Holes In The Ozone

 

Ozone Park, Queens, New York

It was about a year ago that I wrote a post called Affixing A Hole, observing and photographing grotesque cracks and craters on the streets and storm drains and the innovation that gets implemented by the city’s Department’s of Transportation and Environmental Preservation to deter people away from the hazards. Now it’s 2020 and it looks like shit hasn’t changed a bit.

Strolling through Ozone Park I saw a familiar sight, another hole smack dab in the middle of the intersection on 107th ave. and 106th st. with a traffic cone being used as a butt plug so drivers can cruise over with ease, just like the pics I took in Manhattan and around here last year, except this time city workers aren’t even trying to thoroughly cover it up.

Since this has been the default method for remedying damage to the blacktop, our city workers are not even trying to see if it can fit. They couldn’t even shove this bitch down far enough.

Fortunately that’s not a busy traffic area, imagine if there was a hole even more massive and heinous with a big ass objectile vainly trying to obscure it’s hazard…

Imagine no more, because here is the intersection of 96th St. and Liberty Ave

 

It’s stupefying. It really makes no sense why a dangerous blight like this isn’t immediately prioritized and promptly fixed.

It couldn’t be at a worst spot too, the street there is a one way going north which makes right turns problematic and with the green light on the avenue you have to compete with vehicles usually blazing from the west from Rockaway Blvd. which intersects with Liberty. It’s also a veritable commuting minefield for pedestrians being that the stairwell  for the Rockaway Blvd. A Train is right there.

It’s also incomprehensible that this temporary “fix” was done by professionals, because it looks like it was assembled by a bunch of concerned good Samaritan hobos who just passed by and was so disgusted that they had to do something about it. But no, the proper markings are there in spray paint of where they have to cut and dig again.

This crater has obviously been here for a while too. Because it’s a certainty that giant orange thimble (bollard, whatever) was standing upright and was easily knocked down by one of our city’s many careless drivers. If you close it’s actually two thimbles (bollards). Maybe Polly’s D.O.T. thought the extra weight from the one inside would hold it steady. No dice kid.

Actually, that knocked down thimble is confirmation that hole has been like that for a while because Polly’s D.O.T. has used metal city corner garbage cans to act as a deterrence to protect drivers from wrecking their vehicles, and the one that was placed back on the corner obviously didn’t do the job they expected it to do.

Pulverized.

Sure we’re still in an existential crisis of a global pandemic and economic uncertainty but this slacker ineptitude was going on for decades before there was a novel virus and frankly it’s still pretty expensive to live in the city despite an eviction moratorium.

And there’s the big ass factor that infrastructure repair and modernization was still going on because of it being an essential service. How else would all those ambulances be able to take all those COVID sick people to the hospitals and the cops able to get to the protests and engage in civil war with the demonstrators? So there really is no excuse for this shit. Especially even more since Mayor de Blasio decided to exploit the Black Lives Matter movement and painted a bunch of streets with the BLM slogan materializing his virtual signal tweets and yet the holes in Ozone Park still happen and get neglected on the regular. And get bigger and deeper too.

Strolling back to the base, I came upon the first sight and it looks like little Coney couldn’t hold the fort:

When it comes to road infrastructure and safety in South Queens, it still doesn’t matter and never even did.

 

 

Update:

Thanks to Queens Patch, who retweeted my story to Polly’s D.O.T., the Liberty Ave. crater at 96th street actually got repaired.

Kinda.

Looks like someone left, actually lodged a Capri Sun juice bag here for some reason.

Let’s see what’s underneath…

Shame! Shame on you NYC D.O.T.

Commuters are even afraid to drive over it.

Apparently, this pathetic Ozone Park Patch job is an established norm. Because this is what I found a block east on 97th.

Your city would prefer vehicle owners to get adjusted to this. Because the Mayor has a Black Lives Matter mural by Trump Tower to protect from getting splattered with paint.(And y’all thought he defunded the police.)