “Christian nation” housing its wealthy in once sacred sites . . .

Declining church attendance, diminishing influence of dioceses and religion per se . . . scarcity of housing/consolidation of physical space . . .

Sublime inspirations remain as vestiges, reduced to aesthetics: the arched windows, the heavy but graceful stone, the very setting in blue sky intimacy, on the most beautiful street in Brooklyn.

Billboard Shells

2010-11-04T02:59:00.010-04:00

Pitching the Demographic: A Message of Nothing (Coney Island Creek)

Every billboard husk is like a fingerprint—unique—the setting, the details, the way sunlight plays off it at certain times.

Multicolored hues of sunset trapped between empty billboard

Double Duty: Cell Phone Tower/Beacon of Emptiness

Clouds seen through a billboard shell

Billboard seen through hollow in trestle bridge

Billboard shell’s gridwork silhouette

Sunset over billboard shell beside viaduct

A-to-Z Mannequins (Park Slope)

2010-11-01T21:58:00.006-04:00

A-to-Z Mannequins

Dead Tech (No. 3)

2010-06-30T02:17:00.008-04:00

Adolescence/Obsolescence

(Dead Tech: No. 1 . . . No. 2)

Washington Plaza (Beside the Williamsburg Bridge)

2010-06-30T01:56:00.003-04:00

Ode to Corrugated Metal

2010-06-29T14:38:00.006-04:00

Flimsy ribbed fences listing in the wind
the sound like docked boats banging together gently

Horace Greeley’s Grave/Goose in Grass (Green-Wood Cemetery: Part 3)

2010-06-29T14:00:00.014-04:00

Horace Greeley (1811 – 1872) was a famous newspaper editor and politician, best known for saying, “Go west young man.” The monument, though ravaged by black streaks and time, is still etched with that look of resolve Victorian gentlemen favored in their personal statuary (apparent throughout Green-Wood Cemetery).

Greeley’s Grave in Green-Wood is located at one of the cemetery’s highest points, overlooking Bush Terminal (Pictures . . . History . . . More on BSB: No. 1 . . . No. 2).

Go North Young Man: A groundskeeper grooms the majestic burial site

Serene Nature (Seamless Adaptation): Goose in the grass, at the foot of a family plot, paying homage to the clan

(Green-Wood Cemetery: Part 1 . . . Part 2)

Birds on Crane

2010-06-28T10:22:00.011-04:00

Birds alighting
a crane boom and cable
by the canal

Grand Army Plaza/Library (Monumental Brooklyn: No. 2)

2010-06-28T09:57:00.012-04:00

Neptune and friends carouse in the fountain at Grand Army Plaza

Lincoln on horseback, the arch at Grand Army Plaza

Union soldiers massed alongside winged gods (sacrifice, virtue . . . the American Ideal triumphs)

Look: a satellite dish is reflected in the top-middle of the picture

In-spired (No. 3)

2010-06-28T09:40:00.003-04:00

Sunset, day before spring

Dead Horse Bay/Floyd Bennett Field (Brooklyn by the Sea: Part 3)

2010-06-27T19:23:00.015-04:00

Dead Horse Bay and Floyd Bennett Field, like Plumb Beach, are part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

Dead Horse Bay’s main attraction is its vintage garbage (Video).

The Historic Aircraft Restoration Project (H.A.R.P.) is a unique museum and active workshop in an old hangar at Floyd Bennett Field. The volunteer staff there is devoted to the history and preservation of American aviation. They can be remarkably friendly and informative, showing their appreciation to visitors who make the trek to this obscure corner of Brooklyn.

SLIDESHOW – Brooklyn by the Sea (Flickr)

Plumb Beach & Vicinity (Brooklyn by the Sea: Part 2)

2010-06-27T03:34:00.019-04:00

Official Plumb Beach: A shuttered rest stop (click for Plumb Beach history)

Sewage treatment plant on Knapp St.

“Ever Vigilant in Protecting Nature’s Precious Resource. Through Applied Technology We are Purifying our Water.”

