A Weekday Morning in Photographs

Do I take the car or not?

With gas prices the way they are, I opt for the train. I depart from the Bronx via the 6 train.

I arrive in Long Island City about one hour later.

Breakfast consists of a buttered Blueberry Bagel and Orange Juice from Panera Bread.

After breakfast, I begin my walk to work down 35th Avenue. What's this? Looks like I can definitively tell you how to get to Sesame Street. It's one of many current television shows and films produced at the Kaufman Astoria Studios. The studio has an interesting and storied history; It was the east coast home of Paramount Pictures in the 1920's, the Marx Brothers made The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930) here and The Cosby Show was taped here, as well. 

Exiting: Traffic Safety Zone. Entering: Highway to the Danger Zone (It's what I think of every time I see this sign just before making the turn onto 31st Street).

This sad, condemned structure on 31st Street....

 

...reminds me of the house from Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. I don't know why. Other than pitched roofs and haunted appearances, they share little else in common. 

Moments later, I make another turn onto 38th Avenue and descend the hill where I'm greeted by this view every morning.

Detail (l. to r.): Empire State Building, Trump World Tower and a portion of the Queensboro (59th Street) Bridge.

More Detail (foreground and center): Queensboro (59th Street) Bridge and Citigroup Center.

Finally, I arrive for another day of work at Holiday Image Inc.

BONUS: I work about three blocks north of another major New York City film studio Silvercup Studios. While this studio has a much briefer history than Kaufman (it was originally the Silvercup Bakery factory), it's productions are no less notable. They include the HBO series The Sopranos and Sex in the City. Currently in production there are NBC's 30 Rock (an amazing show, by the way) and ABC's Ugly Betty.

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot, At Least Remember to Take Down Your Christmas Decorations Before Easter

Back in early December 2004, temperatures had climbed to an unseasonably warm 60 degrees in New York City. I can recall almost every neighbor of mine out on their front lawns, gaily hanging decorations in shorts, swimwear and white clothing. Even people who don't usually celebrate Christmas religiously, spiritually, commercially or otherwise, took advantage of the nice weather and 'decked the halls' as they say. 

Six weeks later - concurrent with the time annually when both feline and human alike refuse to go near that brown, brittle, glittery mass in the living room - temperatures had dipped to the 10 degree range. 

People began to take a 'wait and see' attitude regarding the removal of all outdoor decor: If it was sixty degrees when I put all this stuff up, surely there will come another 60 degree day when I can take it all down. For some that day would arrive in May of 2005. For others, whose decorations have been up for the last three years, that 'sixty degree day' will come either when hell freezes over or when they're 'damn good and ready!'

Fortunately, I have since devised a catch-all, 'get-out-of-jail-free' excuse for people who will inevitably find themselves in this situation at some point in the new year:

If your decorations are still up in June, you're late taking them down. Should they still be up in July, you've got a leg up on everybody else.

(Insert Phoenix Simile Here)

“The fires were set by landlords who were tired of trying to evict delinquent tenants. They were set by vandals who intended to return for the plumbing systems, which were easier to extract and sell once the firemen had knocked down the walls. They were set by idle kids who wandered the streets aimlessly after school….Sometimes ignition was preceded by the ritual removal of property, meaning that the fire had been started by the family that knew that Social Services was obligated to provide new housing and moving expenses to victims of disastrous combustion.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning, by Jonathan Mahler

There’s a stretch of the Cross Bronx Expressway, between Crotona Park and Webster Avenue, where the road elevates, offering a three-hundred and sixty degree view of the surrounding neighborhood. Traveling that section today recalls memories from my childhood in the mid-eighties when many of the apartment buildings in that area were abandoned and boarded, the result of arson almost a decade earlier. What I found particularly interesting at that time was the addition of silhouettes – human, plant and domestic animal – to the window boards. Literal window-dress, used to mask one of the emblems of New York City’s near-total economic collapse in the late-1970’s.

Today, those buildings have been repaired and are again housing tenants. However, a little further south in the almost equally revitalized Hunts Point I discovered a sight that I had once thought vanished from The Bronx. Four twenty-nine Bruckner Boulevard (pictured upper right), between E. 144th and E. 149th Streets, caught my eye while zipping by on my bike last summer.

Given the neighborhood’s notoriously rough history I found one window (pictured lower left) particularly ironic. It appeared that there was a man being held at gun point. When I made a u-turn for a closer inspection, I realized that it wasn't just a random criminal act, but a cop collaring a criminal. The window silhouettes also seem to have a film noir-ish quality to them - the one to the immediate left of this one features a female with a pin-up girl hairstyle smoking a cigarette - the femme fatale, if you will.

A Google search revealed that the building belongs to Cayne Industrial Sales Corporation, a company which sells steel lockers and shelving. Despite the fact that the building is occupied and functional, its initially deceptive ‘abandoned’ quality speaks to a different period of time in New York when the city was once again on the verge of re-inventing itself.