Archive for August 2022
unwonted ripples
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you may recall, most of the country – including NYC – experienced a dramatic heat wave in middle and late July. Here in “home sweet hell,” the humidity and dew point levels were as high as they can go without spontaneous rain showers occurring, and the atmospheric temperatures were in the high 90’s and even hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit once or twice during the interval.
I refer to this kind of weather as a “reverse blizzard.” At least during the cold months you can wear extra layers and still get something done – but during this kind of oppressive summer heat – not so much.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My desire to be out and about, when even at night it’s 90 degrees with tropical humidity, absolutely evaporates. One spent an inordinate amount of time in late July at HQ, in direct proximity to an air conditioner. Occasional forays to the porch revealed a torrid soup of thunderstorms and other meteorological consequence of “too much” heat swirling around in the heavens. Yuck.
Thereby, there weren’t too many adventures on the table, and the camera sat unused for several days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Saturday the 23rd, which was a candidate for “hottest day of the year” until Sunday the 24th rolled through, I had to head over to Brooklyn to show my face at a Newtown Creek Alliance event – the Kingsland Wildflowers Festival. An annual event, this one is produced by NCA in conjunction with Broadway Stages, and Alive Structures, amongst others. There’s games for kids, food, and a bunch of activists doing activist things.
I wandered around a bit, caught up with friends, caroused. Then I scuttled off to wave the camera around a bit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a really warm night, but I was desirous of taking a walk and decided that I’d cross the Newtown Creek via the nearby Pulaski Bridge and catch a train back to Astoria. The camera and I both required a bit of exercise. Self lubricating parts and all that…
At my age, if you don’t use a body part it just withers away and falls off. This especially includes the knees. “Assholes and elbows,” as they say in the military, so off I went.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One cut through the Newtown Creek Nature Walk, at the sewer plant in Greenpoint, to get over to the Pulaski Bridge’s staircases on McGuinness Blvd. nearby Box Street. Since “Phase 3” of the Nature Walk opened last year, it’s really cut down the amount of time that it used to take to get from NCA HQ on Kingsland Avenue to the Pulaski. It’s also a visually interesting spot, in my opinion.
My toes were pointed in the correct direction and then I just leaned into it. Regardless, I was “shvitzing.” The palm of my camera hand was positively moist. As an aside, I’ve learned that use of the word “moist” makes millennials and Gen Z people uncomfortable. Exploration of this weird fact also makes them uncomfortable. The same people will happily drop their pants to show off a new tattoo or piercing, openly display their kinks and fetishes in political rooms, but there’s now a list of proscribed adjectives which are considered “problematic.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It had to be just after 8 p.m. when I set out on this walk, as the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was already prostrating itself behind New Jersey. How predictable, huh?
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
palsied denials
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
July 16th was City of Water Day, which is a regional harbor festival curated by the Waterfront Alliance. I, and Newtown Creek Alliance, have been participating in City of Water Day for about a decade now. This year, NCA partnered up with North Brooklyn Boat Club and the Montauk Cutoff Coalition to do a shoreline cleanup, and offer boat rides to the public on the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek. It was a nice day.
Until the thunderstorm arrived, it was a nice day, that is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you don’t recall, this was the day that about an inch of rain fell in about a half hour and generated a lot of flooding and damage in Queens. We were out in the open, but luckily the public side of things had ended. Everybody found a bit of shelter, under the Long Island Expressway or in some of the shipping containers found along the shoreline.
It felt like a real Götterdämmerung, I tell you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Blasting waves of rain pounded down, and heavy wind caused the rain to go absolutely horizontal. Dutch Kills was boiling with sky juices.
When the front moved on, we found ourselves standing in its wake. All of the NCA people grabbed their cameras and phones, since we knew what would be coming next – sewer outflows!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
NYC has a combined sewer system, meaning that sanitary and storm water move through the same pipes. Dry weather, which typified roughly an entire month prior to the 16th, sees this flow go to sewer plants. A quarter inch of rain – citywide – translates to a billion gallons suddenly entering the system, and the City’s protocol is to release the excess flow into area waterways as a prophylactic against street flooding.
You can count it out – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… blast off.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Submerged sewer pipes began to excrete into the waters of Dutch Kills. The surface was boiling, and the tumult carried human waste as well as whatever happened to end up in the sewers – trash, motor oil, goo – into Dutch Kills.
Everywhere you looked, filthy water was shooting out of otherwise hidden pipes all over Dutch Kills. In a couple of spots, notably nearby the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge, there were actual geysers of sewerage shooting around.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is a storm sewer, one which drains the Long Island Expressway high above. Thousands of gallons erupted from it.
Exciting, no?
“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.
locks waving
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One last set of shots from the 15th of July, depicting the transit of a Tug called “Daisy Mae” through the raised bascules of the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, spanning the fabulous Newtown Creek.
Coeymans Marine towing operates the tug.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once upon a time, a humble narrator spent a lot of hours focusing in on NY Harbor and the many vessels which navigate its gelatinous waters.
In recent years, not so much.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of my pals whom I used to chase shipping with have either passed away or have retired to greener pastures.
Also, I’ve become jaded.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ll miss these sort of sights in the coming years, I’m sure.
