Archive for May 2016
distance south
Some tugboat action, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Working Harbor Committee, which I’m both a Steering Committee member and the Official Photographer of, is all about education. Our motto and mission is to “educate the public about the Harbor of New York and New Jersey” after all. To this end, there’s a bunch of public tours – I’ll likely be conducting the Newtown Creek boat tour in the fall, and on Thursday of this week will be part of a trio of narrators on the “Brooklyn Waterfront: Past and Present” excursion. Last week, our education director, Meg Black, invited me along for one of the student tours which WHC produces.
There’s a gaggle of high school kids and their teachers onboard for these student tours, and the speakers WHC brought onboard were “Harbor Heavyweights” from the NYC EDC, Martime Association, Port Authority, and the like.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The goal behind these student excursions is to provide a concrete experience that backs up the kids’s classroom work, and to encourage them to consider a career in the maritime world. For a lot of inner city kids, they aren’t even aware that the Harbor is out there waiting to hire them. There’s hundreds of individual career paths that you can choose from in the maritime world – everything from Homeland Security to working on ships. The great news about these waterfront jobs is that wherever there’s a Port, which is just about everywhere that you’d want to go, you’ve got a skill set which is highly transportable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular tour left from Pier 11 in Manhattan about a NY Waterways Ferry. We headed over to the busy Kill Van Kull waterway separating Staten Island’s North Shore from Bayonne’s Chemical Coast and then visited Port Elizabeth Newark and the Global Marine Terminal in Newark Bay, after passing under the Bayonne Bridge. There was a parade of working vessels, some of which are pictured in today’s post.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
Saturday, June 4, 11:00 a.m. -1:30 p.m. –
DUPBO: Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
along with
I like a good door, me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One could bore you endlessly with the metaphorical and philosophical significance of doors. They keep you in, or keep you out, in their simplest function. A lot of the doors in today’s post are simply gone, such as the one pictured above which used to found in Queens Plaza along Jackson Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hunterspoint Steel literally left their building in Queens well more than a decade ago, but their portal and signage nevertheless remained. Found just east of the Dutch Kills Tributary of Newtown Creek and Hunters Point Avenue Bridge, the old factory building has become home to a plumbing supply company in recent years – but their sign typography is nowhere near as cool as Hunterspoint Steel’s was. They also replaced the old yellow door with some modern piece of “store bought.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Brooklyn, at the Greenpoint Terminal Market, this second story number once connected with another building. That building burned away in the largest fire since 911, which – luckily enough – made lots of room available for the development of luxury condos on its lot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In lower Manhattan’s Alphabet City, there’s a church which celebrates the Hispanic Mozarabic Rite of the Western Orthodox Catholic tradition. No, really. I did a whole post on this church back in August of 2012.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on… Staten Island… there’s a bar on Richmond Terrace where you’ll find the front door always open, and within there’s a phone booth. If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s where Madonna called Danny Aiello from in the “Papa don’t preach” music video back in the 1980’s.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Queens, over in Ridgewood, there’s a pretty ancient set of doors you can walk through at the Onderdonk House. If you’re tall, you might want to duck down a bit while walking through, as our colonial ancestors didn’t necessarily possess the same stature which we assign to them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Queens’s Woodside, along Broadway, there’s a church which is fairly well vouchsafed against Vampires. Of course, Woodside doesn’t have too much of an infestation – nosferatu wise. For a good chance of encountering Vampires, you’d want to go to Red Hook (under the Gowanus Expressway is a good bet). As a note, Vampires avoid this particular corner anyway, as there’s a Sikh temple on the opposite corner.
You don’t screw around with the Sikhs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There aren’t that many burial grounds in Lower Manhattan, but you can bet that when you do find one it will be vouchsafed by stout iron doors. Whether it’s to keep the Wall Street types from robbing the graves, or to keep the dead from exacting vengeance upon the living – who cares, it’s Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hidden doors are my favorites, of course. In Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery, there’s hundreds of hidden doors designed to both protect and control the tomb legions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My favorite doors are actually the elaborate bronze portal covers you’ll find adorning the Mausolea at one of the four Calvary Cemeteries here in Western Queens. Just look at that example above. Woof.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
accident or evil
Things I’ve seen, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One decided to take a walk through Hallets Point, or Astoria Point as the Real Estate Industrial Complex has christened it, recently. The fires of gentrification have been stoked on the forbidden northern coast of Queens, as you may have heard. My purpose behind this walk revolved around path finding the probable right of way for the proposed BQX street car system, which I find an interesting intellectual challenge – an Einsteinian “thought experiment” if you will.
