(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on August 30, 2021)

 

The waterfalls in Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park – ten miles from where I live – are always a treat to view, but some days are juicier than others – especially after big rainstorms.

Tropical Storm Henri dumped a TON of rain on New Jersey, New York and New England on the weekend of August 21 and 22. This was no ordinary rainstorm, so I headed for Paterson the first chance I got: August 25.

Wouldn’t you know that that was the first of three days of mid-90s temperatures with high humidity – two things I can’t stand – but this volume of rain doesn’t occur here more than once or twice a year, so it was time to go out and sweat-soak a shirt.

Now, I’ve been to the Falls many times since the 1970s (you can find other posts about them on this blog) and the water volume hasn’t always been great. I took this picture the last time I was there – 12-28-19 – and I’d have to say the flow was about average that day:

SIDE NOTE: That statue is of Alexander Hamilton. Legend has it that he stood on or near that very spot, observed the falls and imagined America’s first industrialized city, powered by those falls. That’s why AH is considered the founder of Paterson, New Jersey.

The expanded story is that Hamilton, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette stopped there following the Battle of Monmouth for a picnic on July 10, 1778. That picnic proved pivotal in the history of Paterson and the nation.

It’s hard for me to picture those three gentlemen going on a picnic together. Were they skipping along and singing songs too? Who carried the picnic basket?

 

Back to the Henri Effect……….in this picture, the flow has greatly increased and the mist is kicking up mightily:

The Great Falls have truly risen in volume.

 

This wider view shows the old power plant, the falls and the recently-installed amphitheater seating stones (looks semi-ancient, doesn’t it?):

 

The Passaic River is what flows over the cliffs. A lot of refuse and who-knows-what collects in the corner nearest me while the river continues onward (upper right):

 

In each of the previous shots, you saw a pedestrian footbridge above the falls. In these two shots, I’m on that bridge shooting down on the falls (and a rainbow or two). You can also see the bridge’s shadow in the first pic:

 

I’m now off the footbridge and heading north on a path around the park. How does anything grow on that cliff and not get swept away by the constant, furious water flow?

 

The path turns and I’m slightly parallel with the footbridge, which is barely visible through the mist. Looking at this picture, I feel like I’m about to go over the falls:

 

I didn’t take a lot more pictures this day because I was annoyed that I forgot to bring my iPhone with the panoramic camera setting – about the only thing I do with that phone – so I decided to come back the next day to take those pix.

I DID, however, take video this day. There were more than a dozen little vidbits I stitched together and they DO jump around a bit. For instance, I started it on the footbridge over the falls and then jumped to something I didn’t even take stills of that day: the pre-falls, which are smaller and are about a block before the actual falls.

As I go around in front of the falls, you can see the little pre-falls in the distance, right in front of the Wayne Ave bridge, which is being repaired. You’ll see that better on Day 2.

As for the very shaky vidbit of the old man sitting on the Hamilton statue: I’m standing on the footbridge at least a block away on the other side of the river and the zoom is at digital maxout, which is impossible to hold steady (excuses, excuses).

Here’s the 8-25 video:

 

 

AUGUST 26, 2021 (Day Two)

I’ve just parked my car in the facility lot. I have to mention that you can’t park much closer to a main attraction in a national park than this. I took this pic while still behind the wheel (no long national park hikes from remote parking lots in THIS place!):

 

The first pano shot of the day shows a nice wide view of the power plant, the falls and the rest of the Passaic River. (Click twice on each pano shot to fully-enlarge them and then hit your back button to return to normal.)

 

 

The next pano shot shows the being-repaired Wayne Ave bridge on the western perimeter of the park, the river going under it and heading east, the top of the pre-falls (separating the smooth water from the rapids-like water about to go over the falls (which is the white blob under the building at the end of the river – you’ll see this scene reversed in later pictures).

 

I followed the path to the footbridge and saw something that made me REALLY unhappy:

 

Actually, I shot these at the other end of the bridge because when I first saw them on THIS end, I was so pissed because not only wouldn’t I get the pano falls shots from the bridge that I specifically came back to get, but I’d now have to walk around the perimeter of the entire park to NOT get them and shoot other stuff……….and my shirt was already soaked!

So I had to exit the park, cross the river on the OTHER side of the Wayne Ave bridge, walk up another block to make a right to follow the northern perimeter to the path by the eastern perimeter.

Truth be told, there’s a path through those woods that saves you a few feet of walking. On the plus side? SHADE! On the minus side? PLENTY!

There’s garbage everywhere in these woods and the city is very slow to keep its crown jewel clean. There’s also a homeless problem, exacerbated by the shade from the sun that the trees provided.

I swear, I saw one guy sitting on a perforated metal bench mumbling. The seat perforations were front to rear and maybe 2” wide (I didn’t stop to measure them or take pictures). He started to get up to reach for something 2 or 3 feet away to his left.

I SAW A BARE REAR END……AND THE MAN WAS REACHING FOR A PIECE OF PAPER……..

Thankfully, I was now past him and didn’t have to see what he was going to do with that piece of paper or what might have gone through the seat perforations he was sitting on. EWWWW!

I finally made it over to the park’s northeast corner and took this wide pano shot of the falls and mist, looking south. You can see the Wayne Ave bridge and the pre-falls. For all you locals, Garret Mountain is in the distance above the falls:

 

Looking southwest, this is closest shot I could get of the Wayne Ave bridge and the prefalls:

 

Without footbridge access, this is the best falls shot I could get that day:

 

This is the best pano shot of the falls available to me that day:

Now I have a reason to go back after the next deluge………….I just hope I remember to bring the iPhone.

 

Last picture of the day – rainbow on the rocks:

 

 

I DID shoot a short (under a minute) video on 8-26…..

• to get the sound (and breadth) of the falls (crank those speakers up),
• to bitch about the closed footbridge and
• to grab one final rainbow:

 

 

Well, at least something good came out of the floods.

 

Thank you, Henri, and my heart goes out to your victims.

 

 

AUGUST 31, 2021 UPDATE

Well, it looks like I won’t be returning to the Falls anytime soon (click TWICE to enlarge):

 

The article says it closed last Friday, the 27th. It was already closed when I arrived last Thursday morning the 26th and the sign says it was closed after I left there on Wednesday the 25th.

Depending on what time the bridge was actually closed last Wednesday, I was possibly among the last people to walk on it and may have some of the last photos and video taken from it – possibly for a long time, based on the ownership squabble mentioned in the article.

I think I’m gonna send this post to the writer, who’s the editor of the Paterson Press.

