Archive for October 2022
times amidst
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A long walk continues! From Astoria to LIC’s Blissville, and then looping around and through Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section, on the 23rd of September of 2022. “Every time might be the last time…”
Scuttling along the hoary asphalt, which armors the oil choked loam of this ancient outpost of the decadent Dutch, a humble narrator suddenly realized that both altitude AND declination were warping, as he had blindly wandered onto those entirely euclidian angles which are offered by the New York State Department of Transportation via the bicycle and pedestrian pathway of the Kosciuszcko Bridge which said agency maintains.
Thoroughly modern in both function and design, the Kosciuszcko Bridge(s) nevertheless are visually pleasing to me – a barren creature, broken and bruised, bereft, bankrupt and often beleaguered – your always humble narrator. The Kosciuszcko Bridge carries, in addition to the path one scuttled atop, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and its teeming multitudes of automotive wanderers, high over the iridescent waveforms of an aqueous ribbon of urban neglect which is known, to modernity, as the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The burning thermonuclear eye of God itself was descending behind New Jersey, just as the monocular of the camera was being moved into position high over the jellies and tepid currents of said waterway. One actuated the shutter button again and again while shuffling along…
It has been years since one has spoken to you, lords and ladies, in this sort of way. Colloquial verbiage and easy conversational voicing has been my intent in recent intervals. Nearing the end of all things, and the shadowy beginnings of a new chapter, one instead feels a deep desire to revisit the past. To plumb the depths.
Always have I been an outsider, attracted to things ancient and unloved.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Who can guess, thereby, all that might be buried down there – beneath the waters buoying that tugboat? What foul truth might lurk, concealed in the black mayonnaise which sits patiently along the bottom of the glacier carved ancestral valley that Newtown Creek floods and calls its bed?
The “bad water place” is what one of the Lenape words for the Newtown Creek is said to translate into English as. That, and those, who are rumored to dwell in the broken stone floor of the nearby Hells Gate section of the East River, might know other words. Perhaps, and perhaps not. I’ve likely said too much.
Let’s change the subject… how about that sports ball team hereabouts? Might this be finally the year of affirmation for our civic and mutual worth, displayed to the globe by champion status in sports ball?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The locale of the forbidden colony of New Arnheim, detested and personally destroyed by the Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant, is not too far away from this spot, just east and towards the Brooklyn side. So too is the forgotten Blissvillian tributary of Wolf Creek, and the overwhelming necropolis called Calvary Cemetery.
The latter hosts its own storm sewer and drainage systems, whose horrifying outflows into the Newtown Creek are not just splendiferous in coffin varnish, adipocere, and formaldehyde. The black mayonnaise underlying the waters here are rich with acrylonitrile concentrations – according to environmental scientists. Toxic, certain groupings of this type of organic chemicals are commonly referred to as “cadaverine” and “putrescine.” This and many other reasons underlie the presence of signage around this waterway adjuring the citizenry against consuming fish or crabs captured from its volume.
This outflow pipe for the cemetery is found directly below the railroad tracks in the photograph above, which are upon the former site of the Penny Bridge crossing demolished in 1939, and a former Long Island Railroad stop also called Penny Bridge which was eliminated by the MTA under mysterious circumstance in 1998. This is the part of Newtown Creek where hauntings of the Blissville Banshee were oft reported.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Horror lurks everywhere along Newtown Creek. Approximately 170,000 vehicle trips cross the Kosciuszcko daily, as reported by Governmental agencies knowledgable about such statistical data. One wonders… statistically speaking, how many times a day does a murderer cross the bridge? Figure there’s two people in every car… how many murderers are there per hundred thousand New Yorkers?
As above, so below?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One found his way back down to the poison ground, alongside First Calvary Cemetery, and its tomb legions, at the outskirts and border of both Blissville and ancient Maspeth, in Queens. The camera’s functional optics were swapped out, and a quick conversion over to the “night kit” was effected. The “daylight” zoom lenses were stored away, and my next steps considered. Into the darkness, yes, but which pathway?
Ahem… truth be told, my feet were hurting at this point so I just called a cab and headed back to HQ in Astoria. I had another busy couple of days coming up, and…
More tomorrow, 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.
voyages incalculable
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was accomplishing a longish scuttle on the 23rd of September, one which saw me perambulating from the rolling hills of almond eyed Astoria in Queens towards the concrete devastations of the lugubrious Newtown Creek and the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Pictured above is the view from mid span on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.
“Every time might be the last time.” That’s my mantra at the moment, and thereby I’m trying to visit everywhere one last time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the poetically named “Unnamed Canal” along Newtown Creek, I spotted the tug Miss Madeline struggling a barge against an incoming tide flooding in from the East River. There’s a bit of laminar or horizontal tidal movement in this section of Newtown Creek, whereas in other areas – notable the tributaries like Dutch Kills and Maspeth Creek, where tidal action is discernible only in a strictly vertical form.
