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What Comes Down Must Go Up…………WAY Up! (Part 11 – January 2026)

On February 17, 2026 - Uncategorized

JANUARY 1

Wind blowing roof snow…

…….and loose Typar on 5th-floor SW corner apartment:

JANUARY 2

Pouring fuel into unidentified apparatus (it didn’t help):

JANUARY 3

Window deliveries into various apartments:

That 5th-floor SW corner apartment and Manhattan:

JANUARY 5

Continuing in the vicinity of that apartment, the next two vertical groups of 4 images each show more Typar application:

……..as does this group of 4 images (click to enlarge):

As we move north along State St, mixed in with a Typar image are 2 roof images (click to enlarge):

Let’s take a short break from Typar (because there’s a ton more of those to show) and look at some window installations (click this and next two to enlarge):

Wasn’t that exciting? No? Oh, well – back to Typar (you’ll be begging for windows when this day is over).

Let’s start with that 5th-floor SW corner apartment (again):

Long view (from my apartment): If you look really closely in the upper-right corner unit, you can see a standing red ladder:

Outside now……….but before I could get up to Passaic St for the street view of the red ladder, I took these two Typar shots (hey – gotta stay sequential…and click to enlarge):

Back to the street view of the red ladder: If you go for a walk to the corner of State St and Passaic St, you can see two views of that ladder…………..from State St (on the left) and Passaic St (on the right…….and click to enlarge):

(Was it worth the wait?)

While I’m on State St, I found some other things to shoot. In this group of 3 shots, I saw two workers on different floors. Left pic: on the upper left floor, the guy kept staring at me, so I stared back and took a picture (click to enlarge):

Then I crossed the street and got right next to the building and took a picture (above, right) of both guys. No staring this time.

There’s that red ladder again and a couple of new windows:

Wide Typar shot:

Back across State St for some tighter shots (click to enlarge):

(click to enlarge):

Back home for some tighter red ladder shots:

Grappling with a huge piece of Typar (click to enlarge):

While that’s going on, I noticed a small car parking (but not feeding the meter) for an apparent north-to-south view of the same thing:

Time to zoom in and find out where the parking ticket should be sent:

Yeah…………..might not happen.

Remember a couple of days ago (January 2) when someone tried to get this apparatus going? Here’s another attempt:

Same result.

Carving out a slice of Typar for a window:

More struggles with Typar (click to enlarge):

How to knock out 10 Typar pix in one “shot” (click to enlarge):

Enough with the Typar already…………..

Time to shoot something other than State Street!

How about Passaic St? (click to enlarge)

And – finally – Main St! (click to enlarge)

GOODBYE JANUARY 5!

JANUARY 6

Oh, great! More Typar!

Let’s get this over with………….(click this and next two to enlarge)

Oh, good………….windows!

This is a construction-related truck whose driver – after a couple of hours – just realized he parked the wrong way on one-way State St:

“Nailed it!”

“Hey – there’s that photographer who’s been bitching about our Typar! (click to enlarge)”

JANUARY 7

Most of this green-wall stuff is accessible from the shared driveway with the next-door neighbor at 389 Main:

Frozen drops on the wires?

A 389 resident’s vehicle meets one from the 359 project:

Wood and wall (click to enlarge):

WOOD: Pickin’, Stickin’ (below morning reflections off 389’s windows onto – of all things – TYPAR!)

(click to enlarge)

BY THE WAY…………when I asked the project manager about all that wood on the wall, the reply was:

“Those are called furring strips to flatten surface and attach metal panels to, for the thin brick to be glued to.”

Got it?

Meanwhile, on the State St side…………..

Is a fancy decal really needed to let the world know that the door it’s on actually works?

And who is hiding in the garage with headlights on?

Lastly, guess what these elephant ears are made of……..

Finishing up January 7, here’s a shot I took early on when I snuck in – disguised as a car…………AND….. (click to enlarge this and the next one)

…… a couple of shots I took much later when I snuck back into my apartment, disguised as a tenant:

JANUARY 8

Planning and doing (click to enlarge):

Oops! One more “doing”:

OMG! I’m so SICK of this stuff! (click to enlarge)

That red ladder is starting to look a bit tipsy. Must be from those weird reflections in the first two windows:

I don’t know what that long cord is about, but I DO know that that machine is the same one that a couple of people have tried unsuccessfully to fuel and drive away (see Jan. 2 and 5). I also know that this guy eventually dragged it away – never (so far) to be seen again:

There’s nothing special about this shot. I think this project is proud that the sun shines on IT and not on the next-door neighbor that’s hogging the lower half/front of this picture:

(Does that make any sense?)