Marina on Plumb Beach Channel, Gerritsen Beach

Gerritsen Beach

Houses on Plumb Beach Channel

Condos on Emmons Ave., Sheepshead Bay

Gulls trail a pleasure craft motoring through Sheepshead Bay

Neighbors: Derelict backyard of motel next to beach

Unofficial entrance to the beach (Kingsborough College lighthouse in background)

Sunset: Assisted Living Facilities surround the wasteland where Plumb Beach meets Sheepshead Bay

SLIDESHOW – Brooklyn by the Sea (Flickr)

Astoria Waterfront

2010-06-23T20:42:00.007-04:00

Luyster Creek

Baseball field next to power plant (Google Maps)

Overgrown baseball field next to power plant

Sewage treatment plant near the Steinway piano factory

Turbines at plant, close-up (see tops of cylinders in previous Google satellite photo)

Murals

2010-04-26T02:11:00.004-04:00

Cemetery Tour Group

2010-04-26T01:44:00.002-04:00

Big Sky Brooklyn Artifacts: Product of the Week

2010-04-04T13:15:00.010-04:00

Rusted Anchor Mousepad

from Big Sky Brooklyn Artifacts

The Ghost Town of Memory

2010-01-17T13:53:00.005-05:00

American Bond

The church stood over the sunken Brooklyn Queens Expressway (“the Ditch”), its spire visible for miles. For Jimmy Bricks that spire was a memory antenna.

Stretcher Bond

“I hate them shitty cinder blocks, and I’ll say it to anyone. Give me clay bricks any day, from the ground—building the way God intended.”

While passing buildings he had worked on he’d get visions of job sites—up on the rooftops, among bridges and towers, trowel in hand, leaving his fingerprints on the skyline. When he was building something, he didn’t think of himself. He went into a sort of trance. Holding a brick, putting it in place, and then another—simplicity itself. Yet high above the ground, with that dizzying backdrop, he was part of something bigger.

Flemish Bond

Jimmy hadn’t worked in more than a year. He was earthbound and stuck, with a surplus of free time; stuck among the empty spaces and alien structures that stood in place of buildings he had known.

Herringbone Bond

A jackhammer echoed in the distance. “We helped to build this neighborhood, now they’re tearin’ it all down.”

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

Sunset on the Gowanus Expressway

2010-01-15T13:05:00.007-05:00

Amber streaks hovered above the viaduct, filtered below as slashes of color through the gaps between exit ramp pillars and overlapping roadbeds. The last of the blue sky hung at the zenith, a ribbon of daylight giving way to a blazing finale.

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

Looming Over the Autosphere

2010-01-13T00:22:00.007-05:00

The auto auction mascot at the highway fringe
where the peripheral car trades gather
his roar is the endless noise of traffic.

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

Temples of Languor

2010-01-11T23:50:00.007-05:00

Isaac ordered a shot and a beer from the weathered bartender. She had the face of someone who’d just been exhumed. Her mottled, leathery skin was proudly displayed through her low-cut blouse, along with tattoos on the side of each breast: a skull with a shamrock backdrop on the left one, and on the right a Gaelic harp wrapped in barbed wire.

A row of TVs above the bar displayed horse races and results. Two or three men were studying racing forms. Lottery ads on plastic flaps were draped like bunting all around the dim space, giving it the air of a moribund carnival. Whenever someone opened the front door a thin ray of sunlight pierced the bar’s gloom, then flashed on the video poker machine as the door closed behind them.

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

The Street Fair

2010-01-09T09:45:00.002-05:00

The street fair was life itself, a vision of the community in its full efflorescence. The atmosphere was autumnal, but the weather was summery and gorgeous.

Junk shops along the route disgorged their items onto wooden tables: videotapes, porcelain figurines, steak knives, picture-hanging kits, a small hamper full of American flag belt buckles. These cluttered cemeteries of commercial failure mostly served as diversions for the throngs strolling down the avenue. Yet some of these things had a history, animated by memories and invested with real emotions (not unlike the streets surrounding the grubby stores from which they came).

