Kevin Duggan Knows

 

Great minds think alike.

So I've heard.  Now, I am not going to tell you that I am a "great mind."  But I know when someone is thinking like a cyclist--in particular, a cyclist in New York City.

Kevin Duggan is such a person.  His latest article in Streetsblog NYC tells me as much.

In it, he lauds a new series of bike lanes I've already ridden a few times.  But he also said they are part of the "groundwork" for a "much-needed safe transportation network in the neighborhoods of Western Queens.

Astoria, where I live, is part of Western Queens.  There is already a lane--which is far from ideal--on my street and a few others.  But those extant lanes do not form a coherent network that would allow a cyclist or, for that matter, anyone not driving, a safe, reliable and efficient way to traverse the area between its bridges, schools, workplaces, shopping areas, parks, museums and the residences of people like me.

Nor do the new lanes about which Duggan writes.  Oh, one of them, along 11th Street, is protected by concrete barriers along some stretches and a lane of parked cars along others.  And it connects, if not seamlessly, with two other lanes along other major thoroughfares--Jackson Avenue and 44th Avenue-- in the neighborhood.  But they don't offer something else they could:  a safe and easy way to access the Pulaski Bridge, which connects the Queens neighborhood Long Island City (an area about 4 kilometers south of my apartment) to Greenpoint, Brooklyn--and has a protected bike lane.

Moreover, the Jackson Avenue and 44th Avenue lanes, which run east-west, doesn't connect (yet) with the lane along Vernon Boulevard--a north-south lane like 11th Street.  And there is no lane to connect Vernon or 11th to Crescent Street or other lanes that take cyclists to the RFK Memorial Bridge and other useful, relevant and interesting places.

Kevin Duggan understands.  I can only hope that the planners will, some day soon.

(Photo by Kevin Duggan for Streetsblog.  Map from New York City Department of Transportation.)

Fall Rides: Colors, Everywhere

 The other morning, I couldn't get back to sleep.  So I went for an early before-work ride.

That's when I learned it's really Fall:

In other parts of my neighborhood, burgundy and orange leaves blaze against a crisply blue autumn sky.  But in the hour before dawn, nothing could have been more dramatic than those yellow leaves.

Of course, those aren't the only colors I've seen on recent rides.  Last week, I encountered this mural on 40th Avenue by the tracks, in a corner of Long Island City I don't often see:

And there was this, just after the seemingly-endless rains we had last weekend:

Wherever I ride in the Fall, I see colors, everywhere!

Voices Of My Rides

In "Sounds of Silence," Paul Simon wrote, "the words of the prophets are written the on the subway walls."

I've been riding daily and haven't been on the subway.  But I have seen, if not the words of the prophets, then at least expressions of the zeitgeist, if from different points of view.

During my Saturday ride to Point Lookout, I chanced upon this in Lido Beach:

I don't think I've seen such a large US flag anywhere else, let alone in front of a suburban house.  When I stopped to take the photo, I talked to a man walking his dog.  He said the house is "outsize for this neighborhood" and that he's seen "the flag more than the people who live there."  I quipped that I've lived in apartments smaller than that flag.

Not only is its size overwhelming:  It's placed so that in whichever direction you walk, ride or drive, you can't not see it.

As I've said in earlier posts, ostentatious displays of outsized flags--often seen on the back of "coal rollers"--seem less like expressions of patriotism and more like acts of aggression.

In contrast, during yesterday afternoon's ride down the waterfront, from my Astoria apartment to Red Hook, I saw something more inclusive on one of the last ungentrified blocks of Long Island City.

The author of that bit of graffiti, I suspect, also gave us this:

That person is not the enemy of the flag-flaunters and coal-rollers--and would surely know that I'm not, either. 

A Gap At The End Of The Day, The Beginning Of The Year

How did you begin your New Year?

