Archive for May 2016
gleaming vividly over
Damnation isn’t a mass market kind of product, it’s personalized and tailored to fit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It has long been my assertion, when discussing subjects involving the occult and or supranatural, that there is no “one size fits all” sort of thing to describe hell. Demons are geniuses, in the Greek sense of the word, and hell doesn’t have specific zip codes for specific sins. For one such as myself, the legendary torments of Gehenna would take the form of either a never ending subway trip or waiting for train to arrive whilst needing to urinate. If you’ve been at the 34th street IND station during the summer months while needing to piss, I’m sure you’ll agree with me.
It is my firm belief, in fact, that many of the characters you meet down in the transit labyrinth are in fact damned souls – which would actually explain a lot of things – the running water, that weird smell, why it’s so warm down there. Aquinas and Origen both described hell as the absence and tacit abandonment of God itself, and if there’s any place that you can be assured that God has abandoned you – it’s the 42nd street subway complex.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The guy selling candy bars and magazines who spends his days and nights in a concrete box on the NQR platform? I’ll allow you to speculate what he did while alive to deserve this afterlife.
I get in trouble with some of you occasionally for referring to “God” as an “it.” I’m all for anthromorphising non human extra-dimensional intelligences and all, but should this entity actually exist – it’s an “it” and not a he or a she. Agnosticism has always served me best, and there are philosophical currents in Buddhism which advise that spending too much of your life pondering spiritual matters is not what the universe – or “it” – intended when they incarnated you into the meatspace which back me up on this idea. If there is an afterlife, I’ll have to pay my check when I leave the table, but in the meantime I intend to continue eating and drinking heartily until the bad news comes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in a prior post, for some reason I’ve begun to mentally refer to Manhattan as “Manchuquo” which is coincidentally similar to the name which the Japanese Empire assigned to its holdings in Manchuria during the 1930’s and 40’s. At any rate, while standing on a platform in what I believe to be the first circle of hell – The NYC Subway system – in Manchuquo, it occurred to me that’s it’s been a while since I read Aquinas, or Marcus Aurelius. Have to find and download some audiobooks for those two – simply for the reason that I can win rhetorical arguments with the NYC EDC by quoting them.
Hell, I need to listen to something intelligent while wandering around the City of Greater New York… Do you suppose that if the Subway is – as asserted – the first circle of hell, that Manhattan might just be purgatory?
It certainly does feel like it.
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
terrible, revolting, and inexplicable
New Yorkers are a bunch of animals, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Psychological Industrial Complex would call it aversion therapy. After being permanently scarred by what I’d witnessed at the Central Park Zoo back during the cold weather months, it was with a palpitatant heart that I approached the Snow Monkeys at Central Park Zoo… In actuality, I had to go in to town for an appointment with my accountant at six, but I also had to call in to a Newtown Creek CAG meeting at four, so I decided to use my NYCID card granted free membership to the Zoo. Whilst the call in meeting was buzzing away in my headphones, I was wandering about the place and shooting. That, lords and ladies, is what you call “multitasking.”
Regardless, I was terrified that a couple of these apes were going to “do the deed” in front of me again. Last thing I need is for the Newtown Creek crowd to hear me screaming and gibbering in shocked horror.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Despite my prior protestations to the contrary, one still has not managed to bank away enough time to make the trip deep into Brooklyn to visit the Aquarium. The Queens Zoo has been visited within the last year, and last month I squeezed in a trip to the unknown country known as “The Bronx” where NYC’s premier animal prison is located. I’m going to try and squeeze the Prospect Park Zoo into the summer schedule as well, but it’s a bit of a pain in the neck to get there from Astoria. The Aquarium is actually a straight shot for me on the N or Q to the end of the line in Brighton Beach/Coney Island.
Btw, did a whole post on the Penguins at Central Park Zoo last year – click here.
Alternatively, I’m thinking about just taking the 5 to its terminus near Brooklyn College and walking from there. That’s my old neighborhood, after all, and the place where I first developed my taste for wandering aimlessly across the megalopolis. It’s been a long time since I took a walk in that part of Brooklyn.
Either way, it’s going to be an all day sort of thing to get there and back.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Time was growing short, and my appointment with the accountant was nearing. I left the zoo and on my way over to “my guy’s” office the usual line up of carriages and horses was encountered on the periphery of Olmstead’s master work. Since I was in an “animals” mode that day, a few shots were cracked out of the critters as I moved along. While I was doing this, the Newtown Creek conversation was revolving around familiar topics – largely sewers, and oil spills, trying to interpret the motives or true goals of the various “Potentially Responsible Party’s,” and puzzle out the kabuki of Federal regulators with their Sphinx like behavior. The usual stuff, in other words.
As the shot above was captured, I was thinking about sending it to the Mayor with the caption “Nice try, Bill, I’m still here.”
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
rotarian path
Burnt, literally and figuratively.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator feels a bit swollen in the brain today, a sensation which is coupled with a mild case of sunburn. Yesterday found me onboard a boat for the Waterfront Alliance’s annual conference, and one took advantage of the fantastic weather as much as possible by being out on deck after I had captured the photos which the WA asked me to get. Accordingly, my skinvelope is exhibiting the characteristic radiation burns one might expect after exposure to the emanations of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in earlier posts, a sudden flurry of activity has occurred in the last few weeks, which has been quite a distraction.
