A few weeks ago I was able to get a little higher up and capture a quick drawing of the work yard where all the trucks come and go from. Prior to last spring this was a small and nondescript playground that had seen better days before closing down and becoming one of two main headquarters for the work that is going on. It is here that the monsters work and rest, all the machines that can’t stay on the street at night for the few hours each day that work stops. For months I could set my clock to the slamming of the back gate of the last Dump truck to unload whatever material they removed over the final hours of the workday. At 10PM each night, you can imagine the surprise the heavy gate brought upon me the first few nights. I kind of got used to it after a while and missed it when it seemed like it was not happening as often as the work on the west side of the street slowed down. Then it started up again and kept getting later and later each night.

My biggest disappointment of the yard location was the fact that what was for years the closest Christmas tree vendor one could ask for has been bumped from the spot for not only the launch box work but I assume the duration of the construction of the new station at 96th Street. Being from upstate it is hard to eat the price that the vendors sell the trees for every year, but it is even more of a hurt to have to walk up the hill a few blocks to get ripped off. On a side note this is one thing that I find to be one of the biggest cons in NYC. There is no way that anything other than demand has created the pricing structure for Christmas trees sold on the streets of New York each season. Either the City of New York is making a killing each holiday or the sellers of our tannenbaum are like Alaska fisherman and making their years salary in the month of December. Nothing justifies a more than 400% price difference in most locations in NYC from what you can get 60 miles outside the city limits.

But I digress, and apparently it is getting late, the gate just chimed 10:15. Maybe in seven to ten years the kids that have been left without a park will once again have their own place where they will be able to watch the commuters coming home from Wall Street making their way to any of the new buildings that will surely dot the landscape between now and then. And maybe, just maybe, I won’t have to walk up the street to make my yearly holiday donation.