How did I begin mine?  Not by asking annoying rhetorical questions.  Seriously, I stayed awake for the Times Square ball drop and the fireworks that followed. I didn't drink, sing or dance or do anything scandalous. (Trust me, my singing and dancing are scandalous!)  Still, I slept late, talked to friends and family on the phone and went for a late day ride.

On the Long Island City waterfront, a few meters from the iconic Pepsi-Cola sign, people walked alone, with each other and their dogs.  I stopped for one utterly adorable three-year-old spaniel-poodle mix who caught my glance.  That led to a conversation with their humans.  Actually, one of said humans was taking care of the pooch for her parents.  She and her partner looked like they were taking good care of each other. 

We watched the sunset over Manhattan.  What I captured in the photos isn't exactly "Manhattan-henge."  The light I saw caught my attention, however, because it struck me, and the two women I met, how unusual it is to see a gap in the Manhattan skyline--or, for that matter, in the Long Island City colony of towers behind us.  I recalled, for them, when LIC was an industrial area (part of it still is) and blue-collar workers lived with their families in the small row houses that are disappearing from the neighborhood.

Now, I know that nobody comes to New York to see a gap: If that's what you want, you go to the Grand Canyon.  I wonder whether we will be the last people to see the sun descend into an urban canyon, as it seems that developers are filling every vacant space they find. I know this city is "always changing," but I don't recall any other time like the one I'm witnessing.

Then again, according to Heraclitus, the only constant is change.  Perhaps it is the only certainty for the coming year, or any other.  

 

Commuting: A Detour Into A Season

 

Interesting, what detours on a morning bicycle commute (yes, I'm doing that again: more about that later) will bring into view.

First, in an industrial area of Long Island City just south of Silvercup Studios, I had to detour for this:

 

OK, I'd seen it before.  But if you're pedaling down 22nd Street and pass under the overpasses for the Queensborough (59th Street) Bridge and the #7 train of the MTA, turn right and then left,  you'll run into something that disrupted the street grid: 

Some time in the past, I started a search I just may resume.  Specifically, I was (and am) curious as to whether that rock outcropping was left in place because it was too hard to break or blast  (there are a few similar outcroppings in Upper Manhattan for that reason)--or, perhaps too expensive.  Or, for all I know, someone or some group of people didn't want it destroyed.  Could it have been sacred to people who no longer live in the neighborhood?

The other morning brought a crisp, cool breeze and a blaze of color some living beings--I include myself, sometimes--hold as a store, a memory, against the season that inevitably follows.

Whenever I see a leaf or a flower, I see a hand.  Sometimes it is trying to capture water, light--or to hold whatever time it may have left.  I couldn't help but to wonder whether those leaves I saw not far from the rock were trying to hold onto their beauty in that moment--or whether they were bleeding away, however slowly, those last flickerings of the light they still hold.

I know that since I've returned to the classroom, my experiences, and those of my students, are different--whether in obvious or not-so-obvious ways--from what they, and I, experienced before the pandemic.  I wonder whether it has anything to do with bicycle commutes like the one I did the other morning. 

Late Afternoon, Early Winter, End Of Year

Late afternoon.  Early winter. End of the year.

That was today’s ride, down the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront and back.

I lingered a bit at the Long Island City promenades op and piers. I started riding there long before it sprouted glass towers, trendy cafes and young people who might be a little too self-consciously hip for their own good.  

Back then, it was an industrial area where each block, it seemed, showed a different stage of post-industrial decay.  But it felt comfortable, to me anyway, like a sweater that might look a bit tattered but feels right.  One thing that hasn’t changed is that it offers some nice harbor vistas and the best views of my two favorite Manhattan skyscrapers—the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. I wonder, though, whether we’ll be able to enjoy those  views for much longer:  It seems that developers are building more and more, as tall and as close as possible to those edifices, as possible.

I mean, if they continue to hem it in, nobody will be able to see this, from Long Island City or anywhere else.

 

Still, the ride was a nice ending to a day and a year, at the beginning of winter.

