Archive for December 2012
poor substitute
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
December 6th, a date which will live in infamy, as it is the anniversary of the birth of British Occultist Dion Fortune as well as the day that a man modernity knows as Santa Claus died.
The Mayan Apocalypse is only 15 days away now, so it might be a good idea to focus in on something a bit less weighty than the end of the universe. Accordingly, on a day that reminded one of nothing more than the Stephen King short story called “The Mist”, your humble narrator headed down to Queens Plaza to check out and ride the MTA Holiday Nostalgia Trains.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These holiday nostalgia trains are a yearly event offered by the MTA, and run on the M line between Queens Plaza and the 2nd avenue stop in Manhattan. Legacy equipment, the trains are a hodge lodge of different eras in subway history, and are maintained with the historical advertising one would have observed “back in the day”. The trains are running on Sundays, with the first train leaving the city at ten and arriving in Queens Plaza for the return trip at 10:44 am. Check out this page at the MTA website for more info on train models and schedule.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Train people, rail fans as they would call themselves, are a breed apart. It is extremely easy to mock their enthusiasm and detailed knowledge of the industrial ephemera which surrounds rolling stock, and there are several nicknames for them. These denigrating nomens infuriate their insular community, in the same way that Star Trek or Comic Book people detest outsiders labeling them as nerds or geeks. This is their hobby, and its actually a fairly wholesome one at that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s funny, how little attention or notice the actual hardware of the subways receives. Personally, the only time I truly pay attention to the cars themselves is when I find myself on a line which is using a completely different model than one of the trains which I normally travel on. The R versus the 1 for instance, use entirely different models, although I couldn’t tell you much more than surface differences, nor why the choice was made to use one of the other. The rail fan will be able to point to the exposed screw in a random light fixture and tell you an involved tale about it, usually involving long dead commissioners and obscure MTA operatives you’ve never heard of before.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You’ve still got two more Sundays to get out and experience these vintage cars, lined with goofy advertising from the past- admonishments to “hire a veteran”, “Smoke Viceroy”, and reminders that “real men wear a hat”. Be prepared though, for camera flash and dozens of photographers roaming the trains as they hurtle along. One interesting existential observation is how “bouncy” these trains are in comparison to the modern units, they are also quite a bit louder.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, the holiday trains are moving along the M tracks, and performing regular duty for the day. An enjoyable activity is to watch the City people blindly get on board, texting and futzing about with their phones, and then suddenly cast their gaze around, noticing their surroundings and the hordes of photographers and rail fans around them. There are some photographers and “creepy camera club guys” who hire models to dress in period garb for the day, and pretty ladies and gentlemen can be observed wearing the fashions of earlier times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One finds that you have to hold on to something when these trains are moving, lest you be tossed about. One of my many annoying habits, this one exhibited while riding the subway, is to stand on the balls of my feet with my arms at my side and “surf” as the subway moves between stations. I enjoy this, and it would be suicide to try it on the vintage trains, which demand two on the floor and one on the pole or hanging strap. The MTA, you’ve come a long way, baby.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The general protocol which your humble narrator follows for this event is to ride the train in a full circuit, from Queens Plaza to second and back to QP where I leave the train, satisfied with the experience. My rail fan friends engage in a Bataan death march of a day, riding back and forth in some kafkaesque loop, and will pack a lunch. Such devotion is remarkable, and beyond my attention span.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My personal predilection, after entering the subway system, is usually to get out of it as quickly as possible. I don’t like it down there, in that dripping stygia of rat infested tunnels. I don’t like knowing that the trains form pneumatic dams within the tunnels which push a swirling cloud of rodent droppings and desiccated decay before them and into the station. Mephitic, these dust blasts paint every surface- including me- with fecund horrors whose byzantine complexity is beyond the capacity of even a madman to conceive.
Accordingly, me and the Forgotten-NY guy went out for coffee in LIC after getting off the train at the 23 Ely stop.
Tales of Calvary 13- The Callahan monument
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s the fifth of December, a date which the pagans once called Faunalia. In 1945, Flight 19 disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, and we only have to wait 16 more days for the Mayan Apocalypse to occur.
Why not spend the day in Section 6?
Cornelius Callahan and his family are represented by an enigmatic monument at Calvary Cemetery, here in western Queens, which is remarkable not just for sheer size but for workmanship and design as well. Callahan was chairman of the building committee for the Catholic Archdiocese, and was credited with being instrumental to the building of the orphan asylums in Kingsbridge by Archbishop Farley himself. He died on June 8, 1911.
You can read his obituary at the nytimes, click through and scroll down to the bottom left of the page.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It should be mentioned that this monument is the sculptural capstone of a family crypt. In addition to Cornelius, his wife(s), sister, daughter and apparently a pet named Emma are buried beneath this block of carved stone. Daughter Katie M. Callahan was meant to inherit the paternal fortune, provided she bear offspring, but unfortunately she left this mortal coil before her father. The story of the execution of the will has survived the passage of 101 years.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The will Cornelius left behind stipulated that his properties be sold off and the proceeds divided amongst several individuals but the primary beneficiary was the Archdiocese itself. Records of a lawsuit persist in the historic record which state that the Church and other heirs would have preferred the deed to the midtown Manhattan properties rather than the cash, but a judge ruled in favor of Cornelius’s estate and Mr. Callahan’s stated wishes. Even 101 years ago, retaining Manhattan Real Estate was seen as a better investment than selling it, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A good amount of looking around revealed little else about the Callahans, although they were obviously people of high station and attainment. Cornelius, as stated above, was the chair of the Building Committee for the Archdiocese of New York during a historical period when it was at its nadir- politically and financially speaking. This was an era of church building, parochial campus expansion, and an age when the Irish (in particular) ruled over the City. Mr. Callahan would have overseen a small army of construction workers, suppliers, and itinerant laborers in his professional capacity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You never know who you might run across at Calvary Cemetery. The Original Gangster, a King of Ireland, the Abbot, or even the Newsboy Governor. This is where Tammany Hall lies, dreaming but not dead, alongside those huddled masses who legendarily yearned to breathe free. Wandering its emerald devastations, one can barely hope to comprehend the transmogrification accomplished by those interred here. They found a city of two and three story wooden buildings, and within a generation or two, altered it into the heroic shape of modern day New York City.
