It was such a nice day yesterday that I went for a walk along the Hudson after I got home. I took the subway to 96th St., walked from there to Riverside Park, and then down to the construction near 70th St. The construction area is Riverside South, part of an old abandoned railyard. Immediately to the west, on the other side of the elevated highway, are the new Trump apartment towers. To build the apartments Trump had to agree to build a 27 acre southern extension to Riverside Park. Residents of the apartments will finance the maintenance of the park in perpetuity.
The park is nice. I sat down at the little sitting area to the right of the woman above and took in the view. There are some nifty ruins of a warehouse and a float bridge in the river. There's also a new pier that extends into the river quite a ways. They've been showing movies on the end of the pier all summer. Tonight's movie was "Tootsie", which, somewhat strangely, was being shown on an almost transparent screen. But I digress...
While sitting there passing the time, I reached out and idly started turning the nut on the bolt that attaches the railing to the wall. Now, it is true that I have superhuman strength. It is also true that I am sometimes absent-minded and misuse that superhuman strength. However, my superhuman strength has its limits and I am not so strong that I can undo new construction with my bare hands! Unless, of course, that construction is really shoddy.
As you can see I unscrewed two of the bolts. The railing was loose and could be easily rattled around. There was enough leverage that a more destructive person could have yanked the railing off the wall without much effort. It was tempting, but I screwed the nuts back on. Probably tighter than I found them.
that's some high quality union labor!!
Posted by: tien | 28 August 2004 at 11:42 PM