Vicky!

(Photo courtesy W.H.A.P.)

As first reported by Sodia Pop in a comment on Sunday's post, then confirmed with a call from the president of WHAP (Winfield Heights Alliance for Preservation), Victorious America has been restored to glory and returned to her rightful place in Winfield Plaza.

Your correspondent first reported on the missing statue in August. Just goes to show, when Be the BQE speaks, Bloomberg listens. Or it was due to be reinstalled anyway. Either way, it's worth a visit, just make sure you go to the real Winfield Plaza at Laurel Hill Blvd. and 65th place (not the Winfield Plaza on 69th St. listed on the Parks Department site). When you go, pay attention to the inscription on the shield, a reminder that this is indeed a Winfield war memorial.

Pretty yes, but dangerous

The statue has been damaged at least twice by drivers coming off the BQE at the 65th Place exit and not making the turn (shades of the tram in the Hrabal story). I took the photo at right on Sunday looking out from the plaza at traffic exiting the BQE--in other words, what Vicky sees. So fellow BQE'stas, a word of advice: Be respectful, don't depedestal!

¡Viva las Revolucións por Minuto!

Courtesy New York Times

Socialist Nostalgia Week continues on Be the BQE with a nod to yesterday's piece in the New York Times on Cuba's decision to allow private sales of automobiles. Well the law is the law, but it's the photos of half-century old Russian and American cars lovingly kept going that's the real pleasure.

But what's that on the far right among the vintage Moskviches (Russia), Tatras (Czechoslovakia), and Chevys (U.S.A.)?  Yes, it's a Fiat 126, otherwise known as the "Mały (Little) Fiat" or "Maluch" (Little One). Back in August, in Coupe d'Arte, I posted about the Ostalgia show at the New Museum. I called attention to the 1972 Fiat 126 artist Simon Starling had driven from Turin, Italy, where the 126s had been made, to Poland, where after 1973 the Maly Fiat was churned out in ever greater numbers to keep the proletariat happy and relatively mobile (they often stalled). He painted it red and white (colors of Polish flag) and hung it on the wall.

The video below shows a Mały Fiat in action, set to the song of the same name by Polish punk band Big Cyc. The lyrics go something like this (tr. BTB):
He was close like a friend
Every Pole in a Mały Fiat
Laughed at throughout the world
But to us he was like a brother

Czar Bomb

1963 Jaguar E-Type

My NYC nephew and niece have rather suddenly become fascinated with cars, not surprising since they are roughly 15 and 13 years old (who keeps track of these things?). I well remember my own teenage obsessions with old MGBs and Triumph Spitfires. Bemoaning the form of today's Jaguars and Saabs, I was reminded of another shapely vehicle, circa 1961: the hydrogen bomb the Soviets built and tested in the Arctic on October 30th of that year, nicknamed, the "Tsar Bomba."

1961 Soviet FU-Type

The explosion destroyed several small island and caused earthquakes, the tremors from which could be felt by three quarters of the globe (according to the Polish journal Tygodnik Powszechny, from which the photo at left). Of course, you can't see the original Tsar Bomba, but you can see its brothers and sisters at a museum in Sarov, in the Nizegorod region, approximately 400 km from Moscow. Sarov is the nearest city to the "Los Alamos of the USSR," the mysterious and heavily fortified Arzamas-16, which is still operational as a nuclear weapons lab, among other things. You can read all about it on the GlobalSecurity.org website, possibly the most terrifying site in the world.

But let's leave all that to admire the sheer beauty of the 1960s-era design, seen in this early 60s Saab TV commercial from YouTube. Our WMDs just can't hold a candle to these.

This post dedicated to my brother James who was largely responsible for my early automobile obsessions. Ironically, he doesn't even own a car.

Bridge to Newark?