Yeah – I know…………..it’s another Typar shot. I guess I like the symmetrical sunburn it’s getting around all its window openings:

JANUARY 9

Only one shot taken today. I wasn’t sure if this piece of equipment was being stolen or not, so I took a quick pic and blew up the door’s ID.

It’s legit.

JANUARY 11

Time for a quick walkaround.

I started on State St and stepped into the shared driveway when no one was looking to get a shot of the Green Monster (SO much better-looking than the one in Fenway Park!):

Stepping back onto State St, I took a PANO(ramic) shot of that side of the building, which included part of neighbor 389 Main:

HAD to include a shot of that 5th-floor corner apartment…………….no sign of the red ladder:

Next up: a Passaic St PANO:

A corner shot of Main and Passaic streets:

And an equal-time shot for that corner’s 5th-floor apartment, where I shot from in December when an icy roof wouldn’t let me shoot from that corner of the building:

Back to ground level, I saw this sign. I’m not sure which building materials they provided, but I probably shot some of it, so it might be a good idea to keep this handy:

Finally – the Main St PANO:

And that’s it for today.

JANUARY 13 – Roof Day!

I wanted to shoot the gorgeous wooden roof before it got layered with various coverings and HVAC equipment. A ton or 3 of that stuff was scheduled to arrive on January 16, so I’m glad we got this done before then.

I told Chris – the project manager – that there were a couple of things I wanted to shoot on our way up to the roof. First and foremost were the views from the 5th (top) floor southwest corner apartment. I knew there would also be other things that I’d want to shoot along the way that I’d know when I saw them – things that would never be seen again by any tenant there EVER.

The first one presented itself when we were down the hall from that apartment. Who would ever see this again?

The wooden symmetry was gorgeous!

So we got to the apartment – let’s call it 5SW (southwest corner). The first thing I shot was a panoramic southern view (click to enlarge).

From left to right:

The Manhattan skyline sits above the nearby tan building that’s a branch of Bergen Community College. The brick building near the middle (with the jammed parking lot) is the Parisian Beauty Academy. Above it is another new residential building (they’re popping up all over town).

To the right of that – across State St – is the Hackensack Middle School with its green field/soccer pitch. Above all of that is the Hackensack skyline with its expensive high-rises that end on the left at Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC, but to most of us, it’s still just “Hackensack Hospital”).

You’re already met 40% of the west-facing view, but directly across State St is the side view of a very nice-looking, semi-elderly apartment building at the corner of State and Passaic streets:

Behind that, you can see my favorite steeple (which belongs to the First Presbyterian Church and is my southern view at home………..and at my 7th-floor height in the yellow-brick building to the right of the steeple, it’s my next-door neighbor).

Continuing the trek to the right, we come to two more church steeples. The tan tower to the right of my building belongs to the Second Reformed Church and the red/tan steeple to its right is that of Holy Trinity Church – our family’s church where all the Leafe kids were baptized (and whose school across the street was where we got our learnin’ done from grades 1 to 8.

Furthest to the right is yet another new residential building.

Time to continue our walk to the stairs to the roof. On the way – of course – other things caught my eye, starting with this:

I had no idea what it was, but it appeared to continue upward:

Well, it can’t go too much higher…………there’s only the roof above us.

Sure enough:

Continuing our northern walk to the roof stairs……………..

This stopped me in my tracks – a windowless apartment with a new delivery of glass:

A week later, it would have been a much more boring shot. And the Typar isn’t complete, so that helps……….

Then I got closer to a window opening in the next room – a sea of Green (Monster)! (click to enlarge)

That told me that just around the corner would be the Monster with the wood strips coming straight up at me and I could get to the edge!

But not standing!

I would have to lay flat on my stomach with my arms and phone extended beyond the edge. I couldn’t see what I’d be shooting!

My first guess wasn’t terrible:

But it told me where to aim next (click to enlarge):

I’ll take it!

ON TO THE ROOF!

SO much better without all the machines and other equipment – all very necessary stuff, by the way – and I’d certainly want to shoot that scene when it’s been completed. Meanwhile…………… (click this one and the next three to enlarge)

What we saw earlier, now from one floor higher:

The back of my building and the “E” municipal parking lot:

I never saw my apartment this close from this height and angle before:

One floor above the “windowless” apartment with the delivered glass (click to enlarge):

What I could see of Manhattan through some haze (click to enlarge):

Some guys were working near the stairwell entrance:

Not sure what this is, but it made a nice final roof shot:

Wait a minute – it reminds me of a number: 3.14159……..? (for all you geometry freaks out there)

Anybody see that?