 

Stay tuned…………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 5, 2021)

 

I’m forever seeing interesting things to shoot from my living room window and sometimes unexpected themes seem to emerge on certain days.

Last Saturday afternoon – August 28 – two unrelated themes seemed to pop up: Dogs (there seem many more of them these days being walked in the neighborhood) and balloons (decorating a stop sign, flying away and an object of theft).

I decided to merge the two themes.

 

There’s a reason why dogs are taken out for walks, as demonstrated in this first photo pair (dog drops, human picks up):

 

A little later and about 20’ from that spot, two women are festooning a stop sign by the parking lot’s exit with balloons and some sort of notice. It can’t be the sign’s birthday because it’s only been in the refurbished lot for about 5 weeks:

 

Curiosity got the better of me – I wanted to know what that notice said that warranted balloons, so I later went downstairs and took this shot:

 

Who are “The Maides” and why wasn’t I invited to what appeared to be a party?

A better question: How does an apartment numbered “511” exist on the second floor?

 

Hello! Is this one of “The Maides”?

I’d be happy to help her out with any spelling or math problems.

 

Oh, darn! They left before I could get back downstairs.

 

Meanwhile, a woman is being pulled apart by two mighty beasts, picks up after them……….AND STUFFS IT IN HER BACK POCKET!

Let’s hope she remembers it’s there before she sits down on her velvet couch.

 

Meanwhile, a family passing the decorated stop sign appears interested in obtaining one of the helium balloons – possibly for the toddler in the stroller, who appears to be reaching for one. Mom looks resigned to the fact that a theft is about to happen:

 

Separation from the stop sign has occurred as the pilferer shows his prize to Mom while he admires his reflection on the other side……….and he did it all with an edible in his other hand:

 

But Fumblefingers quickly loses the balloon and chases the ascending inflatable while trying to lure it back with his tasty treat:

 

The balloon was having none of it as it headed down Main St, flying past another source of edible temptation:

 

Disappointed, the family leaves, but Mom quickly doubles back to do the job right:

 

She turns to catch up with her family while keeping a firm grip on this balloon because it appears to be straining to join its liberated friend:

 

We finish the day on a happier note as a girl walks and plays with her cute dog:

 

The next morning, one of the women who had adorned the stop sign cleans up after herself, while wearing a “Champagne Happiness” shirt:

 

Must have been a fun night in Apartment 511.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 10, 2021)

                                                  

                              

This Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I kinda doubt I’ll be around for the 40th, so I decided on Monday the 6th to see if I could put this monstrosity together in time to launch it on the 10th.

It took 3 days just to find and scan all the old slides, re-scan my site’s tiny September 11th images and figure out a way to present them all. It’s now Wednesday evening and I’m just starting to write and hope that I can finish that tomorrow AND build the WordPress post so I can launch on Friday.

It makes sense to do the entire post as a sequence, so I’ve just sorted the files in folders by year, which leads me to……….

 

1977

This is the first time I can recall ever taking WTC pictures and I went straight to the top to do it.

My girlfriend and I decided to go to the towers and have a magnificent shoot on Tower 1. Before we got there, however, we had a HUGE argument about something (I have NO idea what it was), but it put me in a HORRIBLE mood – so much so that I didn’t even want to take pictures.

At ground level, I took ONE shot (the above pic). Since we were already there, we decided to at least go up and look. When we did, I found that with that view before my eyes, I could not NOT take pictures, so I grudgingly took a few.

It’s a good thing I did, because I never got to go back up there.

Here they are:

East River, Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge:

 

Looking north to the Empire State Building:

 

Turning slightly to the left, this one includes the Hudson River and New Jersey:

 

Lastly, this one shows the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Island), Ellis Island and New Jersey:

 

 

1982

I wasn’t kidding about shooting from land, sea and AIR. The whole story is here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=620. Basically, for my sister’s 23rd birthday, I hired a seaplane to take her (and the same GF) and my camera on a short flight down to and around the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River past all the NYC sights, starting with the World Trade Center.

We approach the WTC and go past it:

 

The plane rocked a bit from side to side, so I took this shot when my side dipped (or was it just bad timing? Nah……….couldn’t be):

 

Although it was a bright, sunny day – and I was using beautiful Kodachrome film – the pictures all had a greenish cast to them. I took a lot of it out, but not all……….otherwise, I’d be left with B&W photos. It turns out that the plane’s windows were tinted green.

But then I found another (smaller) shot that – sequentially – would have been next and whose exposure looks a lot more normal:

I can’t explain it, but I really haven’t had time to get into a major search.

 

 

1985

I had three occasions to photograph the WTC in 1985. On the first one (May 14), I was back up in the air………..actually 65 floors up, shooting a daytime event in the RCA Building’s Rainbow Room.

From my angle, I noticed both the Empire State building – 15 blocks south of me – AND the WTC – about 3 miles from the ESB.

As you saw previously, I shot the ESB (34th St) from the WTC in 1977, so now I get to shoot both from the RCA Building (49th St):

 

I was assigned to cover a July 4 event (the finish of some cross-country race) down near the WTC. Somebody was handing out Statue of Liberty crowns and my friend Hazel got one. Noticing what stood behind her, I thought what could be a more patriotic shot on the 4th of July than a smiling red, white and blue Lady Liberty in front of the World Trade Center?

 

On November 1, 1985, I took what is probably my favorite photo. Before I post it, I have to tell you that it’s part of its own sequence: shown here, it’s third in a shoot that involved the WTC, the moon and fireworks over both the Hudson and East Rivers on both sides of Manhattan.

First shot: Moon has just risen to the left of the WTC:

 

Second shot: Moon is now between the two towers:

 

Third shot (the money shot)……here’s the picture and the story behind it, as it appears on my site:

Taken from good ol’ New Jersey (Liberty State Park), Jersey City, NJ 1985

Probably my favorite shot, a golden-framed, poster-sized copy hung over my parents’ fireplace for a dozen years and now hangs over my couch.

NOT doing what everybody else did got me this shot.

It started at the Hard Rock Cafe in Manhattan where WNEW-FM was doing a week-long series of afternoon broadcasts featuring appearances by various rock stars, called ‘Shootout at the Hard Rock’.

The grand finale, called ‘Shootout in the Sky’, was a fireworks display on both sides of Manhattan in the Hudson and East rivers together with a stirring musical broadcast on the station that was coordinated to the fireworks.

