Archive for November 2015
another would
Rain, cold, and darkness in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Holiday season is upon us, I fear. Already have I been compelled to reminisce with old friends, commiserate over drinks with acquaintances, and discuss plans with Our Lady of the Pentacle for winter holiday feasts. One has never had too much trouble maintaining long term relationships, as I am too lazy to go out and make new friends. Admissions of my curmudgeon like tendencies notwithstanding, the seasonal holidays seem important to people whom I will admit affection for, so I play the game but it feels as if my brain is wrapped up in cling film during this time of the year and that I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The shoe did drop in Paris last Friday, a reminder of the realities of the “new normal” and that the Terror Wars continue to rage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It has long been my contention that the most dangerous collection of people on the planet are the Europeans. America, Russia, and China are the big kids on the block – of course – followed closely by the Japanese. Europe has been tamed for much of the last seventy five years, with their imperial cultures and natural tendency toward conflict and the subjugation of everybody else having been chastised down via the lessons learned during two world wars. Viewing Europe through a historical lens, the modern day residents of Eurasia’s western peninsular enjoy a level of security from conflict, freedom of conscience, and an enviable level of economic stability which their grandparents could only dream of. A lot of this is due to the fact that the United States has a gigantic military footprint in Europe, which has allowed the governments of the EU to spend their money on different things than tanks and fighter jets. The U.S. has always been pragmatic in this regard, as the lack of large standing armies in France and Germany (call them the Normans and the Teutons, or the Gauls and the Visigoths, or the Romans and the… you get the idea) is considered a guarantor that the two ancient enemies won’t throw down unexpectedly and start a Third World War if the United States is standing between them.
The attacks on Paris, I fear, might have roused a great beast from its slumber, and the U.S. can’t do anything about getting this one back in the cage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The French, in particular, have a lousy military reputation, which is based on the thorough and scientific attempts of the German military to degrade and annihilate them in the early 20th century. The word “decimate” would indicate that the Germans killed one out of every ten French soldiers during the world wars, but it’s actually closer to four out of ten. Two lost generations put France on a path towards a peaceful existence throughout the latter half of the 20th, and the first decade and a half of the 21st centuries.
In the United States, we joke abut the French tanks which can only go in reverse, but that’s a dangerous bit of historical subterfuge which does not acknowledge the history of France. In terms of the last 2,000 years, really right up to 1915, you are talking about the country which possessed the most powerful army in history. If you started a land war with France, you lost – ask the English about that one, or the Spanish, or the Italians. It took the Kaiser’s Wehrmacht to change that, and even then, the French cost the Germans hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Long story short, you don’t screw around with the French, and you especially don’t want to piss them off.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My fear, this holiday season, is that the European monster has awoken. In the same way that the American season of military restraint was shattered by the attacks of September 11th, the Europeans are likely to assume a more aggressive posture. Remember, the clowns who shot up a night club and concert venue, and who lit off suicide vests in Paris killed civilians who numbered in the hundreds. By European military standard, this is a failure. When Europeans decide to start killing civilians, they set up factories to do so. They use drumroll artillery tactics to suppress and destroy whole cities, employ weapons of mass destruction, and generally give no shits about committing genocide.
2016 is going to be an ugly year, I think, and our world is descending into the sewer. That’s why, despite my antipathy towards teary eyed holiday gatherings, I’ll gladly attend and play along with the season. You never know when it’s the last time you’ll see someone, so rather than crying out “Bah” or “humbug” this year – raise a glass with friends and family I say. Life’s too short.
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sleep filmed
Triskaidekaphobia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, it’s Friday the 13th again, which got me thinking the number 13.
13 is the atomic number for aluminum, incidentally. I see a lot of shredded aluminum along Newtown Creek, but aluminum foil is ubiquitous. Turns out that aluminum is actually the third most abundant element on the earth, after oxygen and silicon. That’s kind of interesting, no?
How about the fact that Aluminum production consumes roughly 5% of the electricity generated in the United States?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Does the pyrophoric nature of a lot of the aluminum based compounds interest? Pyrophoric means that the metallic compounds spontaneously combust on contact with the air – How cool, and unlucky, is that? Bloof!
I dunno, maybe I’m a little crazy about this Friday the 13th aluminum connection. Gotta go get me a tin foil hat to try and keep Obama and the Freemasons out of my head before they institute Sharia law between my ears.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In a tarot card deck, XIII is the card of Death. 13 is also kind of a lucky number for the ole U.S. of A.
The United States of America was created from thirteen British colonies. Thirteen stars are found on the Great Seal of the United States and there are thirteen stripes on the American flag as well. The deep connections to Freemasonry on the part of our founding fathers contributes to the “13” motif found in our national heraldry, presumptively. The masons love number games, and 13 is an interesting number in European esoteric traditions like Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism.
Saying that, Apollo 13 did not perform as expected, so it’s not necessarily that lucky a number for Uncle Sam.