As a note, I have nothing to do with the project – instead I’m just curious about how they’re going to “thread the needle” through parks and housing projects to make this particular dream of NYC’s oligarchs come true.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Upon arriving back in my neighborhood on the southern border of Astoria, one encountered another member of the growing population of “not homeless” types who enjoy an afternoon tipple and then a short nap on the public way. Nostradamus like, your humble narrator is, and my predictions that the toleration of a population of drunken bums by the 114th precinct along Broadway would begin to draw in others is playing out. At least one bank has had to hire a night time security guard to vouchsafe its ATM laden lobby against them, and the steps of the Broadway/Steinway library have become an open air camp site. I look forward to seeing these folks riding and urinating on the BQX.
This fellow is a regular, and commonly observed sleeping and or manipulating some body part found deep in his the pantaloons. This shot was captured on the corner of Steinway Street and Broadway, which can hardly be considered an out of the way location.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Me? I’ve been a bit too busy to care about the “bum” situation in Astoria for the last few weeks. Boat excursions, walking tours, a never ending series of meetings – all have been consuming my time.
Speaking of, I’ll be speaking early tomorrow at the Greater Astoria Historic Society for “Queens Waterfront” symposium they’re conducting with the Waterfront Alliance. This will be an all day affair, but I’ll only be there in the morning as I’ve got to conduct a tour of the Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek in the afternoon.
Come with? Ticketing link below.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, May 21st at 3:30 p.m. –
A Return to The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek,
with Atlas Obscura, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
even thirstier than
A few tugs, observed, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week I was invited to attend the Waterfront Alliance’s annual conference, which takes place on a large excursion boat operated by the Hornblower corporation. Onboard, there’s a series of conferences in which bigwigs and harbor heavyweights discuss this or that issue which impacts the Harbor of New York and New Jersey. Onboard… well, let’s just say that after nearly a decade of a humble narrator hanging around with the harbor crowd that there were a LOT of familiar faces. Last year the conference boat headed north along the Brooklyn and Queens coastline, but this year I was pleasantly surprised when the trip went south and we found ourselves on the Kill Van Kull separating the north shore of… Staten Island… from the chemical coast of New Jersey.
“Cool” thought I, when Moran’s “Marie J Turecamo” tug slid past!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Kill Van Kull seldom disappoints, as it’s a busy maritime corridor connecting the upper harbor with Port Elizabeth Newark and the cargo docks which you’ll find back there. There’s almost always a ballet of tugs and cargo ships moving through here, and after Newtown Creek and the East River – it’s the one of the NYC waterways with which I’m most familiar and can speak intelligently about.
This is, of course, due to the tutelage I was lucky enough to receive from Capt. Doswell of the Working Harbor Committee, on the many, many Newark Bay tours he led back here for WHC. I’ve studied the place on my own, of course, but when you’ve got somebody like Doswell sharing his “smarts” with you – you shut up and listen.
I believe WHC is going to be conducting a Newark Bay tour this summer, but obviously our late Captain Doswell will be there in spirit only.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Waterfront Alliance boat didn’t go as far back as WHC does – we didn’t get a close look at Global Marine Terminal for instance – but it was a real treat to get to shoot some tugs. I was onboard the WA boat to shoot the actual conferences, and some Oyster thing in the morning as well, but after accomplishing my “shot list” one headed topside and checked a few things off of my personal shot list.
“Franklin Reinauer” on Kill Van Kull, check.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, May 21st at 3:30 p.m. –
A Return to The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek,
with Atlas Obscura, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
came from without
You can tell from the way this song is, Astoria Queens rules.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The quotation above is from the Murphys Law song “A day in the life” which pretty much sums up life around these parts. Pictured above is the assortment of safety equipment which my upstairs neighbor Mario keeps at the ready for situations which might present trip hazards.
My landlord recently received notice from the City that his sidewalk concrete required replacement, and his crew of noise makers got busy demolishing the old pavement and replacing it with fresher stuff. Mario got busy with the cones and barriers after they left, in the hope that he could divert the footsteps of the neighbors.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted this fellow on 43rd street at the borders of Sunnside and Astoria recently. He was a delivery guy, and in the frames not presented above, was draining a can of “cerveza.” The presence of someone who was likely Mexican or Ecuadorian in front of a wall with the LIC skyline behind him made me think of Donald Trump for some reason. Something about luxury towers, and a wall.
As a note – like the villain from Harry Potter, if you stop saying Donald Trump’s name, he’ll lose his powers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fellow pictured above was grifting on Astoria’s Broadway recently, claiming that he had tripped and gotten hurt on a sidewalk grate in front of one of the multitudes of “nail and pedi” shops hereabouts. Since the “nail and pedi” shops are part of the same Asian slave labor industry as the local massage parlors – rub and tugs, as they’re known – the grifter knew that the owners would pay him off in cash. The cops in the shot above realized this too, of course, and the kabuki show of Queens just continues.
Someday, a real rain will fall, but Astoria Queens does – indeed – rule.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, May 21st at 3:30 p.m. –
A Return to The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek,
with Atlas Obscura, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 