A Ride From Art To Marlee

 I've ridden to museums, galleries, plays, poetry readings, concerts and other cultural events.  It's one of my favorite ways to spend a day: I get to combine some of the things I love most.  

The problem, though is parking. I know, I sound like a motorist when I say that.  But only in a few venues can one bring in a bicycle. The Metropolitan Museum has bike racks in its parking garage and valet bicycle parking during certain hours.  But at most other events and venues, you take your chances with parking on the street.

A couple of days ago, during a late-day ride, I came across a solution to the problem:

The 5-50 Gallery is located, as the name indicates, at 5-50 51st Avenue in Long Island City.  More specifically, it occupies a garage--from what I can tell, a commercial one.  Converting industrial and retail spaces to use for art and performance is not new, but this gallery's space is uniquely accessible. 

No, that isn't a portait of Marlee on mushrooms.  It's one work by Kyle Gallagher, the artist featured when I stopped by. 

The paintings have a grab-you-by-the-collar quality, full of  colors that flash with, at once, the energy of street festivals and the urgency of flashing ambulance lights.  And the way cats and other living beings are rendered makes comics seem like a kind of mythology of the subconscious,  spun from threads of graffiti, street portraiture and abstraction.

All right, I know, you didn't come to this blog for two-bit art commentary. But there was something oddly appropriate, almost synchronistic, about encountering those paintings on a bike ride through an industrial-turned-trendy neighborhood.

When I got home, Marlee didn't care. She just wanted to know, "what's for dinner?"  

Review Of A New Bridge

No one will ever confuse Review Avenue in Long Island City with Route Departmentale 618 or the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon.  

I had only one opportunity to do RD 618 and one other for the iconic California ride because, well, each of them is about 6000 kilometers away (in opposite directions) from my apartment.  Review Avenue, on the other hand, is only about five kilometers away (at least via the routes I take), which is one of the reasons I find myself riding there at least a few times a year.

Although it's gritty, to be polite, it is visually interesting.  There aren't any really tall buildings there, which allows the sky to serve as a kind of diorama backdrop for the street that separates the First Calvary Cemetery Wall from the sooty brick and stone industrial structures.  That same street also looks as if it's going to sneak in under the Kosciuszko Bridge, but it makes a sharp left and leaves that job to the railroad tracks and Newtown Creek instead.

Until a few days ago, the Kosciuszko Bridge was the steel-girdered span that looks like an Erector Set project left out in the rain and soot.  It still is, but it's also that other bridge that looks like it's hanging by red and white shoestrings from a couple of concrete tombstones.  

Talk about "build it and they will come":  The new Kosciuszko is already congested with traffic--and the old bridge hasn't been closed!  A second stringed structure is supposed to be constructed parallel to the current one in two years.  I think cars are already lined up to get across it.

Actually, I rather like the look of the new bridge.  And it's probably easier to drive, especially a truck, across as it doesn't have the old bridge's steep inclines and terrible sight lines.  At the dedication ceremony, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he heard his father--three-term Governor Mario Cuomo--use expletives for the first time when he drove the family across the bridge.

Neither bicycles nor pedestrians were allowed on the old "Kos".  As far as I know, they won't be allowed on the new ones, either.  Then again, the bridges are part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where you wouldn't want to ride even if it were allowed!

The old bridge is falling apart.  But some things endure:

I wonder what Joe was thinking when he painted his name on the wall of the cemetery all of those years ago. (Maybe he's inside it now!) I'd love to know what kind of paint he used:  Anything that could withstand all of the fumes from the factories and trucks, along with the weather, must be pretty durable!

What Are They Trying To Say--And To Whom?

Unless you do all of your cycling on unpaved surfaces, you are bound to see road signs during your rides.

We don't notice, or think about, most of them because we see them so often.  Others simply don't apply to us.

But some are really strange. For example, there was the one that said, "Graffiti is a crime camera enforced".   Was that sign trying to tell us that graffiti is camera-enforced?  Or that graffiti is a camera-enforced crime?