The siren song of pig meat was the dominant strain, drifting above the crowd and settling into an aromatic porcine cloud. One stand featured a pig on a spit. It was part of an odd homemade rig; fashioned from a 30-gallon drum and mounted on a small purple trailer . . . Isaac chewed the last of his sandwich and closed his eyes, savoring a moment of pure satisfaction. He was standing in front of the barbeque pit, drinking a beer and inhaling pork fumes, hypnotized by the rotating pig.

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

Song of Third Avenue

2010-01-07T05:20:00.016-05:00

The part of Third Avenue that ran under the Gowanus Expressway was a ten-lane stretch, dominated by the slab overhead. It buried the avenue in shadow, and the surf-like roar of traffic was continual, punctuated by blaring horns and screeching brakes.

Third Ave./Gowanus Expressway & 60th St. (heading south, to junction) (Google Satellite Map)

Pedestrians were all but absent, with evidence of their furtive presence supplied by empty beer cans, filthy clothes, and the odd used condom, everything coated with a dusting of exhaust fumes. It was a blighted place, though it hummed with activity—commerce.

On one stretch the Gowanus was barely two stories high, a canopy over the wide cobblestone lane running down the middle of the avenue. The lane was unlighted and always wet, from the condensation on the pillars dripping constantly. The tight, dark space was an echo chamber for the traffic. Under the slab, the noise was infernal.

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

The Wiseguy Songbook (Strains of the Maudlin)

2010-01-06T18:22:00.003-05:00

His daughter smelled sweet, like flowers and fruits—a tinge of watermelon, some cherry and orange, lilacs and roses, lemon and peach. It was a smell unlike any he associated with humanity—body odors, animal functions. Angels would smell this way if they lived on earth, he thought. “Nancy (With the Laughing Face)” played in his head whenever he found himself close to Gina. No one but Sinatra could nail such a moment.

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

The Dim Hollows Surrounding the Glittering Heights

2010-01-04T21:54:00.005-05:00

Silverman’s vision sprang from an epiphany he had one beautiful spring day, as he walked through the lush streets of Park Slope: Use authentic local charm to transform Brooklyn into a world-class destination. That was what lured him across the water from his Upper West Side home, and he hasn’t looked back since.

"Brooklyn is poised for greatness, I’m just trying to speed things along.”
Morris Silverman, President, The Coleman Group

Welcome to the First Annual Brooklyn Heritage Festival

Calendar of Upcoming Events
An Evening of Classic Children’s Stories
Columbus Park Concert Series (dates t.b.a.)
Jose Canseco Reads Howie the Kangaroo (part of the Read for Life series)
Sacred Sites of Brooklyn Heights (a visit to five 19th century churches)
Family Talent Show (all ages welcome)
The Gardens of Brooklyn (free 90-minute tour)
Ukrainian Movie Night
Canarsie Street Jubilee
Homecrest Flea Market
BK on TV: Tour of Famous Film & TV Locations
Waterfront Craft Fair (kids activities, music, face painting, plant sale)

All events brought to you by The Coleman Group

Always Changing, Always Brooklyn!

At this moment Brooklyn has never been hotter. Indeed, as a place to live, a state of mind, and a subject of popular interest Brooklyn is “all the rage.” The borough has been re-branded and transformed from Manhattan’s provincial cousin into a place with eminent cachet. [Excerpt from The Coleman Group’s Marketing Plan]

“Brooklyn’s neighborhoods are its greatest asset. Communicating the idea of Authentic Brooklyn Charm (ABC) is essential to The Coleman Group's long-term sales strategy.”

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

Cemetery Fringe

2010-01-02T09:17:00.003-05:00

© Google Maps

© Google Maps

Sometimes he walked along the edge of the cemetery, looking up over the black iron fence. The tombstones entrenched in the hillside looked back like indifferent sentries. Their mute, unchanging presence had a powerful effect on the surrounding streets and the rare passersby.

