Archive for 2017
disturbingly heterogenous
It’s National Drink a Beer Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sorry for the single shot today, lords and ladies, a humble narrator is a bit behind on his schedule this week. Back tomorrow with something a bit more “in-depth” at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
Upcoming Tours and events
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
The Hidden Harbors Of Staten Island Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee – Sunday, October 15th, 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
A very cool boat tour that visits two of the maritime industrial waterways of New York Harbor which adjoin Staten Island and Bayonne in New Jersey – The Kill Van Kull and the Arthur Kill. There will be lots of tugboats, cargo docks, and you’ll get to see multiple bridges from the water – including the brand new Goethals Bridge. I’ll be on the mike, narrating with WHC board member Gordon Cooper – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
particularly pleased
It’s National Chocolate Milk Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What you’re looking at up there, lords and ladies, is my own personal piece of the old 1939 Kosciuszcko Bridge. I can now say that the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, or part of it anyway, is in my house.
Here’s the scoop on how I got it:
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, I described bringing an NYU class to Long Island City where we got to do a short visit at a large recycling operation, found along the Newtown Creek, called SimsMetal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While I was there, an inquiry was proferred to the fellows who work there whether or not a sample cut from the tons of Kosciuszcko Bridge steel they had lying about might be possible to obtain. Turns out that they had to cut pieces down to size for shredding over in New Jersey anyway, so it wouldn’t be a problem, I was told. Only hitch was that the welder guy was taking a few days off, so I’d just have to wait till he returned.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So I get the call a couple of days later telling me that the welder guy was on site, and that I should pop over and tell him what I wanted. I asked him for a couple of rivets, basically.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Popping the rivets out would be a pain, I was told, but then the welder asked if I minded if they had a bit of steel attached. “Sure,” said a humble narrator and then the sparks really started to fly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Before I knew it, a smoking and acetylene hot chunk of the Kosciuszcko Bridge hit the concrete. It’s a little hard to make out in the shot above, but the thing was literally out gassing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The chunks got tossed in a stainless steel thingamabob that looked like a giant soup ladle that was filled with water. The water instantly began to boil when the steel went in.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This little chunk of steel is going into the permanent “Newtown Creek Collection.” I’ve got a few LIRR railroad spikes that are very old, I think “Woodrow Wilson” old. I’ve also got the padlock that used to hang on the Kinsgland Avenue refinery gates at Mobil in Greenpoint, but I generally don’t collect artifacts. This time is one of the exceptions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Think about the journey this hunk of metal has had. It was probably forged sometime in the early to mid 1930’s in Pittsburgh, travelled all the way to NYC and the House of Robert Moses, and was installed over the Newtown Creek when it was still the busiest maritime industrial waterway in North America. The Kosciuszcko Bridge opened seventy eight years ago in the late August of 1939, but it had been under construction for quite a while before that.
Now it’s mine.
Upcoming Tours and events
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
The Hidden Harbors Of Staten Island Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee – Sunday, October 15th, 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
A very cool boat tour that visits two of the maritime industrial waterways of New York Harbor which adjoin Staten Island and Bayonne in New Jersey – The Kill Van Kull and the Arthur Kill. There will be lots of tugboats, cargo docks, and you’ll get to see multiple bridges from the water – including the brand new Goethals Bridge. I’ll be on the mike, narrating with WHC board member Gordon Cooper – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
leaden coffin
It’s National Pancake Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Note: Flickr seems to be having some issues today, so if the shots in today’s post don’t appear or display “broken” image link icons, it ain’t me.
Last week, I took a new friend over to “Skelson’s office” on the Staten Island side of the Kill Van Kull. My new pal, who is a photographer that I met during the lowering of the Koscisuzcko Bridge truss during the summer, had never been to Kill Van Kull and given that she’s into shooting the same sort of maritime industrial stuff that I am…
“Skelson’s office” is a section of the Staten Island shoreline that another photographer buddy of mine named John Skelson, who has left this world, used to haunt and this was officially his “spot.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While we were at Skelson’s Office, the usual parade of tugs and barges sailed past, including the gargantua you see in today’s shots. That’s a Jersey City based Weeks Marine maritime crane, specifically the 533. Its boom is 210 feet long and it has a lifting capacity of 500 short tons. That’s 5,392 “regular people” gross tons if you’re curious. If you click over to the Weeks site via this link, you’ll see a space shuttle dangling off of it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were two tugs guiding the crane along the Kill Van Kull, but the big one doing the actual towing was the Katherine, pictured above. My new pal had her mouth hanging open as this unit passed by, as you don’t see this sort of thing every day.
Well, I do, but there you go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Found some garbage lying along the shoreline, and since I had to urinate, the big red letters made for a decent enough target. Great, again? America is great, now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The show continued along the Kill Van Kull and we spent a couple of hours hanging out and photographing the tugs and barges and container ships passing by Skelson’s Office. If you want to see this sort of thing for yourself (I mean tugs and maritime industrial goodness, not me pissing on the word “Trump”) check out the link below for the recently announced Working Harbor Committee boat tour of both Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill on October 15th.