A recent event which I attended was here in Astoria – a visioning session conducted by the NYCEDC in pursuance of the BQX Street Car system as proposed by Mayor De Blasio – was actually quite interesting. I’m working on a fairly in depth series of posts exploring the idea, and next week I plan on walking the 16 mile route of the BQX to provide some sort of tangible visual documentation of the plan and route.
More on this one is coming.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Two events which I’m looking forward to will be occurring the weekend and week of the 21st – a walking tour of the Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek in Greenpoint with Atlas Obscura, and a boat tour of the Brooklyn waterfront with the Working Harbor Committee on the 26th.
Come with?
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
pertinent assertions
Cool Cars, Greenpoint edition.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted a nifty set of wheels on Norman Avenue not long ago, which are attached to what I believe to be a 1949 Chrysler New Yorker. The body of the car wasn’t in the best shape, but then again, I hope I look this good and will still be street worthy when I’m sixty seven.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was a giant engine under the hood in these old New Yorkers, a 323.5-cid straight eight. It’s a fairly huge car as well, with a nearly eleven foot long wheelbase.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The old thing had obviously seen many of her old parts replaced by makeshift specimens. There were quite a few bits of missing trim and other flare, but this car definitely looked drivable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This car has a semi automatic transmission, which was a selling point. Cool dash as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The cross bar just below the license plate is engraved with “fluid drive,” which is what Chrysler branded the semi automatic transmission in the 1949 New Yorker as.
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
apportioned excess
At Brooklyn’s Unamed Canal, best described as a minor tributary of the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whenever possible, on days when I’m conducting a walking tour somewhere around the fabulous Newtown Creek, I like to get there early and scout ahead. The Creeklands are full of surprises. If it’s one of the long ones, I’ll usually try and walk the route a day or two before the event, but for the shorter ones I like to “do it on the day.”
Last Sunday, we did a relatively short one revolving around Newtown Creek Alliance’s “North Henry Street Project.” The group encountered me and my pal Mai first, and I recounted the story of oil in Greenpoint, segued into the whole “CSO” or “combined sewer outfall” situation on the Creek, then talked about the sewer plant. At the end of Kingsland Avenue and what is theoretically North Henry Street, the group was handed over to my pal Will Elkins, NCA’s Project Manager and the fellow who is in charge of this whole North Henry Street situation.
Click here for NCA’s page describing the project.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, that’s why I was wandering around behind the sewer plant on Sunday morning at 9:30 in the morning. The first shot is from just three hours later, at the end of the tour when the weather had taken a dramatic turn for the better. It’s kind of lonely spot back here on Kingsland Avenue, although there’s actually quite a bit of activity – industrial wise – that happens back here.
Metro Fuel, Luna Lighting, Allocco Recycling, and a couple of others including the Department of Sanitation and the DEP are all buzzing around like busy little bees in this little cul de sac found in a part of Greenpoint which I refer to as DUGABO – Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The star of the show in this section of the Newtown Creek heartlands is – of course – the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant and its stainless steel digester eggs. One of those digesters is going to be diverted from Municpal sewerage duty due to “Waste to Energy” project which the DEP has initiated with the National Grid company. Like a lot of “big green” projects, the devil is in the details with this thing.
The digester eggs are pretty incredible bits of technology, and purpose built. Within the eggs, the same micro organisms found within your own viscera are at work on an industrial scale. Said critters digest and sterilize the sewage sludge via biological processes. There’s a few byproducts to this process, one of which is a mephitic and combustible gas commonly called Methane.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Currently, the DEP uses some of this methane byproduct in pursuit of maintaining the temperature range required by the micro organisms within the digester eggs. The vast majority of it is burned off, however, making the plant an immense manufacturer of greenhouse gases. That’s where National Grid comes into the picture.
The National Grid people have partnered with DEP, and will be building a mechanism by which this excess Methane will be added to their own Methane Natural Gas network. Sounds great, right?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that sewage doesn’t have the yield for viable commercial exploitation of the gas. Accordingly, one of the eggs is either now, or soon will be, offline for sewage duty, so it can be fed “food waste.” To guarantee that no pesticide or preservatives can addle the powers of the micro organisms, a preference has been stated for organic food waste. This organic waste is collected by trucks operated by the Department of Sanitation, which will converge from all over the City of Greater New York on Greenpoint’s hazy eastern border with Williamsburg and Bushwick. How do they know the food waste is organic? Let’s just say I know somebody in the school lunch lady Union that mentioned to me that their people were mandated to start separating food waste from the other trash recently. This mention was an angry one, as the City has provided no funds to facilitate the extra work.
The food waste will be “macerated” (chopped up), semi liquefied, and then pumped into another truck. That truck, which will be the sort of big tanker rigs you observe filling the underground tanks of gas stations, will then drive to the sewer plant and pump the stuff into the egg.
One year into the program, DEP and National Grid expect twelve of these tankers to be crossing through Greenpoint on a daily basis. They haven’t projected the number of truck trips through Greenpoint for the second year of the roll out yet. The “waste to energy” program, which seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of compostable organics headed to landfill, has inadvertently added hundreds if not thousands of heavy trucks a year to the already heavy flow of traffic through Greenpoint and the Creeklands as a whole.
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 