saleh.soy

Spider-Man in Sunnyside (Part 3)

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Continuing from parts 1 & 2.

In this post, we’ll go over:

Before we start، a warning. This series will be FILLED WITH SPOILERS for Spider-Man movies and videogames.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

-a small interjection- Some years ago, the bridge was renamed Ed Koch bridge. But I don’t know no one who calls it by this new name. I understand that politicians want to memorialize other politicians but honestly what a bad renaming. How are people supposed to know where bridges/tunnels/roads lead to if they are all named after people? In NYC alone we see examples of re-namings such as the Battery tunnel (from the Battery to Brooklyn) that became the Hugh Carey tunnel and the Tri-Boro bridge (connects three boroughs: Manhattan, Queens & Bronx) which became the RFK bridge.

Back to the scene. The Queensboro Bridge is very interesting. It made numerous appearances in Spider-Man. For example in 2002’s Spider-Man THE fight against the Green Goblin starts here. I’ll get to that when I discuss that movie in a following post.

It is also a bridge that I take multiple times a week to go to Manhattan. I mostly bike over it. The bike lane has pretty views of the East River and Roosevelt Island (another place named after a politician lol). To me, the bridge is a bit of an insult to the island. Because the bridge stands on top of the island, it even has foundations on the island. But it does not serve the island. In fact, there is no bridge connecting Roosevelt Island to Manhattan Island. That does not mean it’s completely isolated. There are a few ways to get into and out of Roosevelt Island. One is a bridge that connects is to Queens (Roosevelt Island Bridge, named after a politican, but it makes sense in this case, i’ll allow it). Another way is via the NYC ferry that connects it to Queens and Manhattan. And the subway (F train). Lastly, my favorite method, the Tramway (an aerial tramway” “) which connects to Manhattan, I just wish it extended to Queens, that would be really cool.

The Tramway also makes it in this scene. As it does in the 2002 Spider-Man movie.

I got a bunch of pictures of the tram & Roosevelt Island & the Queensboro Bridge. This first picture is from the QBB bike path looking north. To the right is Roosevelt Island and the the left is Manhattan

This one is from the same bike path looking west towards Manhattan

This is on 2nd ave in Manhattan close to the tram landing

This is on Roosevelt island, in the Cornell campus looking east towards Queens

This last one is also from Roosevelt island, close the tram landing.

Spider-Man emerges in front of Delmar’s Deli. Which we saw get destroyed in 2017’s film. Nice to see the Delmar’s managed to stay in the neighborhood :) It’s been renamed to Delmar's III, I wonder what Happened to II?

I know this corner very well. There is an actual bodega there, kudos to the locations team for staying true to the location! The bodega is called Bliss Grocery (4622 Queens Blvd, Sunnyside). It is right next to 46 St-Bliss St stop on the 7 train, and across the street Bliss Bistro (a french restaurant) and the pharmacy Bliss Drugs Inc. Bliss comes from Neziah Bliss, who has a micro-neighborhood named after him as well (Blissville) (source).

Sunnyside didn’t get street numbering until 1930s (NYT: The Names Have Been Changed To Confuse the Innocent). However, even today, many people still use the old names (Sunnyside Post: Many Sunnysiders Prefer to Use Street Names As Opposed to Street Numbers), and so all the subway stops in Sunnyside have both the current street number and the old street name as the subway stop name.

These arches are really beautiful, I think it’s the most beautiful elevated train the NYC transit system. Here is what the view looks like during sunset.

The 7 train celebrated it’s 100 year anniversary in 2017. Here is an article from (NYT: Transit service on corona extension of dual subway system opened to the public) about the opening.

When the line was built, most of the neighborhoods that exist on and around the line were farms. This line is truly a life-line for the majority of neighborhoods that live on it, it’s our only train connection to the rest of the city. Here is a picture from when they were building the line, I don’t know how old this picture is, but you can compare it to the picture above!

Before we move on from the 7 train, I want to share this vintage video of decommissioning the old red train cars that were on 7-train, you can read more about it in this wiki/Redbird_trains.

This is what the street corner actually looks like, you can tell it’s the same place by the Turkish bodega across the street. Sunnyside actually has a sizeable Turkish population!

A funny thing about this scene is that for some reason the speed limit writing (20 mph) on 43rd st is written kinda funny. You can see it in the top left corner. of the picture. Here is what it looks like (still to this day) from the street view.

A little bit later, everybody reconvenes and aunt may says “We’re gonna need a safer place to live”. Cue them moving to a new highrise in the neighborhood of Long Island City (LIC), which is about 2 ish miles from Sunnyside.

The waterfront in LIC is really nice. Most of the buildings facing the water are luxury high-rises. The waterfront itself was converted into a park called Gantry Plaza State Park. Gantry being “a bridge-like overhead structure with a platform supporting equipment such as a crane, railroad signals, lights, or cameras.” according to Oxford. To learn more about gantries in NYC check out Untapped Cities.

The reason the park was called this name it still has 2 gantries, they are the objects that have LONG ISLAND written on them. The waterfront was once home to many gantries that supported cranes. And there used to be train tracks that went all the way to the river. The cranes would load and unload cargo from ships onto trains. Hunters Point Parks has a nice blogpost about the park. Some pictures of what it looks like today:

One thing to note is that as you can see in both pictures there is a white-block building. That is the Hunters Point Library. It is a really nice building. For some reason, in the movie, they photoshopped it out and replaced it with an all glass condo looking building of the same height. I assume this is because the library was under construction when they filmed this scene.

This is what it looks like from Google Maps.

This is the end of part 3 :)

Interstingly enough, all the things that I covered are in the first 15 mins of the movie. The rest of the movie does have some location that I can talk about, but they are more generic and have been covered elsewhere by other people, such as the Dr. Strange building and the statue of liberty scene. I hope this was a fun read for you all!

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