Archive for October 2015
viewless aura
Blissville, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Blissville, for those of you not in the know, is the section of Long Island City which the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge connects to. One refers to this area as DUGABO – Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp – as I like to stay ahead of the Real Estate Guys on this sort of thing. DUGABO is an M1 zone, meaning that it is zoned for heavy industry. A couple of blocks to the north, it becomes a “mixed use” zone, and there’s a scattered series of homes and commercial storefronts in the area – a lot of the building stock actually dates back to the 19th century.
The LIRR trackways run along the coast of Newtown Creek, and you’ll find several bits of railroad infrastructure along the shoreline. In focus today, the Blissville Yard, which has found new occupation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Blissville Yard is a series of trackways designed for storage of rolling stock. It connects to the Hunters Point tracks via a rail bridge that crosses Dutch Kills, and there used to be a connection to the Sunnyside Yards and the Degnon terminal railway spurs via the Montauk Cutoff which is no longer an active track. The modern use of the Blissville Yard is governed by the New York and Atlantic company, which is a private corporation that handles freight services for the Long Island Railroad. If you see a black and emerald colored engine operating along the LIRR tracks, that’s them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not too long ago, the Waste Management company, which enjoys a profitable relationship with NYC’s Department of Sanitation, opened a new facility on the Queens side of the Newtown Creek. Waste Management handles the exit from our municipality of the putrescent or “black bag” garbage collected by the municipal DSNY. The company has been operating for several years out of an enormous facility on Varick Street in what should be called Bushwick, but is referred to in modernity as East Williamsburg.
At Varick Street, Waste Management and New York and Atlantic operate the so called “garbage train” along the Bushwick Branch of the LIRR. Now, in Queens, they are operating another garbage train out of the Blissville Yard and the newish Review Avenue Waste Transfer Station – which is across the street from Calvary Cemetery. Those green box cars in the shot above?
That’s the Garbage Train.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUGABO proper, the street where you’ll find the at grade crossings for the garbage train is appropriately called Railroad Avenue. To the west, you’ll find the Blissville Yard and the SimsMetal company. SimsMetal handles the recyclable materials collected by DSNY and others. To the east, you’ll find other new arrivals (new as in the last decade, which isn’t even yesterday to “historian me”) like Waste Managements “Green Asphalt” facility.
This little roadway alongside the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge has become a locus point for heavy trucks, literally thousands of heavy trucks loaded down with garbage, on a daily basis.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The putrescent waste is processed at Waste Management, and loaded into these green boxes, which are then positioned onto rail cars. The garbage train(s) proceed eastward to the Fresh Pond yard. From Fresh Pond, they begin a long and circuitous journey which sees them leave Long Island via the Hell Gate Bridge and head north through the the Bronx via the Owls Head yard. Leaving NYC, they head most of the way to Albany, where another rail bridge allows them to cross the Hudson and enter the continent. Where they go after that seems to be a state secret, although I’ve been told that there are a series of tapped out coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia which are gradually being filled back up.
Future archaeologists are going to love us, I tell you.
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other metals
Cool Cars of Astoria, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One recent afternoon, my pal Larry and I decided to walk our cameras around the neighborhood. Our entirely random path found us heading towards the forbidden north coast of Queens, and after taking in the recently refreshed murals at Welling Court, we continued on in the direction of Old Astoria. That’s when I spotted this 1962 Ford Falcon two door sedan which was bathing in the powerful afternoon illuminations of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself.
Cool Cars indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The early sixties were a time when American cars were getting bigger and bigger, and imports from Japan and Germany were getting smaller and smaller. It’s also a time when many families were thinking about acquiring a second car, and the Ford motor company decided to get ahead of the game by introducing a compact. Their marketing was geared towards the stay at home suburban mom after research revealed that the ladies found the land yachts common to that era were just too cumbersome for their needs.
