Archive for February 3rd, 2021
further liberation
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can have Manhattan, Long Island City is the most visually interesting part of New York City’s center core. Center core, you ask? If you’re in Bay Ridge, you ain’t in it. St. George on Staten Island is core, but a half mile back from the water ain’t. Everything west of Jackson Heights, west of Bushwick. Everything south of the Bronx Zoo, except for Manhattan above about 150th Street. A big chunk of western New Jersey is also core. I have spoken. Are you core? I’m hard core, here in Astoria.
Like Police cars, yellow taxi cabs are vehicles which seldom stop moving, with the exception being the last 11 months of this interminable pandemic for the taxis. I’ve been seeing entirely inert cabs all over the place, and a lot of them have had their medallions and other TLC flair removed. I have no idea how this industry in particular is going to find a road to recovery after this is all over. By my estimate, we’ve got at least another year of this ahead of us, by which point I’ll have watched everything Netflix has to offer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One mentioned both Project Firebox and the native art form of the Borough of Queens – illegal dumping – in yesterday’s post. Here on Skillman Avenue, you’ve got both. That’s value for money right there, lords and ladies, just like dinner theater.
This particular stretch of Skillman Avenue, found between 39th street and Queens Plaza, is a favorite for the race car boys to meet up along. I’ve seen them drifting and fading multiple times over the last year, sending up plumes of tire smoke. The asphalt is scribed with black spirals and figure eight donut patterns. It’s a madhouse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another fence hole I’ve recently been able to exploit allowed one a view of this Amtrak train set moving itself around at Sunnyside Yards. One good thing – for me – about the pandemic period is that since I’m not rushing around to get to work or something important anymore is that I get to photograph the efforts of people who still have jobs.
Fun for me, who is little more than a whirling mass of filthy black clothing concealing a wandering mendicant.
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, February 1st. 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.
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