When we finished shooting at the Hard Rock on Friday afternoon, some of the other photographers said to me, ‘C’mon – let’s go down to The Battery and shoot the fireworks’. The Battery is the southern tip of Manhattan (partially obscured in this picture by what I think is a dark Ellis Island).

I didn’t find that to be a particularly well-thought-out idea………..you can’t shoot the fireworks from BOTH rivers at once from there and you’d only have dark New Jersey or Brooklyn for a background, meaning they’d look like any other fireworks shots.

‘No thanks…………see ya’.

Off I went to Liberty State Park, set up a tripod and a radio, and took these shots with the added bonus of a full moon rising between the towers of the World Trade Center.

The Empire State Building is on the far left. What appears to be a horizontal sky scratch AND a squiggly blue line at the waterline are the lights of a small airplane and a boat that were moving and which ‘painted’ on the film while the shutter was wide open – in this case, probably for about 8 seconds on Kodachrome 64.

Post-September 11, 2001 comment: My favorite photo with the 2 fireworks was suddenly ‘the World Trade Towers with 2 explosions photo’ and it freaked me out a bit having it as my main living room picture.

After a few weeks, it evolved into the more-benevolent ‘the anti-September 11 photo’, because it was bright and celebratory, so all is right once again………………at least it is in my living room.

UPON FURTHER REVIEW: Freakout Factor #2 – There are actually TWO planes in the sky!

The one mentioned before has a flight path that’s either going away from or heading toward the upper floors of Tower 2! A second plane’s flight path appears to be going through the smoke under the left firework and is either going away from or heading towards the upper floors of Tower 1!

 

Fourth shot – Moon is now fully behind the top of Tower 2, rather halo-like:

 

Fifth shot – I wanted a B&W of the nearly-full moon reflecting on the water after the fireworks were over:

I have never scanned 1, 2, 4 and 5 before. I only noticed the moon sequence while gathering images for this post.

 

 

1989

I was hired on April 22 and 23 to shoot stills during a video shoot for the band Accept at the then-deserted Brooklyn Navy Yard (any of you metalheads remember a song called “Balls To The Wall”? That was Accept). The video’s song was “Generation Clash” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOh7hxZFL1s – (I don’t remember it either).

During a break, I walked around looking for interesting scenes to shoot and found this one with both towers and the Manhattan Bridge over the East River:

 

 

1990

June 20 (another hire) – this time for the band Heaven’s Edge. This was an interesting situation: the band had done a show for sailors aboard the USS Intrepid – now a Sea, Air & Space Museum – docked at Pier 86 on the Hudson River.

As a kindness, they were offered a short trip on the US Coast Guard cutter Dallas to nearby Governor’s Island, which – at the time – was a Coast Guard installation and completely off-limits to the public.

On this day, five civilians were allowed on the island: the band and me (there may have been a band lady friend or two, as well).

In this picture, we’re on the CG cutter with one of the crew with the Twin Towers in the background (my first “by Sea” WTC shoot):

 

 

1997

This is a shot I took from home, as the MetLife blimp attacks the WTC. As you can see, Tower 1 essentially blocked Tower 2 from my view, so it always looked like there was only one tower (though you can see a tiny sliver of Tower 2):

 

 

1999

On June 5, I decided to treat myself to a Yankees-Mets interleague game via NY Waterways ferry, which left from Weehawken, NJ in the morning, went south down the Hudson River, around The Battery (southern tip of Manhattan), and then north up the East and Harlem Rivers to Yankee Stadium.

I hadn’t counted on this being my most-prolific WTC shoot ever, but that’s the way it worked out: one direction in the morning and the reverse in the afternoon. One side sunlit in the AM and the other in the PM (and my second “by Sea” WTC shoot).

Since the Hudson River was on the west side of Manhattan – this was NOT the sunlit side in the morning – fewer pictures were taken. Actually, I think this is the only decent one (and the color may have been enhanced a bit):

 

This was taken as we rounded the southern tip of Manhattan:

 

After going under the Brooklyn Bridge, this was a must-have shot:

 

This was probably the most unusual shot on the way to the Stadium. I had never seen a seaplane landing on the East River before, let alone with the FDR Drive and the WTC behind it:

 

After the game (the Yankees beat the Mets, 6-3), we (I and a couple dozen other Yankee fans) climbed aboard the Yankee Clipper ferry for the ride back to Weehawken. Believe it or not, I was able to get almost the same seaplane/WTC shot, except that it was now late afternoon, the scene wasn’t sunlit and the plane was still in the air and about to land in the water:

 

As we came around the southern tip, the lighting was just perfect for getting these 6 shots:

 

This is the sunlit version of the first picture I took on the Hudson River side:

 

Sometime during that return trip, I managed to tear myself away from hanging over the railing while shooting to get a shot of my travel mates aboard the Yankee Clipper. For you Yankee fans, you’ll notice a couple of them wearing Paul O’Neill jerseys (#21):

 

 

2000

I don’t recall what was on fire locally, but the smoke filled in the space between the Empire State Building and the WTC in this “from home” shot. Everything on the bottom is in Hackensack:

 

 

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

NOTE: All text is taken from my site. I rescanned the slides whose site images were 300 pixels on the long side (and scanned by someone else) to make them 3 times longer. Some I converted to B&W. Shooting something emotionally-disturbing that’s over a dozen miles away with a telephoto lens makes it nearly impossible for the pix to be razor-sharp – especially when you have to crop the image. Some of these might be a little sharper than what’s on the site, but their true value lies in the stories they tell to the best of their (and my) ability, given the situation.

From my apartment, Hackensack, NJ 2001

I’m not always awake before 9am and I am NEVER out that early, but I had to bring my car in to the dealer for servicing before 9am on that Tuesday morning.

I got there at around 8:40am, spent about 15 minutes at the service desk and went into the waiting room to wait for their car service to take me home.

The others in the waiting room were gathered around the TV, where I could see a tower of the World Trade Center burning.

‘What happened?’

‘A plane hit the World Trade Center!’

At that moment, a replay came on and I saw a plane tear into a tower………except it wasn’t a replay! It was the second plane hitting Tower 2 live on TV!

OMIGOD!

I called a friend and woke him. ‘Turn on your TV!’ I then demanded a driver to get me home fast and got one. On the way home, we both cursed the only name we could think of in that situation – Osama Bin Laden.

I got home at about 9:25am and could see the WTC from my living room window, about 10-12 miles away. I immediately started shooting stills and video.

From my perspective, Tower 1 has always blocked Tower 2 from sight. In this photo, both towers are still standing and burning.

