Paul, who loves to photograph anything rusty, crusty, or delapadated asked me to join him on a jaunt down to the former home of Blooms and the Butcher Block, currently known as cinder-block-monstrosity on Queens Boulevard so that he could photograph the enormous crane that has been brought in for the construction project.
When we arrived we found out that the crane was gone, but a smaller one was lifting giant buckets of concrete skyward to be applied to the upper layers of this bomb shelter in the sky. What had been for months a giant, deep, open pit in the earth that had apparently disrupted the structural integrity of the neighboring buildings was now looking like a remote wing of Riker's Island.
People were standing on all corners looking the concrete going up. The common sentiment was "what the hell is going in there?" And like a sign from the gods, or ummm corporate America, I looked over to see "Coming Soon, CVS."
CVS? CVS? We have Rite Aid, Duane Read, Eckerd, Sunnyside Pharmacy, 99 cent stores, and the infamous South Pole. What kind of city planning gap analysis did the CVS scouters come up with to determine that what would best fill the open wound left in the ashes of Blooms would be another chain drug store! And why the heck do they need such a big building to do it? Have they not seen the enormous T mobile near the other burned on site on Queens Blvd and 46th street? The store is pristine and enormous and completely EMPTY.
So to whomever is constructing that large gray slab of building on the south side of the boulevard, I would've forgiven you for its anti-Sunnyside structure had it been filled with an ethnic or mom and pop shop operation, but for a CVS to be moving in seems like discount shoppers stomping on the grave of Blooms.
