Deluge Monday

It's taken me a bit to get these shots posted. These are from September 13th, when we had that ridiculous late summer thunderstorm. I tried to get to some of the danger areas before they became danger areas, such as the P&W bridge on Southbridge (which is a notorious flooding spot). An hour after I took these, they were fishing cars out of a lake under this bridge. The rain only caused minor flooding, but the manhole covers blew and the sewer system pumped water onto the street until it was five or six feet deep.

Here's the infamous flooding spot on Southbridge, right near Southgate and the railyard. Expand the photo, and you can see the manhole cover in the middle of the road, blowing water like a geyser.




This is Southbridge at Southgate, you can see where another manhole cover had blown and was spewing rainwater.




Here's Main Street, just up from WCUW...



Here's Park Ave. at State Liquors, which is an area that I have never seen flood before. The rain was so heavy at this point that the parking lot was dumping water onto the road faster than it could go down the drains. The curb looked like the lip of a dam. It was wild.

Renewal (and Abandonment) in Main South

Took a lunchtime drive today, and I saw that the front sliding security doors at the former Ha Tien Market on Main Street were open and there's some renovations happening inside:

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This is good news for lovers of our Vietnamese markets and for Main South residents in general. Ha Tien is one of the only grocery options in this neighborhood, and had a reputation for freshness and value. It was my favorite Vietnamese market in the city (sorry Mekong), and I was devastated when it was destroyed in a fire back in March.

Here are some pictures that I took during the fire:






I'm certainly glad to see that it looks like they're going to be reopening at some point.

There's some other rebirths happening in the neighborhood. The Dunkin' Donuts renovation at the corner of Main and Hammond seems to be moving along quickly:

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I also happened upon some long-awaited work being done at the brick apartment buildings on LaGrange Street. My office used to be right behind these buildings, and after a lot of noise about a fixup coming, they sat untouched for years. Looks like that's finally starting to change:

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One piece of land that I'm sure is very familiar to the patriarch of the Wormtown Fleet remains empty, however:

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For those who are not familiar, this is the former site of Yellow Cab's headquarters.