Archive for February 2017
auto hypnosis
It’s National Patty Melt Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Y’know, after all this time, it feels like certain sections of my particular oeuvre are running a bit dry. I mean, how much more can I possibly say about First Calvary Cemetery at this point in time. Of course, that’s the way it “feels,” not the way it actually is. Accordingly, I revisit my search parameters periodically and see if anything new has popped up. To wit – this 2016 link from the NY Post.
I say it all the time, you never know what you’re going to find in Calvary Cemetery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One cannot offer you any tales of goblins or phantoms harassing the 1933 vintage Court Square IND station, I just kind of like the shot offered above. I can tell you the place does seem pretty haunted, sometimes, but I know what lurks some fifty stories or so above this spot – in the cupola of the sapphire megalith of LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A shot in the dark, literally, I found a hole in a fence that my camera could rest in for the shot above and pulled off a near total darkness handheld thingamabob. That’s Bushwick Inlet at the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, for the curious. There’s a WHOLE lot going on at the moment, which I’ll be discussing later in the week, so forgive my brevity.
The battle of Queens, I’m afraid to say, is finally afoot.
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general credence
It’s National Frozen Yogurt Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not too much to tell you today, lords and ladies, other than to describe and share photos from a recent excursion which took me to Flushing for a social event. It’s on evenings like this, when I’m not consciously “working” that my pathologies are most fully on display. One just cannot stop taking pictures, as Queens is just too marvelous for words and nobody believes it until you show them. My journey from “Point A” in Astoria led me to Jackson Heights, where one secured a transfer from the sepulchral depths of the IND lines to the elevated IRT Flushing Line which carried me eastwards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My arrival in ancient Flushing, at the so called “Main Street” stop, coincided with the local gendarmes performing their duties. My assumption, based on observable behaviors, is that the small statured fellow in the shot above had overly indulged himself with intoxicating beverages. NYPD didn’t seem overly concerned about the situation, treating it with a characteristic world weariness and the laconic mannerisms one normally sees the City’s uniformed security forces display.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At my destination, which was at a fairly new hotel that sits alongside the local precinct house which the fellows in the second shot would call “the office,” there was a rooftop deck – which despite frigidity – was available to visit and explore. The shot above was captured some nine stories up from Northern Blvd. in Flushing, and looks westwards across Queens towards the Shining City of Manhattan. That’s the Queensboro Bridge you see just to the right of center.
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baffling lack
It’s Setsubun Day, in the nation of Japan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in yesterday’s post, the 21st of January was a pretty foggy day, which is something I consider pretty. One made it a point of visiting several distaff locations around Long Island City to capture the scene. The shot above is something that all of you reading this will be able to personally enjoy sometime in the very near future, when the Smiling Hogshead Ranch expands its operations up to the abandoned trackway of the Montauk Cutoff.
The photo above depicts the most photogenic of NYC’s subway lines – the IRT Flushing, or 7 line – exiting the elevated tracks of the Court Square Station and traveling on its way to Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One spent a bit of time up on the tracks, as I ran into an old friend while making my way up there and we spent some time catching up while I waved the camera around. The cutoff is brutally bare during the winter months, as all of the self seeded vegetation surrounding it is deep in hibernation. During the warmer months, it’s positively verdant up here – an island of green amidst the concrete devastations of Western Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Disturbingly, the Queens Cobbler seems to have visited the Cutoff recently, leaving behind one of the totemic “single shoes” signaling that he or she was here. The “Queens Cobbler” is the name I’ve assigned to a likely serial killer who claims human lives all around the Newtown Creek watershed, leaving behind a single shoe to announce that their latest hunt has been successful.
Someday, the NYPD will happen upon a hidden warehouse room in LIC or Maspeth filled with footwear and gore, and on that day – the metaphorical and literal “other shoe” will truly fall. Back next week with something completely different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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enjoined to
It’s National Tater Tot Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For a maritime city, New York doesn’t actually seem to get foggy all that much. Sure there’s mist and murk occasionally, but it’s actually pretty seldom that we get a full on “inversion” and the sky fills with straight up pea soup. Whenever fog conditions do occur, however, one makes sure that the camera is out and about.
Nothing I like more than some atmospheric diffusion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were gathered on the 21st of January, when just such an atmosphere permeated and propagated across the neighborhood. As I’m wont to remind everyone around Newtown Creek – constantly – if you can smell it, you’re breathing it. On this foggy Saturday in January, we were all breathing New York Harbor for a day.
