The Quarter Loops Streetlight Nuts

The world was a fairly predictable place for me, prior to my 6th year. Every day I went to school and every day I returned home to Booth Street, in Rego Park, Queens, NY. My block on Booth St. never changed. Then one day I returned home from kindergarten, and there they were...where only that morning, as I left for school, my old familiar crookarm (tapered eliptical) masted incandescent cuplights still held sway... The infamous Quarter Loops streetlight arms and their evil partners in crime, the "Disgusted" (GE M400) mercury vapor fluorescent fixtures.

Ironically I don't believe I missed the cuplights as much as the crookarms. I was aware that other streets had mercuries and since kids usually want the latest new toy, I wanted my street to have the latest new light. I'd cry over the demise of the cups in later years. What I never took well to was the quarter loop arms. Why the city saw any need for them, I have no idea. Like their stainless contemporaries, the Bigloops, the quarterloops sprouted in the 60's, like some luminous fungus. Why did I take such a dislike to the Q-loops? They probably suffered guilt by association to the Disgusteds.

It didn't help them that I was also very attached to the familiar crookarms. I loved the crookarms the best over all other poles. I drew them all the time. Maybe at six, I couldn't draw curved lines good, rendering me unable to master the drawing of the new loopy arms. That would've been a good reason to hate them. I think I just didn't like them, because. At six, you don't need much more of a reason to dislike something. The irony is that I was not usually averse to new things, but I was hostile to unusual things and asymetrical things. The crookarms were usual. They were everywhere when I was little. A new, shiny crookarm pole would be a welcome new thing. The still uncommon loop was unwelcome. It made my block wierd, in a crookarm world. I might face discrimination someday, for being a Loopian. I was always on the lookout for things that set me apart from the mainstream. We lived in a building that was not evenly divided on each side, with an elevator in the center and 2 staircases at each end, like the neighboring buildings had. Therefore, I hated my asymetrical building. My street wasn't a two way street, which made it seem somewhat stigmatized to me. I didn't hate the street though, but I did want to live on a two way. At least there were plenty of other one ways around.

In retrospect, all thing considered, I blame the fixtures for my anti-loopiness. As the loops and I near our 40th year, I've grown accustomed to them and would miss them if they disappeared. They've become sort of a symbol of NYC. Kojak fans saw plenty of them in stock footage used, whenever Kojak had to jump in a car and rush somewhere. Though the Q's were usually attached to hexagonal or round galvanized poles, they had the dubious distinction of kicking the Whitestone arms off their poles on a couple of highways. Except for that, the Q's were rather predictable. I never saw one attached to utility poles and they never held incandescent lights.

Almost never had incandescents, I should say. There was one single solitary q-loop that I know of, that had a cuplight. As usual, it was the Belt Pkwy that provided the stage. The Belt itself had no q-loops, but its erstwhile service road in Queens; Conduit Blvd., did. Near Aqueduct racetrack, just before Conduit swings away from the Belt, I spied one Q-loop with a cuplight back in the early 1980's. That stretch of Conduit was late ditching the incandescents, as was the Belt, but that cuplight was just one of a scattered few still left in the 80's. Why each of those lights were missed in the sweeping vaporization of those roads, I'll never know. It's possible that some DOT workers, who think like me, strove to save a few for sentimental reasons.

Some background on these mastarms was provided me by site contributor Sanders Saltzman. It is from the 1963 handbook put out by the Welsbach Corporation for it's field crews. Welsbach is the primary servicer of streetlights in NYC. One type of this arm was intended for use with the Type 8S (Welsbach designation) 20' hex poles. Although the q-loops would later hang on 25' poles, it appears they were originally intended to supplant the tapered elipticals on the shorter poles. Another 2 versions of the q-loop, which I've apparently never seen and may never have been used, were ironically intended for use on wood utility poles. Welsbach referred to them as the Type 6'x7'x6" and Type 8'x7'x6" Brackets. The fact that an extended 8' span was planned is also of interest, because of the many mast types used in NYC, the q-loop is one of the few not to have a longer, or braced version, in use. The 6' span is the q-loop standard. Many thanks again to Sanders Saltzman.

© 1996, Jeff Saltzman.