Across The River

Photos: © Stan B.

I was walking out of my mother's nursing home when I was hit with the hottest wind I ever experienced in my life, unnaturally hot, radioactively hot, and having grown up in NY, having experienced many a NYC summer, I realized- this is most definitely not normal! 

It was 98 degrees that day and the major reason I wasn't spending extended periods of time pounding sweltering midtown city streets in the little time I had. So, I continued my Queens bound journey to Long Island City- which I once termed "the armpit of NY." For decades it was the land forgotten by time, one of the last stops before Manhattan on the 7 IRT subway line. Not many people lived there and it wasn't anything even remotely resembling a city, the area immediately surrounding said subway stop was just a stagnant, malignant area of decay- like a hoarder's long forgotten and abandoned living space. The area adjoining it was a mixture of longtime residents living in small residential communities separated by areas of light industry, spreading from the aforementioned LIC to neighboring Astoria- as sleepy and domestically banal as neighboring Manhattan was forever busy and bustling. It was an area I frequented while living in the Lower East Side for it's relative solace and tranquility, streets where one could find themself the only person afoot, where even the occasional horizon line could be spotted.

That all began to change the end of the last century, when hyper gentrification began to rear its head in the NYC real estate market directly across the river. It began quietly in the eighties with PS1, a beloved art museum alternative- when someone once proclaimed: "Artists- the shock troops of gentrification!"* Anyway, by the turn of the century there were Manhattan sized skyscrapers (both business and luxury) springing up all around- a trend that continues to this day. Still, there are pockets of quiet and stillness not found beyond the riverbank, as well as the occasional tree for shade and solace, which is where I headed to and found the included photos (as well as the best bagels I ever did eat)...

*I suppose one could now substitute "techies" with artists.