Iron Triangle

As much as we love to display the beauty and the glamour of cars, there's also the grit and struggle. One cannot be understood without the other, and such is this thing called life.


Willets Point: The Iron Triangle from Nicholas Weissman on Vimeo.

The area featured in Nicholas Weissman's short film "Willets Point: The Iron Triangle" is just by Shea Stadium's backyard (I'm still not used to calling it CitiField), near the heart of Queens borough, New York City. I'm familiar with this area actually, as my dad and I have made quite a number of trips there in our limping Camry through the years before we finally junked it.

And although this area would seem like an ideal locale if one were to scout a set for a gangland movie, the Iron Triangle is, in general, as honest a place as poverty and inequality can allow it to be. Within the weary eyes and the body language of just about every person in this film, there lies a strong feeling of anxiety from the uncertainties that lie ahead and the inability to fight change.

Not exactly Radiator Springs, but there is an ice cream truck.

The film is two years old now and the garages of Iron Triangle are still there. In an article from the local newspapers last month, the Iron Triangle and its 150 businesses will be condemned either to make way for a residential complex with apartment buildings and a bit of retail, or it may serve as a future campus for a university concentrating in technological research.

But in the meantime, I highly recommend a visit to the Triangle, if not to fix up your car for a bargain price then at least to experience a humble, yet uniquely fascinating, community within the vast world of automobiles.