See you in Secaucus

Looks as if the Gateway Project with a new tunnel connecting Penn Station to Secaucus and Newark stations is a go. It took both New Jersey senators and Amtrak to convince Governor Christie to bite, but now it's all aboard. The massive project will require not just a new tunnel but two new rail bridges on the NJ side. Knowing how the governor likes to save a buck (even if it costs the state millions), I have a suggestion: Let's give the Kosciuszko Bridge to NJ. It has to be replaced anyway. With a little spit and polish (get it?), it could easily be retrofitted as a railway bridge.

Moving Day?

Among other advantages, this would unite on the same side of the Lordly Hudson the monuments to the two great Polish heros of the American Revolution: Casimir Pulaski (as in Pulaski Skyway) and Tadeusz Kosciuszko. If London Bridge could be successfully moved to Arizona, we ought to be able to move this one 20 miles or so.




New Jersey, you are welcome.

Games of Reference

OfTroy's comment on yesterday's post directing us to the great The Dot and the Line cartoon (dir. Chuck Jones) reminded me of one other thing--besides vectors are everywhere--I learned about in that high school physics class. Surrealism. Yes, my introduction to surrealism came not from an art or literature class, but from the film Mr. V. showed us at the very beginning of the course: Frames of Reference.

Maybe you remember it: A tweedy scientist with a pipe starts talking and moments later a similarly professorial type shows up in the frame, except he appears to be upside down. All kinds of hijinks ensue with flipping coins, moving walls, swinging pendulums (pendula?), and so forth. Like so many films and filmstrips we were shown in school, it seemed dated (grainy B&W, made in 1960), and yet this one was mindblowing. (The YouTube video has the first three minutes but follow the link to the archives.org site for the whole thing.)

Tribeca, PA

Walter Benjamin writing about surrealism and the "little universe" of Paris: "That is to say in the larger one, the cosmos, things look no different. There, too, are crossroads where those ghostly signals flash from the traffic, and inconceivable analogies and connections between events are the order of the day."

Or night. Coming back from Staten Island on an express bus last night, I dozed off somewhere on the Gowanus Expressway and woke a few minutes later at a plaza on Interstate 80 in the middle of Pennsylvania in the very early hours of the morning in the very early 80s. The dirty windows of the bus and the ghostly signals flashing from the sidewalk providing the frame and memory the reference.

Vector Vendetta

Alien landing?

Vectors are everywhere. The only thing I learned in my high school physics class and I still have no idea what it means. Oh, I don't blame the professor. I was hopelessly over my head from the word go. For decidedly nonpedagogical reasons, I wasn't dumped into a lower level science class (as I was from Algebra II to Senior Math (aka, checkbook balancing)) but allowed to hang around until the end of the year when a totally meaningless B was inscribed in my report card.

The BQE explained?

The vectors in the photo above are actually beams of the superstructure of the Kosciuszko bridge shot through the "sunroof" on a rainy day. If you want a refresher in vectorology, this tutorial site looks promising--but how would I know?

Is This a Weekday?

Coney Island Dawn (or Sunset)

An hour before dawn. As I passed the split for the Lincoln Tunnel on the BQE, I had the momentary sensation that I wasn't on the right road. It seemed somehow that the main road had curved away to the right and I was now on Bob Frost's proverbial "one less traveled by." 

The night before I dreamt that I asked the student teacher I was to observe for her room number. She looked perplexed, paused, and answered, "Oh, it's like a small number of coins." In my sleep-fogged mind, I had begun to play out possibilities: Would 25+5+5=Rm. 35 or Rm. 2555? (and when did the cent symbol disappear from my keyboard?)

A few days before, I was looking at the show on the third floor of the main branch of New York Public Library. A young man with a Latin accent asked me, "Where is the library?" I must have had the same expression as the student teacher in my dream. "You're in the library," I said. He asked again, and I directed him to the main reading room, which seemed to me to be the most library-like place in the place.

Is disorientation contagious? What is the opposite of orientation anyway? Must be occidentation.