2026 – What Comes Down Must Go Up…………WAY Up! (Part 14 – April 2026)
(Note: Click all PANOs once – and sometimes twice – to fully-enlarge)
Another sparsely-attended number of days this month (13)………….with the first one being on:
APRIL 6
Don’t ask me what’s going on in these pictures…………..
APRIL 7
I saw this truck pull up in back and this guy with the striped legs walking away from it. Dunno what he did:
APRIL 8
More roof work going on:
APRIL 9
TONS of HVAC equipment being brought up to the roof, plus the crane on Passaic St:
APRIL 10
Four more Passaic St views and three from inside the State St driveway:
7pix
APRIL 11
The roof view from home:
We’ll see this view again on the 24th.
APRIL 13
Window frame work and security work on the State St side:
APRIL 14
A few more tons of roof material and a few more window bits on the State St side (in the order I took them:
PANO:
APRIL 18
Recently, you’ve seen LOTS of garbage being thrown down from above. Most of it’s now gone:
APRIL 23
You might be able to see the word “STYROFOAM” on these gray panels. Right under that are two more words: “Scoreboard Insulation” (these apartments have scoreboards?):
PANOs:
Later, I took a walk around the project……..
Main St side (note the scaffolding – you’ll see more later):
PANOs:
Passaic St side:
Two more from inside the State St driveway:
Lately, there hasn’t appeared to be anything happening on the roof, so maybe it’s a good time to check in with the project manager about doing a roof shoot, now that all (I think) of the HVAC equipment is up there.
He agreed, but his days of availability wound up being predicted to be either rainy or cloudy. Of course, us fussy photographers can’t have that (I needed PM sun) and April was running out of days (and I haven’t shot that many to begin with, so – long story short – I switched some things around one day from PM to AM, PM was good for him that day and it was sunny, so we got it done on the last Friday of the month – April 24, sooooooo………………
April 24
………..After a few shots from home:
I put on my hat (AND their hat) and went to work (some fashion statement, huh?):
Besides the roof shots, I also wanted to get some interior shots to show any noticeable changes since last time. That was no problem since we had to climb the stairs anyway to get to the roof and stopped on a few of the floors.
You may recall that I wanted to get shots of where all the garbage that was tossed from higher floors landed. Unfortunately, most of it had already been cleaned up and all I got was this:
The first (and strangest) thing I saw was men working on stilts! I took a very quick shot as we approached them (in case they were anti-photo)………so quick that I cut off the feet of the closest one.
As we passed them, Chris (project manager) said something to them about “history” – a reference to the picture-taking stranger in their midst and I waved my phone at them and then the strangest thing happened:
They froze in place, closed their eyes while a non-stilted fellow worker hid his face:
I think I’ll call it “Statues on Stilts”.
You think that’s strange?
Check out this unusual image:
Why is there a ladder that – if climbed – leads to sure death?
Welcome to the Suicide Suite!
Next up, we come to “Urinario Solamente”….. and – in case you can’t figure out that simple Spanish phrase – an illustration has been provided to help you decipher it:
Now the question is……….is this a temporary setup for the workers or is this the bathroom of a really cheap apartment?
This is some crazy apartment building!
Lastly, here’s a PANO of the electrical room:
Time to hit the roof! (PANO City)
The view looking north (we just came out of the staircase – the cinder block structure to the right of center):
The view looking west (my apartment is that yellow-brick structure near the center):
The inner courtyard and the gray next-door neighbor at 389 Main St:
(Note the sloped, white area under my watermark and its position relative to 389 Main. Why? Because it’s the next PANO.
So the project manager asked me what I thought was the purpose of this raised slant:
“To deny the horny oglers at 389 Main the view of your gorgeous sunbathing-on-the-roof tenants?”
His answer was somewhat disappointing……….something about snow drifts.
I’ll let you figure that one out.
Back story:
During April, I would try to look closely from home at the roof structures to determine what time of day was most photographically advantageous sun-wise (what was lit-up, what looked better in shadows, etc.).
I used the structures next to the staircase to figure that out and it turned out that afternoon was best (see the top part of the below image – I took that on the afternoon of April 11).
I took the bottom closeup 13 days later after we found a time that worked for both of us:
It’s more than just taking pictures whenever. A little research goes a long way.
FINISHING UP ON THE ROOF – THE EAST VIEW
For some reason, there was a sheet that was higher than the roof (and higher than I could see, so my only option was to try a panoramic shot held high from left to right, which would make the middle more visible and the sides less so.
This side is the front of the building on Main St. To make things more difficult, the entire front had scaffolding covering it (PANO):
But I managed to include a lot of good stuff (even though I was shooting blindly), from the Sears tower on the far left, to parts of the Hackensack River (center) to Midtown Manhattan (on the far right horizon).
Note: See that wide part of the river just to the right of center? That wasn’t visible the last time I shot from up here a few months ago. See that big cleared area just beneath the river? The Hackensack YMCA building stood there for 99 years until its luck ran out on Friday the 13th, this past February.
Here’s THAT story: https://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php/topic,4293.0.html
Unfortunately for the tenant who rents the top-floor apartment below where I’m standing, that river view will be lost again sometime in the near future when yet another (taller/expensive-to-live-in) building takes the Y’s place.
So this may be one of the last river view shots from this location for the next couple hundred years.
Here’s a tighter shot with more Manhattan and less white sheet (the Empire State Building is the last building on the far right):
And here’s the last roof PANO, which shows the river, used car lots, a riverfront park called Foschini, new residential structures, Midtown Manhattan, and a nice view down Main St (that tallest building with the sculpture on top used to be a bank) PANO:
(NOTE: except for the view down Main St, I can see all these things from my living room)
SO………….the roof shoot is done.
Chris walks me down to the Passaic St-side garage entrance (where we started an hour or so ago) and I take one last site PANO shot of wood and bricks and all sorts of delivered construction materials that maybe I’ll see again some day in a different form:
So the roof shoot is done…………..but I’m not.
There are a couple of shots I still need on the State St side, starting with a PANO of that whole side:
You can see a little of neighbor 389 Main on the far left (by the tree).
As I was shooting that PANO, I noticed something on the street and recognized it as a small piece of the insulation(?) I shot being delivered to the upper floors this morning (the first 3 shots of this post).
For good measure, I paired it with a closeup of the piece, which leads to one last question……………
How much extra does it cost to have a scoreboard in your apartment?
Still not done.
Between the two structures is a common driveway, whose gate hasn’t been down much lately………….which lets me slip in and shoot a couple of shots not generally available to me (or the public):
The wall on the immediate right (small PANO):
…………and the ground view of the roof I was just on:
Notice the “snow drifts” slant below my © symbol?
I had nothing to shoot the next 4 days (which I was grateful for, given the previous day’s workload), but then on April 29 (Note: all images are ©Bob Leafe):
OK – three things: I think the black hoodie says Satec (hard to read), which is an energy management firm, the guy in the red sweatshirt goes to Bergen Community College (but I think I saw him working on a lot of electrical stuff) and the long hauler in the last shot was stopped at a light (I thought it was there to pick up a crane).
April 30
Same two guys sharing giggles. I think the guy in the gray t-shirt is the guy in the fourth pic with a black jacket added. If not, it’s John Lennon…….and he appears to have spotted me. And I have no idea what his jacket says.
PANO:
Good way to end the month………
NOW I’m done! (except for all the computer uploading, photo editing, watermarking, this writeup and building/combining everything into this WordPress post you’re now reading)
Was it worth it?
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