The Newtown Pentacle

Monday shots from the after times.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Recent endeavor found one walking a friend who has recently acquired the photography habit around the industrial quarters of Long Island City. My intent was to inculcate a few safety oriented customs into his mind, since the first rounds of photos he had been posting scared the heck out of a humble narrator. As is often repeated, Newtown Creek and the industrial business zone areas surrounding it are an easy place to get dead if you’re not cautious, careful, or have some background knowledge of the way that the “hard hats” operate. Photos my friend had been posting demonstrated that he had no understanding of the place’s code, which I set out to rectify. Dutch Kills in LIC was a great place to start.

I sort of gave him a tour, which is something I miss doing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One did not gather too many pictures on this outing, but I couldn’t resist a shot of this ivy which had been graffitied over. The weird sodium lamp light pouring out of a nearby shipping company’s property just added to the attraction.

The shipping business continues to expand and expand around the Newtown Creek, and despite the fact that I broke the story last year that an enormous Amazon facility is about to be constructed over in Maspeth on Grand Avenue, other people are acting like it’s news. Of course, nobody cares about this, until the tractor trailer and delivery trucks leave the IBZ and drive through the residential neighborhoods lying between it and the highways or the approaches to Manhattan.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I can’t say this scientifically, as in I can’t point to a traffic study conducted by a professional outfit like the one run by Sam Schwartz, but observationally I’ve seen heavy traffic in and out of the Newtown Creek Industrial Business Zone magnify significantly over the last few years. It’s all part of the ever evolving national economy, of course, and what with the pandemic and all, we’re all relying on businesses like United Parcel Service or FedEx to service our needs more and more.

I do wish that our elected officials would demand that these companies incorporate more rail and water transport into the plan. The UPS barn pictured above is across the street from Dutch Kills, and a giant FedEx facility is directly located on the bulkheads of the same waterway about a block away, and there are freight tracks everywhere in LIC just awaiting reactivation. Saying that, there’s some fairly big news on the water transport front along the Creek that is still forming up. I’ll keep you posted.

Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, July 13th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.

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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.