Archive for 2018
daylight around
The 2018 Riverkeeper Sweep on Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last Saturday, everybody’s friends at Riverkeeper organized an estuary wide shoreline cleanup event in which groups from all of the bays, harbors, rivers, lakes, ponds, and especially the Creeks brought their volunteers together to remove garbage and junk from the shorelines. Along Newtown Creek, there were multiple efforts underway. Pictured above is the group that HarborLab, based at the Vernon Avenue Street End in Long Island City, brought together.
HarborLab worked on the area of Newtown Creek between the East River and Pulaski Bridge, and removed hundreds of pounds of garbage from the shoreline.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
HarborLab worked out of canoes, and from the water. I was on foot, personally, and had a couple of friends walking along with me. After getting shots of HarborLab gearing up for the day, we shlepped eastwards to the next gathering.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Gil Lopez and DNA from Smiling Hogshead Ranch with a few of their volunteers in the shot above, who were cleaning up the shore surrounding the Borden Avenue Bridge in LIC. There were others further down towards the water, and they also removed a significant amount of junk from the water. Metallic items, plastics, even a few empty suitcases.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The scuttling resumed, and my little group headed over the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge to attend the next event, which was organized by Newtown Creek Alliance and LaGuardia Community College.
The NCA motto is “Reveal, Restore, Revitalize.” I always say that I’m happy I’m on the first “R” side of the operation since the other “R’s” involve a lot of manual labor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NCA section of the sweep was at the Meeker Avenue street end, and the group there also removed hundreds of pounds of junk and debris which had either been illegally dumped or just ended up getting swept in by hydrological action during heavy rains. The kids from LaGuardia really pulled out the stops, I was told.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s a very, very cool thing – seeing the citizenry taking agency for our waterfront.
The government people who work for us should be doing this, of course, but they’re generally pretty busy finding new ways to either screw things up or completely ignore the problems they’ve created. Recent developments in this arena involve using tax dollars to fund places for junkies to shoot drugs, decking the Sunnyside Yards, and so on.
Upcoming Tours and Events
May 12th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
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?
Tickets and more details here.
May 17th – Port Newark Boat Tour – with Working Harbor Committee.
For an exciting adventure, go behind the scenes of the bustling Port of NY & NJ on our Hidden Harbor Tour® of Port Newark! Get an insider’s view of the 3rd largest port in the nation, where container ships dock and unload their goods from around the world. See how the working harbor really works and learn about what all those ships and tugs do. See giant container terminals, oil docks, dry dock repair, and more! Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
spent potential
Are those drums I hear?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Western Queens is under assault by the powers that be in Manhattan. Blissville gets a homeless shelter population which outnumbers actual residents by more than two to one? Check. The LIC Core rezoning is on the way, which will extend the residential towers of Hunters Point and Queens Plaza all the way up Northern Blvd. to Steinway Street? Check. Traffic on the highways – namely the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Long Island Expressway, Grand Central Parkway – higher than ever? Check.
Did anyone in Queens ever ask for any of this, or is it just the dream of people who work in Lower Manhattan office buildings and at Columbia University?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Do we receive literal mountains of garbage and recyclables curbside collected by DSNY on a daily basis? Check. Do the truck fleets of both DSNY and private carters transverse our residential neighborhoods on a daily basis? Check. Do we host power plants, and sewage plants, and waste transfer stations? Check. Is our transit system failing? Check. Did the Manhattan people export Fed Ex Ground and other truck based businesses to Western Queens the last time they decided to deck over a rail yard at Hudson Yards in the City?
Check.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYC EDC is moving forward with their quixotic plan to deck over the Sunnyside Yards, lords and ladies.
EDC has told me in the past that bringing construction materials in by rail is not an option, to a rail yard, which means it will be trucked in. Is that through Manhattan via George Washington and then Triborough Bridges? Midtown Tunnel? They do not intend on building new hospital beds, nor expanding fire and police service, or new transit stops and lines while installing half the population of Boulder, Colorado into our neighborhoods.