Have a happy Faunalia, lords and ladies, and embrace your loved ones, for the Mayan Apocalypse draws nigh.
glassy eyes
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
17 days to the Mayan Apocalypse, and for a preview of things to come- turn to the loathsome shoreline of the Newtown Creek at Hunters Point in Long Island City. These shots are from a few days after Hurricane Sandy. There isn’t normally garbage hanging from the trees here- one of the fellows I was with commented “check out the Sandy Christmas Tree”. Normally, there may be some wind blown detritus about, but this is incredible.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This piece of construction equipment, I was told, was wrecked by the flood water. It did seem pretty rusty, but heavily used machines often are. What distinguished it was the fact that it was just hanging open, and normally a mechanism like this is locked up tightly to guard against vandalism and theft. As a resident of Queens, you will often see heavy equipment just driving down the street- backhoes, earth movers, cranes. There is no absolute law in Queens, instead permutation and interpretation rule, and anything is probable at any given moment. It would not surprise me to see a space shuttle towed by a van going down a one way street, on its way to a scrap yard.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the working guys from a nearby property told me that the water was about four feet high around this spot. The real flood was down near the LIC Crab House which apparently suffered major damage from the surge tide.
exhausted form
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
18 days till the Mayan Apocalypse, and only 20 until Festivus on the 23rd (there’s also that Christmas thing a couple of days later, but the holidays are really all about the end times and feats of strength). Apprehension is alleviated by looking back at photos of earlier times. These shots are from last year, gathered while wandering around Manhattan in April.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If your humble narrator was some artsy fartsy “photographer” type, an attempt would be made to describe street photography and its many virtues. Misanthrope, I detest crowds of anti savant shoppers and demimonde tourists, eschewing any interaction with the great human hive unless absolutely necessary. A meeting at the Working Harbor Committee offices drew me to the City this day, and I decided to give this street photographer thing a whirl.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve met people who wander around looking for fights, pre focus their cameras and then shoot blindly in Times Square, all sorts of techniques are employed in this pursuit. Personally speaking, I like taking pictures of poop floating in antifreeze green water in Brooklyn and Queens, so I’m qualified to decide if this sort of thing is wholesome or not.
Look- a fireman with a drum.
unseen fingers
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We only have nineteen days left until the end of the world on December 21 when the Mayan Calendar’s 13th b’ak’tun ends, and if you’ve got apocalypse problems, the FDNY Fireboat Three Forty Three is the sort of tool you will need to make it through the storm. I’ve talked a bit about this ship in the past, in the posts “growing ferocity” and “betwixt the horns“.
In another posting describing another model of Fireboat– “The Bravest”, a lecture conducted by an FDNY Harbor Unit commander- Chief James Dalton of the Marine 6 unit– which I had attended was mentioned.
Information passed on in this weeks Maritime Sunday posting is gleaned from the copious hand written notes I scribbled down during that lecture. Any errors will be due to my own confabulation of transmitted fact.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Three Forty Three is 140 feet long, and built for speed. Its flared bow allows it to cut through waves, and has a relationship to the engineering of the past, present, and future models of the Staten Island Ferry– height wise. The Marine Unit works with and utilizes land based fire companies to combat fires, and the boat is designed to accommodate and transport as many as thirty lubbers. The bulkhead is designed to flood and drain itself, which allows the boat to adjust its vertical height.
As seen in the shot above, however, it’s the monitors which amaze.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Monitor is what you call the high pressure water hose nozzle on a fireboat, and Three Forty Three has six. 5,200 gallons per minute, the main one of the fore is capable of 17,500 gpm alone. The monitors at the corners of the boat also serve as a self protection system, and operate as foggers to defeat radiant heat. In addition to water, they can also access and deploy two 1,600 tanks of fire retardant foam. There are also four manifolds which allow conventional fire hoses to be attached to the pumps, and connections are found for FDNY standard three inch and NJ five and twelve inch equipment.
Everything described is remote controlled from the hermetic wheel house.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Below deck is an interagency municipal command center connected to an esoteric series of sensors and electronic systems. Situational awareness is the purpose of a lot of what happens on the lower deck. There is also the engine room, which outputs an inconceivable 8,000 HP to either the pumps or the four sixty inch variable pitch propellers which provide motive actuation. There is also a crane with a man basket and a monitor, and a 17 foot launch for rescues. Additionally, there are capstans which can be used for towing or anchoring at various locations onboard.
A hearty, and awe stricken, Maritime Sunday shout out is sent to the crew of the Three Forty Three, who will surely ride out the Mayan Apocalypse and probably end up saving the world.
The Newtown Pentacle 