Archive for February 2021
singularly immobile
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A friend of mine, I recently learned, is going to be digging a seven hundred and fifty nine foot deep hole in Sunnyside. This is what my friend does.
Lurking, in fear as always, a humble narrator decided to witness and record the future hole’s site in its current manner. Deep below, something awaits. It yearns for connection, and conduit, and to flow into your homes while your children sleep.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cryogenic technology and explosive devices will be used, to open and widen the hole. Then, and only upon the say so of my friend, will the esoterica of his titanic machines be employed. Like scarabs, these devices will claw, and scratch, and tear open a path to the deep. Thrusting into secrets which were long buried even when the ice sheets allowed a pathway for men and women to walk from Asia to the American continent, the cleaving teeth of his works will bore through the ancient flesh of the earth.
At the bottom, 759 feet below the southern edges of the Sunnyside of Queens, it waits. Swirling and spraying, coiling against its restraints. This is what a man whom I call friend wishes to unleash upon Western Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fortress like Church just up the block, which has long vouchsafed this area against all sorts of supernatural threats (but especially Vampires) has been informed of my friend’s plans – and on his intentions. Supposedly they are ok with what’s about to happen, and the release of the voluminous entity trapped below.
759 feet down… what doth lurk? Go ahead – guess.
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 8th. 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.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
silently gliding
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luyster Creek, lords and ladies. Also, a different day than the one I mentioned last week. I don’t get over to this side of the Queensiverse, the “Forbidden Northern Coast,” all that often these days. One thing Covid has made me absolutely long for is ownership of an automobile. At some point in the next year or two, I’m going to be purchasing a motor vehicle. The gyrations one endures getting around on foot during this period of time have been extreme. I make a big deal of walking just about everywhere, but under normal circumstance if my foot starts to hurt I’d just hop on a train or bus and come back home. Not an option due to mathematical probability of infection exposure, which reduces me down to taking the occasional cab here and there – but that gets pretty expensive, pretty fast.
As it turned out on this particular visit to Astoria’s loneliest and saddest waterway, a buddy of mine from the community board who wanted to check the place out picked me up in his car and we rode over.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the factors which is playing into my continuing thought process regarding personal transportation is what I’d be trading away – dealing with alternate side parking, the cost of insurance and maintenance – ugh. Alternatively, it makes day trips in a roughly 100 mile circle around… let’s use the Triborough Bridge as a center point reference… to photogenic subject matter possible. So, then the question about what kind of vehicle – Jeep, Van, SUV for instance – would be best for that sort of endeavor. Something I could conceivably sleep in? I don’t know. I can’t afford a car, currently, so I’m just fantasizing out loud about it. Still, would’ve been nice over the Pandemic to pack up girl and dog and go somewhere. Dog’s gone, girl’s still here.
I tell you this, walking multiple miles every other day doesn’t get easier when you get older, and I definitely start to feel a bit tired after walking from Astoria to Greenpoint and back.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lottery winner Mitch would get one of those snazzy RV’s that are rolling around these days, the kind with satellite tv and water heaters. Regular Mitch would be lucky to be able to afford an aged mule pulling a third hand Romani wagon.
Man, it would be cool to own a mule though. I’d get her one of those straw hats and rig a tripod onto the saddle. Last time I mentioned Luyster Creek, and its generous apportionment of Poison Ivy, the fact that goats eat poison ivy (which I’ve also recently learned) came up. Further, the best of all the facts was offered, which is that you can rent goats in NYC who will graze away your poison ivy on a per diem rate.
Who needs a car if you’ve got your own mule and a set of rent-a-goats?
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 8th. 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.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
curling fumes
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve not been thinking about running for office but am instead considering seizing power as an absolute leader, but I can’t seem to negotiate the City website for matching funds from the City’s Board of Elections as they don’t have a checkbox for “Czar.” Yet. The “Mitchtatorship” would be short, fierce, and would likely end badly, but that’s how that sort of thing goes. Saying that, we’d get a lot of things done quite quickly.
