Archive for 2012
Things to do!
July 28th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk- This Saturday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Kill Van Kull, or tugboat alley as its known to we harbor rats, is a tidal strait that defines the border of Staten Island and New Jersey. A busy and highly industrialized waterfront, Working Harbor’s popular “Hidden Harbor – Newark Bay” boat tours provide water access to the Kill, but what is it like on the landward side?
Starting at the St. George Staten Island Ferry terminal, join WHC Steering Committee member Mitch Waxman for a walk up the Kill Van Kull via Staten Islands Richmond Terrace. You’ll encounter unrivaled views of the maritime traffic on the Kill itself, as well as the hidden past of the maritime communities which line it’s shores. Surprising and historic neighborhoods, an abandoned railway, and tales of prohibition era bootleggers await.
The tour will start at 11, sharp, and you must be on (at least) the 10:30 AM Staten Island Ferry to meet the group at St. George. Again, plan for transportation changes and unexpected weirdness to be revealed to you at MTA.info.
for July 28th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
August 5th, 2012- Newtown Creek Alliance Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek Alliance historian Mitch Waxman will be leading a walk through the industrial heartlands of New York City, exploring the insalubrious valley of the Newtown Creek.
The currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens, and the place where the Industrial Revolution actually happened, provides a dramatic and picturesque setting for this exploration. We’ll be visiting two movable bridges, the still standing remains of an early 19th century highway, and a forgotten tributary of the larger waterway. As we walk along the Newtown Creek and explore the “wrong side of the tracks” – you’ll hear tales of the early chemical industry, “Dead Animal and Night Soil Wharfs”, colonial era heretics and witches and the coming of the railroad. The tour concludes at the famed Clinton Diner in Maspeth- where scenes from the Martin Scorcese movie “Goodfellas” were shot.
Lunch at Clinton Diner is included with the ticket.
Details/special instructions.
Meetup at the corner of Grand Street and Morgan Avenue in Brooklyn at 11 a.m. on August 5, 2012. The L train serves a station at Bushwick Avenue and Grand Street, and the Q54 and Q59 bus lines stop nearby as well. Check MTA.info as ongoing weekend construction often causes delays and interruptions. Drivers, it would be wise to leave your vehicle in the vicinity of the Clinton Diner in Maspeth, Queens or near the start of the walk at Grand St. and Morgan Avenue (you can pick up the bus to Brooklyn nearby the Clinton Diner).
Be prepared: We’ll be encountering broken pavement, sometimes heavy truck traffic as we move through a virtual urban desert. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking, closed-toe shoes are highly recommended.
Clinton Diner Menu:
- Cheese burger deluxe
- Grilled chicken over garden salad
- Turkey BLT triple decker sandwich with fries
- Spaghetti with tomato sauce or butter
- Greek salad medium
- Greek Salad wrap with French fries
- Can of soda or 16oz bottle of Poland Spring
for August 5th tickets, click here for the Newtown Creek Alliance ticketing page
devour and dissolve
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a short one today, as your humble narrator is quite the crunchy critter due to the exertions of yesterday’s Newtown Creek Tour committed for the Working Harbor Committee. The shot above is from the 5th of June, in this year, from an interesting vantage on the water near New Jersey.
Back tomorrow with some announcements of new tour dates, and something a bit more expansive to sink your teeth into. Here’s another shot of the same scene- capturing the spectacular, and high altitude, cloud formation in some detail and framed vertically.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
perils faced
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Simple of mind, your humble narrator is always overjoyed when a previously unrecorded Tug passes in front of me. This time around, it’s the Mary Alice operated by Donjon Towing. Extensive operations performed by the corporations boats upon my beloved Newtown Creek have been discussed frequently at this, your Newtown Pentacle, and usage of the search box at the upper right hand corner of this page will reveal many of them to those who typed “Donjon” into it’s text field.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If horses could swim well, it would take 3,000 of them to equal the output of this Tug’s engines, which drive the hundred foot long and 40 foot high boat through the Kill Van Kull along with its barge. A home town girl, Mary Alice was built in 1974.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As she passed me by, the comical windmill generator in Jersey- rising over the oil tanks- came into view. For a while, I’ve been wondering if it was put there to provide comic relief to, or just taunt, the petrochemical companies located on the Kill Van Kull. That’s this week’s Maritime Sunday, Lords and Ladies.
final destinations
This is tomorrow, as in Sunday the 22nd. Seriously- you can count the number of seats left with one hand. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, today is probably your last chance.
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Many people know about the environmental issues facing Newtown Creek, but did you know that the Creek was once the busiest waterway in North America, carrying more industrial tonnage than the entire Mississippi River?
You’ll learn much more when Working Harbor Committee’s maritime historians and harbor experts
put it all in context during a Hidden Harbor Tours: Newtown Creek Exploration.
The heart of industrial New York, Newtown Creek was home port to hundreds of tugboats (one of which is the historic WO Decker). It was also an international destination for oceangoing ships and a vast intermodal shipping and manufacturing hub that employed hundreds of thousands of people. Forming the border of Brooklyn and Queens for nearly three miles, five great cities grew rich along the Newtown Creek’s bulkheads — Greenpoint, Willamsburg, Bushwick, Long Island City and Manhattan itself. The waterway is still a vital part of the harbor and the Working Harbor Committee (WHC) is proud to present this tour as part of the celebration of their tenth anniversary year.
