Juan Pachange is Dead. Long Live Juan Pachanga!
Pyramid Oracle (who signs his name with a K: Pyramid Orakle) covered the doors of 29-14 Queens Plaza East with this drawing of a hoary looking, two-faced codger. I see a resemblance to Lubomyr Melnyk. This enormous, pleasantly glowering face reminded me that this space was once occupied by the Juan Pachanga Discotheque and that for years my “Big Picture” of September 27, 2002, was just about the only thing you could find on the Internet to prove the place existed. Shoulda slapped some ads on that sucka.
There is a lengthy interview with Pyramid Oracle at BrooklynStreetArt.com.
This particular part of Queens Plaza, around the surrealistically idyllic-looking Dutch Kills Green, is probably the noisiest. The racket from elevated subway trains must have shaken this small building so much that revelers inside would have noticed any time they passed. I never entered this place when it was a club but I wonder if that noise was an annoyance or an endearing part of the Juan Pachanga experience.
I recorded a 9 minute sample of how noisy it gets at Dutch Kills Green. I did this on a weekend afternoon, though, when traffic is relatively mellow and the noise is almost tolerable. I should get this sound again on a weekday rush hour. The noise at Dutch Kills Green can be simply unbelievable, though I admit that I am far more sensitive to noise than most people. Others who can better tune out this kind of atmosphere could probably experience this park as the urban oasis its creators and advocates claim it to be. Any time I see or visit this spot I can only feel bafflement at why it was chosen as the location for a park. I remember when the project was first announced and I laughed at city planners who claimed the noise would somehow be absorbed by an exotic tree-placement technique. Only after the park’s completion did its developers admit that mitigating the noise was impossible.
The racket in this recording doesn’t really get going until about 5 minutes in. Going to get back over there and get a better snapshot of the real noise.
Queens Plaza, Pre-Gentrification. Juan Pachanga. September, 2002.