By the way, that terrorist balloon shown that you never heard about was an advertising balloon for Sifford Pontiac in Bogota, NJ. Apparently, they were called by the authorities and told to take it down pronto.

This image is weirdly-cropped because we had a problem with the foreground during scanning, so we just cut it out rather than waste a lot of time.

 

In this photo, Tower 2 has just collapsed and has begun spreading throughout lower Manhattan. Unfortunately, it is the only view of Tower 2 ever to be seen from here.

Family and friends begin calling, knowing my proximity and my love of the view. One person makes reference to the Superman movie with the nuclear missile headed for Hackensack.

All the while, I’m doing video on the WTC with a TV news soundtrack in the background and taking stills.

I didn’t take that many because the sun was on the wrong side and I figured I’d do more in the afternoon when the lighting was better, never thinking in a million years that the towers would fall.

 

This is my most dramatic photo of the entire event. Essentially the same shot as the previous 22-002 (it was the next shot taken after 002), this was taken with a crappy 500mm mirror lens and is not sharp.

From 10-12 miles away, you can see the dust clouds of Tower 2 rushing up against some of the nearby buildings.

The darkest lower area is Hackensack, the next lightest area is NJ along the Hudson River and the lightest buildings are, of course, in NYC.

This photo freaks out more people (including myself) than any I have ever taken.

 

This was an absolutely heart-breaking moment for me not only for the obvious reasons, but for selfish ones as well. It was devastating to see Tower 2 go down, but if Tower 1 stayed up, my view would be the same and I’d be able to think that both towers were still up, since I could never see Tower 2 from my angle, and that NYC was whole.

But NYC wasn’t whole………..it now had a hole known as Ground Zero.

 

 

2011

The new tower (r.) is being built (and electrified?). I took this shot on August 1.

 

On October 1, I saw fireworks going off nearby (though I don’t recall what the occasion was). From my angle, the now-slightly-taller tower is prominent in the background. There’s also a tall crane between me and the lower pyrotechnic bloom:

 

 

2014

From my living room on September 11, I took these two shots of the 9-11 lights. In the left one, the Empire State Building is in red, white and blue and the lights have hit a cloud:

 

 

2015

In these two “from home” shots, both the Empire State Building and the completed World Trade Center tower are in rainbow LGBT lighting to celebrate the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states (the “Q” wasn’t added until 2016):

 

 

2018 & 2019

In these more-recent “from home” shots from 2018 and 2019, the sun sets on the new tower (and on this post):

 

 

 

Well…………..not completely.

 

I think that the changeover from 9/11 to now can be summed up in the name of the sailboat I photographed during my 1999 “WTC by Sea” shoot:

 

And – yes – I finished the post in plenty of time.

Thanks for asking………….and for making it all the way through.

 

LATE ADDITIONS:

It’s now September 11. I’m reading all the 9/11 articles in my newspaper (yeah – I still get one) and I see a picture of a man holding a box of matches from Windows on the World – the magnificent restaurant on the 107th floor of Tower 1.

Wait a minute……….I think I have something like that! Sure enough – in plain sight- in my living room, no less, are a tinier box of matches from the same place and they’re displayed in front of an unopened CD with a horrific image. I’ll get to that part later.

I was never in that restaurant and I’m pretty sure I bought the matchbox on eBay shortly after 9/11.

Here’s the matchbox:

 

The back of it:

 

Its contents:

 

Those are some rough-looking matches. Maybe they were designed to make you stop smoking because you’d get splinters every time you lit up.

I counted the matches……….11. Seems like there was room for one more. Did someone use one, get splinters and decide to sell it?

Who knows? But if you look on the striker side, there appears to be one long strikemark, so…………..maybe:

 

Now to that CD, which came out 5 years before 9/11. The copyright year (1996½) is from the back cover:

I have nothing to say about it except that I didn’t buy it.

 

 

                             (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 17, 2021)

I’ve photographed (and posted) about this whenever I happened to pass by and notice a complete change in the artwork. This has been going on at the other end of my street – almost a mile away – for at least 8 years and probably longer.

The walls that feature this dazzling work belong to two businesses that I’m going to have to visit and find out who organizes all this and how often it changes, so I can cover it on a steady basis.

Most recently, I shot the latest artwork on August 26 with a return on September 3 to correct an omission.

These are ALL panoramic shots done on my iPhone, so you’ll have to click many of them TWICE to see them full-size – ESPECIALLY the last one, where you’ll also have to do some scrolling.

The above pic is the establishing shot of both walls – what I saw when I entered the park. I didn’t need to interfere with the basketball players at all because all the other shots could be done close to the wall,

Starting on the left, here’s that whole wall:

 

The next four pix are the closeups of what’s on that wall:

 

 

And now, the whole right wall:

 

And its components:

 

A better way to view everything:

 

My opinion? When viewed as a whole, there’s a kind of sameness in some of the more-intricate ones. Overall, it looks too same-sized, neat and orderly. In the past, they seemed to be more wildly different

Check out this photo-stitch from 2013……….much more chaotically diverse:

 

But what do I know? I’m just a photographer.

So I’ll find out how often this changes and document it on a more-regular basis and then you can make up your own mind, OK?

Meanwhile, can I get some opinions on what you’ve seen here?

Thanks.

 

           

                   (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 22, 2021)

 

Actually, this was one of five different concerts under the official banner of “The MUSE Concerts For a Non-Nuclear Future”, with MUSE standing for “Musicians United for Safe Energy” in September 1979.

I attended two of them at Madison Square Garden (MSG): 9/22 and 9/23. This post is about 9/22.

The above picture was a full-page ad in the 10/31/81 issue of Record World, which was one of the three main music industry trade publications in the US, along with Billboard and Cash Box.

The Bruce Springsteen picture was the main image on the front cover of the various “No Nukes” video versions that were released.

I took the picture.

I didn’t have a photo pass that night and I wasn’t in the pit or even on the Garden floor. I was given a ticket in the loge – the first ring of seats that surround the floor.

This is my ticket stub in Section 21B and part of the Garden seating plan. Looking at my pictures from that night, I was about even with the third row on the floor (it’s a little hard to tell because of a center stage extension into the orchestra) and a little elevated, which turned out to be somewhat advantageous:

 

Having shot from the Garden pit many times, I was NOT expecting to get anything good from this seat.

Turns out, however, that I took three shots that night that became pretty well-known. Let’s start with the Bruce cover image.

