Archive for December 2016
doglike lopers
The concrete devastations, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I’ve mentioned several times recently, an effort is under way to revisit a number of spots which I’ve not set foot in for a while. When I first began wandering around Newtown Creek and the neighborhoods surrounding it, a point was made to visit every single block, but in recent months and years, temporal exigency has caused one to travel along “efficient” routes to get from Point A (A as in Astoria) to Points B, C, and so on.
Accordingly, since I seem to have all the time in the world at the moment, I’m taking the road less travelled and revisiting a few locales which have been off my radar for a bit. To wit, pictured above is the view from 53rd avenue at the angle between Sunnyside and West Maspeth, looking west towards the BQE/LIE interchange.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Prior to the installation of the two highways, roughly 75-80 years ago, this was a place where working people still lived. There was a neighborhood here, at the western border of Newtown’s Maspeth section and the eastern border of LIC’s Blissville subdivision. That’s when Robert Moses, with his New Meeker Avenue Bridge (Kosciuszko Bridge), and Brooklyn Queens Connecting highway, and Long Island Expressway came to town. Zoning decisions made in Manhattan during the post WW2 era rendered this area as “M1” – meaning it is designated for heavy manufacturing usage only.
Regardless of how the City people decided this land should be used, residential usage continued and there are still a small number of fairly ancient homes found peppered in amongst the warehouses, factories and construction oriented tower crane storage yards hereabouts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Funny thing is that this neighborhood is – observationally – one of the last places in NYC where you can “leave your front door open.” Saying that, when I use the term “concretized devastations of Western Queens” this section of industrial Maspeth is what I’m usually thinking of.
Most of the surviving homes I see in this neighborhood are typified by what you see above, wood frame row houses which date back to around 1900 or so. There’s a few older houses nearby which are a bit “grander” and speak to an earlier incarnation of this area. A few have disappeared “under my watch,” and have been replaced with bland cinder block warehouse or industrial buildings. Can’t really speak to “who” lives here, amongst the cranes and highways.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All I can tell you is that they have an amazing view. This POV is on the rising bluff which once led to a prominent hill to the south called Berlin. The next highest prominence to the west would have been Laurel Hill, which Calvary Cemetery was carved into. This section of Maspeth was actually called “Berlin” until the First World War, when it was changed for obvious reasons to West Maspeth. To the east, the land’s declination rises until it meets a ridge which signals the beginning of the terminal moraine of Long Island nearby Mount Olivette and Lutheran Cemeteries. That ridge, which sports the same sort of rocky geology that lends its name to Ridgewood, is “real” land. Everything west of Laurel Hill is elluvial fill deposited by glacial process and sediment delivered by flooding from the Newtown Creek and East River.
Climate change and rising sea level wise, this likely will be the East River coastline someday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looping around to the south, as the BQE and LIE interchange cut off egress east/west, an ad hoc art gallery is encountered. Illegal dumping, as I’ve often opined, is the unofficial nativist art form of the Borough of Queens. Combined with long fence lines that are covered in crude graffiti, you’ll encounter several installations along this route which offer intriguing intellectual postulates from the local artistic community.
Everything here is artisanal, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The reality of these installations are that this is simply a convenient place for a low level building contractor to dispose of construction debris without having to pay a dumping fee, but allow me to stay “high brow” in my assessments.
These dumpers really do seem to pay some attention to composition and color, however.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
53rd avenue terminates in a parabola which carries it into 43rd street, a colonial era pathway that once connected to Newtown Creek from Bowery Bay in Astoria. The road transected the properties of (amongst several other famous Dutch and English family names from the colonial era) the Riker’s, Skillman’s, and Alsops along its route, and according to the historic record – it was paved with crushed oyster shells. All that changed, of course, when first the Long Island Railroad and later Robert Moses came to town.
43rd street still exists in a fairly unbroken line from Astoria to Northern Blvd. and then crosses the Sunnyside Yards south into Sunnyside where it crosses Queens Blvd. and Greenpoint Avenue. When it crosses under the Long Island Expressway overpass, it resumes its pre municipal consolidation name – Laurel Hill Blvd.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “43rd street” you encounter in this section of industrial Maspeth, however, is disconnected from the northern section. The last homes on 43rd street went “bye-bye” just a few years ago, due to a smallish construction project going on in the area. With fewer people watching, and caring, the artisanal illegal dumping in this area has amplified.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the shot above, you can discern why I sometimes refer to this section as the “crane district.”
