Ghost Train (Derelict Tracks)

30th St. & Hunters Point. Ave., Queens (Google Satellite Map)

Five minutes behind me: St. Raphael’s church on Greenpoint Avenue

Look: it’s a smokestack half inside of a building.






Abandoned train tracks between two factory buildings (right off Dutch Kills).

Cemetery Fringes (Part 2)

Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens is the one at the top, separated from the northern half of Lutheran Cemetery by the diagonal road (Elliot Ave.). This “garden cemetery,” with rolling hills and lush vegetation, has an interesting jagged perimeter.


There are 29 cemeteries in Queens, where more than five million people are buried. That’s almost three times the borough’s current living population, many of whom live on the fringes of the “Cemetery Belt.”

A house with a cemetery for its extended back yard is not uncommon in Queens (click image to enlarge).

Snaking off mighty Metropolitan Ave., right near Lutheran Cemetery, is Admiral Ave., which leads to an alley, which leads to the tracks.


This is the alley-like street off Admiral Ave. (Terrace Court). Notice the freshly opened beer in the foreground. If you click the picture to enlarge it, you can also see some balloons (above the red car). It was Saturday afternoon and a kiddy party was in progress while I was doing my “work.”





Calvary Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens


Cemetery Nook: Street level view of what appears as a sharp right angle on the satellite photo. Notice the melange of textures that converge in the corner: two different stone walls, a metal fence, some scraggly vegetation and some trash.

Off Off the Beaten Track: Dutch Kills (Borderland Wonderland, Part 3)

The sectors of a city . . . are decipherable, but the personal meaning they have for us is incommunicable, as is the secrecy of private life in general, regarding which we possess nothing but pitiful documents.

—Guy Debord




The service road beside Newtown Creek, past the forking railroad tracks spanning Dutch Kills, looked ripe for exploration. The satellite photo was ambiguous, though; it looked like the only way onto the tracks was through a large truck depot, but was it accessible? Would the gatekeepers of industry bar my way?


Up from the subway



Onto the footbridge


Highway cash crop
Billboard harvest






Target acquired. Trespassing? I don’t know, but it felt like it.






On the rickety wooden footbridge between the forking railroad tracks. . . the rumbling and clanking of the scrap yards on the creek within earshot . . . I am ecstatic beneath the satellite photos that guided me here.







On Railroad Avenue I heard something rustling behind me and I turned quickly, thinking it a rat. It was a puppy from the scrap yard, a dusty little mutt, sweet as can be, rabidly frisky, nipping at my fingers—pure motion.



We had a moment together . . . Goodbye sweet little dusty scrap yard puppy.

In the Industrial Zone

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.

—Oscar Wilde


In the industrial zone, certain truths—not necessarily related to the surroundings—reveal themselves.





Some of the companies I passed: pipes, plumbing supplies, paper, recycling, waste disposal, Chinese food distribution, lumber, marble, floor coverings/linoleum, machine tools, valves, oil refining, oil recovery, plastics, garbage/shopping bags, windows and doors, building supplies, live poultry, roof tiles, steel doors, lamp importer, produce, store gates and iron work.





Chinese Economic Miracle (The Price of Globalization)



A trip down to the engine room, for a glimpse at the gears.






Concrete: the most prevalent manmade substance
Brooklyn IS concrete













Crossing the rails
Walking the streets
Spanning the city
Ped Xing

Google Satellite Map