Speaking of Newtown Creek, check out how the new Kosciuszcko Bridge’s cable stay towers are visible from the corner of 39th street and Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One left HQ relatively late in the day, hoping to catch that particular moment when the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself would angle itself properly to create sculptural lighting for the industrial landscape of LIC. Win!
The shot above looks down 47th avenue, as you travel down off the shallow ridge that Sunnyside and Woodside straddle towards the alluvial flatlands surrounding the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, just for the curious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As part of my “winter strategy,” which allows for taking some sort of transport in one direction to or from “Point A” in Astoria, a short ride on the “7 line” carried me to Queensboro Plaza where I transferred over to the Astoria bound “N line.” Glad that I did so, as the photo above was my “shot of the day” for the fog occluded 21st of January.
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utmost interest
It’s World Hijab Day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Boy oh boy, it has been a fairly depressing couple of weeks, huh?
As mentioned in the past, several of the casual friendships I enjoy at my local saloon include fellows who were Trump supporters. They’ve been forcing the rest of us to eat crow since the election, a phenomena which I’ve termed as being “sore winners.” Funny bit is, last week I was sitting alongside one of them “shooting the shit” when his phone began to light up as his union coworkers began teasing him that he’s too fat to be able to climb back in to the country over Trump’s wall. He, Mumbly Joe that is, presumed that when Mr. Trump talked about illegal aliens or those who have overstayed their visa period it was in reference to Mexicans and not Croatians. In my neighborhood, here in Astoria, back in the 1970’s when the predominant numbers of Yugoslavian and Greeks emigrated – it was far easier to get citizenship and green card paperwork fulfilled by certain distaff members of the Italian community for a fee than it was to “go through channels” with the Feds. This is also true for the Irish emigres of the 70’s and 80’s, incidentally.
As always – be careful what you ask for, as you just might get it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has truly enjoyed watching Mayor de Blasio attempting to position himself as figure of national importance during all this, presenting himself as the opposition to the current administration in Washington. The Mayor of NYC is an important position, of course, but City Hall does not “get you a seat on the rocket” which will launch and preserve the lives of important people as the world is ending. It’s also been a joy comparing him to Dickens’ Jakob Marley, dragging the chains of his own perfidy and legal trouble around as he has postured on the national stage.
Speaking on a strictly local level – why are we taxpayers expected to pay the nearly twelve million bucks for the legal defense teams that will attempt to keep the “dope from Park Slope” and his cronies from paying the piper for his sins?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It has actually been a pleasure watching the Democrats, both national and local, trying to figure out a way to attach themselves to the spontaneous and self organizing protests springing up all around them. Ever since the 1990’s, the national party has been operating in a space which – back in the 1980’s and 90’s – would have labeled them as centrist Republicans. Big business, corporatism, a deep embrace of the “forever war.”
When I’ve had labels thrown at me in the last few years – libtard, liberal, etc. – I’ve asked “What does that mean”? There hasn’t been a true liberal in the national sense since President Johnson (or just maybe Carter) and the last “actual” conservative on the Republican side was Bush the elder. Bill Clinton and Obama were actually left leaning conservatives, Bush the younger was a “radical,” and what we’ve got now… well, there isn’t a name for what Trump is yet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My buddies at the bar all tell me “give him a chance.”
I respond that Trump has already blown that chance, just in the first days he’s been in office. I’ve been following with great interest the early signs of factionalization amongst the National Republicans, as the actual “conservatives” are beginning to break away from the White House. One thing that’s been truly interesting to consider is the observation that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is actually the most powerful person in the country right now, simply because it’s the Speaker of the House who holds the switch that triggers impeachment. In the meantime, Donald Trump has nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, as well as the ability to unleash the greatest military machine in human history on anyone he wants.
The Congress hasn’t held this much actual power since the early days of the imperial Presidency back in the 1950’s, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s it for my little missive about National and Local Politics. As I’ve been saying since the election, National stuff is way above my pay grade, and I’m laser focused on local matters which directly affect me and mine. The Sunnyside Yards decking battle is coming, and the Superfund situation on a certain local waterway is about to come to a head. We are being developed to death by the Real Estate shit flies, and Western Queens is under siege by opportunists from Manhattan. There’s an Underground Railroad to set up for the Mexicans… simply put, there’s lots to do.
Bill de Blasio and his vainglory must be sent back to Park Slope, and ultimately – Carthage must be destroyed.
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