Another side of Green-Wood bordered a sprawling train yard, contiguous with the Gleason Bus Depot. That edge was a no-man’s land. One time he walked the road between the two complexes—nearly a mile with no outlet, just tombstones behind one fence and transit gear behind another. He looked askance at the few cars that went by, and felt uneasy just thinking about what it must have been like at night.

More Big Sky Brooklyn: The Novel

Slideshow of the Week: The Houses in Brooklyn

2009-11-29T05:17:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Ornamental Brooklyn

2009-11-28T05:05:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Castles of Limbo (Car Service Waiting Rooms)

2009-11-27T04:52:00.000-05:00

Full Screen: ► . . . 4-way arrows (lower rt.)

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Slideshow of the Week: Brooklyn by the Sea

2009-11-26T17:05:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Coney Island (inc. Coney Island Creek)

2009-11-24T03:31:00.000-05:00

Full Screen: ► . . . 4-way arrows (lower rt.)

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Slideshow of the Week: Brooklyn Unleashed

2009-11-22T17:16:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Billboard Shells

2009-11-21T03:44:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Industrial Brooklyn

2009-11-20T03:49:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Abandoned Toys

2009-11-18T16:56:00.001-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Monumental Brooklyn

2009-11-16T17:02:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Heavenly Transmissions

2009-11-15T03:42:00.002-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Churches & Transit

2009-11-14T03:37:00.002-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Bags on Barbed Wire

2009-11-13T19:58:00.002-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: 99¢ Wholesale

2009-11-13T19:53:00.003-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Footbridges & Pedestrian Tunnels

2009-11-12T20:55:00.000-05:00

Full Screen: ► . . . 4-way arrows (lower rt.)

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Slideshow of the Week: Cemeteries

2009-11-04T17:48:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Brooklyn Birds

2009-11-03T09:20:00.002-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: Gravesend

2009-11-02T03:27:00.000-05:00

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Slideshow of the Week: The Autosphere

2009-11-01T09:16:00.003-05:00

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The Houses in Brooklyn (Brooklyn’s in the House) – Part 2

2009-10-03T08:22:00.011-04:00

Williamsburg

Greenpoint

Greenwood Heights

Windsor Terrace

SLIDESHOW – The Houses in Brooklyn (Flickr)

Citicorp Metaphor (Object Reminders)

2009-10-02T01:38:00.000-04:00

The Citicorp building in Queens (as seen from northern Brooklyn)

Towering over a landscape of cemeteries, billboards, and scrap yards

Behold the shadow it casts on the flatness all around it

Empire Under Siege

2009-10-01T02:30:00.000-04:00

Water Tower Wired

2009-09-30T20:26:00.002-04:00

Cell phone waves
Flow through clouds
In a glowering sky

Monumental Brooklyn

2009-09-29T22:24:00.002-04:00

Houdini’s Grave (Queens)

2009-09-28T21:34:00.000-04:00

Machpelah Cemetery, Queens

Trinity Cemetery: Monument to Modesty

2009-09-27T20:00:00.000-04:00

“To ensure uniformity and humility so that there would be no difference between rich and poor, a rule was passed that all markers would have to be made of wood or hollow metal.” (From cemetery history, Gowanus Lounge blog.)

Click for Google map of Trinity and surroundings.

Tracks along the edge of the cemetery (see earlier post, “Lutheran Cemetery”)

Vegetation, wrecked cars in the space between Trinity and neighboring Cemetery of the Evergreens. (Click for Google 360-degree view of peripheral street.)

Exit, Trinity Cemetery

One Day Near Calvary Cemetery

2009-09-27T17:42:00.000-04:00

A man came off the footbridge near Calvary Cemetery and was standing next to the Long Island Expressway. Someone there who saw him said he was disoriented. Cars were flying by and the noise was deafening. He kept muttering something about “Triangle Fifty Four” and going to see his cousin, who lived near there.

