Richmond Hill, Queens, N.Y.
Where does the time go? It sure flies when you’re being stagnant, right MTA? Right Governor Cuomo? It’s April 9th as this is written and the station, 10 days after the first quarter of the year. While it has shown some improvement and new structure, is still one bottleneck forming staircase and inoperable elevator poor excuse for a station.
The stairs were supposed to be ready on April 1st. Can’t say enough about the uncanny scheduling as this has made fools of thousands of commuters. Although with the horrendous way the worst transit system in the fucking universe operates, sometimes at times these little big annoying things seem intentional.
Anyway, there was some encouraging things to see the other day in these first new days of spring as I actually saw life forms donning proper apparel and protective head wear, 3 of them, actually putting the pieces together on the looooooonnnnnggggg anticipated completion of the south stairway.
April 5th
I assure you readers, they were there, I saw them really. One of them actually turned around and saw me observing them and paused as if he recognized me. Another hardhat also suddenly stopped for a bit too. Noticing my smartphone and assuming correctly of it’s camera setting. But being respectful of people’s sensitivity, I waited till they went back to work to snap a pic so not to spark a confrontation and distract from the relevant matter of finishing this goddamn fucking staircase as soon as possible. You think 2 years to modernize a station would be long enough. Did the Empire State Building take this long to build? Hell Fucking NO. And it was built AHEAD of schedule by a week. This daily combination slog and eyesore is behind by at least a damn year and a half.
At least they noticed the health hazard bird shit partition and scoured as much as they could…
…yet to no avail
Yet they missed a lot of spots elsewhere
This delay is offensive enough. Really, MTA, you only got 3 contractors working on the weekend? So I had to be reminded again with a visit (can being reliant on the nearest subway entrance to commute count as a visit?) to the 86th street station in Yorkville about how the second avenue subway/galleria got the priority fast track so our megalomaniac ambitious governor had to build his pseudo legacy in real time with his command and worker bee swarm deployment to finish it on time. Well, more precisely for his stupid new years eve party.
Behold such envious beauty, although I take some smugness at the fact that after 4 months they have no one working the newsstand.
Admittingly, these are great pieces. It’s a fine reverential immortal tribute to NYC’s greatest songwriter that eradicates the stain of sweet Lou’s last aural shit sandwich collaboration with Metallica, Lulu (“I AM THE TABLE”, yes “I AM THE TABLE”). But come on, Chuck, as great as they are, 2 self-portaits? Is this why, as with the other 2 stations, it took so years to get the trains running down there? Well, they are there and they’re awesome so C’est La Vie, Que Sera Sera, IT IS WHAT IT IS (somebody brutally kill that last saying)
Hopefully, commuters will show up this lovely Monday morning to 2 staircases, if going by the might and skill of those 3 mortals can probably attest. I wouldn’t count on it at all since it still looks a bit skeletal and they have to move all that shit surrounding it. In all probability it might get done by Friday or maybe a strike of lightning by the Zeus of state officials, Mario’s son. He has plenty of time to wield his mighty authority to summon an army of flourescent safety vest clad drones to complete the task now that he is done crafting his vote pandering budget. Unless he has the misguided gumption of starting his 2020 presidential campaign early.
Impunity City 