First up – during the Mitchtatorship, mass transit now runs for free. You have any idea how much money MTA spends collecting money and counting fares? Short answer is that it’s a lot more than you think, and they’re actually losing millions counting thousands. Get them up against the wall.
Waxist bully boys would be how I manifest my societal whims. I’d have these anti intellectual automatons stationed on every corner, smacking the phones out of your hands if you’re looking at them while crossing streets and adjuring the population that minding your own business is a virtue. My Waxist educators would instruct the children on the difference between prejudice and racism, why you should make coffee at home rather than buying it at a shop (that’s how they get you), and eliminate any argument that begins with “What about…” through the usage of backhanded stooge slaps. The future is a human face with a boot stomping on it forever,” said Orwell. The future is instead a human being reminded that they might need an umbrella today and that they can’t complain about being moist should they have ignored the Mitchtator’s sensible advice and prosaic wisdom.
Also, call your mother, she misses you. Off with their heads, otherwise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Barber shops… remember those, from the before times? When I see the scene pictured above, shot through a window from the cold darkness I inhabit, I couldn’t help but think about the smells I associate with this sort of establishment even though all I could actually smell was auto exhaust and the nearby rotting remains of some workman’s castaway chicken dinner container.
For some reason, the smell of barber shops is quite a memorable scent.
Mitchtatorship rules would preclude stupid haircuts, and I’d set up a new group of Ultrafunded Cops who enforce sensible and easy to maintain hairstyles. It would also outlaw beauty regimes which I vaguely don’t like the sound of nor have any idea about like “brow lamination” or “microblading.” The Mitchtatorship would enforce profound amounts of patriotic “brow lamentations,” and all of the blades you encounter would be macro rather than micro. More, better, now, why wait, you can have it all now, you deserve it and the other things too, now, and my Waxist Followers and I will give it to you when the benevolence of the Mitchtatorship wraps it’s fatherly arms around you in a totally non creepy way and begins redistributing other people’s income taxes to my inner circle of mystics, demagogues, and some of the random people whom I hang out with.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Mitchtatorship – which will make you happier, more attractive, and far wealthier than you have ever dreamed it possible to be, now more than ever, will give you access to this and to that and together we will reach for the other thing and we shall arrive on the mountaintop together or not at all, a shining city, you can have everything because why not you and boot straps – will take inspiration from the Covid lockdowns and create Municipal “stay at home, but shut the fuck up for an hour or two” days.
Did you fill up the gas in the car after you used it? Close the garage door, all the way? Feed the dog and then you can be on your own recognizance. Don’t flush the toilet like an asshole.
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 8th. 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.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
abnormal ticking
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Empty Corridor is what I call those streets of Long Island City which are particularly shadowed by the ferrous gargantua that is the Long Island Expressway’s “Queens Midtown Expressway” elevated truss section. The blighting effect of this 160 feet at its apex, 1940 vintage, span is all encompassing – both because of its inescapable presence and for the supernal amount of automotive related pollution which it represents. 32 million vehicle trips a year, lords and ladies, push along this truss bridge on their way to and from Manhattan via the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Were these vehicle trips moving along the ground, at least Queensicans could benefit from it by selling bottles of water or bags of oranges to the drivers. Instead, we get all the bad and nothing good from its presence.
Pictured is a section of the centuried Montauk Cutoff elevated railroad tracks, mentioned many times here at Newtown Pentacle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has experienced a few close calls, human interaction wise, in the Empty Corridor in recent months, and this “zone” as a whole has impressed one as having become somewhat “crimey.” This is partially the paranoia of a middle aged fellow marching around in the dark by himself, of course, but it’s also the prosaic observation of a life long New Yorker who knows what trouble looks like when it’s walking your way. Be careful out there, keep an eye on others, and ask yourself why somebody might be making a beeline towards you despite there being a respiratory plague spreading. Nobody is that friendly.