You can also plainly see the sharp rise in altitude hereabouts. This is, as mentioned, largely an industrial zone. There’s a lot of heavy industry going on. Warehouse operations, severely heavy truck traffic, waste transfer stations – Newtown Creek is just a few thousand feet to the south.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of Newtown Creek, that smallish construction operation I mentioned earlier is the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement project, which crosses the waterway. If memory serves, that means that something like a half million vehicles a day pass through this pass between Berlin and Laurel Hills. The Kosciuszko Bridge was opened in 1939, and the Queens side approach was built into a shallow valley found between the two landforms, and over a lost tributary of Newtown Creek which was called “Wolf Creek.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s that, then. See you next week, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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dominant concern
I hate Christmas, but I do like puppies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the worst time of year for one such as myself. The forced social encounters at Christmas parties, the darkness, the cold. One gets invited to a few holiday parties, which I agree to go to, then back out of the day of. This is kind of a dick move on my part, it is realized, but in reality I’m trying to spare the party giver that certain shadow which I carry around with me. Nobody actually wants me around their homes during the holidays, just like a kitchen fire. Y’know how a lighthouse looks? The bright beam of light scanning about? Imagine a beam of utter darkness emanating from it instead, that’s me.
During December, I always feel like some demon cursed and quite useless object that spreads an acerbic contagion to whatever it touches, or a tumor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I prefer to work on updating my enemies list during December, looking through my calendar for those who’ve slighted or annoyed me during the preceding year, and begin to develop my plans for exacting vengeance on them. There’s a few people out there who I can already tell you will be having a very difficult time of it in 2017. Bah.
Usually, when I say “bah,” somebody chimes in with “humbug.” I don’t know what a humbug is, but I suspect it’s one of those angry red razor bumps people get from ingrown hairs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s best for all that one remains secure in his hermitage this time of year. The humans all seem happy to be enacting their odd rituals, giving manufactured items to each other in the presence of a tree which they’ve had killed and then brought into the house. Luckily, the seasonal bacchanal ends in a couple of weeks,
Bah.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
dread aperture
There’s so many of us, at least for a couple of hours each day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling down Skillman Avenue and approaching Queens Plaza, one was reminded of a conversation recently enjoyed with a locally deployed NYPD Commander about the unique nature of this area. For a couple of hours, each morning and evening, this is theoretically one of the most densely populated places on the planet, but the individual members of this population blob are seldom in the neighborhood for longer than a few minutes and they are in vehicular motion (however stunted) the whole time.
To put it simply, the multitudes moving through western Queens during the rush hours, on their way to work or home to other places – traveling by car, bus, subway, railroad, bicycle, or autogyro perhaps – create a statistically irrelevant but nonetheless astounding jump in the “persons per square foot” or population density of LIC. Thing is, lots of people elected to suffer a long commute when they moved to Eastern Queens, or Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Lots of time to read, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Statistical relevance is part of how planning decisions are made. It big math – “quant” stuff, actually, and beyond my understanding. The theory behind the relevance of statistical information is summed up by that quote from Josef Stalin that a single death is a tragedy whereas a million deaths are a statistic. A lot of policy decisions revolve around, or at least they’re supposed to, the greatest good for the greatest number.
“Greatest number” inherently means that someone gets left out, which translates as “not statistically relevant.” Planning of public works in recent decades has strived to expand and include traditionally marginalized groups, most notably folks with health related mobility issues – thanks to the ADA or Americans with Disabilities Act. A lot of public spaces and City buildings out there were formally denied to people in wheelchairs, since the era in which most of these public buildings were erected, the disabled population wasn’t considered as being “statistically relevant.”
Access to mass, affordable, and reliable transit – which parallels what’s available to “abled” people – still remains a problem, I’m told.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Statistical relevance, I’m informed, is a big part of the algorithm under which the 311 service of NYC was designed to operate. One person from Blissville complaining to 311 about a cat in a tree is low priority and statistically irrelevant, but the City will send somebody out when they can. Twenty people from the same block call 311 about the cat? Help is on the way a lot faster, as the problem is now far more mathematically relevant and the City will send out Superman to investigate and mitigate.
Make me wonder what would happen if everybody who was commuting through Queens Plaza on any given day suddenly called 311 to complain about something.
Then again, I wonder why it is that everyone doesn’t vote on Election Day.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
loathsome tittering
Astoria, Queens rules – In today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering about in the dark and cold, as one is wont to do, this inflatable snowman was encountered on Northern Blvd. at the angle between Astoria and Sunnyside. For those of you who don’t “speak Mitch,” an angle is the borderland between two neighborhoods where you’re neither here nor there. These “angles” are usually where the old municipal borders between the town and villages of Western Queens were found – prior to the creation of Long Island City in 1870, or the consolidation of the greater city in 1898. These angles are where Robert Moses would usually site his roads, as is the case with the border between Sunnyside and Blissville or Woodside and Maspeth where the LIE was built, or between Long Island City and Maspeth when the BQE was routed.