Then there was the one that warned us, "Use of cameras prohibited and strictly enforced".  Now, perhaps I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I can't, for the life of me, understand how something can be prohibited and strictly enforced.

Some signs leave you wondering who is their intended audience and what, exactly, they are trying to tell said audience.  I saw an example today not far from my apartment.

About a kilometer from my place, next to the East River (which isn't actually a river), there's a Con Ed power plant.  It's located on Vernon Boulevard, which rims the river, just south of the bridge to Roosevelt Island.

(Interestingly, there's a Moishe's storage facility across Vernon Boulevard that used to be a factory that made Loft candy.  Now I wonder how much I--and members of my family ate!  Well, I guess I shouldn't worry yet:  Nobody's glowing in the dark!)

Anyway, a bike lane now runs along the western edge of Vernon.  As it happens, the lane directly crosses the path of the Con Ed plant's driveway, through which trucks enter and exit.

The traffic lane that borders the bike lane handles southbound traffic.  A driver headed in that direction would not be able to read the sign, except perhaps in a rearview mirror.  The northbound traffic is so far to the right that most drivers probably wouldn't see the sign.  Even if they did, it probably wouldn't matter, as neither the driveway nor the bike lane enter, or intersect with, the northbound traffic lane.

The bike lane is sub-divided into a northbound and southbound lane.  As with the auto traffic, southbound riders wouldn't see this sign.  Even if they glanced back to look at it, the sign would be useless to them, as they would have already crossed the driveway.

So, I have to wonder:  For whom was this sign intended? (Or, in market-research speak:  Who is the intended audience?)  And what was the sign's creator trying to tell the intended audience?

You have to wonder what some people are thinking when they make and post signs.

The Pulaski Bridge Bike Lane Is Open. It's A Victory--Almost

One sure way to elicit chuckles or groans, or both, from a longtime New Yorker is to mention the Second Avenue Subway.  It has been planned for nearly a century, and construction on it began in 1972, only to be halted by the city's near-bankruptcy in 1975.  

The tunnels were dug in three non-contiguous sections.  By the time new construction on the line began eight years ago, those tunnels were unusable.  So, the whole line has to be built from scratch.  It was supposed to open last year; now the city's Metropolitan Transit Authority is saying, in effect, "maybe next year, or the year after."

On this blog, I have also mentioned the Randall's Island Connector, which seemed to take nearly as long to build and open as it took for the island--and neighboring Manhattan, Long Island and the Bronx--to form during the Taconic and Acadian orogenies.  Finally, in spite of the snark and cynicism (entirely warranted!) of people like me, it opened late last year, and is actually a good, well-designed bike route.  My only complaint is that the Bronx entrance, while not difficult to access, is easy to miss if you're not familiar with the area.

Speaking of difficulty in access:  That has always been one of my complaints about the Pulaski Bridge pedestrian path.  That difficulty in entering it--especially if you're coming from the east on 49th Avenue or the north on 11th Street, which just happen to be the two ways I usually access the bridge--is one of the reasons I usually ride in the traffic lane.  Another reason is that the pedestrian path is so narrow--actually, there are signs telling cyclists to walk their bikes across the span--and heavily used by pedestrians (some with dogs), skateboarders, skaters and others, that it's actually easier and safer to ride the traffic line, where visibility is pretty good.

 

I get the feeling that when the bridge--which connects Long Island City in Queens with Greenpoint in Brooklyn--opened in 1954, nobody anticipated that so many pedestrians and cyclists use it.  As I've mentioned in other posts, I can recall riding over it, and through the neighborhoods it joins, twenty or thirty years ago and not seeing another cyclist.  Then, most of the people who lived on either side of the bridge were longtime blue-collar residents who stopped riding bikes as soon as they got their drivers' licenses--if, indeed, they ever rode bikes in the first place.  Now, of course, Greenpoint and Long Island City--as well as nearby neighborhoods like Astoria (where I live) and Sunnyside in Queens, or Williamsburg and DUMBO in Brooklyn, are full of young people who've discovered that it's OK to ride a bike even though they're old enough to drive.