Speaking of deep space, Metatron’s Cube is composed of 13 Platonic solids.
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ultimate effect
The nighted Newtown Creek, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As detailed in several posts this week, one decided to take advantage of the creepy atmospheric effects of the temperature inversion last Thursday – which produced copious mist and fog – and a journey on foot from Astoria to Newtown Creek began at four in the morning. My eventual destination was the historic Maspeth Avenue Plank Road, from whose vantage I planned on capturing a series of “night into day” shots.
The images in today’s post are what I expended the effort for.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking into Brooklyn, that’s the Empire Transit Mix company’s bulkheads. They were just getting to work, as it was just about 5:30 in the morning. Industrial types get started early. Twilight would begin at 6:04 so there was little time for me to fool around, and one started clicking away.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking eastwards towards Grand Street and Newtown Creek’s intersection with another of its tributaries – English Kills. As a note, these shots are quite a bit brighter than what the human eye could see, but that’s actually what I was “going for.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking across the Turning Basin of Newtown Creek towards the National Grid Liquified Natural Gas facility found at Greenpoint’s historic border with Bushwick.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A wide shot of the tuning basin, with the Kosciusko Bridge at right.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Zoomed in on the bridge, that dark hill is Calvary Cemetery and you can just make out the skyline of Long Island City rising behind it in the mists. What might seem like a developing error – the halation present around the bridge and crane – was actually visually present. The fog and mist were being lit up by work lights.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The remnants of the Plank Road itself, which last spanned the Newtown Creek when Ulysses S. Grant was President in 1875. When the whole superfund thing is over, I’m going to market mud and water from the waterway in the same manner as the folks who do the stuff from the Red Sea – claiming the benefits of its preservative qualities.
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duplicate and exceed
In the wind, and flying with the Night Gaunts in Industrial Maspeth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing my walk through the nighted streets of Maspeth, the path chosen carried me from Astoria to the streets surrounding the Newtown Creek. Caution regarding traffic guided my steps. As illustrated in yesterday’s post, the greatest danger you face around here is heavy vehicle traffic. Despite this assertion, when I mentioned my plans to come down here in the small hours to my neighbor, I was offered a firearm to carry, as he was concerned about me meeting up with malign elements of our society.
Untrained as I am in the brandishing of such weaponry, I retorted that I’d probably end up shooting myself if any attempt was made to discharge the thing and I declined. When I go out shooting, it’s about light hitting a camera lens, not little bits of metal hitting things. The atmosphere continued to thicken as one transversed the sloping street which inevitably led to the fabled Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you want to experience “spooky,” however, one cannot recommend the feeling of isolation and exposure which is offered by industrial Maspeth at night. You truly feel alone here, all of the steel gates are down, with the exception of an occasional warehouse operation’s loading dock being open and spilling light onto the street.
The smell of the place, on a foggy night, is exceptional. Misty atmospherics, fed by high humidity and air temperatures quite a bit higher than those in the gurgling waters of the sewage addled Newtown Creek, caused an omnipresent stink to inhabit the place. One does not like to think what he was breathing, but suffice to say that on a night like this you are fully in touch with Newtown Creek – in fact, you are respirating it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You know that you are out early when the DSNY workers haven’t made it to work yet. The Sanitation Department maintains an enormous facility nearby my destination, and the corner of 48th street and 58th road was where I had been heading for all night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Maspeth Avenue Plank Road, a street end which has been recently made salubrious by the efforts of my chums at Newtown Creek Alliance. This is the spot which I had in mind when I announced to Our Lady of the Pentacle that I would be foregoing sleep and heading out to “do some night shooting.”
This is also why I schlepped the tripod with me, as there were a few shots which I was desirous to capture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A quick change up of my gear and camera settings began. The tripod came out of its carrying case, and so did a remote shutter release. The dslr was affixed to the tripod, and the shutter release to the camera. One was intent on working in the “night into day” genre, and began a series of long exposure shots of the environs.
The shot above is part of the series, an “amuse bouche” as it were, for the set of images which will greet you in tomorrow’s post.
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betraying myself
Like the ghouls and ghasts, loosed upon the night wind.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in yesterday’s post, one decided to take advantage of the atmospherics offered by temperature inversion last week and proceed to hike over to Newtown Creek from Astoria at four in the morning. As also mentioned in the prior posting – the manifestations of high humidity like fog and mist, coupled with spring like temperatures, created a physically arduous environment. Perspiration offered an abundance of skin secretions for my clothing to absorb, which, combined with worries about condensation on camera and lens – caused a rather uncomfortable series of existential challenges to endure. No one ever promised me a rose garden, however, so your humble narrator soldiered on into the night.
