Sailboat hits Roosevelt Island Bridge

A sailboat got caught with the top of its sail against the Roosevelt Island Bridge Monday evening. No one was injured and the boat was towed, reports NBC.

A few notes:

  • The city council is investigating Jared Kushner’s company for falsely claiming that buildings it owned and sold in Astoria didn’t have rent-regulated tenants.
  • Rep. Carolyn Maloney dismissed the campaign funding of her primary challenger, Suraj Patel by saying “it’s mainly from Indiana, where he’s from… mainly a huge amount of the name Patel, which is his name.” Patel told BuzzFeed that not all Patels are related, suggesting that Maloney is racist. “I guess I didn’t realize Rep. Maloney hired Steve Bannon as her campaign strategist,” he said.

More politics and news round-up after the jump!

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LIC High School football field site for protest action

I think we’ve all tried one time or another to walk through the crowds of teenagers on the sidewalk along Broadway at Long Island City High School. Even at the far west end, it’s a busy road down there, so maybe that’s why during the nationwide and citywide student walkout against gun violence yesterday, LIC High School students spent their 17 minutes of protest on the football field.

A few notes:

  • A federal crackdown on the MTA for failing to comply with disability standards for a subway renovation in the Bronx has created an alliance between Trump-appointee U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman and Democrats such as State Sen. Michael Gianaris. “The MTA’s continued emphasis on style over substance wastes scarce resources, hurts transit riders, and stunts our economy while its failed Enhanced Station Initiative continues to cosmetically renovate stations without improving service or accessibility,” Gianaris said, reports City and State. There has been outcry in Astoria as renovations on the N/W line don’t include elevators.
  • The MTA plans to prepare Long Island City’s transit for the 2019 L-train shutdown by removing the airport-type automated walkway and widening and adding stairways at the Court Square hub and creating a free transfer between the 23-Ely Ave G and Hunters Point Ave 7 stops as Vice explains. In its Queens angle of the shutdown, the piece delves into the concerns people in Queens are having.

    “The members appeared frustrated, not just with what the shutdown could wrought, but what this area of New York City will face in the coming years. According to severalreports, Long Island City has witnessed the most apartment construction in America since 2010, with thousands of additional units in the works. If there’s no infrastructure in place to handle the shutdown, what does that mean for the entire region’s future?”

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TV pilot filmed at Sixteen Oaks Grove

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A TV film crew at 16 Oaks Grove, the triangle park on 21st St. and 37th Ave.

A TV crew filmed a pilot today at Sixteen Oaks Grove, the usually desolate tree-lined park on 21st Street and 37th Avenue across from a string of auto-body shops. A crew member on the periphery told me the show was so-far untitled. A man knocking on a film-set trailer door on 36th Avenue told me he was filming two pilots in the area for NBC but not Get Christie Love, an ABC project set for filming on 36th Ave tonight and tomorrow. 

Spaghetti crime scene shuts down Broadway near 21st Street

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A teenager pointed out to his friend on the corner: It’s spelled out on the truck, Bomb squad! 

Cops taped off a section of Broadway between 21st and 23rd streets by the Bel-Aire Diner this afternoon after a bomb scare. There were NYPD cars and trucks, ambulances and I even saw a state trooper. And there was the bomb squad. 

Turned out, according to the New York Post, the suspicious object was a pot of spaghetti. 

CautionTape

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Simotas introduces bill to save businesses harmed by subway disruption

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One day, I can almost make it out in the distance, the clouds will part, and the N/W stations at 36th and 30th Avenues will reopen and we won’t have to simply stay in our homes all day. But until then, small businesses near these stops say they are suffering. State Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas hears them. She has introduced a bill that would offer the business owners tax credits if they see a 25% loss due to a state or city project.

Of course this made me wonder about the Second Avenue Subway. Efforts were made to protect those businesses from the decade-long construction (longer than our eight months) but all I see is grant proposals that were specific to the area. Simotas’ bill in contrast is wide-reaching, applying to the whole state, presumably forever and would apply to “infrastructure” projects in general, according to Queens Chronicle.
The stations are expected to reopen in June, the month when the 39th Ave and Broadway stations are set to close.

H/T Queens Chronicle.

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Get Christie Love film crew is coming to 36th Ave

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No-parking notices are up for a film crew set to arrive on 36th Avenue Tuesday night for Get Christie Love, an ABC reboot of a 1970s TV show. The original show is considered part of the blaxploition genre and is known as the first TV show starring an African American female lead.

36th Ave in Ravenswood gets plenty of film action. I’ve seen film crews here at least a few times in the last few years, including for Roxanne Roxanne, the biopic of the rapper who lived down the street at Queensbridge.

[UPDATE: Christie Love will be filming along 36th Avenue all the way from 12th Street to 24th Street, and apparently all day Wednesday.]

New gray block building shines blue in the night

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For months I watched men lay bricks at 12-02 37th Avenue, creating a gray block building in the middle of the Ravenswood industrial business zone. It is so gray and blocky it looked like they were building a castle or a fort. Now with the exterior done, the building is totally more flamboyant at night, its surface illuminated by blue lights, giving it a jazzy, almost night-club like appearance in the industrial area. Most of the buildings that have gone up in the zone lately are hotels. I’m not sure yet if this is a hotel. And guess what, this is also a hotel! Of course it is. It took me a minute to call the wrong architect to find I had the wrong address and wrong paperwork to find a proper link explaining. And that architect? Also building a hotel in the Ravenswood IBZ (at 11-02 37th Ave.) Of course. ***Another update: Google Maps has this place listed as Hotel Nirvana! Well, nevermind. I like the way New York YIMBY described the 12-02 37th Ave development plan 2.5 years ago:

“The development would rise 100 feet into the air on a vacant lot between 12th and 13th Streets, in a sleepy commercial no-man’s land near Ravenswood Generating Station and the Roosevelt Island Bridge… In fact, it seems like an odd place for a hotel. The surrounding blocks are dotted with low-slung warehouses, two-family homes, and the large Ravenwood Houses public housing project.”

But we know now that the Ravenswood IBZ, intended to preserve industrial business space, is a small forest of hotels surrounded by the tall grass of warehouses and small factories. So anyway, this hotel definitely has a stubby shape in comparison to the others. I’ll just say it again. It’s a gray block thing. But at night, that’s when it lets its freak flag fly.

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Pacific Rim

(This post was adjusted to conform to learned information.)

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