Someone in the city's Department of Transportation no doubt noticed the changes I've described.  So, that person reasoned, a dedicated bike lane was in order.  A plan to create one was first proposed about four years ago. Then, we were told, it would take about two years to complete.

Now, I understand there were challenges in creating that particular lane.  For one, the bridge carried six lanes of traffic over the entrance to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and near entrances to I-278, and is located near industrial areas.  Thus, the bridge receives a fair number of vehicles, some of which are trucks and vans.  Surely, the drivers of those vehicles--who, in some cases, are independent contractors and businesspeople of one sort and another--would not be happy about losing traffic lanes.

Another difficulty in creating the bike lane is that the Pulaski is a drawbridge.  So, anything used to separate the bike lanes from traffic would have to be sturdy enough to do the job yet could be separated when the bridge is opened for a ship. 

Then, of course, there are the usual causes of delays, such as obtaining funds and working with contractors.  Those wrinkles were ironed out and, when I rode down 11th Street the other day, I saw--yes!--cyclists using the lane.  That, even though the path is not officially open:  ribbon cutting is supposed to take place today.

While I am glad for the lane, I think it doesn't resolve one problem of the pedestrian path:  access.  On the Long Island City side, one still has to make awkward turns across lanes of traffic, and on the Brooklyn side, the "merge" with the traffic lane is fairly smooth for cyclists coming off the bridge, but makes it difficult to enter the lane.

So--we got our lane, better late than never.  But, as with too many other bike lanes, the person who planned it probably isn't a cyclist and therefore doesn't realize that simply providing a separate lane for cyclists does not ensure our safety.

 

Autumn Twilight In New York

Is the spectacle of day turning into evening the most autumnal part of the day?  Or is Fall the twilight of the seasons?

During my short but exhilirating late-day ride today, the time of day seemed to mirror, perfectly, the time of year.  Day was turning to dusk; leaves were falling and spreading a shawl of deepening hues across the aging, wizening ground just as the setting sun cast its glow across the deepening cold of the river and sky.

Some have said that cycling sharpens our awareness of our surroundings.  I agree that it does, in part because it opens our internal vistas in much the same way skies and trees open before us.

On my way back, I stopped in Queensbridge Park.  The bike path along Vernon Boulevard, which wends its way along the Queens side of the East River, detours into the park and brings cyclists, runners, skateboarders and dog-walkers within the shadow of the bridge for which the park is named.  The park is named for the bridge.  But, while people use the name in reference to the park (and a nearby housing project and subway station that share the name), they never use it to refer to the bridge, which is more widely known as the Queensborough or 59th Street Bridge.

Anyway, the park--about two kilometers from my apartment--is wonderful and interesting in all sorts of ways. One, of course, is the views of the river, harbor, skyline and, of course the bridge--especially when the lights are turned on.  Another is the way that it seems to stand, almost defiantly, against its surroundings.  

As I mentioned, there is the housing project across Vernon Boulevard from its eastern side.  There are also small factories and warehouses.  The bridge looms over park's southern side. But to the north is a Con Ed power plant:

During the summer, the leaves on the trees at least partially obscure those smokestacks, depending on the spot from which you're viewing.  Now, of course, the trees offer no such cover.  However, they seem to be as inseparable in this autumnal vista as this season and time of day.

Who Came To The Baby Shower

Last night, I attended a baby shower for a friend who happens to be an employee of a bike shop I frequent.  Not surprisingly, other employees of that shop—yes, including males—also attended. 