The last time I was on the roof, I took a picture similar to this one, looking down the stairwell to the first floor. That area was a slightly bright blue – just like this one:

But when we got down to 1, there was practically no blue there. I think an auto camera setting combined with a good amount of upper floor bright surrounding area created the effect.

Just a guess…………..

So now I’m out of the building and heading home and what’s the first thing I see? A MuskMobile parked on Main St:

It looks like two differently-colored cars, but it’s the same car.

So now I’m about one short block from home, but I’m not done shooting yet because I looked up (click to enlarge):

Why wasn’t I able to see this from the roof?

I found that if I included the steeple, I’d get more streaks:

So I decided to include my apartment too (click to enlarge):

An interesting Tuesday afternoon of shooting…………….

JANUARY 14

Carriers…………(click to enlarge)

JANUARY 16

This was Major-Tonnage-Delivery-To-The-Roof Day.

The first signs of that were :

Tractor-trailers lined up around the building (well, half of it, as you’ll see later).
A giant extended crane

It was a non-stop barrage of whatever these things are (roof coverings?):

It appears that one stack was tipped over and caught by an alert (and strong) worker:

I’m sure that’s not the case, but it sounds good.

The barrage continues:

The workers catch their breath:

Ooo, look! There’s a pretty-in-pink variety!

This one says “Last” (don’t bet on it), plus a closeup of the label (click to enlarge):

The pink ones seem to have affected my watermark:

…and gets banished for doing so:

A giant hoagie gets delivered for lunch:

Time to go for a walk. It’s rinse-and-repeat on Passaic Street:

On to Main St, where we find Big Apple Computer…..Ooops! “Compactor” parked in half of a legal space:

Just above the shoddy parking, we find a worker dealing with some shoddy Typar:

This pic is a nod to someone who helped me shoot all this stuff and whose office is somewhere in these buildings (and it’s NOT Jake from State Farm):

Two shots from the SE corner of Main and Passaic:

At this point, the building would have to be named “Typar Heights”.

From Truck-To-Top in 3 shots (Well, actually SIX shots):

(click the next two to enlarge):

OK – remember the “wrap-around-the-building” delivery trucks mention at the beginning? The best I could do was 5 trucks on parts of 3 different streets.

Ready?

Passaic St (Two trucks): You can see the crane working on a truck that has a partial-pink load with an all-white truck waiting behind it:

State St (Two and a half trucks in four images): The first truck in the image is near Passaic St (you can see that 5th-floor corner apartment in the upper-right corner of the image) and it has an indiscernible caricature near the front passenger door that I’ll make clearer later:

The second image shows both State St trucks separated by the common driveway between 389 Main (on the left) and 359 Main (what this post is all about).

The third image shows the above-mentioned trucks and half of a third truck whose other half sits on Ward St.

And lastly, here’s the other half of that truck that’s carrying white and pink cargo AND some of those large hoagies (which reminds me………….it’s lunchtime – gotta go).

But before I do, I noticed what looked like a race, after I turned the corner onto State St, between a truck and a chair-on-wheels. You can see the truck’s caricature that I mentioned earlier pointing the way towards the finish line:

At this stage, the truck is barely ahead, but looking at the chair’s gearbox, I can see that the man still has another gear to go to surely go ahead and beat the duck truck and win the prize (a roasted angry duck…………..hey – it IS lunchtime, remember?).

And here is that clearer image of the late (and tasty) Mr. Duck that I promised earlier:

And he’s sticking his tongue out at ME? No wonder I’m angry. “LOSER!”

Phew! Busy day!

JANUARY 17

Hey! Look what yesterday’s delivery just barely beat:

But also look at that delivery’s winter coating:

(This is from a small part of a very large image of 5 photo-stitched pix)

JANUARY 20

After three days of exterior inactivity, this is all I could get……..Typar and soon-to-be-glassed windows:

JANUARY 21

You want glassed-windows? That’s almost all that was available today (click #3,5 and 7 to enlarge):

Slim pickings, otherwise:

Yellow wires going down two floors from a window to…………a garbage receptacle?

Talk about a stretch! A guy uses a hand plow to get to a spot where he thinks his phone is buried in snow, digs it out(!) and then has to back the hand plow out: