……………………………………………(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 30, 2022)

 

I hate Summer heat and absolutely cannot tolerate humidity. I’m just like my father in that regard. My mother couldn’t understand what was wrong with us. “It’s beautiful outside!” (Good – YOU go out!)

Consequently, I rarely go out during Summer days, which means no walks (which makes my cardiologist less than thrilled with me).

No walks means no photowalks – my preferred type of walking – which makes long distances seem a lot shorter to me. They also provide me with a ton of editing work, which keeps me busy when I go home.

So you can imagine how happy I was when the weather suddenly got cooler last Friday. Saturday morning saw me out on a 2-hour photowalk. It was like a release from prison.

 

THE MORNING SHOOT

My favorite walk is a section of the Hackensack River Walkway in Johnson Park (and beyond) that starts about 3 blocks from home and goes north for about a mile. With all the little side trips and the return, it’s a good 3 miles total. And there’s a lot to shoot along the way.

Here’s the first picture I took before I even got on the path (it’s a panoramic, so click it – and all other PANOs – twice to fully-enlarge):

 

Here’s a map of the route I covered. The red X is the start and end point. You can see that there’s a bridge crossing the Hackensack River right there. If you live in Teaneck (as I did), it’s the Cedar Lane Bridge. If you live in Hackensack (as I do), it’s the Anderson Street Bridge:

I got down underneath the bridge at high tide and took the above PANO shot. I’m glad I did because that structure may not be long for this world. It’s been declared structurally unsound and the many bus routes that cross it haven’t been allowed to do so for the last few years and have to go a mile away to cross the river. Supposedly, it’ll be replaced soon.

On to the pathway (black dots on the route map heading north)……………

 

The first odd thing I see is two guys fishing. Why is that odd? Everybody – well, almost everybody – knows you don’t eat anything that comes out of that river:

 

Continuing on, we’re finally getting some colorful growth on some dirt piles:

 

Something colorful is moving on the next dirt pile………..a male American Goldfinch:

 

From a distance, it appeared that there was some more colorful flora to be seen, but………..not quite:

 

There seemed to be a million squirrels running around that day. Here’s one that stopped running to pose:

 

You’ll notice on the map that the path bends around an inlet as it exits Johnson Park. I’m standing on the small bridge over that inlet (before it narrows to becoming a creek), taking this PANO shot:

The river is in the background, running perpendicular to the inlet. The distant middle trees are in Teaneck. I’m now entering the property of the Hackensack campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. The Teaneck campus (guess where THAT is) will be shown in upcoming images.

As I come around the inlet (on the right) to the point where it meets the river, I come across a few more fishermen, who didn’t want to be photographed (or in this case, PANOgraphed). If you look closely on the left, you can see one of their fishing lines extending downward towards the river:

They were convinced that eating their catch would be OK because “this river is the same as the Hudson River since they meet together”.

Oh, brother………..

First off, they’re assuming that anything from the Hudson is OK to eat (it’s not) and second, I had to explain that these two may be parallel rivers, but they don’t meet. The Hudson flows into the Upper New York Bay and the Hackensack ends at Newark Bay (along with the Passaic River).

I suggested they protect themselves by doing some research on the edibility of the fish in these rivers.

 

Continuing north, I saw these small riverbank openings with seating for one, two or three people (or foolish fishermen):

 

A dining squirrel:

 

Here’s a nice PANO view of (right to left) part of FDU’s Teaneck campus, the pedestrian bridge across the river and the semi-distant statue of a certain gentleman we all know:

 

That gentleman, of course, is Dr. Martin Luther King. To the right of the PANO is a view of the pathway that I had just come up and to the left is the Hackensack entrance to the pedestrian bridge to the Teaneck campus (and I wish his face was on the sun side in the closeup):

 

Before we cross that bridge, I’d like to mention that I was/am quite proud to have been the photographer who documented the truck-to-standing installation and the two-days-later dedication ceremony of that statue eight years ago:

That last one is a PHOTOSTITCH (click twice). And as I wrote on the original 2014 post:

Lastly – and right on the Hackensack side of that pedestrian bridge – is a 4-image stitch taken at the unveiling/dedication of the new Martin Luther King statue, which you saw earlier in this post.

If I recall correctly, everyone was singing “We Shall Overcome”.

 

On to the pedestrian bridge……………..

If you go back to the day’s route map, you can see that I crossed the bridge to take the following two photos.

I took this 180º PANO from the bridge’s midpoint (looking south) to include both campuses:

 

This PANO was taken from the Teaneck side, looking back towards Hackensack:

 

Continuing north on the pathway, you can see a sort of looped area on the route map under where it says “Bergen County Technical Schools”. Within that loop is FDU’s baseball field. My position on the river pathway is on the other side of the center field fence.

From that position, I can look across the field into one of the dugouts and it appears that someone is in it, though the field is deserted. Here’s what I saw when I zoomed in:

Fooled by a cutout!

 

As I continue along the last segment of the pathway toward Rt. 4, I notice a squirrel strolling along the top of a fence. He looks pretty tall in the bottom pic. I never knew a squirrel’s legs were that long:

 

There’s nothing to see when I approach Rt. 4 because of the density of the trees/foliage there. It’s time to head back.

But a couple of things distract me enough to draw me away from the pathway and closer to Hackensack Avenue, which – as you can see on the route map – is sort of parallel to the pathway.

