Archive for January 2011
Project Firebox 15
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The seldom trammeled but often traversed intersection of Skillman Avenue, 43rd Avenue, and 32nd Place alongside the titan Sunnyside Yard is home to this wounded veteran. Here’s a google maps “street view” shot of it in happier times.
A cursory examination of the nycfire.net forums has at last revealed a discussion of the prevailing logic governing the odd numbering system which codifies the alarm boxes, and discusses why you’ll often see the base and stump of an alarm box left in place years after the actual alarm has been removed. Check it out here.
gentle manner
Combined Sewer Outfall BB-013, from the Pulaski Bridge – photo by Mitch Waxman
To begin- I warn you- this post will most likely “gross you out”.
In 1674, Boyle said: “I have often suspected, that there may be in the Air some yet more latent Qualities or Powers differing enough from all these, and principally due to the Substantial Parts or Ingredients, whereof it consists. For this is not as many imagine a simple and elementary body, but a confused aggregate of ‘effluviums’ from such differing bodies, that, though they all agree in constituting by their minuteness and various motions one great mass of fluid matter, yet perhaps there is scarce a more heterogeneous body in the world”.
When the pithy observation was recorded, “effluviums” were the central notion behind the miasmatic theory of disease.
CSO Outfall NC-077, Maspeth Creek, discharges 288.7M gallons per year into English Kills – photo by Mitch Waxman
The viewpoint of the learned classes in prior ages held that when certain noxious vapors produced by a mingling of soil with that standing water typically found about marsh, swamp, and sewer- then mixed with the cool night air- form so called miasmas (which is an ancient greek for pollution, I’m told).
CSO Outfall NC-077, Maspeth Creek, Tier 2 outfall – photo by Mitch Waxman
These miasmas- or “epidemic influences”- were believed to be the cause of Cholera and Typhus– and all the other plagues which would one day scythe through the crowded 18th and 19th century cities of the Industrial Revolution.
Vitruvius, in the 1st century BCE, said: “For when the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring with them mist from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous breath of creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy.”
CSO Outfall NC-077, Maspeth Creek, Ranked 25 out of over 400 in terms of volume – photo by Mitch Waxman
The air produced by, in, and around a sewer is typically an aerosol of whatever liquid solution might be floating through it. Hydroden sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia and a host of other constituent compounds mingle and form what is generically known as “Sewer Gas”. Typically, this gas has the sulfurous smell commonly associated with rotten eggs. Otherwise lacking and poor, the average human’s sense of smell can discern this odor when its concentration in the surrounding air is minor- which speaks to an evolutionary quirk.
Obviously- our ancestors who could not detect this aerosol, or miasma, died off while while those who could detect them passed on these sensitivities on to future generations.
CSO Outfall BB-026, Dutch Kills – photo by Mitch Waxman
If you suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, this would probably be a good time to stop reading this post, incidentally. Things are about to get ugly.
As an example- When a toilet is flushed, and there is scientific evidence to back this, a plume of microscopic droplets- an aerosol– erupts from the water. These droplets carry microbes and virus particles, which then settle on surfaces around the commode facilitating the “surface to hand to mouth” vector of infection. Modern plumbing does its best to minimize this bioaerosol in the house, but routine antimicrobial maintenance with bleach and other chemicals is necessary to sterilize the potential infections which might otherwise occur.
CSO Outfall BB-026, Dutch Kills – photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, these cleaning chemicals- along with non neutralized microbes- end up in the wastewater flow, and make their way into the sewers… just like the petroleum products, volatile organic chemicals, and everything else that the human hive produces… where they swirl about beneath the streets and follow gravity to low lying areas. A properly designed system intercepts these waters, but in the case of a “CSO”, a lot of the poison makes it into the mud.
