Forgotten New York

8TH AVENUE STATION, BMT

In November 2017, Thanksgiving to be exact, I embarked on one of my lengthiest forays, walking from Sunset Park to Maspeth. The family had informed me that the Thanksgiving stuff would have to be done on Saturday due to unforeseen circumstances (and it wouldn’t be the last time as the pandemic cost me a couple of Thanksgivings as well). As the weather was near-ideal, severe clear and 45-50 degrees, I took an N train to the 8th Avenue station and set out for Maspeth, walking through Sunset Park, Borough Park, Kensington, Flatbush, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Ridgewood and Maspeth, taking about 6 or 7 hours as darkness enveloped Queens when I finished, a trip of 12 miles. I haven’t used many of the photos from that 12-mile trip yet, but here’s a taster, a look at the temporary local platform at 8th Avenue.

The MTA was doing a long-overdue restoration of the stations along the N line which meant express service only from 8th Avenue south to 86th Street for several months, and then the reverse as the other stations were remodeled. A weakness of Brooklyn Rapid Transit, later the BMT, later the MTA, is that no express stations with center platforms were built on the Sea Beach, today’s N train. I am still mystified at this lack of foresight.

The 8th Avenue stop was “my” stop when I lived at 7th Avenue and 73rd Street at the BQE between 1982 and 1990; I had my choice between using 8th Avenue (N) and Bay Ridge Avenue or 77th Street (R) and it must have turned out 50-50. I had a favorite diner, Zeke’s, at 8th Avenue and 66th Street, where I would invariably eat every Monday evening before heading to Manhattan for the night shift at Photo Lettering. Even after getting a day job elsewhere in 1988, I would simply head for Zeke’s after work.

I still look at that era with nostalgia, though many would be well rid of it. I am unusual that way.

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9/14/23

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