 

The first video version that I became aware of was not a VHS tape or LaserDisc, but rather something most people aren’t very familiar with. It’s called a CED, which stands for “Capacitance Electronic Disc”. Its player uses a needle/stylus and it plays like a vinyl album:

 

Its case is about a half-inch wider and almost 2 inches taller than that of an LP. I never even knew how to open it – never having had a CED player, I had no reason to – until last week when I found a YouTube video that showed me how.

First, you have to take a pen – with its point out – and push aside some hidden little plastic latch in the top while pushing/pulling (and holding up) that side of the top, which is the inner tray:

 

While you’re holding all this stuff open (and up), you have to do the same thing on the other side. Now the tray and disc will slide out:

 

You can look up the CED’s short history, if you’re so inclined. Essentially, VHS tapes wiped them out before they ever gained a foothold in the video market.

Somewhere around the year 2000, I bought a couple of the No Nukes CEDs – quite cheaply ($5?) – because they had something that all the other video formats lacked:

1. MY PHOTO CREDIT! NONE of the subsequent versions bothered to put any photographer credits on them – an insult to ALL of us – so here’s what the CED showed on the back:

2. See the striped floor that Bruce is standing on? Getting than on film was one advantage of being slightly elevated, but it’s darkened on subsequent video versions (look at the floor in the Record World ad).

Note: the No Nukes CEDs don’t appear to be very cheap now. As I type this, there’s ONE on eBay. With shipping, it’ll set you back 40 bucks.

 

These are a couple of slightly beat-up VHS tapes I have that I must have bought on eBay:

 

My laser disc is from England, where they think that Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt are left-handed guitarists:

How could such STUPID mistakes be made………..ESPECIALLY since so many previous versions that had it right could have just simply been copied?

 

Speaking of stupid, I just found a BRAND NEW VHS tape from the US that someone is selling on eBay for $175.99 (marked down from $199.99!). Whoever the art director was, he/she elevated the stupidity level by also reversing the James Taylor/Carly Simon picture:

So 60% of all pictures on this “brand new” VHS box are backwards! Yeah – that’s worth almost 200 bucks!

 

So much for my No Nukes cover shot. You might be surprised to know that it was originally taken as a horizontal photo that included Steve and Roy. If you’d like to see that, go to https://bobleafe.com/ and look at the Springsteen listing.

 

Let’s move on to the next sort-of-well-known photo from that night:

Here’s the whole story from my site:

 

Lynn Goldsmith and Bruce Springsteen

M.U.S.E. Concerts (No Nukes) – Madison Square Garden, NYC 1979

Around the time of the ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ album, Lynn, a MAJOR music photographer, was Bruce’s girlfriend and tour photographer. After their breakup, Bruce supposedly had an agreement with her that she was not to photograph him anymore.

During his No Nukes performance, Bruce spots something, suddenly leaves the stage and plucks secretly-shooting Lynn from the 12th row, escorts her up onto the stage, where someone else escorts her down the back steps and out the door.

While this is occurring, everyone is standing around, going ‘Who IS that’? I knew who it was and fired away. This shot was published in a Springsteen book.

NOTE – April 19, 2011:

I have received an email from Lynn today that states the following:

“I was not his tour photographer, nor was I asked by Bruce not to be there that night or not to shoot him in his performance.”

This is why I used the word “supposedly” when I wrote this back in 2003.

 

(Did anyone notice #1 Springsteen fan, friend and band confidante Obie Dziedzic [glasses] behind Bruce and next to the guy in the Jethro Tull shirt? We became friendly after I saw her in front at almost every Springsteen show I went to. Miss Obie was a sweet woman who passed away in 2017 at age 65.)

 

Back to Bruce/Lynn: What nobody knows until now is that I took a second shot right after that one, as Bruce led Lynn backstage. There are some smiles and some wonderment on the faces of everyone backstage and in the rear loge.

But there’s ONE face you should look for. It’s between Bruce’s head and the black cables(? – in shadow) on the left. He has blond hair and a toothy grin as he looks at Bruce with his American Girl:

If you look on the right just above RoyGarrySteve, you can see a video guy who HAD to have captured something more interesting than what I have.

 

There’s a lot of interest in this show currently because of an upcoming release of Springsteen’s No Nukes performances (two nights – full shows). What will be in it besides what the original No Nukes movie showed decades ago? Will the Lynn Goldsmith part of it be included? Will another incident that happened that night (and is discussed later on) be in it as well?

 

The next photo I took that night that got a surprising amount of attention shows Clarence Clemons, Roy Bittan, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Rosemary Butler:

This would have been a very difficult – if not impossible – shot to get if I was in the pit. The seat location provided the angle. After that, it’s timing: somebody was always blocking somebody else from view. Suddenly, Roy turned and showed his face at the moment that Bruce backed off the mic and Jackson stepped up to it…………CLICK!

The attention came not from publication, but rather from online sources like Pinterest, Tumblr, WorthPoint and GottaHaveRockAndRoll.com. People just re-posted, re-blogged and re-tweeted the pic no end. I have no idea where Worthpoint or GHRnR got the prints to auction and I have zero idea what they went for (I’m not a member of either, so I’m not privy to that information). And GottaHaveRockAndRoll.com gotta get itself a 1979 calendar because they insist that the date was November 22 instead of September 22.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/476466835558936069/

https://thewildandthedarkness.tumblr.com/post/114306563954/bruce-and-the-e-street-band-with-tom-petty

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/original-bruce-springsteen-photograph-1730831068

https://www.gottahaverockandroll.com/lot-24377.aspx

(Ooops! Looks like that last one didn’t get any bids. Well, at least the estimate looks OK for a little 5×7.)

 

GRAND FINALE

This is not a case of saving the best for last because it’s not the best and – at this point – hasn’t even gotten a single comment from anyone EVER………mainly because – like the second Bruce/Lynn shot above – it’s never been seen before. Yes – this is an exclusive unveiling of a well-known No Nukes moment that you’re the second person to have ever seen (well, one of you is).

It may mean nothing to most of you, but if you’re a Springsteen fanatic, you’re probably aware of the circumstances.

This is the other “incident” that happened that night that some people are curious as to whether it will be included in the new video release. My guess is it won’t – either because someone withheld it or because video cameras weren’t aimed at all of the participants. I hope I’m wrong.

As far as I know, there are NO other photos in existence of this item. I’ve even asked people who are well-versed in Springsteen lore if they have EVER seen a photo of it anywhere. No one has.

In much the same way I got the Bruce/Lynn shot from the side, I got this one too.