CSO Outfall BB-026, Dutch Kills – photo by Mitch Waxman
A classic example of a bacterium whose spread is defined by such aerosol dissemination is Legionella, but heavy metals and other contaminants may also find a pathway into the human body via such aerosols (let’s just call it vapor or fog). Additionally, fibers of toxic manmade substances- Asbestos for instance- are left behind during evaporation. Such deposits are then picked up on the wind, as are the dusty remains of the putrescent particulates which escape treatment by wastewater industries like the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment plant in Greenpoint or the Bowery Bay facility in Astoria.
During heavy rain events, some untreated sewage reaches the rivers, but a large percentage of it- the lion’s share- oozes out from the bulkheads of that assassination of joy called the Newtown Creek.
CSO Outfall NCB-632 – photo by Mitch Waxman
The Newtown Creek and its tributaries are indeed waterways, but no one ever discusses this plume of disease and contamination in the air. Fingers are pointed at certain chimneys and infamous underground lakes of petroleum and chemicals, heated discussions of when it might be safe to kayak or swim in the water are offered by interested parties, and odd admissions that there are some who actually fish in and consume the catch from these waters (which according to the EPA, are offering this catch for sale in area restaurants) both shock and titillate area wags- but what about the miasmas?
CSO Outfall NCB-632 – photo by Mitch Waxman
The sewer system of New York City is a composite beast, marrying together the municipal infrastructure of multiple communities into a single system. The cities of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan (the historically agrarian and until modernity- lightly populated – Bronx has almost always been ruled over by Manhattan) each had their own standard, staring elevation, and set of regulations governing the sewers.
This NYTimes.com article from 2008 discusses recent attempts to consolidate and digitize the municipal record, and make sense out of the byzantine network of pipes which underlie the city.
CSO Outfall NCB-632 – photo by Mitch Waxman
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
Who can speculate, all there is, which might be wafting out from these deep channels of filth and what strange aerosols are carried upon the gentle breeze- here in the Newtown Pentacle?
Scenes from a Snowpocalypse
– photos by Mitch Waxman
The recent and much commented on Blizzard of December 28, 2010- which we in the frozen zone of Astoria refer to as “The Snowpocalypse”- produced many memorable moments around the ancient village. Made especially clear was that the internet, designed to withstand a nuclear attack, has become vulnerable to seasonal weather in the hands of corporate stewards such as Time Warner Cable.
Here’s a few photos of the experience, and notice the Daily News Truck- which was stuck in the middle of 44th street from 4:30 AM to 11PM and was finally towed out by a block long hydraulic chain. The auto in the second to last shot zipped up the block- the wrong way- and got stuck into the very spot that the truck was in. Some of these shots are unforgivably grainy, as they were captured at extremely high iso speeds.
Incidentally, the iPhone shot of the truck being towed finally out is here.
H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Festival”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
text quoted from H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Festival”, courtesy wikisource, where you can read the whole story
I was far from home, and the spell of the eastern sea was upon me. In the twilight I heard it pounding on the rocks, and I knew it lay just over the hill where the twisting willows writhed against the clearing sky and the first stars of evening. And because my fathers had called me to the old town beyond, I pushed on through the shallow, new-fallen snow along the road that soared lonely up to where Aldebaran twinkled among the trees; on toward the very ancient town I had never seen but often dreamed of.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten. Mine were an old people, and were old even when this land was settled three hundred years before. And they were strange, because they had come as dark furtive folk from opiate southern gardens of orchids, and spoken another tongue before they learnt the tongue of the blue-eyed fishers. And now they were scattered, and shared only the rituals of mysteries that none living could understand. I was the only one who came back that night to the old fishing town as legend bade, for only the poor and the lonely remember.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Then beyond the hill’s crest I saw Kingsport outspread frostily in the gloaming; snowy Kingsport with its ancient vanes and steeples, ridgepoles and chimney-pots, wharves and small bridges, willow-trees and graveyards; endless labyrinths of steep, narrow, crooked streets, and dizzy church-crowned central peak that time durst not touch; ceaseless mazes of colonial houses piled and scattered at all angles and levels like a child’s disordered blocks; antiquity hovering on grey wings over winter-whitened gables and gambrel roofs; fanlights and small-paned windows one by one gleaming out in the cold dusk to join Orion and the archaic stars. And against the rotting wharves the sea pounded; the secretive, immemorial sea out of which the people had come in the elder time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Beside the road at its crest a still higher summit rose, bleak and windswept, and I saw that it was a burying-ground where black gravestones stuck ghoulishly through the snow like the decayed fingernails of a gigantic corpse. The printless road was very lonely, and sometimes I thought I heard a distant horrible creaking as of a gibbet in the wind. They had hanged four kinsmen of mine for witchcraft in 1692, but I did not know just where.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the road wound down the seaward slope I listened for the merry sounds of a village at evening, but did not hear them. Then I thought of the season, and felt that these old Puritan folk might well have Christmas customs strange to me, and full of silent hearthside prayer. So after that I did not listen for merriment or look for wayfarers, kept on down past the hushed lighted farmhouses and shadowy stone walls to where the signs of ancient shops and sea taverns creaked in the salt breeze, and the grotesque knockers of pillared doorways glistened along deserted unpaved lanes in the light of little, curtained windows.
