I too have been looking for sites. Yesterday I rode my bike up through Brooklyn, North into Queens to the Roosevelt Island Island Bridge, made a circuit around the island, head south through Queens back to greenpoint, and I missed my turn for the bridge and found a site, that is at least spatially the kind of site I'm looking for. I haven't done much research on it yet though. It is on Vernon Boulevard between 50th and 51st Avenues.

I looking for the site I have been fascinated with a text I read about the Method of Loci that references an ancient Greek text that suggest the best sites for it are those that are "deserted, solitary, unfrequented." Riding past many abandonned industrial sites, I realized that in the context of this city I should not take the reference so literally. The implication of the text is that the best sites for the Method of Loci are not exclusive abandonned ruins, but rather forgotten sites that have been primed for the storage of memory by the amnesis of time. New York's abandonned industrial sites may be faded in their physicality, but they are hardly forgotten. Rather they are cliches of the common history of the city and their future is often hotly contested by those with interests in the real estate that they stand upon.

So I decided that rather than picking an icon of abandonment, I wanted to look for a forgotten urban imbedded in the urban context. This is what I like about the site I found in Queens. It is essentially a space left over by the diagonal cut of Jackson Avenue. Further riding through the neighborhood I discovered that it is actually full of left-over forgotten spaces as the are is cut up not just by jackson avenue, but also the midtown tunnel approach, and the emergence of the 7 train from its underground lair.

Here is the specific site I looked at




Here is the aerial of the area. The site is highlighted in red. The yellow are a few other sites that piqued my interest.