Have I mentioned that Sunnyside Yards has been added to the list of “PRP’s” or Potentially Responsible Parties in the Newtown Creek Superfund? Check.
Upcoming Tours and Events
May 12th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
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?
Tickets and more details here.
May 17th – Port Newark Boat Tour – with Working Harbor Committee.
For an exciting adventure, go behind the scenes of the bustling Port of NY & NJ on our Hidden Harbor Tour® of Port Newark! Get an insider’s view of the 3rd largest port in the nation, where container ships dock and unload their goods from around the world. See how the working harbor really works and learn about what all those ships and tugs do. See giant container terminals, oil docks, dry dock repair, and more! Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
pandemoniac howling
A few more shots from high over LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, an event found me in Hunters Point, and a friend invited me to get some shots from the roof deck of the tower building he lives in. Normally, I’m wallowing in the filth of the gutter and Newtown Creek, so whenever I have an opportunity to change the perspective, I take it.
The shot above looks down at the East River shoreline along the Hunters Point Park waterfront, and depicts the littoral gradation from dry land to river mud.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a new section of the park opening fairly soon, and construction on it has been briskly occurring for a while now. That green fenceline in the middle of the shot depicts the currently public area (bottom) and the new section which will soon be available for recreation enthusiasts (top).
That curvy shape at the bottom right forms a roof for the home of a local restaurant called Coffeed, and the LIC Landing NYC Ferry stop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the mouth of Newtown Creek in the center of the shot above, which looks south along the Queens and Brooklyn waterfront towards the Williamsburg Bridge. The prominence on the Manhattan side is Corelars Hook, roughly the Lower East Side’s Cherry Street. Within the next decade, the entire left side of the view above will be filled in with residential tower development projects.
Upcoming Tours and Events
May 12th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
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?
Tickets and more details here.
May 17th – Port Newark Boat Tour – with Working Harbor Committee.
For an exciting adventure, go behind the scenes of the bustling Port of NY & NJ on our Hidden Harbor Tour® of Port Newark! Get an insider’s view of the 3rd largest port in the nation, where container ships dock and unload their goods from around the world. See how the working harbor really works and learn about what all those ships and tugs do. See giant container terminals, oil docks, dry dock repair, and more! Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
extent of
Getting high in Hunters Point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saturday last, a shoreline cleanup operation was scheduled by HarborLab and the Hunter Point Park Conservancy, and the Hunters Point Civic people were present to lend a hand as well. The goal was to gather up and dispose of the flotsam and jetsam that had gathered in the East River shoreline over the last couple of seasons. I helped out by offering a free walking tour of the area for some of the volunteers from HarborLab, and getting shots of the effort for usage by the various groups involved, and for one of my pals from Councilmember Van Bramer’s office – the irreplaceable Matt Wallace.
At one point, my friend Rodrigo announced he was going to go up to one of the roof decks at the Hunters Point South development and offered to take me along. The shot above looks eastward, along the spine of my beloved Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are actually two parks on the LIC waterfront, one managed by the City and the other by the State. Hunters Point Park is the southern one, and Gantry Plaza State Park is the northern one. The actual dividing line between the two properties is about mid block between Center Blvd. and 51st Avenue, if you’re curious.
The shoreline cleanup focused in on two locations, the rocky area pictured above where you see the crowd of people gathered up on the concrete, and another one just south of the ferry stop at LIC Landing. The NYC Parks Dept. sent along a garbage truck to collect up the debris, and a few employees who were there to help out and supervise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above looks north west towards Roosevelt Island and the Queensboro Bridge, and over the grounds of the NYS Gantry Plaza State Park.
As a note, this was my first time shooting from one of the Hunters Point South towers. Normally, I’m staring up at them from the gutter, where one such as myself belongs.
Upcoming Tours and Events
May 12th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
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?
Tickets and more details here.
May 17th – Port Newark Boat Tour – with Working Harbor Committee.