He had been discharged from a mental hospital the day before and was going to talk to his cousin about staying with him temporarily.

His cousin said he never showed up. His wallet was found on a grassy knoll beside the highway.

St. John’s Cemetery (Queens)

2009-09-27T00:01:00.001-04:00

Brooklyn Unleashed (Some Animals I’ve Seen)

2009-09-26T23:24:00.007-04:00

McGorlick Park, Greenpoint

Gerritsen Beach

Greenpoint

Carroll Gardens

Bedford-Stuyvesant

Birds on Barbed Wire

2009-09-25T21:24:00.000-04:00

Seen from the Street

2009-09-24T02:36:00.001-04:00

Factory workstation through window grating

Oil worker through chink in fence

Under the Overpass

2009-09-23T21:50:00.000-04:00

Ghost Train (Derelict Tracks)

2009-09-23T01:51:00.007-04:00

30th St. & Hunters Point. Ave., Queens (Google Satellite Map)

Five minutes behind me: St. Raphael’s church on Greenpoint Avenue

Look: it’s a smokestack half inside of a building.

Abandoned train tracks between two factory buildings (right off Dutch Kills).

English Kills: The Garbage District

2009-07-22T01:42:00.008-04:00

English Kills (Dutch for creek) in East Williamsburg is a fetid body of water that leads to the even more fetid (and hyper-toxic) Newtown Creek. A big part of Brooklyn’s garbage industry is concentrated in the area, with both city and privately operated transfer stations lining the creek, and many small scrap/recycling companies nearby.

The creek is mostly hidden behind the gates of the transfer stations, all but inaccessible from the street. There is a spot, though, where one can not only see (and smell) the kills up close, but actually walk across it. The railroad tracks off Morgan Avenue, right across from Bushwick Terminal, turn into a bridge that spans the creek.

Indelible images from the bridge over English Kills: the claw machine in the scrap yard bobbing above the corrugated metal fence.

The price is right: someone is living in a shack right near the source of the creek.

Not for human consumption (it is water, though, technically).

On a hot day around English Kills, an infernal stench pervades and clouds of flies are like part of the landscape. The diesel roar of carting trucks is practically the only sound that can be heard in the otherwise barren place.

The Houses in Brooklyn (Brooklyn’s in the House)

2009-07-04T04:19:00.023-04:00

Canarsie

Gravesend

Dyker Heights

Bay Ridge

Bensonhurst

SLIDESHOW – The Houses in Brooklyn (Flickr)

Lawn Ornaments

2009-07-02T05:23:00.005-04:00

Architectural Trimmings

2009-06-30T05:52:00.001-04:00

Cemetery Fringes (Part 2)

2009-05-21T01:00:00.028-04:00

Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens is the one at the top, separated from the northern half of Lutheran Cemetery by the diagonal road (Elliot Ave.). This “garden cemetery,” with rolling hills and lush vegetation, has an interesting jagged perimeter.

There are 29 cemeteries in Queens, where more than five million people are buried. That’s almost three times the borough’s current living population, many of whom live on the fringes of the “Cemetery Belt.”

A house with a cemetery for its extended back yard is not uncommon in Queens (click image to enlarge).

Snaking off mighty Metropolitan Ave., right near Lutheran Cemetery, is Admiral Ave., which leads to an alley, which leads to the tracks.

This is the alley-like street off Admiral Ave. (Terrace Court). Notice the freshly opened beer in the foreground. If you click the picture to enlarge it, you can also see some balloons (above the red car). It was Saturday afternoon and a kiddy party was in progress while I was doing my “work.”

Calvary Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens

Cemetery Nook: Street level view of what appears as a sharp right angle on the satellite photo. Notice the melange of textures that converge in the corner: two different stone walls, a metal fence, some scraggly vegetation and some trash.

Mt. Zion Cemetery (Queens)

2009-04-16T01:16:00.015-04:00

Mt. Zion is on the right. On the left is New Calvary Cemetery.