Data was all that mattered to the Ford executive who created and ran the Falcon enterprise, Robert McNamara. McNamara is the same fellow who would eventually become the United States Secretary of Defense and coin endearing concepts like “acceptable losses” regarding the possibility of nuclear war, and is the fellow that designed the strategic bombing program for the Viet Nam theater of operations.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Ford Falcon was produced between 1960 and 1970, and the design of the thing had budget and economy of scale in mind. The factory used parts and systems which were already being manufactured for other models to keep costs low. Back in the 50’s and 60’s it was common practice to design automobiles with an entirely unique series of parts and components, rather than utilizing the modern practice of modularity which dictates that a single carburetor or muffler could be installed in several different models or lines. McNamara was a data guy, a “bean counter” as it was known at the time. He would end up being the President of Ford before jumping over to the Government posts for which he is justly infamous, and for which he evinced great regret in his dotage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Falcon was a success for Ford, and versions of the line were produced internationally – there’s a somewhat famous Australian variant which customized and used for competitive racing. The 1962 model pictured in today’s post was a product of American manufacture, and the specimen encountered here in Astoria was in pretty good shape all things considered. This thing is older than me, but my pal Larry had a few years seniority on it. Larry is holding up pretty well himself, but occasionally has engine trouble and is worried about his struts and suspension but that’s another story.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When conversing with “Astoria Lifers” the early sixties are often referred to as a golden era here in Queens and seeing these cool cars persist in situ is a particular joy to them. For those of you “youngins” who have never driven a 1960’s American car, I cannot describe the thrill of having the massive horsepower respond to your commands. I know you’ll miss your Bluetooth stereo and seat belts, or the entire concept of being able to walk away from a wreck intact, but wow – when these old cars start up – it is exhilarating.
The Falcon, according to Ford’s corporate propaganda at the time, could do around 30mpg in terms of fuel efficiency. It was powered by a six cylinder 101 HP engine, and could seat six. There were a lot of variants available at the time – station wagons and four door sedans as well as a sort of van. The station wagons were available with those faux wood vinyl stickers on the doors and fenders, btw.
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yellow paw
A few randoms, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An assertion which has been offered on several occasions… it’s actually more an observation or opinion, actually… is that the 7 line of the NYCTA division of the MTA is the most photogenic of NYC’s subways – particularly that stretch that emanates off the Queensboro Bridge heading towards Sunnyside and Woodside. There’s all kinds of delays, crowding, and an angry mob has and continues to form from Queensicans suffering the “7 Train Blues” but for a purely visual bit of candy – the 7 just can’t be beat.
I also enjoy photographing the G, particularly at the elevated Smith 9th street stop in far off Red Hook, but the 7 is tops.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Carridor, or Northern Blvd. as it is conventionally known, is also one of my favorite spots to wave the camera around – particularly at twilight. Pictured above is a car lot that occupies a triangular property nearby 43rd street. The particulars of Northern Boulevard’s mapping, which sees it sweep around the curvilinear borders of the Sunnyside Yards, creates several oddly shaped properties. There are few rectilinear or squared off lots along its run from 31st street to Woodside Avenue. As it enters Jackson Heights, the road assumes a more conventional path as it moves through Roosevelt and Corona on its way to Flushing.
I’ve walked all of Northern Blvd. between 31st and Citifield, where pedestrian sidewalks disappear nearby the intersection with Ditmars and Astoria Blvd., and can tell you that the section adjoining Astoria, Sunnyside, and Woodside are my favorites – the happy hunting grounds, as it were.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been fascinated throughout the summer by a certain Brownfield remediation project underway in Queens Plaza, incidentally. Sometime soon, you will be greeted by post detailing the operations underway at the former West/CN Chemical factory and the efforts being made to raise residential towers on the site. Personally, I would not want to a) live in Queens Plaza, b) live on the site of a chemical factory which was erected on a swamp, c) live within throwing distance of the tens of thousands of automobiles which exit the Queensboro or traverse Jackson Avenue, or d) live within direct ear shot of the 7, N, Q elevated tracks. I wouldn’t mind capturing shots of these trains from the windows of one of these towers, I would add, but wouldn’t want to live there.
I’ll happily take my little spot here in Astoria, although it is never quiet here either.
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been decreed
Scenes from the lugubrious Newtown Creek, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had to go to Greenpoint to talk to a guy about a thing, recently. The guy in question was my colleague from Newtown Creek Alliance, Will Elkins, and the thing was to pick up some flyers he had printed up for the OHNY Plank Road event we conducted last weekend. We met at the North Brooklyn Boat Club location in Greenpoint’s DUPBO (Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp) neighborhood, and soon I found myself catching a ride with him in a medium sized row boat – outfitted with an electric motor – plying the waters of Newtown Creek.
