Archive for January 10th, 2019
dark speculation
Ghosts, wolf ghosts, ghost teenagers, bears, witches, black mold, paranoia, vampires…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shots in today’s post are from a different night than the one I felt threatened by teenagers passing by, but still did a humble narrator lurk in fear. This time around, I found myself a couple of blocks from the future Amazon campus, an area which I’m trying to form a photographic record of before the furnaces of the real estate industry are fully stoked in response to the so called HQ2. Luckily for me, there was virtually no one about in this area after dark, but I can report that nearly every one of the squat industrial buildings found hereabouts bore a vinyl sign that read “available” followed by specific information leading one to a realtor’s name and phone number.
These vinyl signs are generally the “buboes” of a forthcoming plague of construction activity in Western Queens and North Brooklyn. It has begun, again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is one of those areas where you can go knock on a door looking for work, rather than submitting a resume to some automated system. HR is usually a mid 40’s woman named Esther or Shirly, and you get to work before the sun comes up most days, but get out at four in the afternoon. The job don’t pay well, but if you’re new to speaking English or just knocked your girlfriend up, this is the sort of thing you have to do to pay the bills. These are the jobs which will be extinguished by the coming of Amazon and the white collar economy of Manhattan.
If you’re one of the people who counted on finding a job, any job, and you don’t “know someone” you can just go to New Jersey or something. Neither the “Dark Prince of Albany” nor the “Dope from Park Slope” give two shits about you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Adolescents are real, and scary. So are political hacks. Saying that, I prefer my little world of eldritch horror and ghostly influences to the real world in Queens these days. At least monsters like vampires can be done away with by jamming a stake in their hearts and they don’t keep on getting reelected, or climbing the career ladder to new and higher positions. Ever feel like a rat trapped in a maze? I often do.
Pfah.
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