The party was held in an American Legion auxiliary hall.  That, of course, is not remarkable:  Halls like that are used for all sorts of purposes.  One of my uncles was the Commander of a Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter in my old Brooklyn neighborhood; two of the earliest celebrations for my birthday that I can recall were held in that VFW space.  He and another uncle of mine were also members of the now-all-but-defunct Maritime Workers Union, which had its headquarters just a couple of blocks from the South Brooklyn docks where those uncles worked.  The MWU’s headquarters—now the Al-Noor School, the largest Muslim elementary school  in the United States—hosted any number of birthday and holiday parties as well as other events.

The baby shower I attended last night was the first time in years, possibly decades, that I have gone to an event in a hall like the ones I’ve just mentioned.  There was a time in my life when I could go to a neighborhood I’d never before seen, inside or outside of NYC, and find the American Legion and UFW halls, no matter how inconspicuous they were, without even trying. I’d also find a Maritime Union headquarters, if one existed, and the halls and offices of any number of other unions.

The hall in which the baby shower was held is one of the more inconspicuous ones I’ve seen:  It’s located in a house on a residential street.  Like other houses on that block, it’s pretty shabby-looking on the outside.  On the inside, too, as I suspect most, if not all, of the other houses on that block are.  The signs on it are barely legible, even in the late-afternoon daylight.  Those signs have faded, in part from decades of weather, but also, I’m sure, from the smoke and soot that belch out of factories and workshops, and cars entering and exiting the expressways that form two of the boundaries of that neighborhood.

The other boundaries of that community include industrial zones, cemeteries and streets that dead-end in a vast railyard or truck yards.  It’s the sort of place that, if I could ride to it “as the crow flies” from my apartment, I would need only a couple of minutes.  But, because the city’s grid pattern breaks down and I have to go around the yards I’ve mentioned, it took me about fifteen minutes.  Other guests at the baby shower, some of whom had lived in Brooklyn, Queens or Manhattan all of their lives, said they had difficulty in finding it.

The American Legion hall.

So, that neighborhood is, in effect, an urban island.  Almost nobody ever goes there unless he or she lives or works, or has friends or family members, there.  Probably no tourist—not even one who’s gone to PS 1 or any of the other Long Island City or Brooklyn venues located within two kilometers of that block—has ever seen that block.  And, I’m sure that few if any people who live on that block, or the ones adjacent to it, cross the boundaries I’ve mentioned frequently, if at all. 

A visitor to the block might be surprised to see that most of the people—at least the ones I saw congregating in front of, and around, those houses—are Caucasian.  Such a visitor would probably be less surprised to see that the people there aren’t, for the most part, young.  Or, at least, they do not have the youthful obliviousness one finds spilling in and out of the bars and cafes along Kent Avenue in Williamsburg. 

In brief, that neighborhood—like its American Legion hall—is something that is surviving, if just barely, because of its isolation:  a community of (mostly low-skill) blue-collar workers and their families, many of whom have never lived anywhere else.  It’s similar, in many ways, to the neighborhood in which I grew up.  I imagine that had my old community remained as it was, it might have become more and more run-down as remaining residents tried to hold on to it.  

What the neighborhood doesn't look like.

Years ago, I used to see many other such areas while riding through Brooklyn and western Queens.  Some of those areas have turned into the hipster havens and the playgrounds of the fresh-faced I see today.  Many current residents ride bicycles, if only as an expression as their self-conscious hipness.  But in those same neighborhoods thirty, twenty or even fifteen years ago, one almost never saw an adult cyclist.  In fact, those aging blue-collar workers and their families very often didn’t use the subways or buses, even if they stopped just steps away from their front doors. 

It seems that no one in the neighborhood where I attended the baby shower rides bicycles, either.  I’d bet none of them would ride even if Citibike installed a port right in front of the American Legion hall. I include, among those people, a man who seemed to be a manager or caretaker of the hall.  He was helpful and polite, if a bit reserved:  He addressed me and the other women as “ma’am” or “miss” and held the door for us.  He didn’t seem to be surprised that so many men attended the baby shower.  Rather, he expressed mild consternation that so many of us—men and  women—showed up on bikes.