Bruce was going to turn 30 the next day and – like everyone else in that position – he was NOT looking forward to it and certainly didn’t want to be reminded of it while performing.

He WAS, however, used to accepting gifts at every show from fans who made it to the front with their offerings, so he stuck out his hand and received a………

CAKE!

 

From https://www.collectorsmusicreviews.com/springsteen-bruce/bruce-springsteen-no-nukes-godfatherecords-gr-615616/:

As Dave Marsh – an American music critic, author and editor – wrote: “Bruce wasn’t thrilled to be turning thirty.”

Springsteen reacted petulantly when a woman in the audience passed him a birthday cake.  He can be heard saying, “don’t remind me,” before throwing the cake back at the woman, eliciting a widespread and clearly audible gasp, and stating that the icing-splattered fans can, “send me the laundry bill.”  As Marsh succinctly concludes, “it wasn’t funny.” 

 

This may be the only pic that shows the cake still in one piece. All I know is that it wasn’t in his hands for more than a few seconds.

Let’s see where this copyrighted photo winds up…………..

 

And the next post is a related result of this post.

 

 

 

(ignore April 30, 2017 publish Date – this was published on September 28, 2021)

 

As you may know, I posted on this blog on 9-22-21 about the No Nukes show I shot at Madison Square Garden on 9-22-79.

On 9-26-21, I started to notice a steady deluge of dozens of blog visits in my stats that ALL had similar pages/hits numbers – that means they were all going to the same destination – a rarity that hasn’t stopped as I write this two days later:

 

I was able to initially trace them all the way to Greasy Lake.

Actually, Greasy Lake – in this case – is a well-known site (https://www.greasylake.org) that bills itself as “The Ultimate Bruce Springsteen Tribute Page”. Someone there simply posted the link to my post without another word. A few hours later, someone else replied that they liked my post and thanked the other person for the link………….that’s it.

The floodgates were open!

Yesterday, two posts were made on another great Springsteen tribute site – https://www.backstreets.com/ – that had nice things to say, resulting in an increased flow of blog visitors.

 

As of October 22, 2021, the final count for the one month after I initially made the No Nukes post is 36 countries around the world making 513 visits. The highest total – by far – was Spain, which made 178 of those visits:

Argentina – 1

Australia – 5

Austria – 4

Belgium – 2

Bermuda – 1

Canada – 12

Chile – 2

Denmark – 7

Dubai – 1

England – 57

Finland – 11

France – 6

Germany – 15

Ireland – 13

Israel – 1

Italy – 13

Lithuania – 1

Luxembourg – 1

Mexico – 4

Netherlands – 13

New Zealand – 4

Norway – 1

Peru – 1

Poland – 1

Portugal – 1

Puerto Rico – 1

Scotland – 5

South Africa – 1

South Korea – 1

Spain – 178

Sweden – 9

Switzerland – 3

Ukraine – 1

United States – 133

Uruguay – 2

Wales – 1

 

One last thing for all the Greasy Lakers and the Backstreeters:

Before either of your great tribute sites existed, before there was an Internet to display them, there was the original Springsteen tribute magazine: Thunder Road, to which I contributed photos.

Publisher Ken Viola and I knew each other from the famous Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ. Ken worked security and I was the house photographer.

In the late 70s, I lived about 3 blocks from Ken in Ridgefield Park, NJ, so when he needed a last-minute Bruce photo, he got it quickly.

 

 

                                    (Ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on October 7, 2021)

 

So I’m going through yet another box of STUFF and sitting on top of everything in it is this very large envelope that contained a TON of photos:

 

I knew my parents went on trips to various places, but I had no idea it was a yearly event for almost a quarter-century (I was long out of the house for most of this).

I remembered that my mother had annual Daily Planners in another box, but they were from the 50s and 60s. However – buried beneath them – were 25 little hand-sized notebooks dated from 1970 to 1995. These contained every detail of every trip: every plane takeoff and landing time, the temperature of the destinations, EVERYTHING she and Dad did, when and where she ate, what time she woke and what time she went to bed. In the backs of these books was a ton of photo information (she may have inherited that trait from me).

So here are the 25 little notebooks with the year and vacation destination written on the cover:

 

In case they’re not readable………..

1st row: 1970 – Rome, 1972 – Hawaii, 1973 – Majorca, 1974 – Rio, 1975 – London

2nd row: 1976 – Acapulco, 1977 – Russia, 1978 – SF, LA, Vegas, 1979 – Greece, 1980 – Caribbean Cruise, Disney World (she wrote “Disneyland” on the cover, but not inside)

3rd row: 1981 – Scandinavia, 1982 – World’s Fair (Knoxville, TN), Opryland (Nashville, TN), Denver, CO, 1983 – Italy, 1984 – Europe, 1985, The Far East

4th row: 1986 – West Coast Canyons, Parks, 1987 – Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, 1988 – Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida tour, 1989 – Scotland and Ireland, 1990 – Canadian Rockies, British Columbia and Seattle

5th row: 1991-1994 – It doesn’t appear that they went to too many places, though I do have a 1993 photo of them on a boat in NY harbor with the towers of the World Trade Center behind them.

Dad had Alzheimer’s and it really started manifesting itself around this time. He looks slightly stooped and a bit unsure and doesn’t have his arm around Mom as he usually did. Perhaps the harbor photo shows a final trip. It was around this time he entered a Veterans’ Home where he was cared for until he left us in 1998.

But that didn’t stop Mom. Also in that 5th row are two notebooks that show her 1994 trips to Colorado and California. The last two notebooks show that she finished her global travels in a blaze of glory when she went to Australia and New Zealand in 1995.

 

I have a bunch of photos to show you from most of these adventures, but not necessarily sequentially. Fortunately, that doesn’t make them any less enjoyable (and you’ll LOVE this first group).

Did you ever get so excited that you were “tickled to pieces”? Mom did in Hawaii:

 

Here’s the front cover of the photo folder:

 

 

Here’s what was inside:

Whaddaya think of THAT?

 

Think it had any lingering effect on Mom?

 

She was very involved with the Woman’s Club of Teaneck. Here’s a poster for one of their events a year later:

I’d say that the effect lingered a bit. Wouldn’t you?

 

Actually, she was kind of used to unusual things like this happening on vacation. For instance, check out the front, back and inside covers for the photo folder of an Acapulco cruise she and Dad took in 1976:

 

The pictures inside it:

She looks mildly disturbed about Dad being held up.