Everybody tells me that I’ll be coming back to NYC within two years. This is extremely unlikely. If things go badly for me in Pittsburgh, Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself will just move on to the next place, or the one after that. I’m sure that there will be occasional visits here for work or extended family events, but my residence will be elsewhere.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey, it’s the New York City Department of Environmental Protections’ Newtown Creek Resource Recovery and Wastewater Treatment Facility pictured above. Can you imagine being the person who answers the phones there? Due to my influence, everybody associated with the various Newtown Creek community groups have just started using “the sewer plant in Greenpoint” instead. Give DEP five years and they’ll have probably inserted the first stanza of “T’was the night before Christmas” into the place’s name by then. Jeez.
My next destination was the Newtown Creek Nature Walk, which was funded under the NYC Charter requirement known as “1% for art.” The stipulation commands NYC to commit one percent of the budget of any new municipal construction project to either public open space or to a work of public art. Phase 2 & 3 of this Nature Walk was a project which a humble narrator was deeply involved with, as a member of the community oversight “Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee” or NCMC. I ended up putting in a lot of hours for this one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From Phase 1 of the Nature Walk, one observed Miss Madeline still struggling against the physics of the tidal cycle. They had maneuvered out of Unnamed Canal and into Whale Creek, as pictured above.
The hour was beginning to grow late, and my desire was to find myself somewhere else, with an interesting and elevated point of view, when the descent of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself behind New Jersey occurred in about 60 or so minutes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One leaned into it, and began quickly scuttling eastwards, past the largest source of greenhouse gas in the borough of Brooklyn, pictured above and found at the Department of Environmental Protection property known as “the sewer plant in Brooklyn.” Those four pipes are burning off the methane produced by the sewer plant. The venturi jet burner is tuned up to produce a clear flame, and you need to look for the heat distortion emanating from the things to visualize the horror of it all.
DEP has been working with the National Grid outfit for nearly a decade to work out a “waste to energy” program which would harvest the greenhouse gas, and will often talk about this project in public in a manner suggesting that it’s up and running, but in reality not a single visible screw has been turned yet and it’s kind of a scandal waiting to explode and embarrass them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Every time might be the last time…
You may have noticed that I’m centering that scaffold clad chimney in a few of my shots lately. It’s all that remains of Van Iderstine, the ghastly fat rendering company who’s redolent presence defined the Queens side of the Greenpoint Avenue for nearly a hundred years. It’s being taken down and demolished currently, which feels like a quite appropriate thing for me to witness, as regarding my own situation. The edifices of the past and all that.
More next week, 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.
local dangers
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off – Newtown Creek Alliance will be honoring John Lipscomb of Riverkeeper, Christine Holowacz, and… your humble narrator… tonight, (the 20th) at the annual “Tidal Toast” fundraising event. Ticketing information can be found here, and the tax deductible donation of your ticket money will help to fund NCA’s ongoing mission to Reveal, Restore, and Revitalize Newtown Creek. NCA has been at the center of my public life over the last 15 years, and I hope you can make it. This is officially my finale, in terms of public facing events, and the end of this chapter of my life.
On the 23rd of September, a humble narrator set out for what ended up being an extremely long walk. Upon leaving HQ, a black cat with yellow eyes skated past me. Such an occurrence is always indicative of a good photo day coming. You have to learn how to listen to Queens, I always say, and recognize her omens.
The late model pick up truck pictured above was the first cool thing that she showed me. I’m going to miss Queens, but I don’t think she’ll miss me. I don’t think anyone in NYC is actually going to miss “me,” rather they’ll miss the idea of me. I think, on the other hand, that there will be a lot of people happy to see me go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My next stop was at “hole reliable” at Sunnyside Yards, which lived up to the name I’ve assigned it. Hole Reliable is a surveyor’s aperture cut out of the plate steel fencing over the Harold Interlocking.
Wonders, I tell you, wonders.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My pathway continued on, south to Greenpoint Avenue and then into Blissville, which carried me over the Long Island Expressway.
Why do I think no one will miss me, and why some will be happy to see me go? Experience. It’s the way of NYC. When somebody leaves the megalopolis, or dies here, there’s a lot of hugging and handshaking for a little while but then life goes on. As far as the “happy to see me go” people, I’m either in their way right now, or perceived as a wizened scold whose knowledge of past events and the circumstances is inconvenient to the current dialectic on offer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp, in Long Island City’s Blissville section, that’s where my next stop was. Railroad Avenue, specifically. I call it DUGABO.