I’ve always ascribed this to Robert Moses having been clever enough to play the politicians of both communities off of each other, which got him better deals and concessions from each. These ward bosses and assemblymen and town Mayors could then report back to their constituents that not only didn’t they allow Moses to dig a trench through the center of their town but that Old Man Moses had promised them that building jobs would be available for anyone that the elected official put forward. That’s how you build a city!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also spotted while picking my lonely way through the nighted devastations was this pair of taxis gassing up before starting (or ending, perhaps) their shifts. Urban ephemera is what I’m all about these days – gas stations, car washes, minor bridges.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Longtime readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – might remember that there was an electrical transformer fire on my corner back in July of 2016, which was described in this post. This set off a whole slew of work by Con Ed and its contractors here in Astoria, some of which is discussed in this post. During the intervening months since the event, multiple crews of workers have randomly shown up on the corner, then dug a new trench down into the street, did some sort of stuff, and then filled in their new hole. Two to three random weeks later, another bunch of guys in orange vests shows up and then they repeat the process.
The latest passel of work involves the replacement of a lamp post, which must have been shorted out during the transformer fire. Pictured above is a crew who have dug the most recent trench, this time going from the transformer to the affected lamp pole. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the lamp pole now seems to have power, the newly installed LED luminaire mounted on the pole is displaying a red bar rather bright bluish white light. The red bar is the “trouble” signal that repairs are needed, I’m told.
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hitherto baffled
Santa Claus, Sunnyside, the Turks, and FDNY Ladder 163 – in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Celebrating the forthcoming Saturnalia, on a stretch of Sunnyside’s Skillman Avenue, the community received a visit from Santa on Saturday the third of December. There was a street fair sort of thing, and all the local small businesses welcomed the arrival of both Father Christmas and the shoppers who followed him. The whole thing was orchestrated and underwritten by the office of Jimmy Van Bramer, the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce, and I think there were other donors but didn’t pick up on who they were.
The owners of Flynn’s, Quaint and Claret, and the Dog & Duck all slept happily that night – I’m sure – after watching their establishments grow absolutely full to the gills with merry making community based customers who were lured over to Skillman Avenue for the event.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Even the Turks, who aren’t exactly Christmas people, got in on the show. They were grilling kebabs – or whatever the Mediterranean grilled meat on a stick standard is called in Anatolia – on a smoky BBQ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was asked to come and photograph the event by my friends in the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce, and did my standard “thing” at public events when behind the camera. Part of my “thing” is this – always take pictures of kids, dogs and the food.
I moved back and forth between 51st street and 43rd street on Skillman Avenue, which was closed to traffic due to the pending arrival of Santa and the concurrent lighting of a tree at that little church on the corner of 48th. I will admit that this sort of event photography ain’t exactly exciting for me – I mean… it’s not like something visually “exciting” is going to happen at a parade or street fair.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On one of my passes, the smoky Turkish BBQ pictured above had disappeared. The smoke liberally painting the air was now billowing up from their sidewalk basement gates, and FDNY had arrived on the scene.
As mentioned in the past, I was the Brooklyn kid who ran down the street yelling “Firemen, Firemen” whenever an engine or ladder truck screamed past. Nothing has changed for me, despite the passing of multiple decades.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A minor blaze had broken out in the basement of the Turkiyem Market, it seems.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ladder 163 was called to the scene, along with their partner unit Engine 325 – both are stationed at the same firehouse and they call themselves the “Woodside Warriors.” The two units were discussed a couple of weeks ago, in this post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given that this was a street fair, ultimately, the normal crowd control stuff they do didn’t apply and this was a rare opportunity to get in close and observe while FDNY did its thing. Saying that, I wasn’t “that” close as I was using that new zoom lens of mine – the Sigma 50-100mm f1.8. I also swapped in another Sigma lens occasionally, which was an 18-35mm f1.8. Periodically I fired off the flash for a bit of extra light, but I’m trying not to use camera mounted flashes these days.
These two Sigma lenses are now the core glass in my “NYC night kit,” btw.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The FDNY folks firehoses (monitors?) were charged up with hydrant water, but from what I surmised, the initial wave of personnel who went into the basement had managed to quell things using hand operated extinguishers. I suspect that they probably squirted a bit of water around down there anyway in the name of conquering any “hot spots,” or areas which might reignite.
BTW, I question “monitors” above as that’s what you’d call a fire suppression hose and nozzle on a boat. If any of “youse guys” are on the job, let me know what you call a fire hose in the comments. The comedic potential of the preceding sentence is acknowledged, but keep it clean – this is a family blog.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was all terribly exciting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The crisis was averted, and Sunnyside got back to the holiday season. Jimmy Van Bramer lit a Christmas tree at the church, kids sang holiday ditties, and eventually Santa showed up despite being around 25 minutes late. It seems that Santa got stuck in highway traffic, which amplifies the message on a bit of common knowledge held by all New Yorkers.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, beats the Van Wyck. Not even Santa.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 