Archive for October 2013
too acute
The concrete devastations are nepenthe to me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This past weekend was a rather busy one, with a trifecta of tours completed. On Friday, a short walk around Dutch Kills with a group from LaGuardia Community College, a Saturday tour with the Obscura Society explored the Insalubrious Valley, and Sunday found me leading a group from the Brooklyn Brainery through the Poison Cauldron. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again- to be seen by so many diminishes me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shots in today’s post were gathered while I was headed for last weekend’s excursion- a Newtown Creek Alliance sponsored event which was conducted as part of the Open House NY weekend event on October 12. This was a novel concept, a “surf and turf” wherein my walking tour met up with a party of rowers from the North Brooklyn Boat Club at the Maspeth Avenue Plank Road. Along the way, I noticed this Yeshiva bus parked in a bus stop. The driver must have literally interpreted what “bus stop” means. This was a Saturday morning, so the chances that this vehicle was still in place on Sunday morning are pretty high, but I wasn’t there to see it moved so I can’t comment authoritatively. As the saying in my old neighborhood used to go- now Hasidim, now ya don’t.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All over the upper Creek, there seems to have been some sort of bloom going on for the last couple of weeks, as the water had assumed a chalky green coloration. Last year, while onboard the Riverkeeper boat, just such a happenstance was witnessed. Captain Lipscomb, who operates the boat and scientific equipment onboard, investigated the phenomena and offered the theory that this was a bacterial bloom rather than the effects of an industrial spill or leak. It seems that there are lakes in upstate New York which also suffer from low oxygen levels in the water, and that they exhibit a similar coloration and turbidity as witnessed at the Maspeth Creek tributary in the shot above.
sluggish river
Maritime Sunday witnesses a somber duty.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The infamous Newtown Creek, at its junction with the East River, flows languidly between Greenpoint in Brooklyn and Long Island City in Queens. This post is being written on Friday the 18th, and at the time of this writing, a young fellow named Avonte is still missing. Avonte Oquendo, a 14 year old Autistic boy, wandered out of his school in LIC on October 4th and has been missing ever since. To their credit, the NYPD is leaving no stone unturned in the search for the kid, which includes my beloved Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Patrol Boat 315, a SAFE boat, was recently observed combing the shoreline. One of my informants on the Brooklyn side told me that they had witnessed NYPD individually checking the private boats which proliferate on the Queens side as part of the so called “Vernon Boat Sanctuary.” Descriptions of uniformed patrol units working in concert with the harbor units have all reached my ears. The sky has been alive with helicopters as well, which I can personally attest to.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Today’s Maritime Sunday shout out goes to the uniformed crew of 315, tirelessly searching Newtown Creek for a local kid who’s in trouble. If you’ve got any info about Avonte or his whereabouts, his family is absolutely sick with worry. Avonte is described as 5-foot-3 and weighs about 125 pounds. He was last seen wearing a grey striped shirt and black jeans.
Those with information are asked to contact the NYPD at 800-577-TIPS.
Project Firebox 93
An ongoing catalog of New York’s endangered Fireboxes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Found amongst the blessed hillocks of Astoria, this scarlet soldier of the realm stands at 21st street and 31st avenue. Long has it stood, amongst the chaotic and never settled landscape, awaiting the moment when it will be needed. Shine on, Astoria Firebox, shine on.
this impression
Name a phobia, and I probably exhibit symptoms of it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m afraid of anything meant to represent a sentient being, so Automatonophobia is on my list, As is Algophobia- which is what my fear of pain is called. One presents Frigophobic symptoms when a fear of cold flares to life, which usually happens to me between the months of November and March. Globophobic fits keep me away from any public event wherein balloons will be displayed, especially ones which are yellow. I’ve never liked being touched, but rampant Haphephobia relegates one to a horrid and crumpled mass of quivering defeat whenever someone brushes past on the subway and makes physical contact- no matter how casual. These conditions are all quite debilitating, and I demand pity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Obsessions and compulsions notwithstanding, the work must come first. Nyctophobia must be denied, for what is there to fear about the dark that isn’t also there during the day? For those who suffer from an inverse affliction- a fear of the sun known as Heliophobia, the night is nepenthe. I believe that the non medical term “panphobia,” or the fear of everything, best describes my outlook. Despite this, a humble narrator dares both the fuligin night and the emanations of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself, but does remain scared of all that might be hidden, out there, in plain sight.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lengthening shadows and shortened intervals between dawn and dusk indicate strongly that the wheel of the year has turned once again to Halloween. Fundamentalists of modern times decry this most Christian of holidays as “the devils night,” lambasting the celebration of manifest fear and terror as antithetical to their limited interpretations of biblical narrative. One such as myself, however, prefers to embrace the army of phobias and trooping night terrors as they gambol along with the goblins and ghasts.
Upcoming Tours
Saturday – October 19, 2013
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek with Atlas Obscura- tickets on sale now.
Sunday- October 20th, 2013
The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek with Brooklyn Brainery- tickets on sale now.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
almost homogeneous
Xanthophobic horrors abound, here in the Newtown Pentacle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If light may be observed, and if its wavelength is between 570 and 590 nanometers, one can be reasonably assured that they are witnessing a color known as yellow. Xanthophobia is the fear of the color yellow, a sickness of the mind one must avoid at all costs, for contemplation of it serves only to populate the mad house. As a note- Sexual organs like the ones pictured above are likely to contain carotenoids- yellow and red pigments that are found in the chloroplasts and chromoplasts of plants and other photosynthetic organisms. These colorants are also present within certain algaes, amongst certain strains of bacteria, and even within fungi. All of them scare me, as I am afraid of the color yellow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a boy in Brooklyn, an aged neighbor named Klein farmed sunflowers, vast ugly things whose bee infested faces leered over the insufficient fence that separated his property from our own familial plot. Many a summer afternoon was passed by a young narrator in a state of mortal terror at the thought that Klein’s cyclopean flowers might achieve some form of malign sentience and free themselves from the ground.
A bizarre notion, but I was a very strange child, according to those who knew me in those days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Commercial fisherman’s outerwear departments, safety vests, even the sudden appearance of a taxi- all can send one such as myself into a sickening spiral of hallucination and panic. It is no stretch to say that the DC comics superhero Green Lantern and I would have a lot in common and would find quite a few things to converse about concerning the subject of the color yellow.
It goes without saying that riding the otherwise wholesomely orange Staten Island Ferry can sometimes be so unbearable to me…
Upcoming Tours
Saturday – October 19, 2013
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek with Atlas Obscura- tickets on sale now.
Sunday- October 20th, 2013
The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek with Brooklyn Brainery- tickets on sale now.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 