Upcoming Tours and events
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
The Hidden Harbors Of Staten Island Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee – Sunday, October 15th, 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
A very cool boat tour that visits two of the maritime industrial waterways of New York Harbor which adjoin Staten Island and Bayonne in New Jersey – The Kill Van Kull and the Arthur Kill. There will be lots of tugboats, cargo docks, and you’ll get to see multiple bridges from the water – including the brand new Goethals Bridge. I’ll be on the mike, narrating with WHC board member Gordon Cooper – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
prostrated citizen
It’s National Lobster Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of late, one has been observing a growing trend wherein those who write about NYC pine for some mythological golden age they believe to have occurred hereabouts in the 1970’s and 80’s. They will wax on with great eloquence about Tompkins Square Park, the East Village “scene” which spawned bands they like, and an era in which rent was only $500 a month for a supposed palace in some pre war Manhattan building. Older generations do this as well, especially here in Astoria – “y’know, this apartment used to rent for $20,” back in the good old days.
The fact that income levels were lower back then and that $500 was as difficult a number to arrive at – proportionately speaking – as $2,000 is today… Back when Patti Smith and the Talking Heads and even the Ramones were enjoying the height of their fame and they were buying property – pizza was fifty cents a slice, folks, and the minimum wage was $3.35. Those minimum wage jobs were held by teenagers, not adults, it should be mentioned as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Quoting another band of an era (Fear) which younger generations seem to believe was the epitome of NYC’s culture – there were “piles of blood, scabs, and hair everywhere.” It was fairly routine to see bodies lying in the street – I can tell you about the guy with the smashed skull on the corner of 22nd and Third nearby the NYPD Police Academy, or the “bloodsicle” guy frozen into a phone booth on 99th and Broadway, or the dozens of people who found out just how organized crime was back then that were fished out of Sheepshead Bay by the cops. A big business in residential neighborhoods was the installation of wrought iron bars over first and second floor windows, and most of the autos you saw parked on the street had signs taped up in them proclaiming that there was “no radio” in the car. Beat downs and “getting jumped” were a facet of life in the 1980’s – in particular – and at the edges of my neighborhood in Brooklyn you’d see people with bandaged up “crack smiles.” For you youngins – a crack smile (aka “bustin ’em a fiddy,” slang for inflicting a fifty stitch facial wound) was gang retribution for informing to the cops about drug dealers taking over your block.
The pop culture references you can google or watch clips of on YouTube from back then would include the movies “Taxi Driver” and “Death Wish.” The NYPD was purely reactionary in those days, and Williamsburg was just as dangerous a place to visit as the South Bronx. I know, as I used to have a job in Williamsburg during college, working at a garment factory across the street from Domino sugar and just down the block from a facility called Radiac where nuclear, radiological, and chemical waste products were transferred and stored. In communities at the lower side of the economic spectrum it was common for parents to have their kids sleep on the floor for fear of stray bullets, and property was so worthless that it was cheaper for a landlord to hire an arsonist to torch buildings for the insurance money than it was for them to continue operations.
New Yorkers of my generation don’t carry money in our wallets. We keep our cash in discretely pocketed bundles, a large amount and a smaller one. The latter is called “mugger money,” which you’d be ready to toss at an assailant(s) before turning and running away at “maximum boogie.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This era which spawned hip hop, and saw punk rock become culturally relevant… what do you think we were all so angry about back then that we were driven to gather in Bowery Bum shit holes like CBGB? When you arrived here from Derrien, or whatever semi suburban City you’re from to pursue your dream of “life in NYC,” was it before or after 2001? Are you disappointed with what you found? Was it less “real,” or not as “vibrant” as Hollywood told you it would be? Did Spike Lee sell you a bill of goods about what Brooklyn would be like? Do you understand that the “Gentry” who have gentrified the City are yourselves?
Also, when you look in the bathroom mirror in the mornings, is it just you looking back or is it “humanity”?
Upcoming Tours and events
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
intense interest
It’s National Ice Cream Cone Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few odds and ends, in today’s post at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
There’s nothing that somebody who works for the City hates more than being photographed while pursuing their occupation, and none moreso than the NYPD. Saying that, if you’re doing a traffic stop right in front of me while I’m hanging out with my pals at the neighborhood saloon… what’s a humble narrator to do? Constitutionally speaking y’all have less of a right to privacy in the public sphere than the rest of us do because you’re wearing that blue suit and sporting the badge, and the inherent lack of privacy that all of us suffer when out in public is the constitutionally justified reason y’all can get away with hanging surveillance cameras and speed trap gizmos on lamp posts.
Big brother? Little Brother? All part of one big happy, and quite paranoid, family.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Same corner in Astoria, different day, and a DSNY garbage truck was experiencing mechanical problems. You don’t see tow trucks of the type pictured above too often… well… I do, but most don’t. I didn’t stick around too long to watch them towing the truck back to 58th street and the garage found at the angle between Woodside and Maspeth.
I had somewhere to be, people to see, politicians and officials to annoy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Down in Hunters Point one night, as I was passing by the LIRR yard, I noticed this cool bit of kit. My surmise, based on the sort of tools that the gizmo sported in its front end, was that this was a track maintenance mechanism. It had what looked like two claws that stuck out of the front which were positioned pretty close to where the steel tracks are found.
Upcoming Tours and events
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura – Saturday, September 23rd, 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Join us on the wrong side of the tracks for an exploration of the hidden industrial heartlands of Brooklyn and Queens, with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 