 

In this one, the soon-to-be-widow looks overjoyed as Dad pays the price for his bad acting:

 

It wasn’t their first encounter with violence. Five years earlier, they decided to settle a disagreement they had in Canada with that old marriage counselor remedy – open warfare:

They had the artillery, but no ammo, so Mom posed seductively and won the argument.

 

I have NO idea what they (and sister Geri) did when they visited her in Colorado in 1982 to merit being detained in Denver:

 

They escaped the next day and somehow made it to the US Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs where they commandeered this nondescript jet (Geri’s in the cockpit):

 

Prior to their life of crime, they’re seen here meeting the captain (and a disembodied hand) aboard a ship during a Caribbean cruise:

 

They’re seen here the following year in Italy in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican and in Venice:

The photographer in me is quite annoyed that a much-wider lens wasn’t used in that bottom photo to capture much more of the musician and the top half of the gondolier. It’s a really nice photo, but it would be magnificent if it was complete.

 

Royalty in Singapore:

 

Group shots at Germany’s Heidelberg Castle and in Bangkok:

Why are Mom and Dad not together in both shots?

 

Zooming ahead to 1995’s Australia/New Zealand trip, animal-lover Mom – the one who told us we could never have a dog – sidles up to some rams and rides a camel on her last big trip without Dad:

(Good for her!)

NOTE: That wasn’t her only adventure Down Under. SOMEWHERE, I know I have photos of helmeted-Mom riding a jet-boat. I was sure they’d have to be in this bunch, but they’re not. I’m afraid they may have been already packed away in a previous box. But if I ever find them……………….

 

Zooming back 25 years, Eunice (“I don’t drink”) samples the local product somewhere in Spain (possibly Majorca)

I don’t think Dad was on this trip. It seems that it was a group of women and the “AITS” ribbon on Mom may stand for AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL SERVICE.

 

That same year (1970), Mom shows some leg somewhere in Algeria:

Pretty daring to do that in a Muslim country – something that could possibly get her in big trouble.

 

MULTIPLES TIME……..as Mom and Dad alternate, starting with four of Mom:

Mom in Brazil in 1974, in the Coliseum in Rome in 1971, with a friend in Brienz, Switzerland in 1984 and saying “I’ll take one of each” in Spain in 1987.

 

Dad looks lost in both Sweden and Hong Kong in ’81 and ’85 and gets a new job somewhere in 1980:

He always DID like to play the ponies (though I’m not sure if that included picking up after them).

 

Mom with a new friend in the USSR in 1977, tilting at windmills in Amsterdam in 1984 and had the forethought to buy a frame for the previous pic of her lovely new shoes (for swollen tourists’ feet) somewhere in June of 1972:

Since her 1972 trip to Hawaii took place months before, I think this one was taken at a US garage sale.

 

Three VERY diverse pictures of Dad taken in ’89, ’75, and ’76 in Ireland (sitting on sacks of “Molassed Beet Pulp”…………yum!), London at Madame Tussaud’s (maybe his friend is why he smoked Winstons for so many years) and in…………..Hackensack, NJ! The old Army guy was trying to work his way through the USS Ling – a WWII submarine that’s still docked here in the Hackensack River (but not for long):

 

1982 found Mom and Dad in Tennessee visiting the World’s Fair in Knoxville (not pictured), the Grand Old Opry AND an eatery in Nashville that you won’t find anywhere else in the US :

 

I have lots of pictures of them standing in front of various large sites that make them seem minuscule, so I skipped all that to show a few where they look more recognizable. You’ve seen some of them already, but I have a couple more to show before I close their lives’ journeys.

Though Mom seems like she’s looking out for purse-snatchers, I like this one across the Thames from Parliament in London:

 

This may be my favorite later-in-life photo of them. Mom took it in a mirror somewhere on the streets of Seattle in 1990 before Dad’s illness began to take hold. They both look great:

 

This is the photo I mentioned earlier – the 1993 photo of them on a boat in NY harbor with the towers of the World Trade Center behind them when Dad was…………..well, you know what I wrote:

 

 

It’s appropriate that I finish up with a photo of Mom taken in July, 1996, on what I’m guessing was her last trip – albeit a very short one. She appears to be atop the Empire State Building in Manhattan, where the view looks south towards the World Trade Center:

 

 

Four months later, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer and eight months after that, she was gone.

 

I’m happy she was able to satisfy her wanderlust with a loving partner for such a long period of time.

 

How many people get to do that?

 

 

                                                      (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on October 15, 2021)

 

This will be a short and rather disjointed post that goes from a dumpster to an old photo pass to a crunched hotel and back to the dumpster. You’ve been warned.

 

So I’m sitting at my computer yesterday and I hear a strange noise outside. I don’t see anything, so I stick my head out the window to hear which direction it’s coming from……..

DOWN!

A little over to the right, I see sparks flying near an upside-down dumpster. I’ve seen this before: after years of being tossed around by garbage trucks, they get a little worn and need some metal patches.

Hey! This looks like it might be directly below my bedroom window. That could make for some interesting overhead shots from 7 floors up.

I look out the bedroom window………….perfect!

It’s almost 6:30pm and it’s starting to get dark, which is good because the best sparking shots need longer exposures – in this case 1/6 sec. Hand-held, that might be a problem, but I can steady the camera against the outside wall.

Here’s what I got (click twice to fully-enlarge – you may need to then scroll vertically):

I think this is my new favorite shot (and notice the lone butt spark).

 

Whaddaya think? I think this 33-year-old photo pass’s credit finally makes sense:

 

By the way, the Vista Hotel no longer exists. This photo should explain why:

 

Just saw the “repaired” dumpster today:

If I had to guess, I’d say that the right edge was the beneficiary. Looks like the bottom right edge should be next.

Slow day today……..

 

 

 

                                                              (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on October 20, 2021)

 

 

According to https://bobleafe.com/:

 

Someone else had a different take 10 years ago:

https://thetrad.blogspot.com/2011/10/twat-1984.html?m=1

 

I’m slightly biased towards Mr. Leafe’s opinion. Besides, it’s funnier. Plus, Mr. Trad appears to be biased against anyone who took a bridge or a tunnel to get there.

 

So anyway…………although I have 3 photos of this event on my site, I have another 30 or so sitting around that I’ve never done anything with. They’re not all my best work and if I was submitting them for publication, I’d edit some out, but there are a lot of people who were involved in this parade and maybe never saw a photo of themselves from that night.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a couple of those people happened to stumble across this blog and – 37 years later – see themselves in their glorious youth prancing through the Village in full costume?