Many of my younger friends believe that the stories we tell about “the bad old days” in NYC are reflections of systemic racism, outright fiction, or overblown reportage. What I can tell you is that what my younger friends think is uninformed and wishful thinking, romantic aspiration for who they wish sympathetic characters were, and that getting “jumped” is something that’s never happened to them – apparently. The late 1970’s and the entire 1980’s were no joke. Back then, you had to learn how to improvise weapons on the fly. Metal garbage can lids are no longer available for ready hands to use, and there’s fewer glass bottles lying around to break and use as a slashing weapon due to the return deposit cash in. Plastic bottles, as a note, make for shit shivs. When you hit a guy with a plastic bottle it makes a comical and hollow “blonk” sound.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One time in the mid 80’s, I was crossing the street at 21st street and Third in the City. Some guy had his back to traffic on 21st and got hit by a car. He hit the crosswalk with his forehead, which pretty much “asphalt erased” his face, and his corpse was set up in a tripod formation with his knees flat on the street along with what remained of his head, the arms were arranged straight back and it looked a lot like he was praying. The cops were so busy with handling corpses back then that they just threw a blanket over the body and set out a traffic cone while waiting for the Coroner to scoop up the mess, and the whole tableau was still in place about three hours later while I was walking the other way. His blood was running into the sewer. There’s a metaphor there, I thought.
Early 90’s, a guy got shot on the corner of 99th and Broadway while he was talking on the phone in one of those half size phone booths. An ice storm blew in, and the poor SOB’s body and in particular his hand froze up while he was still grasping the phone receiver. When I passed by on my way to work the next morning, his body was swaying in the wind and the phone cord was the fulcrum supporting him. The Cops smoked cigarettes and drank coffee while similarly waiting for the morgue’s meat wagon to appear.
I’m not arguing for any sort of Police state Götterdämmerung moment, by the way, I’m just saying that there’s always been a different set of rules on the street. A lot for these rules aren’t what you’d like them to be, aren’t fair, and have nothing to do with justice.
It’s all true. The Force, Luke Skywalker, the Death Star, all of it.
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 8th. 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.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
legal advertisements
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A holocaust of Zoom meetings notwithstanding, one still finds the time to wander about Queens aimlessly in the dead of night with a camera. These shots have arrived in front of you due to one of my bimonthly visits to the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, which can be found comfortably nested in with and amongst the concrete devastations of Long Island City. There’s a lot of science hereabouts, and not enough fiction.
The fiction is found a few blocks away, in the lobby offices of those shiny new luxury apartment towers, staffed by Real Estate Industrial Complex worker drones who never mention or instead misrepresent the heavy industrial/environmental history of LIC to their tenants prior to getting the rubes to sign on the proverbial dotted line.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It shakes my basic faith in people. They’ll spend hours watching documentaries about where and how McDonalds produces and manufactures its gruel, or the mean reality of the production line for Hallmark Greeting Cards, but won’t bother trying to find out if the luxury condominium they’re entering into thirty years of debt for sits on the former site of a chemical factory. They’ll expound upon on the political issues of the day and adjure you to “do your own research” but don’t bother googling up an old map of the area where they’re investing in property to see what used to be where. Also, as a note, googling something is not research. It’s exactly the same thing as asking a librarian where to find a book. Reading the book isn’t even “research,” but it can be a part of that process.
Just last week, I attended a community board meeting in which a project was being offered to Astoria as a panacea to solve an intractable issue of affordable senior housing, by a highly politically wired developer. As soon as I saw the address, I said “Hey, that’s the Nelson Galvanizing Superfund site.” Why am I the only person in Queens who knows about and talks about these things?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Brooklyn or Manhattan, if you were to crumple up a gum wrapper and throw it in the gutter, before it hit the pavement somebody would have already formed a nonprofit group to combat the phenomena. In Queens, you could dissolve truck tires, with gaseous chlorine, in a hole you dug out of your yard and that’s not just peachy keen – it’s also cool. When the vapors kill your neighbor’s dog, also cool. When a kid gets killed, the Politicians will show up and christen a bike lane, and they’ll “tsk tsk” about your chlorinated tire habits but won’t actually do anything to stop you. Hell, the Queens Chamber of Commerce will probably show up and give you a trophy for being industrious and taking care of the old tire problem.
Clean your room. Do you want to get sick? Don’t buy a new construction condo without first inquiring what used to be there.
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 8th. 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.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 