Melancholy actually rules my roost at the moment. On the one hand, ebullient excitement for all of the challenges and opportunities that relocating to a different part of the country offers is undeniable. Conversely, I’m leaving behind everything I know and everything I’ve ever known. It’s manic and depressing – all at the same time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a reason that they named this particular street in Long Island City “Railroad Avenue.” During my travels on Amtrak last year, one of the realizations I enjoyed was the one that stated “Everywhere you go, there’s a Railroad Avenue.” Really. I found one along Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont, of all places.
I’ve been forced to craft a little speech in order to save time. It starts off with “Not to get all Doctor Who here, but we’re all different people at different times of our lives…” Deep thoughts have accompanied the underway diving expedition of ridding myself of the material detritus of a lifetime in preparation for this move. Over all, I like to think that I’ve done some good, in this most recent version of myself.
The trash bags in front of HQ have included yearbooks from schools that some early variant of me attended, the toys and tools acquired over a half century by several of the “me’s”, and clothing worn by a younger man which no longer fits.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, a humble narrator is currently exhausted. A thousand thousand small but important details are being maintained in active thought, and a never ending landslide of physical task work, that I’ve scheduled around garbage pickup days, is underway at HQ.
There’s no way that NYC is going to let me go without an attempt at slamming some kind of whammy at me on the way out – that’s my governing terror. One of the reasons I’m so exhausted is that I have my radar on at full power every time I leave HQ just to buy a bagel.
More tomorrow.
“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.
insistent pleas
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off – Newtown Creek Alliance will be honoring John Lipscomb of Riverkeeper, Christine Holowacz, and… your humble narrator… this coming Thursday night (the 20th) at the annual “Tidal Toast” fundraising event. Ticketing information can be found here, and the tax deductible donation of your ticket money will help to fund NCA’s ongoing mission to Reveal, Restore, and Revitalize Newtown Creek. NCA has been at the center of my public life over the last 15 years, and I hope you can make it. This is officially my finale, in terms of public facing events, and the end of this chapter of my life.
On the 17th of September, a humble narrator conducted a Newtown Creek walking tour for a group of students from New York University. Our path involved a meetup in Sunnyside along Queens Boulevard, then a walk over the Kosciuszcko Bridge and then through “oil country” in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section. We then visited the Nature Walk at the sewer plant, and I released the students back into the wild at Manhattan Avenue.
Me? I wandered over the Pulaski Bridge and back to Queens afterwards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Every time might be the last time” is my mantra at the moment, so even if I’ve got a hundred shots of the Queens Midtown Tunnel, I’m going to get in one last exposure of it.
I was heading to LIC for the subway, which is oddly enough one of the things I’m really going to miss. The MTA is shit, but it’s mostly reliable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The most photogenic of all of NYC’s subway lines is the 7, and that’s a statement I’ll swear to in court. The shot above is from the first of its stations in Queens, the Vernon Jackson stop.
20 years ago, I’d occasionally use Vernon Jackson as an alias when somebody asked me to sign in on something but wasn’t checking ID, but these days LIC has become so populous that the nomen has lost its anonymity. Other names I’ve offered to strangers include Lex Triomani, Septa Katz, and my all time favorite – John Johnson. I used the last one once when talking to a group of Republicans, as they generally like people whose first and last name are the same – Rob Roberts, Tommy Thomson, Mike Michaels – that sort of thing.
The greatest of all Republican names remains that of the former Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee – Dick Armey. The best way to disperse a group of Republicans – as a note – is to say “Hey, I think I just saw Karl Rove across the street.” They’ll panic, as he’s their bogeyman.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 18th of September was a Sunday, and I decided to quaff an afternoon pint of Guinness at my local on Astoria’s Broadway in celebration. The fellow pictured above reminded me of a character from a French or Belgian comic and I couldn’t resist cracking out a shot of him passing by on that sweet bike he was riding.
Me? I was getting ready to and girding up to commit professional suicide in the next week.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve been a member of, and Transportation Committee chair, Community Board 1 here in Queens for a while. While walking over to the first in person meeting since Covid, I noticed yet another century old utility pole ready to break in half under the weight of the cables which keep the neighborhood connected and electrified. I attended the meeting, and formally offered my resignation during the thing.
Seriously, some of you people are going to have to start reporting things like the utility pole pictured above to 311 or NYC is going to come to a screeching halt when I’m gone.
Anyway, I resigned, people applauded my service, and were secretly or not so secretly happy to see me go.
The next night, I resigned from Access Queens, a transit group I’ve been a member of the executive committee of which advocates for riders of the 7 train. The night after that, I resigned from the Steering Committee of the Newtown Creek CAG, and the night after that I resigned from the board of the Working Harbor Committee.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve been unsubscribing from the various NYC email lists and newsletters which have kept me informed over the last decade. Also, several calls have gone out to colleagues and friends. The last thing that I’m still a part of is Newtown Creek Alliance, and I’m going to be resigning there fairly soon as well.
