Archive for May 2016
imperfect posture
Just a short, and selfie, one today
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As one scuttles about from place to place, lots of things are observed. Recently, the young lady pictured above was taking advantage of a (fairly) recently installed bike lane on one of the truss bridges crossing the Sunnyside Yards, at 39th street, to capture a series of selfies as she rode along. Vision Zero, or zero vision?
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
that chafe
Catching up, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been on a tremendous “run” for the last couple of weeks, with several back to back walking tours of Newtown Creek thrown into the mix. Luckily, a slight window of opportunity to draw a breath is finally apparent, as I’ve only got three or four horribly important and time sensitive things to do this week.
The good news for me, and perhaps for you, is that I’m announcing two new excursions happening in the second half of May.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUKBO, or Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp, in Greepoint has been off limits – tour wise – for a while due to the early phases of the Kosciuszko Bridge project. There was a lot of demolition, airborne nastiness, and several blocked or closed streets in this area which I’ve long referred to as “The Poison Cauldron,” and I haven’t felt it was advisable to bring anyone back there for health and safety reasons.
Whereas DUKBO is still a hellscape and littered with contaminants and filth… well, if you’ve got the stones… the Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek awaits you on May 21st.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Thursday the 26th, I’ll be one of three speakers on the Working Harbor Committee’s Brooklyn Waterfront boat tour. We’ll be cruising the East River coast of Brooklyn from Newtown Creek to the Brooklyn Army Terminal, and I’ll be doing my “thang” with the history onboard. Also, since it’s an evening event – there should be some pretty good photographic opportunities as the sun will be setting while we’re out.
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
went wherein
Tug Sea Lion, at Newtown Creek, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not too long ago, one found himself lurking around the Nature Walk at the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant when the tug Sea Lion appeared on the languid waters of that legendary cataract of municipal neglect referred to, in hushed whispers, as the Newtown Creek.
It got me to thinking about life, and how much of the last decade I’ve spent photographing Tugs and Newtown Creek, or some combination of the two.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Constant pursuit of material examples of these two subjects has taken me to a lot of weird and interesting places over the years. I’ve met a lot of incredible people, and made quite a few friends who are also interested in both topics. The real treat has been the research, of course, and the broader story of a carefully hidden history that has appeared – one which I’m still piecing together.
It starts with Newtown Creek, and the tendrils leading out from the waterway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Erie Canal? I can tie that one back to DeWitt Clinton sitting on his porch in Maspeth. Jello brand gelatin? Peter Cooper in Greenpoint. In the shot above, which depicts the Sims Metal facility in LIC’s Blissville, are three distinct subjects which I’ve ended up learning as much as I possibly can about – maritime shipping, the garbage and recycling industry, and that tall building with the green stripe on top – incidentally – is the former GEVC factory where electric cars and trucks were manufactured in LIC back in 1915 (which led to me learning about early electric vehicles).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek forced me to learn about the early petroleum industry, and to study manufactured gas plants, which led to looking at the chemical industry. Luckily, Phelps Dodge was the owner of the former General Chemical factory at the border of Blissville and Maspeth nearby Penny Bridge. The Creek has also led me into Calvary Cemetery, which forced me to learn about 19th century Irish Catholicism and has somehow resulted in me photographing the Irish Language Mass at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on more than one occasion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek led me to study tugs, both their history and their current occupation in NY Harbor. Tugs led me to the East River Coastline of Manhattan and the vast ship building complex that existed between Corlears Hook and 23rd street. Manhattan real estate valuations in this area were so high, as early as the 1820’s, that ship yards began to relocate across the river to Greenpoint and Williamsburg, where the Federal Government established the Brooklyn Navy Yard at Wallabout Creek…
That led to reading up on Continental Iron Works, at Bushwick Inlet, where the USS Monitor and the caissons of the Brooklyn Bridge were built and launched.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All down the Queens side of the Creek, there’s rail, which forced me to learn about that one as well. That led me to the Sunnyside Yards, which Dutch Kills once flowed through, and the grist mills operated by Dutch farmers, which led me to the English takeover of New Amsterdam and its satellites, and eventually to the American Revolution. Then I had to learn about Cornwallis and Howe and their occupation of Maspeth and how their troops rowed down Newtown Creek in pursuit of General Washington, who was fighting his way north…
It goes on and on like this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everybody asks me when I’m going to write a book. I tell them to subscribe to this blog, as half the Newtown Creek book is already written and contained herein at this – your Newtown Pentacle. Thing is, the Newtown Creek story is so unbelievably complicated and so intrinsic to the story of not just New York – but the entire United States – that without pictures to prove what I’m saying about this waterway – you’d think I was making it all up.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, May 8th at 11 a.m. – North Henry Street Project,
with Municipal Arts Society Janeswalk and Newtown Creek Alliance,
in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
doom that
Kosciuszko Bridge visit, a few random things I noticed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A couple of days back, a fairly enormous posting detailed the latest visit to the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement project in Greenpoint. The shots in today’s post were candidates for that post, but I had to draw a certain line in the name of being concise in terms of the overall narrative. It was a progress report, after all. Today, some of the cool stuff I saw which didn’t fit into the structure thereof.
