This is the city's last seltzer factory, where a century-old carbonator is still doing its best Jesus impersonation: turning chilled, triple-filtered New York City tap water into "the poor man's champagne". The bubbly beverage is delivered to customers in thick glass siphon bottles (most of them made in Czechoslovakia during the middle of the last century) at a pressure of 60 pounds per square inch. Comparing his supremely fizzy product to "that dreck you buy in the supermarket", Kenny Gomberg says: "Good seltzer should hurt. It’s the truth."
This plaque outside Canarsie's PS 115 looks identical to those found along Eastern Parkway. Planting trees in honor of fallen soldiers seems to have been a popular practice in the years following World War I.
Established in 1839 as the Methodist Protestant Church of Canarsie, and later known as Grace Church, this is the oldest congregation in Canarsie, although it's not clear exactly when the present structure was built.
Part of the Junction streetscape beautification project taking shape around the intersection of Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues in Brooklyn
From the NY Times:
"The Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club once ruled southern Brooklyn as its fiefdom. The club’s boss, Meade Esposito, his teeth clenching a cigar, dined with mayors in Canarsie basements and at Gravesend diners, and he cut deals that sealed elections and made and broke political careers. The club made judges, controlled school and community boards, and handed out thousands of jobs to loyal party soldiers."
Built in 1877 following the arrival of many German immigrants to the area
Like the Bronx Grit Chamber, this 1933 sewage pumping station at the head of Paerdegat Basin (near the new combined sewer overflow facility) stands as a dignified monument to New York City's waste.
Accompanied by his skateboard-riding daughter here in Flushing Meadows, Dharbhasana completes his 327th, and final, lap of the 1-mile loop that he's been running around for the past six days. That comes out to 54.5 miles — more than two marathons — per day, and it's good for 11th place among the male competitors in this year's Self-Transcendence 6 Day Race. The top finisher ran 462 miles (77 per day), while his first-place counterpart in the 10-day contest covered 720 miles (72 per day). You can see all the results, and read more about the races, here. (If you remember my visits to the mind-boggling 3100-mile race last summer, you will probably not be surprised to learn that the 6- and 10-day competitions are also put on by the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team.)
Located just off to the side of the racecourse, this is where the runners hunker down for a few hours of sleep each night.
Created for the 1939-40 World's Fair, this is the largest lake in New York City (not counting the Jerome Park and Central Park Reservoirs).
This abandoned structure, originally covered by an enormous, multi-colored, translucent suspended roof, was part of the New York State Pavilion at the 1964-65 World's Fair. Inside, sprawling across the floor, is a 130-by-166-foot terrazzo road map of New York State, heavily deteriorated after decades of neglect. It's currently hidden from view, however; in 2009, it was covered by protective layers of sand, geotextiles, and gravel in an attempt to preserve what's left of it. You can see a photo of the map in all its World's Fair glory here, and you can also spot it on several occasions in the circa-1987 music video for "Don't Let's Start" by They Might Be Giants, which was mostly filmed inside the Tent.
Flushing Meadows Park was the site of not only the 1964-65 World's Fair, but also its 1939-40 predecessor. Before that, however, the park wasn't a park at all, but rather a vast ash dump run by a Tammany crony named Fishhooks McCarthy. This befouled landscape was immortalized in the pages of The Great Gatsby:
About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally, a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.Realizing that a tremendous amount of money would be required to convert the old dump into parkland, Robert Moses seized on the idea of holding a World's Fair here in 1939, using the financial resources available for the fair to level the ash mounds, dig out lakes, and lay down topsoil, turning what Moses described as "a cloud of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night" into one of the largest parks in New York City.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean they're preparing to reopen the place to the public. The guy standing on the old escalator said they're just trying to pretty up the areas visible from the adjacent Queens Theatre.
Closed since 2008 — not even a nice fat bribe could keep it open.
Love locks, perhaps, on the way to Little Neck Bay