Saying that, one of the inviolable prerequisites for where I live “next” has involved the statement “there has to be a waterfront.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My beloved Creek.
Everybody I know keeps on saying to me that I can’t leave NYC since I love Newtown Creek so much. It’s time, though. Time for someone else to discover the place and scry its wonders.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuity is important to me. It’s one of the few parts of my Jewish upbringing that really “stuck.” If you learn something, write it down for somebody else to use as a starting point.
All in all, it’s all just bricks in the wall.
“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.
scintillant semicircle
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What you’re looking at above took place on 29th street in Long Island City on the 15th of July, at the Dutch Kills tributary of the Newtown Creek. It’s not the end of the story, it’s just the latest chapter in a tale that I began telling you all about in September of 2018.
For two and change years, the shorelines of the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek have been actively crumbling, dissecting, and collapsing. The situation has caused 29th street itself to become undermined, and subsequent bulkhead collapse continues.
2020’s “Unaltered Bone,” 2022’s “wide scattering,” “expiring orb,” “harmless stupidity,” “plumbed descent,” “yellow rays,” “crawl proudly,” “nemesis mirror,” “ugly trifles,” “torture of,” “verdant valleys,” “budding branches,” “crystal coldness” all tracked and followed the collapse.
The theme offered in all of these posts was “nothing matters and nobody cares.” I also offered that in the end I would make “them” care. Luckily, my pal Will Elkins – Newtown Creek Alliance’s Executive Director and the guy with the megaphone – managed to marshal the political world around 29th street. The moment in time in this post is his doing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek Alliance cares, and as it turns out – so do City Council Member Julie Won, the presumptive next NYS Assemblyman for LIC Juan Ardila, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Democratic District Leaders Emilia Decaudin and Nick Berkowitz, the executive committee of Queens Community Board 2, the President of LaGuardia Community College, and about fifty to sixty of the local business stakeholders.
This matters, and now everybody cares. I felt like this. Told y’all we’d ultimately make them all care.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
29th street is my last dragon to slay on Newtown Creek. After this, it’s all about moving out of New York City, and rebooting into a different life elsewhere. For the first time, I’m feeling like everything I’ve been working on and for in the last fifteen years is in good hands, and that there’s another generation ready and willing to take the wheel.
My beloved Creek is going to be just fine without me, with stewards like Will Elkins and the amazing staff he’s surrounded himself with at Newtown Creek Alliance fighting the good fight.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My Pal Val attended the presser, and after the event was done, she wanted to check out the Gaseteria/NYS Marshalls impound lot which was described to you at the beginning of this week.
We jumped in her car and went over to Greenpoint, and the English Kills tributary of Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a scrap metal operation located on English Kills, but their entrance is on Grand Street. All that material is brought in by truck, but shipped out via maritime barge. Just one of those barges carries the equivalent cargo of 38 heavy trucks.
It’s insane how little used this sort of hauling is utilized in the archipelago City of Greater New York.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back next week with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
thronged through
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
July 9th saw me briefly escaping the hell of zoom meetings and other obligations which had consumed a couple of my days after the the whole rented car adventure described earlier this week.
I took a “stretch my legs” walk around the neighborhood. As always, Sunnyside Yards never disappoints.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Part of my path carried me through the devastated industrial zone found along Northern Blvd. and 35th and 36th avenues.
What devastated it, you ask? Innovation Queens did. The proposed “Big Real Estate” mega project’s owners have been buying up the properties here and not renewing the leases of the businesses housed therein for about ten years. This allows them to claim that it’s a blighted area, without mentioning that they’re the ones who created the blight.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Headed up by a three headed serpent, Innovation Queens would demolish a triangular section at the southern edge of Astoria which currently provides employment to hundreds, who work at jobs that pay taxes. The replacement is a series of 20 plus story luxury apartment towers, hosting about 3,000 units, which would be tax free to their owners for about 20 years due to having the bare minimum of “affordable” units within them.
The three headed serpent is: Larry Silverstein – self described best friend of Donald Trump and Governor of the Real Estate Board of New York, Bedrock Properties – an entity, whom one of the principals of recently bragged to me, wrote the affordable housing laws in the State of Connecticut (in other news, a fox recently wrote the Connecticut rules governing hen houses), and the Kaufman Astoria Group – who used to be in the movie and TV production business. Grrr.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They’ve been allowing the properties they’ve acquired to decline, putting out tenants, and looking the other way at illegal dumping in the area. They also have neglected to clean their streets, remove graffiti, or do any of the other things property owners normally do.
The Three Headed Serpent claims that the area is “dark, dangerous, and forbidding.” This section didn’t used to be any of those things, before the three headed serpent slithered into the neighborhood.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were the last ones captured before I fell into the grip of a three day long adventure involving gastro intestinal distress, and a concurrent pinched nerve in my neck which that was the result of too much bad sleep. What made it bad was the GI issues. I had one of those weird 72 hours when you’re sleeping a lot, but never more than two hours at a time.
As always is the case with such matters, you just need to wait it out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, by mid week, I was back in fine fettle and moving around the world again. Cannot tell you how many people’s days I’ve ruined since with my presence.
Back tomorrow, with something that matters and proof that somebody cares.
“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 