Men at work

In the future many thousands of umbrellas will make the walk up and down the section of the High Line north of 20th Street, but this guy most certainly gets to seize the mantel as First Umbrella Walker. Good for you, dude.

It was a small parade this morning, led by two guys in a yellow machine with Umbrella Man taking up the rear. One thing I love about the construction crew on the High Line: they have such varied outfits. The guy at the wheel of the (way cool) yellow machine (which I covet a ride on…) has yellow rain pants whereas the other fellow — the one riding shotgun — is in an orange sou’wester suit. Umbrella Man is wearing a simple yellow construction pinnie.

Since we’re on the subject of what guys on the High Line construction crew wear: I snapped this fellow last week. It’s not his well-worn green helmet that’s so appealing, nor is it the casual, bright-orange-gloves-stuffed-in-the-back-pocket look. It’s the fact that his black hoodie completely covers his face, making him appear like a character in Star Wars. High Line Mystery Man.

There hasn’t been much action lately. Workmen come and go (talking of….Michaelangelo? Popsicle Toes?).

They carry materials….

and they haul materials….

and they work together to move stuff around.

Some of them seem almost balletic in their movements.

It feels like they are nipping and tucking. Getting ready for something much more significant.

It was a slushy downpour today: a combination of driving rain/snow that landed on every surface and materialized into slush. Including the guys in orange slickers who were toling away down on the High Line. I was setting up my camera as the machine to the right rolled by, so I had some serendipity (it’s rare to catch a moving machine on the High Line…), but given the lack of light and the little time I had to get the settings right, the photo is a bit of a blur. But you can see much intriguing stuff down there: rail ties set out on concrete beds on the eastern side and a stack of materials ready to be laid on the western edge.

Taking Bucky downstairs for a quick pee this morning I was greeted with a sign in our elevator bearing the headline: “Notice of High Line Deck Waterproofing.” Snapped it with my iPhone. Juggling a leash with an impatient dog at the other end didn’t help, but you get the picture: we are advised that “Deck Waterproofing” is soon to begin. The sign explains that “three coats of waterproofing, primer and two finish” will be applied. “Because concrete waterproofing is a very weather dependent operation,” they go on, “it is difficult to provide an exact schedule.”  And then the kicker: “The waterproofing operation is likely to be accompanied by odors…” Luckily this operation took place on a cold January day so there was no need to close a window.

I caught these fellows in the act of pouring concrete early one morning. I had Bucky with me and we had just dropped Ann off at Penguin. Walked back up on Tenth Avenue, rather than the bike path, and was rewarded with the sight of a large, loud, concrete mixer with a very long piping system attached to its arm. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a view from my window of the concrete being actually poured onto the High Line bed (meetings, tarnation). This was taken with an iPhone, so not such great quality.

But wait, the men in Hasmat suits are back, and they are painting the High Line white.  The smell is still overbearing.  They have a particular way of doing this, a choreography that seems to work well:  all the guys walk east with their sprayers and then they walk west, following the east/west axis of the High Line.

It doesn’t take long, and soon the Highline is bright white, ready for its next moment.

Days pass with no action and suddenly there is a large truck on the Highline.  How did it get there?  Why do I have to go to meetings?

The truck gives way to yet another machine, but before these fellows arrived on the scene a worker made a huge amount of noise with a leaf blower.  Perhaps he was drying out the concrete?  I had to move to the bedroom in order to take a business call.  This blue machine appears to be a precise instrument that does what??

And then, most amazing of all, the men change outfits and re-emerge in Hasmat suits to paint the Highline yellow.

The smell is so awful and sickening that I am forced to close every window in the apartment (7 face the Highline) and turn on the air conditioning.  Finally I move (again) to the bedroom.  What is this paint and why does it smell so deadly?

But it certainly does the trick. The Highline is now yellow.

We begin on a rainy August day, 8/28, with a group of men in hardhats preparing the bed of the glorious walkway we’ll all enjoy later in 2010.  It looks like they’re running some sort of a drainage pipe along the concrete floor.

Soon there are more men:  guys carrying large wooden beams across the wire-meshed underfloor that will soon be covered in freshly-poured concrete.  A fellow in a pretty nifty full-length anorak stands in the concrete toward the northern end. I bet that guy jumped in puddles as a kid.

Before long the concrete has been poured and the smoothing-out process begins. I missed the pouring -– must’ve been at a meeting — but our block was filled with huge trucks and machines and a gigantic giraffe-like contraption that apparently sucked the concrete up to High Line and poured it down for the men who were waiting.