Posts Tagged ‘Long Island City’
Saturday, April 30th, 2011
I love green. It’s my “other” favorite color. Today’s festivities around Long Island City and Astoria, Queens, also featured lots of green – which I didn’t even notice until much later in the day when I was reviewing my shots. In order of appearance:
Easter Egg Hunt at Gantry Plaza State Park – less of a hunt, and more like a stampede!
9th annual Kite Flight at Socrates Sculpture Park – even the tape is green!
Kite Flight in action – a good windy day indeed
container garden in Astoria
probably my favorite domicile in all of Astoria, this house property goes all the way through from block to block, with a huge “backyard” garden and cobblestone driveway
green garage door – it was painted after the windows were filled in with plywood
lots of places in Queens with this rough growth – not the best light, I’ll be back!
Saturday, March 26th, 2011
Long Island City is afforded many wonderful views. The now-landmarked Pepsi Cola sign. sits in front of East Coast 7. You can see the area immediately around the sign’s base and behind it for about a block is still being constructed, and full of trailers. There is plenty of construction immediately north of East Coast 7 – which hopefully will be the end of this development craze (not likely) which has been many years in the making. All gentrification issues aside, the State Gantry Park is nicely landscaped these days…
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
Spotted during another one of my many tours of this wonderful town and borough!
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
[FULL set on my Flickr]
In between a couple meetings yesterday in Sunnyside and Woodside, I took some time to stroll through those neighborhoods, as well as skirt along Sunnyside Gardens, and stroll through Blissville – yes, there is a neighborhood called Blissville in New York City! Not to be boxed into the area only around the first four stops on the 7 train in Queens, I still consider all of these neighborhoods part of the “greater LIC” – I won’t go into why that makes sense to me now, but it’s all part of an ongoing series, and will be detailed someday. For now, enjoy the vantages, the juxtaposition of commercial and residential, and a peek at some of the best-kept secrets in all of NYC:
Okay maybe not the “best” kept secret, this is a Queens prison. A “correctional facility” as they say. I don’t think I ever noticed this building before, even though it’s the only thing at the intersection – it is kind of designed to not-be-noticed after all.
backyards, deli counters, and never-changed-since-the-1990s era comic book stores are abundant in these areas:
lovely stained glass art at the subway stations along the 7:
when you get off those trains, you’re afforded with some wonderful sweeping skies, and magnificent views of Queens and beyond, including but not limited to top of the Chrysler Building, parts of Times Square, you can see the Queensboro Bridge almost head-on here, and even Big Allis off to the right:
This epitomizes LIC to me, a very quaint residential domicile just blocks away from a heavily commercial, industrial district:
Personally I love these architectural juxtapositions. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a post-industrial city, in a home but I yearned for industry, or maybe because to me it just makes sense to have work and life in the same district.
And of course cutie houses, faux alleys, shopping by the pound, and more hidden streets that never get walked on:
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
Since 1978, Materials for the Arts (MFTA) have supplied New York City arts and cultural non-profits and public schools with free materials that otherwise would have wound up in the trash. They supply everything from sidewalk chalk to office binders, from latex paint to furniture, spools of fabric and even computers and lumber. And of course crafts! They have a huge craft department, and tonight is their annual Masked Marvelous fundraiser and cocktail party.
Featured performers this year will include the Band of Bicycles and the Madagascar Institute, who both participated in last month’s World Maker Faire (I still hear those jet engines in my dreams!).
Other acts include Playdate Puppets, Lady Circus, Theatre Dzieci and about a half-dozen other groups and musical performances.
Below are some shots from last year’s mask-making party, and again you can visit this link for more information and directions.
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
[this post was originally published at makezine.com]
This past weekend I went on a group bike tour of five compost sites in Western Queens, NY, in the neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside. The sites were as diverse as the borough’s residents, ranging from barrels in community gardens to a one-acre rooftop farm. And the compost was as stinky and steamy as you would expect it to be!
The bike tour was organized by Stephanos, from the Western Queens Compost Initiative, which is part of the Two Coves Community Garden in Astoria. You may remember the Compost Initiative joined forces with the Compostess and the Queens Botanical Garden at last month’s World Maker Faire in NYC where they presented composting workshops, a worm petting zoo, and other hands-on projects.
We began our tour at the LIC Community Garden on 49 Avenue near Vernon Blvd. The operation here is quite small, so they only need two of these tumble-style barrels. The barrels were originally used for transporting and storing olives, and were donated by a local distributor.
You can see they built some custom bases out of 2x4s and used a type of metal dowel system to hold the barrels and allows them to turn the compost inside. There is a grate on the bottom which allows air in and keeps pests (rats!) out.
We proceeded to the nearby Sunnyside Farmers Market where kids got to see how worms assist in helping break down food waste for composting. This is also where the majority of their compost material is collected — approximately 550 lbs. per week!
The food waste from the market is transported to the nearby Brooklyn Grange (our next destination) via these trike bicycles that have been supplied by Worksman Cycles, America’s oldest bicycle manufacturer, who also had some fun and eclectic bikes at the World Maker Faire.
Named after the adjacent borough, but housed on the roof of a former auto parts supply building on Northern Boulevard, the Brooklyn Grange is a one-acre commercial rooftop farm that supplies area CSAs and grocers with produce. It’s a strange and wonderful experience, to be standing in the middle of a working farm, while surrounded with views of a city of nine million people! The farm has three working “heaps” of compost, each currently in their own stage of processing — and one of them was so fresh and hot that it was steaming!
Eventually, we finished off our tour at the Two Coves Community Garden where their outreach programs began. Here they maintain 26 compost barrels and Stephanos also showed us this nifty sifter made out of a wood frame, chicken wire, and bicycle wheels:
You can find out more about composting in NYC at nyc.gov
