Archive for 2012
frightful parts
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In ancient Greenpoint, down on Manhattan Avenue, a scrap metal processing yard has opened.
This is a somewhat puzzling development, as the modern streets around these parts host a large number of residential buildings- both old and new- and the locale is clearly trending toward the residential rather than industrial in the future. Regardless, this business brings badly needed jobs to recession plagued Brooklyn, and all I can say to these new stakeholders along the water is this- “Welcome to Newtown Creek”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news is that this particular metals business- which is TnT Scrap Metal, by the way- is using barges in the pursuit of their trade.
A single barge carries the equivalent load of better than 150 trucks, and one of the tried and true complaints offered incessantly at this – your Newtown Pentacle- is how few of the businesses based along the Newtown Creek utilize their bulkheads. The metals trade, at least the big players like SimsMetal, utilize maritime methodologies routinely.
This Newtown Creek of ours was once one of the finest industrial waterways on earth, and could be again someday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once upon a time, the sight of a barge tied up here would have been nothing special. The Newtown Creek Towing Company was nearby, as was the New York State Barge canal. The enormous brick structure framing the shot above, known to modernity as the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center (GMDC) was once home of the Chelsea Fiber Mill, an 1868 era factory building which was employed in the manufacture of maritime textiles and rope.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Manhattan Avenue Street end, where once the Vernon Avenue Bridge connected the Brooklyn municipality of Greenpoint to Long Island City’s Hunters Point, is a park and sports a kayak launch. It’s actually a pretty popular place for the locals- for dog walking, coffee drinking… and god help us all… people actually fish and crab here as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
TNT is making an effort at being a good neighbor, and has recently announced a contest for local artists to compete for a monetary prize and the chance to paint a mural on their largish metal gates on Manhattan Avenue. When word of this reached me a few weeks back, and TNT’s “rfp” crossed my desk, the first person I thought of to disseminate the news to the arts community of Greenpoint was none other than Ms. Heather over at newyorkshitty.com.
Ever gracious and instinctually curatorial, she ran the news in this post- where you can get all the details on the competition.
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming walking and boat tours of Newtown Creek, and Staten Island’s Kill Van Kull
June 30th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk
for June 30th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
July 8th, 2012- Atlas Obscura Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
for July 8th tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
unvocal waves
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent business carried me into Manhattan, to a meeting where the alcohol flowed freely and afterwards your humble narrator found himself more than a little tipsy. In prior times of plenty, a taxi might have been hired to carry my besotted husk back to Astoria, but as dire financial circumstances demand- it would be the subway that would ferry me home.
The assignation that night was right in the middle of rich people country, Lexington Avenue in the high 30’s, so the drinks were far better than the usual swill I quaff.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Making my way through Times Square, by this point more than just a little tipsy and edging on drunk, the notion of attempting a few night shots entered my fevered mind. As mentioned in several prior posts, this is something “I’m working on”. A difficult endeavor under normal circumstance, low light photography is especially interesting after several cocktails have been imbibed over a short interval.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, I’ve never felt inhibited taking “street shots” of strangers, and have often been chided for walking right up to people and just starting to click away. Of course, embarrassment ruled over me the next morning, as I found a series of cliche “Times Square Street Photography” shots had been captured in my stupor.
Back to the sobering realities of the Newtown Creek for me.
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming walking and boat tours of Newtown Creek, and Staten Island’s Kill Van Kull
June 30th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk
for June 30th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
July 8th, 2012- Atlas Obscura Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
for July 8th tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
vain presence
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One feels as if enough attention hasn’t been paid to Queens of late, and special efforts to program my walks have been accordingly undertaken. Ambitions and obligations have drawn me, more often than not, to Brooklyn in the last few months and it seems as if I spend my days walking back and forth to the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge more than anywhere else.
I haven’t been east of Forest Hills so far this year, nor south of Ridgewood- for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Special attentions must, as always, be paid to the area around Court Square, Queens Plaza, and Hunters Point- all of which are undergoing thunderous transformations and metamorphoses. Blink just once, it seems, and an entire neighborhood might be transformed into something new and unrecognizably shiny. That thing which cannot possibly exist in the cupola of the Sapphire Megalith doesn’t ever blink, as its singular eye is lidless and likely triple lobed, but it isn’t talking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unadulterated and unbound, Western Queens never fails to disappoint the itinerant photographer plying its lanes. Rhapsodic, the lessons and parables freely observable and extant both inform and instruct. It is said, by physics scholars and quantum mechanists, that reality is altered merely by the act of observation itself.
A humble narrator, therefore, hopes to profoundly alter reality in the coming weeks.
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming walking and boat tours of Newtown Creek, and Staten Island’s Kill Van Kull
June 30th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk
for June 30th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
July 8th, 2012- Atlas Obscura Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
for July 8th tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
dizzying fear
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a short one today.
Several of the neighbors here in Astoria, all of whom were born and raised on the southern end of the European subcontinent, have purchased models and iterations of these so called “Smart Cars”. A lot of good natured ribbing is offered by area wags and devotees of the SUV class of motor vehicles to the owners of these tiny cars, over beers or around the BBQ, focusing in on the diminutive size of the vehicle and what it says about the owner’s various physical attributes or virility. The laughing stops, however, when the Smart Car guy manages to find street parking in quick order, and the mockers are stuck driving around for the better part of an hour looking for an appropriate spot which would be large enough for an elephant to enjoy.
Who’s laughing now?
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming walking and boat tours of Newtown Creek, and Staten Island’s Kill Van Kull
June 30th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk
for June 30th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
July 8th, 2012- Atlas Obscura Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
for July 8th tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
profound discouragement
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Odd things occur during the night, here in the rolling hills of Astoria.
Just last week, a thief arrived in the small hours of the night and stole two cement planters from in front of the building where Newtown Pentacle HQ is located. The planters were simple things, but quite heavy, and had stood outside the entry way to this building for decades (as I have been told by my neighbors). A stocky man and powerfully built, as revealed by security camera footage, pulled his car up to the curb and purloined the items in under a minute.
His manner was strange, displaying a jerky style of locomotion and there was something just “not right” about his appearance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Later in the week, a series of loud “pops” echoed through the night.
Fireworks were thought the culprit, detonations of which are a fairly common occurrence in the neighborhood, but area wags were set to wonder- and more than wonder- when a small army of Fire Department Personnel arrived in duty uniform and deployed in large numbers across several blocks. High above, helicopters circled, and the FDNY employees were observed operating a series of metering instruments.
Suddenly, they all returned to their units and left.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Police too have been busy in the area of late, and several nocturnal arrests of unlikely seeming suspects have also aroused rumormongering and gossip amongst the gentry.
More than once have I noticed the local constabulary collecting stricken or unconscious men off the street. These have not been the “usual suspects” either- the familiar cast of local inebriates or opiate devotees who provide regular annoyance and predictable chaos. Many of these men seem to be foreign born, display a low and common character, are oddly tattooed, and universally bear either craniofacial injuries or deformities. Often they are screaming something in an unintelligible and unfamiliar language, which Croat, Egyptian, and Greek alike refer to as some sort of gibberish.
Something odd seems to be going on, here amongst the concrete devastations of Western Queens…
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming walking and boat tours of Newtown Creek, and Staten Island’s Kill Van Kull
June 30th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk
for June 30th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
July 8th, 2012- Atlas Obscura Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
for July 8th tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
The Newtown Pentacle 