Thus past weekend, the legendary Jeff Stark organized a party that was held in the Chinatown segment if the second avenue subway. The NYPD is likely to arrest him and potentially all guests to this event in the coming days, months and even years, depending of course on how bored and desperate they are to make arrests and maintain appearances.
They must have been really busy these last 2 weeks. As we recently reported, Willow Lake Trail has basically been abandoned for the last 15 years.
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(Scroll down for the complete report) – with update!
The above photo is from one of the easiest subway tunnel explorations I’ve ever done. It is the mouth of the tunnel for the new ‘Canada Line’ subway route in Vancouver, B.C. (more…)
Here is a story that will frustrate anyone who has ever been tasked with trying to get to JFK airport from anywhere in NYC. Instead of reusing a branch of the LIRR which was shut down back in the 1962 (when LIRR was the red-headed stepchild of the Pennsylvania railroad – which looted its cash), the current governor of New York is backing a plan to convert the tracks into a park.
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Over the last few years a group of NIMBYS in central Queens have been basically advocating for the eradication of rail freight through Queens. The people behind this campaign seem to live close to Fresh Pond Yard (which has been a rail yard since at least 1906). After years of freight rail decline and the lost of the large ‘Yard A’ classification yard in L.I.C. (which will become a passenger rail yard in support of the ESA project) the LIRR outsourced its freight operations to a small startup railroad (New York & Atlantic) which has aggressively and successfully marketed its services. The growth of their business has made Fresh Pond yard busier than it has been in the last 20 years.
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Many Sunnyside residents were awoken in the early hours of Monday morning by a low-flying police helicopter.
The police tracked them down and arrested them at 41stand Queens Blvd at 2:30 am. The three—Jeffery Sanchez, Jonathan Aramis and Aileen Mahmoodi- were all charged with criminal mischief; making graffiti; and possession of a graffiti instrument, police said.
According to our records, The NYPD has 6 helicopters. 2 – Bell 412EP’s, 3 – Bell 212’s and 1 – Bell 206.
According to Conklin’s the average hourly flying cost is as follows:
412EP – $1668/hour.
212 – $1439/hour
206 – $516/hour
That’s not counting the officer overtime processing these kids, or the fact that the arresting officers were taken off the street probably for the rest of their tour to do the paperwork, etc. Call me crazy but in the grand scheme of things, we’re talking $1000-$5000 cost for these 3 arrests.
Now you can argue like every other idiot on the internet does these days that ‘they did the crime and should pay the time, expense, etc’. But when you factor in the fact that NYC’s now the weed arrest capital of the US, and star tallying up how much it costs to arrest all these petty crooks (even if no ghetto bird is used) and you’re talking about perhaps millions of dollars, spent largely to keep minorities in jail or with criminal records that will hold them back some more in life. Millions blown on people catching tags and smoking weed – habits that people generally grow out of on their own as they get older. Seems like a huge, huge waste of money to me.
Mad Props to GasAxe for the research on this one.
The city is going fine, Broadway shows were full last night. There are lots of tourists here enjoying themselves. – Mike Bloomberg
For anyone that doesn’t get it
Epic Photoshop cred: Grep
…so Gothamist today picked up the story that anyone with their ear in the underground has known for a few months now: Amtrak has painted over much of the freedom tunnel.
The rumor is janet Nazipolatino road through the tunnel on Amtrak one day and was appalled at all the graffiti down there. Thus, someone threw a huge pile of cash at Amtrak to paint and ‘better secure’ freedom tunnel.
With this new monumental act of state sponsored vandalism, NYC lost a huge amount of priceless art. The works of art in freedom tunnel ran the gauntlet of graffiti, and included everything from a dizzying array of throwys by FE to a 20×30 foot reproduction of Goya’s ‘3rd of May’ by Freedom and Smith. Many of these were priceless works, some created nearly 25 years ago.
There is absolutely no good reason for this state-sponsored whitewash to have occurred. The tunnel is out of public view so no civilians ever complained about it. To paint over the entire tunnel surely cost taxpayers a huge amount of money. Think about it: 2 walls, running along 2 miles of tunnel, 12-14 feet high. how many gallons of paint was wasted on this project? How many man hours at union wages were wasted on this utterly ridiculous endeavor? What is the total cost to taxpayers for this completely pointless destruction? How many hundreds of thousands of dollars were thrown at this? Money that could have been used to feed the poor, bail out the MTA to keep subway fares down, aid in the construction of the 2nd avenue tunnel… there are dozens of more important projects around NYC that all this time and cash could have been better used on.
This isn’t the first time that Amtrak has tried to ‘secure’ and clean up freedom tunnel. Several times in the 1990s they evicted homeless people and sealed up entrances to the tunnel. Those entrances were always broken open again, or new ones were created. Many of the homeless moved right back into the tunnel and never left. The tunnel is simply too big to ever be completely secured, and this new creation of miles of clean wall space is just a brand new canvas which will be retaken by graffiti artists in time.
Meanwhile, all of the exits to this tunnel are chained shut and locked with ‘102’ high security locks. If a train were to derail and burn in the tunnel, there is no escape. NYPD and FDNY do not have 102 keys. They would have to wait on amtrak to show up to get access to the tunnel, and by the time that happened, dozens, potentially hundreds, would be dead.
Way to go Amtrak and Federal ‘security’ morons. You succeeded in throwing away more taxpayer money while not making this tunnel one bit safer for the public. I for one am completely disgusted by your useless idiotic actions, and you can be damn sure you won’t be getting one red penny out of me on tax day next year.