pitying smiles
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Inveterate pedestrians who frequent the primary arteries of Queens will tell you that are few City streets like Jackson Avenue in Long Island City.
As the ancient thoroughfare slides past the Megalith at Court Square, one might observe- if atmospheric condition and time of day permit- the curious reflections cast by the mirror skin of the towering structure. Not long ago, a member of the cultural intelligentsia named Heidi Neilson published her novel and intriguing “Long Island City Sundial” concept, which describes the inverse of the what you’re seeing above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At Queens Plaza, where the first phase of the titan “Gotham Center” construction envisioned by the Tishman Speyer corporation nears completion, I’ve noticed a similarly reflective affect taking place as the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself plays across the polished and curiously curved mirror glass serving as its architectural facade (and curtain wall) which is tangentially similar to that observed at Court Square, just a few blocks away.
As a note, the recent posting “progress” follows the construction of the structure from the ground up and from every corner of the Newtown Pentacle in a slideshow format.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Plaza is a notoriously difficult environ for the photographer with it’s rich collection of elevated and shadow gathering steel trackways and their cyclopean aspect- it’s dark and dirty and the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume (due, no doubt, to the uncountable number of vehicles transiting it at any given moment). Vast inventories of vehicles, variegated and numerous, move in short bursts as they ache in traffic in order to transit to and from Queensboro.
What the place has always needed, required in fact, is merely better lighting!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The seamless robe of that gloom and soot and hurried transit which 150 years of breakneck growth hath wrought seems to have finally been rent by the reflective light emanating from the new structure, illuminating the dimly lit and misunderstood bridge plaza. Lighting like this would be too expensive for the ordinary photographer or cinema “Auteur” to manufacture, especially given that at this location, and as the day progresses- the relections follow and present the inverse position of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself as it rolls across the sky.
I would add that it is extremely uncomfortable to be in the direct path of these reflections or wander into one unexpectedly, as (given the permanent twilight around the rest of Queens Plaza) one’s pupils contract precipitously in the same manner as they might if a sudden camera flash erupted in an otherwise comfortably lit room.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Strobing, the light returned from the reflective “blue with a hint of green” colored glass of the Gotham Center building is cool in temperature.
Studies in “color psychology” conducted by municipalities all around the world suggest that public area illumination accomplished and designed to utilize the blue frequencies of visible radiation suffer fewer incidents of public disobeyance, misdemeanor and felony incidents, and that other beneficial psychological effects are evidenced. For instance, the Keihin Electric Express Railway Co. of Yokohama (amongst others in Japan) installed blue lights at stations with high numbers of suicide attempts, Glasgow is apparently all about the blues, and the Police in Nara, Japan report a 9% drop in crime under blue lighting.
Perhaps this gigantic soft box in Queens Plaza is actually a mechanism designed to help quiet anticipations of a restive future population? It is meant to house the City’s Department of Health, after all.
This sounds like hippie talk to a humble narrator, however.
The Newtown Pentacle 