For an exciting adventure, go behind the scenes of the bustling Port of NY & NJ on our Hidden Harbor Tour® of Port Newark! Get an insider’s view of the 3rd largest port in the nation, where container ships dock and unload their goods from around the world. See how the working harbor really works and learn about what all those ships and tugs do. See giant container terminals, oil docks, dry dock repair, and more! Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
frightful vistas
On this day in 1931, the Empire State Building opened for business.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Empire State Building was completed a month and a half ahead of schedule, no doubt due to the influence of the “official” head of the project’s influence. A mostly ceremonial and political position, former NYS Governor Al Smith was nevertheless the boss. The real players in the construction of the icon were an investor group led by Louis G. Kaufman, Ellis P. Earle, John J. Raskob, Coleman du Pont, and Pierre S. du Pont.
John J. Raskob was the prime mover, however. Everything and everybody else on the project were just political window dressing or finance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Empire State Building was designed by William F. Lamb, of the architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon. The actual construction of the thing was accomplished under the oversight of the Starrett Brothers and Eken, Paul and William and James Farley’s General Builders Supply Corporation handled material delivery and deployment. John W. Bowser was the construction superintendent of the project, and structural engineer for the building was a fellow named Homer G. Balcom.
The plan for the Empire State Building was presented to the public on January 8, 1930. The entire operation, which included demolishing the old Waldorf Astoria which stood on the site, was accomplished in 16 months. The actual erection of the Empire State began in March of 1930.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just the facts; the Empire State Building rises 1,860 steps from the first to the 102nd floor, and it’s said to weigh 365,000 short tons (331,122 t). It encloses an internal volume of 37,000,000 cubic feet, and its exterior is covered in 200,000 cubic feet of limestone and granite. Construction of the tower incorporated ten million bricks, 370 short tons of steel, 1,172 miles of elevator cable and 2,000,000 feet of electrical wires. The building has a capacity for 20,000 tenants and 15,000 visitors. To the 102nd floor, Empire State is 1,250 ft tall, but is 1,453 feet 8 9⁄16 inches when you include its 203 ft pinnacle.
According to official records, the construction cost 7 lives, but contemporaneous socialist newspapers claimed that 42 deaths occurred during construction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally speaking, I can tell you that the easiest way to say “New York City” in a photograph is to frame the Empire State Building into it. One of the “seven wonders of the modern world,” and for much of the twentieth century the tallest structure on earth, Empire State Building was the first of the “super talls,” although the Chrysler Building did technically arrive on the scene first. It’s pretty commonplace to see skyscrapers these days, but the significance of the Empire State Building to the generation that saw it rise – at the astounding pace of 4 1/2 stories a week – cannot be overstated.
For that NYC generation, who were either immigrants or the children of immigrants, the future had arrived.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When the generations of immigrants who pulsed into NYC during the high tide years of emigration – the 1850’s through the 1920’s – arrived here, what they found were a few grandiose structures like the Woolworth Building or the odd church or cathedral, but these were the exception. Manhattan had unpaved streets which pigs roamed around at night, and the building stock in NYC was squat. Tenements spread out in every direction, punctuated by occasional six to eight story industrial or office buildings.
Up until the 20th century – ship masts, industrial chimneys, Trinity Church’s steeple, and the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge formed the skyline.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For those of us who grew up in NYC, the Empire State Building was always aspirational. It represented “the City,” where we’d make our fortunes someday, escaping the humiliations and constraints of the blue collar neighborhoods we were born into. When returning from someplace else, spotting the Empire State Building was a signal that home was near.
Happy 87th Birthday, old fella.
Upcoming Tours and Events
May 12th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
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?
Tickets and more details here.
May 17th – Port Newark Boat Tour – with Working Harbor Committee.
For an exciting adventure, go behind the scenes of the bustling Port of NY & NJ on our Hidden Harbor Tour® of Port Newark! Get an insider’s view of the 3rd largest port in the nation, where container ships dock and unload their goods from around the world. See how the working harbor really works and learn about what all those ships and tugs do. See giant container terminals, oil docks, dry dock repair, and more! Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 