It’s wild to again be free of having to worry about things that I have no control over, and since all of these resignations have been received, I’ve had not one single person offer a reprimand to me that stated “you can’t say that.”
More tomorrow 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.
seventy steps
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off – Newtown Creek Alliance will be honoring John Lipscomb of Riverkeeper, Christine Holowacz, and… your humble narrator… this coming Thursday night (the 20th) at the annual “Tidal Toast” fundraising event. Ticketing information can be found here, and the tax deductible donation of your ticket money will help to fund NCA’s ongoing mission to Reveal, Restore, and Revitalize Newtown Creek. NCA has been at the center of my public life over the last 15 years, and I hope you can make it. This is officially my finale, in terms of public facing events, and the end of this chapter of my life.
Heading back towards Astoria, from a far ranging walk on the 16th of September, which saw me visiting places familiar and loved, I decided that the course northwards and towards HQ would involve 48th street, where Woodside and Sunnyside collide. To get there, I scuttled along an access road that follows the Brooklyn Queens Expressway’s connection to the Long Island Expressway.
This is a lonely path through my “happy place” borderlands of Industrial Maspeth. You needn’t fret overly about marauders, muggers, or molesters here, instead you worry about monsters. Not metaphorical ones either. If you’re going to get got by a werewolf or zombie in NYC, this is the neighborhood where that’ll happen. Vampires? Nope, that’s Queens Plaza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cool cars abound in the borough of Queens, but they’re given to mechanical failure, so tow trucks also must exist. Universal rule.
At the moment, since this is another one of the things people keep asking me, I’m still maintaining my every other day schedule of “part of one day out shooting and then one day back at HQ.” The length of the walks I take on one of the “out days” is based purely around whatever else I’m obliged to do that day and how the physical plant is behaving. Of late, it hasn’t been too easy to detach myself prior to about 4-5 in the afternoon, and as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself is currently dropping down behind New Jersey sometime in the 6 o’clock hour here in NYC so I seem to be catching a lot of sunsets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My mood is fairly serious but I’m not as anxious or stressed out as you’d imagine, as I’m driven by the exigent circumstances of the day, and I’m actually feeling quite positive. As described in the past, one of the things I do when scuttling around is think in a meditative fashion. I like to believe that all of this alone time over the last fifteen or so years has allowed me to figure some things out, about myself at least. What I can say is that I’m a very different person than I used to be.
Physically, I’m what I’d describe as “ok” but I’m still really fat and haven’t been able to drop the weight I put on during COVID, despite all the walking. Saying that, the trick left foot seems to be a little less tricky these days and despite being in my middle 50’s – four out of seven days a week I’ll walk between five and fifteen miles around this hellish industrial zone while lugging around ten pounds of camera crap with me. Rain, snow, hot, cold. That’s me. I’m still made of leather.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One looks forward to living in the Pittsburgh area. I’m thinking about augmenting my nascent car ownership with an electric pedal assist bike of some kind, which would allow me the option of parking the larger vehicle somewhere and then exploring the various neighborhoods of Pittsburgh on 2 wheels until I get a feel for the place. As mentioned in the past, I don’t think you can see or understand a place from behind the wheel of a car, as you’re moving too fast to notice things. Even a bike moves a bit too fast. Walking, that’s the trick, but until you’ve found pathways through a city it’s best to be mobile in case trouble lurks.
Perhaps I can find a pair of robot pants which would walk up and down those hills in Pittsburgh for me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, there’s all sorts of stuff there that you can just walk right up to and photograph without having to shoot through a chain link fence like you do with literally everything in NYC. Pictured above is the interchange between the BQE and LIE, at the Maspeth/Sunnyside/Woodside border mentioned at the top of this post, the one whose access road I was walking along – and it’s a photo shot through a chain link fence.
This point of view is found along 48th street, at the Woodside and Sunnyside Border with the happy place of Industrial Maspeth. From here out, as I headed north, 48th street is entirely residential for several blocks. Nothing too interesting to shoot there, I’m afraid. I also don’t really like taking pictures of people’s homes, as it looks really, really suspicious and weird. Given how suspicious and weird I look as a default…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily for a humble narrator, just as I got to Queens Boulevard at 48th street, the Q104 bus was pulling up and after a quick “maximum boogie” sprint across the so called “Boulevard of Death,” I was utilizing the MTA’s newish OMNY fare payment system to buy myself a ride the rest of the way back home to the rolling hills of almond eyed Astoria.
The next few days were meant to be rather “involved,” and they certainly were. More on that tomorrow.
“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 