We were heading for the so called “Unnamed Canal” which is analogous to the intersection of Kingsland Avenue and North Henry Street, which sits alongside a relict DSNY marine waste transfer station. That’s where NCA’s “Living Dock” project is underway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the electric engine slowly but surely propelled us along, the FDNY’s “BATT” SAFE Boat (Callsign: WDG3982) appeared behind us. The SAFE Boat platform has been discussed numerous times at this – your Newtown Pentacle – over the years. It utilizes the “weapons platform” concept which has been in vogue in military circles for the last couple of decades, which dictates that you create a single superstructure which can accomplish a variety of basic missions and then customize it to the particular occupation of the user. The NYPD carry towing equipment, the FDNY has water monitors (nozzles that shoot water or foam), and the Coast Guard mounts M60 machine guns to them.
This creates an economy of scale for the procurement of basic replacement parts like screws and engine bits, and creates a large number of trained mechanics who can easily find employment based on their familiarity with the design. The SAFE Boats come in small, medium, and large. The BATT is of the “response boat small” type.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By all appearances, the BATT was on patrol. It’s officially designated as a “Law Enforcement” vessel everywhere that I checked. Above, the BATT is depicted as proceeding eastward along the Newtown Creek, with LIC’s M1 industrial zone and the SimsMetal Newtown Creek Dock as a backdrop. Presumptively, they were on a regular patrol. It’s likely that this unit is based at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, although there are other Marine unit bases to the north where it might hail from.
As a note, I forgot to take the flyers from Mr. Elkins after returning to land and after having walked to Greenpoint from Astoria to get them. This is one of the many reasons that a humble narrator can best be described as an idiot.
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clumsy modifications
The Newtown Pentacle is back in session.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been creeping and crawling about, here in Astoria and in those spaces beyond, in pursuance of certain – lets just call it “esoteric” information. Hidden amongst the dross facts, the conventional interpretations, and the expected interpretations are hints at the true nature of things hereabouts. Dark undercurrents flow beneath the pavement here in the Newtown Pentacle, following ancient pathways which were wisely buried and carefully occluded by those generations for whom the setting of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself meant naught but shadowed terror. Once, wolves prowled freely across the sunken meadows and painted nocturnal terror across the stinking marshes of western Queens and North Brooklyn. The Dutch, and later the Angles, went to great pains to hunt down and exterminate these canid predators – eventually causing their local extinction.
Who is to say, though, what moved into that niche once occupied by the wolves? Or what old world horrors the seafaring Nederlanders and Britons unknowingly carried here from their far flung journeys to the Far East? The settlers of this area were heretics and rebels, cultists who rejected the orderly religious practices of their times. Did Thomas Case and his followers speak truly when they promised adherents to their bizarre form of Quakerism that bodily transmogrification and eternal life could be attained upon this plane of material existence?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
During the two week interval which saw this, your Newtown Pentacle, enter into a “holding pattern” – your humble narrator has been traveling non stop across the megalopolis in pursuance of carefully hidden reference. Uncommented private libraries have been visited, and the counsel of diabolist and clergy alike have been sought. It is once again the “most wonderful time of the year” as the liturgical wheel rolls towards Hallowmas and Samhain. Those hidden waterways which still gurgle and splash beneath the sunlit streets, dripping into night black grottoes and hidden voids perverted by modernity’s sewage and filth… Do the phantoms of those primeval wolves gather along them even now?
Who can guess, all that there is, that might be buried down there?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The presence of occultists and magick workers amongst us has long been established by multitudinous postings at this and other publications. Long time readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – will attest to the presence of ritual altars and offerings found along area streets, railway junctions, and even within the gates of the mortuary complexes which distinguish this section of the megalopolis. Consultation with souls braver than myself confirms the presence of subterranean populations of humanity living in abandoned tunnels and forgotten vaults beneath the pavement. Forbidden books suggest that they might not be alone down there, and members of the underground communities refuse to speak, other than in hurried whispers, of things which stalk in the shadows.
It is best, ultimately, that those of us who exist in the open air warmed by the emanations of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself remain ignorant of such things… or so they say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Were it to become generally known what exists in the dank earth, amongst the plumes of industrial chemicals and atavist stream beds which litter the deep city, if the truth behind all of those “lost pet” posters were to be acknowledged… It might be enough to depopulate the City of Greater New York and signal the descent of humanity into madness and the glad acceptance of a new dark age.
The good news in that, however, would be that rents would likely go down.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 