The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It’s fall foliage time in Long Island City, so capturing the bucolic splendor of the Industrial Business Zone is on my menu this week. Admittedly, there’s a definite deficit in these parts – vegetation wise. You take what you can get, I always say.

This shot is from Skillman Avenue, nearby a company called “Propper” which seems to manufacture and distribute military and utility oriented clothing (army pants and service uniforms) that have more than the usual number of pockets sewn into them. I wear army pants most of the time for both comfort and utility, but order a different brand than propper, one that includes a lot of velcro closures on those many pockets. My particular brand also has several internal pockets sewn into the velcro closure outer ones, which comes in handy when I want to leave the camera bag at home. Between the pants and my trusty Scott E Vest sweatshirts, I’m packing (literally) 39 distinct and secure pockets at all times. Literally – I’m Mr. Big Pants.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One lost track of time on this particular lonely walk around a nocturnal Long Island City, what with the unseasonably warm November weather last week. Additionally, the route I chose successfully avoided the presence of any other humans somehow, so possibly my missing time involved an abduction by aliens. Solitude is no mean trick, given how this section of Western Queens which I call home counts amongst the most densely populated sections of North America.

Under normal circumstance, solitude is reached for and desired, during a pandemic season – it’s nepenthe.

This particular route isn’t exactly unfamiliar to longtime readers of Newtown Pentacle, of course, and I’ve been marching along it throughout the pandemic. I’ve actually been making it a point of visiting certain spots at different seasonal intervals, which has been kind of a “thing” for me to do. We’ve all had to find something to do during this weird interval, I would imagine. Adapt or die, right?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Given that it looks like the long dreaded second wave of Covid is upon us here in the big City, I’d like to join the chorus and remind all to be preventative and careful as you move around the world in the next few months. I know a LOT of people who experienced the virus during the first wave and even the folks who didn’t end up in the hospital due to it described a pretty undesirable experience. Who wants to get sick, anyway?

It’s going to be a very cold winter, after a very hot summer and a definitively annoying autumn. I imagine somewhere around the middle of December we are going to start hearing about a baby boom, as December 13th will make it 9 months since this all started and “Netflix and chill” became a lifestyle. Damn.

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, November 16th. 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.