I hope it happens and I hope someone lets me know about it, so I can strain my arm from patting myself on the back.

 

With a few exceptions that could not be helped – the lead photo, for instance – I’m posting these in the order I took them in case the sequence is helpful to anybody. I’m also making believe that anyone from that period would be able to recall a sequence like that after nearly 4 decades (the only reason I “remember” it is because Kodak thoughtfully printed little sequential numbers on each slide, giving me a fantastic “memory”).

So, you ready?

 

To get us in the spirit, I’m actually going to kick things off with a non-parade photo I took that afternoon in a publisher’s office. If I recall correctly, this lady in red was called “Luciferaso” and I know that she’ll be reading this soon after I publish it (she may even comment below………..and I may wind up being banned from hell as a result………….darn the luck!):

 

On to the parade!

Before I put this together, I Google-Imaged this parade to see what others may have captured that night. I expected to see a lot of the same things I shot, but only found a few.

The most common same-subject image had 2 or 3 variations of Leonardo painting Mona, captured from different angles, with some showing how really 3-dimensional Mona’s face actually was.

What I like about mine (he says modestly), is not only that Mona looks much more like a 2-dimensional painting, but it’s the only one I found that also included Richard Nixon (quel bonus!) and someone talking to him who I thought was Queen Elizabeth, but she’s wearing a “Miss Arizona” sash (maybe Kyrsten Sinema picking Tricky-Dicky’s “brain”?):

 

And what did https://bobleafe.com have to say about this image?

“Looks like Mona is also a big fan of ‘TWA Tea’.”

And, yes, this photo is out of sequence because it might make you think they’re ALL gonna be this good.

 

So let’s start the real sequence, where – at least in the beginning – I appear to be at the intersection of Bleeker and Charles:

 

An interesting quartet of individuals, including a brave, barefoot Cupid, followed by his foot servant, Raggedy Ann:

 

I have no interesting/clever captions for the rest, so I’ll just post what I have that will take us up to the finale:

 

The 2-shot finale begins with this very interesting-looking car. What a paint job!

 

I have no idea how I got this shot, but I think the car stopped, someone (not me) opened the right backseat door, the driver appears to still be waving to people (was the car still moving with an open door?) and I made the most of this ONE shot I got:

And look at the incredible detail! I can’t imagine how much work went into this.

I hope this is in a museum somewhere.

 

 

That’s it……….hope you enjoyed the trip back……….Happy Halloween!

And please note that everything in my blog – including this post – is copyrighted.

(I know…….not the most joyous note to end on, but I AM dressed up for Halloween – and every other day – as a professional photographer…………whatever that looks like……….so I have to say stuff like that.)

 

 

And – since you asked – here’s what that professional attire looked like in 2020:

https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=11433

 

But if you really want to see me in my favorite mid-80s mask (1986, actually) while in my professional photographer attire, at work, ON HALLOWEEN, go here:

https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=726 

(I’m right after the lead story about a legendary friend of mine.)

 

And if you need to contact me for any reason, hit the red WHOWHATWHY link at the top of the page and find the email address.

 

In any event……………..

 

 

                                                    

                        (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on October 25, 2021)

 

Last Friday morning, I looked out my living room window to see this odd red……….thing a couple of blocks away on Main St. Now, I’ve seen a lot of unusual things from here over the years, but this was new. What the heck IS it?

Time for a walk (and a mini-photo-project).

I approached it from a block to the west: State St. I knew something was going to happen at the red-thing location because of an article I had read about a beloved old music store called “The Record King” that’s been on Main St since 1965 having to close for “downtown redevelopment”, but I wasn’t aware that demolition had started.

From the looks of the piles in this panoramic shot, it was already well under way (NOTE: with the exception of this photo, click all panoramic shots ONCE to fully-enlarge – click this one TWICE. Hit your back button to return here.):

 

Heading down towards Main St, I had to hold my camera high over a fence to get this:

 

The gate was open, so I walked in and took a quick panoramic shot:

You can see part of the red thing that I saw from home.

 

Continuing on towards Main St, I took these two shots………one from above the fence (yes – that’s a bird in the air) and the other from across the street:

So the red thing is some sort of netting to protect Main St from falling objects during demolition and is held aloft by three cranes.

 

As I crossed Main St, I found something that was helping to keep cars off that block (I’m not referring to the police vehicle a few doors down). All that’s left of The Record King – which was located on the other side of the street and not shown here – is probably in those demolition piles I showed above, but its parking cone survived:

 

So I’ve got Main St all to myself to try to get what I can, but the red netting is limiting things a bit:

 

But the morning sun is lighting up the netting, so maybe I’ll make THAT the star of the show (the last photo is panoramic):

Demolition is ugly business, but this netting makes the joint a little classier-looking.

 

They kept chipping away at the wall (you can see little pieces falling). Since the netting was in place, I don’t know why they didn’t just knock the wall down, as was done on other Main St demolitions without netting:

 

This is what it looks like when you try to shoot through the netting:

 

SHOT OF THE DAY

 

This is a panoramic shot of the entire scene. You know how some people hook up a big bed sheet to a wall or side of a garage so they can show movies on it? To me, this shot looks like the City of Hackensack hung a MASSIVE sheet on some cranes and a movie about demolitions is being shown on it……………..and I’ve got the theater to myself:

One odd little detail: within that “screen” and just to the right of the building, right above the first SKY sign on the fence, there appears to be a standing traffic light that seems to covered by “protective”……….cardboard? Looks kinda flimsy to me.

Anyway, this is my favorite photo of the project and thanks to the sun for illuminating the netting just right.

 

I DID take one more panoramic shot as I was walking away after the police officer repositioned his vehicle, but it’s rather anti-climactic:

 

 

The next day, I saw that my newspaper – The Record – covered the same project the same morning I was there:

 

By the way, if any of you Record King fans are interested, I just came across a video that features a 2018 visit to the store by long-time New Jersey television personality, Uncle Floyd:

He was doing one of his “Uncle Floyd’s New Jersey” shows (not his old regular show), where he walks around towns and talks to people. This is over two hours long, but the Record King segment (almost 27 minutes long) starts at about the 3:50 mark…………..with a spelling lesson.

 

 

 

Post Script

I just found out that this 3-story building will be replaced by a 7-story residential building, whose width goes beyond the right edge of this photo:

 

There goes my cherished view of the World Trade Center……………

 

On the plus side, I now own the traffic cone I showed earlier – a nice little local music-related memento.

Not exactly a fair trade, but you take what you can get when presented with this kind of “deal”.