The distractions:

For that second shot, I saw a container/dumpster that was taller than I was. All I could see was a chair wheel poking out the top, so I raised my arms as high as I could and took a small, blind PANO to see what was there…………a keeper!

 

By now, I was close to Hackensack Avenue and since I had never before walked down it from Rt. 4, I decided that would be my return route (white dots on route map) – something different to shoot.

I’ve always been aware of Hackensack Cemetery across the street, but never had occasion to enter it. I crossed the street, but still had no reason to enter it, preferring to shoot what I could from the sidewalk (two clickable PANOs):

 

I seemed to recall some sort of Catholic connection to this place – Holy Trinity School and Church were less than a mile away – so something was sticking in my mind.

As I continued south, Hackensack Cemetery ended and St. Joseph’s Cemetery began right next to it. (A-HA! – the connection I was looking for!):

If you look at my route map, it appears to be two sections of one big cemetery.

 

Again, I didn’t go in, but I did see a couple of familiar surnames from the sidewalk:

I didn’t know these people, but “Foschini” is a well-known name in Hackensack. Foschini Park is a big park in town that was named for a former Hackensack mayor.

 

I didn’t know the man, but I recall the name “Father Van Wie” as being Holy Trinity Church’s pastor:

 

I was very surprised to see two headstones with one word on each: Gatti:

Maria Gatti was a good friend in my class at Holy Trinity. I’m guessing these are for her parents, but I really have no idea.

 

My only incursion onto the property was when I saw these two buildings at the southern end (top). The smaller one is the cemetery office and the larger one is the mausoleum. The stained glass image inside the mausoleum (middle) caught my eye, so I took a shot with my camera against the glass of the door to cut down on reflections and got a nice, clear image (bottom):

 

On the road at the cemetery’s southern border, I saw a small flag laying in the street and that ain’t right. I had seen flags this size by headstones in the cemetery, so I figured it must belong there, so I placed in on their fence:

 

On the western end of that same road is a water company facility with a video-guarded fence. From a distance, I could see some red, white and black………..things, but couldn’t tell what they were without zooming in:

A whole bunch of new fire hydrants – I’ve never seen that many together before. Being horizontal makes them even stranger-looking………..almost like a stockpile of weapons.

 

Continuing south on Hackensack Avenue, the other side of the street started looking more interesting, so I crossed it once again to take these three shots:

BTW – that second image is a PANO and was taken at a long-closed gas station (you can tell by the $2.73/gallon price. After reaching $5.00/gallon around here lately, it’s now in the lower $3s, but nowhere near back at $2.73 yet………and BTW – the right booth tells you there is “NO GAS!”).

 

And here’s your chance for all you Whopper fanatics to own a home or business right next to Burger King!

 

The tall Burger King sign made me notice that its height is not unique on this stretch of road, as this PANO shows:

 

Hackensack Avenue becomes River Street when you get south of Burger King, as the route map indicates.

The last thing to shoot before reaching the starting/ending point is on River St and it closed a couple of years ago:

Can you read it?      (Sears Auto Center)

 

Last pic of the AM shoot……..bent sign shadow on my next-door-neighbor church’s wall:

 

 

THE NOON (actually afternoon) SHOOT

I’m always seeing interesting things (and people) from home. This afternoon’s haul:

 

Seeing fire trucks outside a nearby apartment building is always concerning and the fact that one of them is facing the wrong way on a one-way street might indicate some urgency, but the assembled firemen aren’t suited up or gathering equipment, so what’s the story?

 

Sometime later, I saw one of them carrying a ladder toward the back of the building:

 

They were on the roof for a majority of the two hours they were there, but again – no obvious problem or sense of urgency:

 

Finally, they gathered by the elevator door and left:

I’m glad there was no fire, but what were they doing on the roof for all that time?

I emailed someone I know at the HFD and asked.

The reply: “Training”.

 

 

PEOPLE

 

For some reason, this photo…………

………….reminded me of an old “Non Sequitur” newspaper comic:

 

Hood-do and Hair-do:

 

No comment:

 

Looks like a skater-biker collision (it’s not):

 

Look at all the little green poop bags:

 

 

Sunset – The bottom structure is a block away in Hackensack, The Modern 1 & 2 towers are in Fort Lee by the George Washington Bridge and the lit-up high-rises sit atop the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River (as the towers do) in Cliffside Park:

 

 

SO AM I FINALLY DONE FOR THE DAY?

 

(Hey, dumbass – did you read the title of your post?)

I withdraw the question.

 

 

THE NIGHT SHOOT

So it’s after 9pm and I’m sitting at my computer editing the 200-250 pictures I took that day, when I heard a familiar popping sound that I usually hear on the 4th of July.

“Fireworks on September 24? Can’t be.”

It was. And I could see them from my living room window in my World Trade Center line of vision.

I couldn’t tell if they were fired off from the Hudson River down near the WTC or if they came from a NJ town between here and there, but now was not the time to ask questions………….shoot first and ask questions later (I never bothered to do the latter).

Here are my Top Ten fireworks shots from that night in ascending order (I didn’t like the shaky backgrounds in the first two shots):

In that last one – taken toward the end of the finale – there’s so much smoke that only the WTC’s lit antenna is visible.

 

A phabulously-phitting ending to a phull day of photography……………….