Archive for 2016
reciprocity delayed
Street Furniture, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above is not what I mean by the term “street furniture,” despite some accuracy in the description for the depiction. Street Furniture is the term used by city planners and their ilk for the lamp posts, fire boxes, benches, and all the other stuff which officialdom rivets to the sidewalk. The City of Greater New York is blessed with what must be at least one bureaucrat for every living citizen, and they just love generating “municipal paper.”
This sort of municipal paper is chock full of technical drawings, installation instructions, and specifications outlying the construction and installation of “street furniture.” Check out the NYC DOT’s street design manual here. It will tell you how to plant a tree, or fence one off, and install a light somewhere near it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The urban ephemera which surrounds us all is barely noticed except when one is trying to park a car, but the signs governing the activity are all up on certain sorts of poles, and carry missives which conform to city, state, and federal guidelines governing font usage and kerning.
As discussed in this 2014 NY Times piece, the Federal Highway Administration recently updated the specifications for street signs and have compelled the NYC DOT to change EVERY street sign in the City to conform to their “Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, the one thing which the municipal officials don’t seem to want to acknowledge is human biology, and the concept of hanging a piss bucket on a post every few blocks seems to have escaped their endless categorization and classification. Luckily, there are amateur planners out there who ensure that there is always someplace for a passing pedestrian to use and exploit.
While passing by this tableau, a few years back, a humble narrator did – in fact – investigate what might be found under the lid of this unconnected commode. Affirmation that somebody used it to produce what is colloquially referred to as “#2” is offered.
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if awakening
It’s going to be a fun year, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is false.
Every nuanced point of view, rhetorical platform, and political stance is plainly bullshit. Nothing is true, and the entire world refuses to admit it, for the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Conspiracists abound, and they just might be right – for there are, in fact, elite cabals who “rig the game.” We citizens are little more than the pigs at the stock yards of 19th century Chicago, whom workers attached to a mechanical wheel whose sole function was to dismember and commercialize every molecule of their bodies.
All roads lead to Calvary, and are paved not with good intentions, but suffering and humiliation instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is true.
The greatest City, of the greatest country, that the world has ever seen – the Megalopolis of the Proletarian mass – wherein “arebeit” truly does “macht frei.” If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Things are nearly perfect, and the system just needs a few conservatively applied tweaks to assure that all within its borders can live as they choose to. The strong will aid the weak, and through labor and sweat – all may partake in this glorious and great Metropolitan cornucopia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is false.
Living corpses are rejected from common consideration and abandoned to the frozen pavement, disincorporated and dissolute, awaiting only their eventual cremation. Incarceration and persecution is their lot, and deservedly so, for their iniquities. Shunned groups willingly subdivide themselves into ever smaller fractions, which accomplishes the work of political and corporate bosses. Swineherds in blue uniforms push and cajole the offending castes away from the notice of the gentry, lest delicate sensibilities be offended by their presence.
Every hour of every day, the noose is tightened.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is true.
Struggle and valiant effort provides one with a ladder to climb out of the gutter and neither luck nor familial heritage has nothing to do with success in the Metropolis. Gotham is naught but the survival of the fittest writ large in concrete and steel, and the trees who root themselves most soundly are those who will rise the highest. Even for the lesser specimens, the forest floor holds naught but untold riches waiting for those clever enough to recognize and reap the fecund value of compost.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is false.
Charlatans and confidence operations stand in shadowed doorways, waiting to hook some rube and roll through their pockets. Even the pillars of law and government are set up to remove as much of the filthy lucre from the working man’s pockets as they can get away with. Nobody cares what happens to you, and won’t offer a helping hand out of fear of having the spotlight of the super predators turn upon them. Better to shelter away from others, for engagement only means new troubles will be added to the list, and thicken the skin.
Scar tissue tends to be numbed to external sensation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is true.
Gaze upon the works of man, the great bridges, and the towers which do – in fact – scrape against the clouds. The electric glow, the sounds of a society which never stops moving, and a fascinating polyglot culture which offers music, and flavors, and smells which can be found everywhere and nowhere else on an entire planet. A direct line of descent, from Ur to Rome to Constantinople to Paris to London to Manhattan can be drawn, tracing the evolution of mankind from troglodyte ape, to human, to New Yorker.
Surely – this place is where the progress of civilization has, logically, been striving for.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator has made one resolution for this new year – it’s time to get serious, and to stop pretending that I’m just some kind of tourist in this horrible dichotomy which I’ve lived in for nearly half a century. Iconoclast tendencies will be given full reign, as will the black diamond of hatred in my heart be allowed to bloom. Time’s nearly up, and I’m tired of fooling around with liars and idiots.
All is false, all is true.
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indubitably again
Wake up, sleepyhead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s a brand new year, and we’ve all got a lot to get done. Let’s get to it! You’ll probably want to make some coffee first.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 