Shot with a Diana F+. June 6, 2010.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Planet Hollywood, double exposure

The Strip, 8 a.m.

Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon

The Monte Carlo

The New York, New York

The Excalibur

CVS

Fremont Street

“I’m going to give you some advice,” this man told me. “Writers should not be photographers.”

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building (a.k.a. One Hanson Place), downtown

Brooklyn Flea, inside the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building

Flatbush Avenue LIRR Terminal

20th Street

20th Street

Green-Wood Cemetery

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Meadowlands Xanadu, East Rutherford

I’ve written before about Meadowlands Xanadu, the ginormous mall under construction in New Jersey. I’m fascinated by this brash, misbegotten project. It’s shockingly ugly, it has absolutely no interaction with the space surrounding it, and it has an indoor ski slope.

On Labor Day, I decided to see if it was possible to ride my bike from Brooklyn to Xanadu. According to Google Maps, it was 27 miles each way via the back roads. Totally doable. Off I went.

Meadowlands Xanadu, East Rutherford

My route took me across the George Washington bridge and down from the north, on a road from Moonachie, which looked on the map like a back entrance to the Meadowlands stadium complex. As soon as I hit that road, I could see Xanadu and the stadiums looming in the distance. But as I pedaled along, this nice little road went from two lanes to four, then four to six, then separated into a divided highway. And then, with about 1/4 of a mile to go, it passed through an interchange. It was Labor Day and the highway was deserted (as you can see in the first picture), so I decided to keep biking on it. Not the smartest decision I’ve ever made. But I was so close to my goal, how could I turn back?

The old Giants Stadium, East Rutherford

Destination achieved, I rode across the salt-flat-like parking lots on the stadium side of the complex. I crossed the highway on a pedestrian bridge that emptied into a parking garage. I did a lap around Xanadu, a silent and deserted fortress, resembling nothing more than a giant distribution warehouse with colorful exterior walls.

Then I got stopped by the cops. I kind of anticipated this—nobody bikes around a mall construction site without expecting to meet somebody in uniform.

The New Jersey state trooper asked me how I got there, and I told him. He asked me if I rode on the Interstate, and I said no. “There’s no way to get here except the Interstate,” he said. His point was that it’s illegal to ride a bike on a highway, which clearly I had done. At this point I figured, if it came to it, I could beat a traffic ticket for a bicycle violation the officer had not actually witnessed. But my real concern was ending the encounter as quickly as possible. By this time a second police car had arrived.

“Well, here I am,” I said. “All I can tell you is I’ll bike safely on the way out.” The officer said something about how it was their job to keep the roads safe. “I’ll let you go,” he said, “Since it’s Labor Day and there’s not much traffic.” I left the same way I rode in.

Thinking about it now, this is the perfect detail to explain why I’m fascinated by Xanadu. You cannot legally bike to it! Homogenized, corporate, free of history or context, built for the internal combustion engine. It’s the anti-Brooklyn. I can imagine them posting signs: “Welcome to Xanadu – Bicycling prohibited by law. Strictly enforced.”

When the mall finally opens, I want to go see it. Even though I’ll probably have to take a bus from Port Authority. Even though I probably won’t enjoy being there.

Here are a few pictures I shot in New Jersey on the ride home:

GW Bridge seen from Fort Lee

Abandoned furniture store, Ridgefield Park

“Where is the true birth certificate,” Ridgefield Park

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

A few Holga photos along the New York City subway’s West End Line. Shot last Sunday in Brooklyn.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Shot these on a bike ride last weekend…

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Following up on my post from Tuesday, here are the proposed subway cuts announced in an MTA press release yesterday:

• Route modifications – shorten G, operate N via Manhattan Bridge late nights, eliminate W and extend Q to Astoria, operate M to Broad rush hours, eliminate Z, add J local service.
• Increased headways and loading guidelines during non-rush hours – headways increase from 8 to 10 minutes on ADEFGJMNQR on Saturdays and the ADEFGNQR on Sundays; headways increase from 20 to 30 minutes from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.

MTA also wants to cut some low-ridership/redundant bus service, eliminate jobs (management, station booth managers) and cut back on (ugh) cleaning. The MTA’s budget presentation says they are trying to make budget and still: “Fulfill fundamental mission of getting people where they need to go.”

Okay, let’s talk about the cuts. As I wrote earlier, we’ll be fine without the W and Z. I hadn’t considered the possibility that they would run the Q all the way out to Astoria once they kill the W, but that’s a good solution. Confirmed that they want to stop running the M all the way to south Brooklyn during rush hours, which is a bummer. The R train is going to get crowded. And the G… [long silence]… That poor train…

Most serious is increasing the overnight space between trains from 20 to 30 minutes. Psychologically, there’s a huge difference between waiting 19 minutes for a train and waiting 29 minutes. We’ll have to start carrying timetables for the subway!

About once a month I end up taking the subway during those hazy hours between 2 and 5 a.m. (heading home after parties, or heading out to an airport or Penn Station early in the morning). During the pre-dawn hours, most of the people riding the train here in Brooklyn are working-class immigrants on their way to work. Anybody who works that hard deserves a break. A functional, round-the-clock public transit system is one of the few breaks they get in this hard city. If we’re pinching pennies, let’s find another service to cut.

(Thanks to Jeremy for the tip.)

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Coney Island, 2008

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.