I love taking shots of people welding or working with metal and torches. There’s two ways to approach this shot, btw. One is to use a high ISO and insanely fast shutter speed to freeze the individual sparks. The other is to lower the ISO sensitivity and use a slower shutter. The shot above uses the former approach, which freezes all the little sparks. The latter approach allows the sparks to stretch out and look like fiery spaghetti.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above is from up on the still under construction roadway and overlooks the National Grid site in Greenpoint. I don’t know ANYONE who has ever personally visited this site, and it remains one of the “black boxes” on the Newtown Creek. By “black box” I mean that it’s like fight club when you ask the National Grid Guys about it, and you don’t talk about fight club. This is looking easterly, towards Maspeth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Turning on my heels, as it were, and looking south along Meeker Avenue/Brooklyn Queens Expressway towards Manhattan. For some reason, the chattering lunatic voice which constantly wails between my ears and behind my eyes has started referring to Manhattan as “Manchuquo” in recent weeks. I don’t know why. It won’t be the first time that I remind you that I’m an idiot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Kosciuszko Bridge, Brooklyn side, is absolutely surrounded by waste transfer stations. Something close to 40% of NYC’s trash (by ton) comes to within about a mile of the bulkheads of Newtown Creek and its tributaries for processing. Last time I checked, the City generates about 12 million tons of trash a day, and since I’m mathematically challenged – I’ll allow you to do the calculations.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gear, gear, gear. These construction guys have the coolest toys to play with you’ve ever seen. The vehicle above had some sort of crane/winch thing on it which appeared to be able to telescope out of the hydraulic boom that was set into the rear of its chassis, scorpion style. This particular device seemed to be just a few generations away from the the exoskeleton rig that Ripley used in the movie “Aliens.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot came from a temporary staircase set against the new overpass’s abutment/retaining wall. This has to be around 50-60 feet up from the deck. One of my many, many phobias – albeit a minor affliction in my portfolio – involves heights. In my mind, it’s a good defense mechanism, as falling 50-60 feet will kill you dead. Saying that, just looking at this picture causes neurological symptoms to manifest in the muscles controlling my hands.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, May 8th at 11 a.m. – North Henry Street Project,
with Municipal Arts Society Janeswalk and Newtown Creek Alliance,
in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
fetter upon
Wandering the post industrial wastelands of America’s Work Shop – that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted the numeral above in LIC recently, adorning the loading dock of some nameless warehousing company housed in the former Waldes Koh-I-Noor site nearby Dutch Kills. The Real Estate Industrial Complex recently discovered the former Degnon Terminal, it seems, and the Waldes buildings are currently being marketed as “The Zipper Building” by the powers that be and to opportunists who have connected themselves to LIC as some sort of stepping stone from Wall Street.
As a note, five is the only prime number that ends with the number five. It’s also the only number which seems to be entirely European in origin, having little verisimilitude to Arabic or Indian glyphs that represent the number. There’s five senses, five books in the Torah, five wounds of Jesus, five pillars of Islam, and in western music – a perfect fifth is considered to be the most consonant of all the harmonies. In geometry, there’s the Pentagram, and of course – you’re reading the pentacle.
Five.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of Dutch Kills, when you see a structure of creosoted logs held together with iron, as you do nearby the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge – the official term for this sort of thing is a “dolphin.” It’s meant to vouchsafe the bridge against an accidental collision by maritime traffic, but since there’s little to no maritime traffic on Dutch Kills – a tributary of the legendary Newtown Creek – these days, it’s just a thing to take pictures of.
There’s twelve former trees, infused with creosote oil, in that shot above.
Twelve is thought to be a Germanic/Old English term describing the smallest composite number which has exactly six divisors. It’s the largest number that has a single syllable name in the English language. A cube has twelve edges, the human body has twelve cranial nerves. The Western zodiac has twelve signs, as does the Chinese variant, and the 12th moon of Jupiter is called Lysithea.
Twelve.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant Nature Walk in Greenpoint, should you have a medium long zoom lens on your camera, you can observe the Sims Metal Management Company at work – processing all sorts of metallic things. In the case of the shot above, it’s derelict cars in the process of being recycled. After collection at Sims on Newtown Creek, these automobile carcasses will be barged out to New Jersey where they will be fed into a shredder that will reduce them down to metallic bits and a cloud of dust.
As I count it, there’s eighteen automobiles in the shot above.
The number eighteen translates from the Hebrew word for it (Chai) as “Life.” There’s 18 chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, which is part of the 18 book Mahabharata. Chinese tradition declares the number eighteen as a lucky one. Eighteen in binary code is “10010” which is a seven block long zip code in Manhattan – from 20th to 27th, and from Sixth avenue to the East River.
51218, you ask? According to the National Institue of Helath, that’s the numerical designation of a gene we inherited from our single cell ancestors.
What all of this means, I can’t say, but it’s kind of freaking me out.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, May 8th at 11 a.m. – North Henry Street Project,
with Municipal Arts Society Janeswalk and Newtown Creek Alliance,
in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 