2023 – Yikes! & Hooray!
(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on August 17, 2023)
(That title might make sense at the end.)
As you may know, I photograph some of Hackensack’s nearby redevelopment projects for my “job” as the moderator of the City historian’s site (he’s also the director of all these redevelopment projects, so when I get questioned at sites, that’s my “photo pass”).
As you may not know, I absolutely can NOT stand heat and humidity and basically don’t go outside during the summer, so that limits me to shooting the two projects that I can see from home (with an occasional visit to them on tolerable days).
From my living room, I can see a large project that’s 4 blocks away. It’s bordered by Main St, Berry St, State St and Camden St, so I’ll identify it as the MBSC project (not its official name).
You can see my living room view of it in this picture (yellow, huge crane):
From my kitchen, I can see some of the 95 Anderson St project (3 blocks away) and here’s that limited view:
Most of the good shots available to me on this project involve their huge crane and whatever it’s carrying (and an occasional train going by).
Here are 3 crane hauls:
How tall is that crane? Here are 4 shots I took from my kitchen sink (click to enlarge):
The private jets are coming in to land at Teterboro Airport, which is 3-4 miles south of me. The planes came in at 2-minute intervals.
Oh, yeah – here’s the NJ Transit commuter train coming in:
So much for opening-act 95 Anderson…………..
The headliner: the MBSC Project
Even though it’s a bit further away, there’s so much more to shoot. While the 95 Anderson crane was pretty tall, it sat outside the periphery – sort of like the crane you see in the right side of this picture:
But this project’s monster crane sits in the middle of the project and was built in sections. The vertical part never moves………..all movement is in the horizontal section above it.
In the left distance, you can see the World Trade Center – something I may lose sight of because I think this building’s going to be taller than what you see.
Consequently, I’m taking as many good pictures of the WTC as I can, while I still can:
Here’s a sunset shot of the project:
And here are a couple of the loads the crane’s carrying:
At first, I couldn’t tell what important building component the crane was carrying in this pic, but zooming in makes me say………..”Never mind”:
A quick visit one day got me a street shot of one more load heading skyward:
Going around the corner onto the Main St side got me a sneak preview of what color will soon be replacing all that yellow facing my LR window:
Back home, the directly-overhead sun lights up the wood:
On August 15, I thought I could see birds on the east end of the crane arm with the naked eye (not easy from 4 blocks away). Zooming in found 7 of them:
That crane’s been here a couple of months and I’ve never seen a bird on it, so I decided to take a close look at the rest of the crane:
There’s one right in the middle!
And there are two more at the west end:
Did you notice that there’s a sign attached to the far side of the west end that says “EXTREME” (written backwards and with a white X)? More on that later………..
Looking back at the east end, I see one sitting on top:
Because that shot is tilted slightly upward, I wondered what it would look like if I reversed it, put them together and increased the contrast. Well, here it is!
I like it! The birds are facing each other, the symmetry is cool and the two wires have doubled to make a sort of floor.
This shows two similar shots with the same bird(s) plus some color:
This all sort of started the creative juices to flow a bit. Remember the above west end shot with the backwards “EXTREME” sign? What if I changed its direction so
EXTREME wasn’t backwards and joined the two? Symmetry City!
I’m not loving the separate thing in the bottom middle, so let’s lose that:
MUCH better! It looks like an alligator’s upper denture………..talk about EXTREME!
So this is what I started with two days before I turned LXXVI:
On my last day of LXXV, I put it all together and wrote it up. I released it on the day that I became closer to LXXX than to LXX.
Simultaneous Yikes! and Hooray! May you be blessed with more “Hoorays!” than “Yikes(es)!”.
And if you know who entertainer Uncle Floyd (Floyd Vivino) is (and even if you don’t), please send good thoughts and wishes his way. He recently suffered a double stroke. He’s out of the hospital and currently in a cardiac rehab facility and doing well, but it’s going to take some time and a lot of work to be back to where he was.
If you’d like to send a card to him, use this address:
Uncle Floyd
c/o Scott Gordon
PO Box 791
Paramus, NJ 07653
Scott visits him regularly and brings every single card to him.
Thanks.
Happy LXXVI – Yay!!!!
Happy Birthday stay cool 😎
Happy Birthday you Woodstock baby!
Happy Birthday, cuz!
Oops — Happy Belated Birthday!