Next to the cemetery is a Dept. of Sanitation (DSNY) incinerator.

For the residents of bordering Maurice Ave., Mt. Zion is conveniently located.

Your ad here.

DSNY parking lots.

Looking down at the base of the DSNY incinerator.

A row of garbage trucks—a fraction of the large fleet parked at the complex.

Mid-March: Plows at the ready.

Pile of plows.

Garbage-strewn vegetation at parking lot edge.

Look what I found among the garbage. (What’s been going on there?)

Lutheran Cemetery (Queens)

2009-04-14T01:11:00.009-04:00

Google Satellite Map

Only in Brooklyn: Guard Dogs on Rooftops

2009-02-13T10:30:00.006-05:00

Guard dogs on rooftops follow your path
running along the ledge, barking nonstop.
I heard about someone in a nearby building
who threw a steak on the roof to shut the dog up
and for the rest of the night it was quiet.

In and Around the “North Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone”

2008-12-17T15:32:00.028-05:00

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.

—Oscar Wilde

In the industrial zones, certain truths—not necessarily related to the surroundings—reveal themselves.

Some of the companies I passed: pipes, plumbing supplies, paper, recycling, waste disposal, Chinese food distribution, lumber, marble, floor coverings/linoleum, machine tools, valves, oil refining, oil recovery, plastics, garbage/shopping bags, windows and doors, building supplies, live poultry, roof tiles, steel doors, lamp importer, produce, store gates and iron work.

Chinese Economic Miracle (The Price of Globalization)

A trip down to the engine room of commerce, for a glimpse at the gears.

Concrete: the most prevalent manmade substance
Brooklyn IS concrete

Crossing the rails
Walking the streets
Spanning the city
Ped Xing

Google Satellite Map

Off Off the Beaten Track: Dutch Kills (Borderland Wonderland, Part 3)

2008-12-12T00:55:00.024-05:00

The sectors of a city . . . are decipherable, but the personal meaning they have for us is incommunicable, as is the secrecy of private life in general, regarding which we possess nothing but pitiful documents.

—Guy Debord

The service road beside Newtown Creek, past the forking railroad tracks spanning Dutch Kills, looked ripe for exploration. The satellite photo was ambiguous, though; it looked like the only way onto the tracks was through a large truck depot, but was it accessible? Would the gatekeepers of industry bar my way?

Up from the subway

Onto the footbridge

Highway cash crop
Billboard harvest

Target acquired. Trespassing? I don’t know, but it felt like it.

On the rickety wooden footbridge between the forking railroad tracks. . . the rumbling and clanking of the scrap yards on the creek within earshot . . . I am ecstatic beneath the satellite photos that guided me here.

On Railroad Avenue I heard something rustling behind me and I turned quickly, thinking it a rat. It was a puppy from the scrap yard, a dusty little mutt, sweet as can be, rabidly frisky, nipping at my fingers—pure motion.

We had a moment together . . . Goodbye sweet little dusty scrap yard puppy.

Maspeth/Calvary Cemetery (Borderland Wonderland, Part 2)

2008-12-11T19:14:00.023-05:00

Borderland wonderland
Edge of the cemetery
Industrial periphery

Crossing the bridge to Queens
A concrete factory on English Kills

The Crane District

Living in industry

It's a living

Full frontal ductwork

Bridge to the end

Exit R.I.P.

Buried under debt

Corporate headstone

Death of industry (smokestack tombstone)

The last pitch

Under the Kosciuszko Bridge (Greenpoint)

2008-12-11T15:24:00.031-05:00

Google Map

The Kitty Saint of Queens (Borderland Wonderland, Part 1)

2008-12-11T14:42:00.015-05:00

Signage (Mobile)

2008-12-11T14:06:00.007-05:00

Click images to enlarge

Signage

2008-12-11T13:55:00.000-05:00

Digital Scrapbook (DrunkWalk Artifacts)

2008-11-18T19:25:00.011-05:00

Click images to enlarge