The apex of this part of Laurel Hill, sitting alongside a shallow valley through which a lost tributary of the lugubrious Newtown Creek which was known as “Wolf Creek” once flowed, is always that moment when a humble narrator comments to himself that the creeklands have been reached.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Calvary Cemetery’s newer sections are on the left side of the shot above, and the “House of Moses” occupies the center. That’s the Long Island Expressway at center and above, with industrial Maspeth to the right.
This is where 48th street, whose gradual climb in altitude I had been ascending since Northern Blvd., begins to slope roughly towards the elluvial flood plains of the Newtown Creek. Once, this ancient road was paved with crushed Oyster Shells. That colonial era surface would have been replaced with horse and carriage friendly Belgian Blocks (colloquially known as cobble stones) shortly before the Civil War, and later in the 19th century by tar and Macadam. The modern road is formed out of a concrete bed underpinned by steel rebar and is paved in a petroleum industry waste product called “Asphalt.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Industrial Maspeth never knows sleep.
There are vast fleets of trucks, locomotives, and shifts of laborers converging at all hours of the day and night on this area, and on every day of the year (except Christmas and Thanksgiving, mostly). Sodium street lamps lend the place a sickly yellow glow, and the harsh illumination of passing heavy trucks provides for occasional blinding white blasts of light.
One has received “safety training” from Union laborers and corporate entities over the years, so a certain amount of confidence in how to handle oneself in locales such as this informed my actions. Donning an orange safety vest with reflective strips was one of the preparations made before leaving Astoria, incidentally. Night time in an M1 zone is one of the few times when the wandering photographer definitely WANTS to be noticed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are lots of giant machines moving around in industrial Maspeth, and 21st century industrial America operates within and promulgates a certain cultural imperative. That culture is called “workplace safety” and it’s important to understand the “lingua Franca,” customs, and mores which these laborers operate within – and their expected cultural normatives – as one moves about.
As a rule, never walk in front of a truck or any sort of machine without its operator acknowledging your presence, and if possible indicate to them which way you will be going and wait for them to further acknowledge that before proceeding – that’s one of them. Another is to not just wander across a driveway without looking. These hard working people aren’t expecting some idiot with a camera to be wandering around at 4:30 in the morning, after all, and the cops don’t exactly enforce the 25 mph speed limit around these parts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the bottom of the hill into which 48th street was carven, the grid of the streets is broken, and you can either head west towards Blissville in Long Island City or deeper into industrial Maspeth to the east or south. The Long Island Railroad tracks are found just beyond the fence line pictured above. That’s Review Avenue/56th Road/Rust Street you’re looking at. This is the very definition of a “not pedestrian friendly” intersection and is a dangerous crossing when on foot or a bike.
How dangerous is it, you ask?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another one of the thousands of ghost bikes is found here, a roadside memorial to someone who got squished. Every time you find a ghost bike, you find a human life cut short.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crossing the LIRR tracks. It should be mentioned that the “Haberman” section of these tracks are quite active these days, and that the signals are in terrible condition. Over the summer, just east of here, a truck crossing the tracks was swept away by a freight train. The exact spot which this shot was captured saw a similar incident occur a couple of years ago. In both cases the barriers never came down, the bells and flashing lights never sounded, and unlike the summer 2015 event to the east – this is where a fatality occurred.
In the distance, the Kosciusko Bridge project lights the horizon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a bit of lens flare present in the shot of the Ferrarra Brothers Concrete trucks above, but there’s little one can do about that in context. The shots in today’s, and yesterday’s, post are almost entirely handheld. High ISO settings, coupled with a “wide open” aperture, and compensating for the counterpoints of bright artificial light and enveloping darkness make for quite the technical challenge. It’s all about technique, shooting postures, and being able to force the camera into “seeing the light.”
Sometimes that means light is bouncing around inside the lens, producing flares. “Work with it” as my pal Bernie Ente used to say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Heading towards Maspeth Creek along 49th street. I’ve been told that this, the section of 49th pictured above, is actually one of the lowest places in NYC – in terms of altitude relative to sea level and the sewer shed that feeds into the Newtown Creek. It’s a guarantee that you’ll alway see some flooding here every time it rains, which is something I can say with authority, and based on observation.
An apocryphal story offered by one of my many neighborhood informants stated that during a Hurricane Sandy, geysers of water were erupting from the sewer grates and manhole covers in this spot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above, depicting Newtown Creek’s tributary “Maspeth Creek” on a foggy night in November of 2015, was actually the first tripod shot which I popped off last Thursday.
I bagged the dslr momentarily, and employed my trusty old Canon G10 with its magnetic tripod and a remote shutter release. The magnet allows me to “clang” the camera onto fences, fire hydrants, anything ferrous. The shot is a 15 second long exposure, which characteristically causes water to assume a mirrored glass like appearance. In the distance – the Kosciusko Bridge, with Manhattan’s skyline lost in the mist rising from that malign example of municipal and corporate excess known only as the lugubrious Newtown Creek.
Tomorrow – more.
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The Newtown Pentacle 