Mitch Waxman, a member of WHC’s steering committee and the group’s official photographer, also serves with the Newtown Creek Alliance as its group Historian. In addition to working on WHC’s boat tours of the Creek, Mitch offers a regular lineup of popular walking tours, and presents a series of well-attended slideshows for political, governmental, antiquarian, historical and school groups. His website – newtownpentacle.com – chronicles his adventures along the Newtown Creek and in the greater Working Harbor.
He was recently profiled in the NY Times Metro section, check out the article here.
Upcoming tour: Hidden Harbor Tours: Newtown Creek Exploration.
On July 22nd, Mitch shares his unique point of view and deep understanding of the past, present and future conditions of the Newtown Creek as the narrator and expedition leader for this years Hidden Harbor Tours: Newtown Creek exploration.
Our NY Water Taxi leaves from South Street Seaport at 11 a.m. (sharp) on a three hour tour of the Newtown Creek. From the East River we’ll move into the Newtown Creek where we’ll explore explore vast amounts of maritime infrastructure, see many movable bridges and discover the very heart of the Hidden Harbor.
Limited seating available, get your tickets today.
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nature transmutes
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator just can’t get enough of the Long Island Railroad yard in Long Island City.
Back in January of this year, while “wondering uneasily“, we established that the LIRR station in Long Island City accomplishes tasks which it would take some 30,000 horses to accomplish on a daily basis. Last year, in October- these very tracks were visited in “Deeply Hidden“.
Simply put, I’m kind of drawn to this spot.
from wikipedia
This station has 13 tracks, two concrete high-level island platforms, and one wooden high-level island platform. All platforms are two cars long and accessible from Borden Avenue just west of Fifth Street. The northernmost one, adjacent to tracks 2 and 3, is the only one used for passenger service. The other concrete platform adjacent to tracks 6 and 7 and the wooden one adjacent to tracks 8 and 9 are used for employees only. All tracks without platforms are used for train storage. The southernmost four tracks are powered by third rail while the remaining tracks are used only by diesel-powered trains.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once upon a time, street grade rail crossings were pretty common in Western Queens, but these days there are only a few that I know about. As always, never will I claim to be an expert on this subject, as there’s too many alphanumeric terms involved for me to remember. As mentioned in the past, mathematics isn’t my strong suit, and I’ve always been cursed by a sort of numbers based dyslexia. I’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
The Long Island Rail Road owns an electric fleet of 836 M7 and 170 M3 electric multiple unit cars, and 134 C3 bilevel rail cars powered by 23 DE30AC diesel-electric locomotives and 22 DM30AC dual-mode locomotives.
In 1997 and 1998, the LIRR received 134 double-decker passenger cars from Kawasaki, including 23 cab control cars, and 46 General Motors Electro-Motive Division diesel-electric locomotives (23 diesel DE30ACs and 23 dual-mode DM30ACs) to pull them, allowing trains from non-electric territory to access Penn Station for the first time in many years, due to the prohibition on diesel operation in the East River Tunnels leading to Penn Station.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Arithmetic challenged, in a Jewish family, this marks one as worse than an idiot. The stereotype which opines that Jews are possessed of a certain aptitude for mathematics is fairly accurate (or at least it generally is in my family), and black sheep status was assigned me as early as second grade when they rolled out long division. Consistently low scores on the math section of standardized testing always betrayed my inadequacies to scholastic authorities, and was a great cause of concern to my parents. Reports from teachers fed their dire suspicions that I would someday end up “a bum on da bowery” or “shovelin shit on da street”.
from wikipedia
The DE30AC and DM30AC locomotives replaced aging GP38s, Alco FA1/FA2s, F7As and F9As, and MP15AC and SW1001 locomotives, with GP38s used to push and pull diesel trains and other locomotives used to provide HEP for the trains. The bodies of the DE30AC and the DM30AC are similar; the difference is the ability of the DM30AC to use electric third rail while the diesel engine is off, enabling the locomotive to use the East River Tunnels into New York Penn Station. DM30ACs have third rail contact shoes, permitting direct service from non-electrified lines in eastern Long Island via the western electrified main lines all the way to Penn Station. A few such trains a day run on the Port Jefferson, Oyster Bay, and Montauk Branches. The engines’ naming scheme: DM = Dual Mode, DE = Diesel Engine, 30 = 3000 hp, AC = Alternating Current traction motors.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m told that people suffering from several different cognitive disorders spend their time memorizing train schedules and details about the rail system, and that they find some solace in the purely numerical language which governs the subject. Me, I just wander around aimlessly, and get the giggles when I’m lucky enough to randomly come across a train passing so close by. My major malfunction is taking too many pictures of trains and boats, it would seem.
from 1877′s “Long Island and where to go!!: A descriptive work compiled for the Long R.R. Co.“, courtesy google books:
Long Island City is the concentrating point upon the East river, of all the main avenues of travel from the back districts of Long Island to the city of New York. The great arteries of travel leading from New York are Thomson avenue, macadamized, 100 feet wide, leading directly to Newtown, Jamaica and the middle and southern roads on Long Island, and Jackson avenue, also 100 feet wide, and leading directly to Flushing, Whitestone and the northerly roads.
Long Island City is also the concentrating point upon the East river, of the railway system of Long Island.
The railways, upon reaching the city, pass under the main avenues of travel and traffic, and not upon or across their surface.
The Newtown Pentacle 