Archive for November 2022
unguessed companion
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A scuttle through the lonely corridors of Long Island City continues in todays post. The rain had stopped, but it was still kind of wet out. One was heading, ultimately, to a subway stop. This was one of the nights where I walk for a few miles and then take a train back to Astoria.
Every step and every thought was consumed by the forthcoming “escape from New York” which Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself have been planning since the beginning of the year.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were several things which needed to be accomplished first, as a predicate for the escape. I had stupidly allowed my driver’s license to expire, so I needed to deal with the DMV and sort that out. They rejected my expired drivers license – which they themselves had issued – as a valid form of ID, which is the sort of Kafkaesque thing you’d expect from New York State’s agencies. My passport was also expired, and since that’s a form of ID that they do take – that meant I had to dance with the Feds first to get that reinstated in order to drive again. Feds first, DMV second to get a learners permit, and then I had to sit through a driver’s ed class and subsequently take a road test. There’s no point in trying to fight a bureaucratic process, you just have to go with the flow.
At any rate, by late spring, I was a licensed driver again in the State of New York. Our Lady and myself had decided on our destination after somewhat extensive travel using Amtrak in 2021, but now we had to buy a car. You can’t move to America from the Archipelago City off of its eastern shore without a car.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The car thing was unnecessarily complicated and took many months, due to the supply chain issues you keep hearing about on the news. We placed our order in early July, and received the unit in middle October, roughly two weeks after these photos were captured. A Toyota RAV4 hybrid, if you’re curious. Gets great mileage, 41mpg on average. A fill up gives me just under 600 miles of range per tank. City driving, it runs electric most of the time for the stop and go. Comfortable ride.
There’s all sorts of gizmos and systems onboard which I’m still figuring out how to operate. The difficulty in finding street parking in Queens is overstated, if you’re patient enough you’ll find a spot. It’s no better or worse than it was the last time I had a car in my charge, which was back in the early 1990’s. Sucked then, sucks now. It’s New York City, where nothing is easy. Get used to it or get out. I’m opting for the second option.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the computer systems which the new car offers is absolutely terrifying but works fantastically well – radar guided cruise control. When you’re on a highway and you engage it, this system maintains a designated following distance from the car in front of you. It slows down and speeds up automatically, and the sensors in the car read the painted lane indicators on the road and automatically keep you centered in your lane and the system makes steering adjustments for you. You still need to have your hands on the wheel, and the car nags at you if it doesn’t sense input from the driver, but the thing can actually drive itself to a certain extent.
Like I said, terrifying.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve already put more than a 1,000 miles on the odometer in the last three weeks, but to be fair – there was a trip back and forth to Pittsburgh. We’ve signed a lease there, and by Christmas, I’ll no longer be a New Yorker.
There’s been a couple of really nice moments in the interim, however, where my friends have gone “all in” to say goodbye. Newtown Creek Alliance awarded me with the “Reveal” award at our annual “Tidal Toast” gala and fundraiser, and my pals at the John J. Harvey Fireboat brought a big group of my friends and I out for one last Newtown Creek boat tour.
I’ll show you photos from the latter at some future date.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve removed myself from the many obligations which I found myself in for the last few years in preparation for this great escape – Community Board, Access Queens, Newtown Creek CAG executive committee, Working Harbor Committee Board. I’ll be stepping down from the board of Newtown Creek Alliance next week, as well. It’s all over.
Time to close the cover on this chapter. Pittsburgh, a rough beast is shambling towards you, clothed in black sack cloth. It’s name is Mitch.
“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.
bold entreaty
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On October 5, it was raining in the City. A diminishing meteorological system had stalled over the megalopolis for several days and all was moist. Regardless, one required a bit of exercise and time for thought, so off on a scuttle did a humble narrator go.
My plan was to hug the fence lines of the estimable Sunnyside Yards, and commit a few exposures to the “same old, same old.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned ad infinitum in the past, HQ is a few blocks away from the yards and my habit is to use it’s curvilinear border streets to transit back and forth to Newtown Creek, so I’ve passed through this corridor often over the nearly twenty years that I’ve been living in Astoria. As also mentioned, I’m suddenly trying to capture a lot of “portrait format” vertical shots.
That’s the Long Island Railroad passing through the Harold Interlocking, as seen from “hole reliable.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One really isn’t a “rail guy,” rather rail is something which I find very interesting as far as photography challenges go. Surprisingly difficult to get a decent rail shot, especially so in challenging lighting conditions. Shiny things festooned with bright lights which are moving at a high rate of speed is a problematic situation, camera wise. There’s also an abundance of busy detail in frame – wires and lamp posts with super bright lights, occluding infrastructure, all sorts of stuff to worry about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was just getting dark as I scuttled around and onto Skillman Avenue.
The former Citigroup building, or as I’ve previously styled it – the Sapphire Megalith of Long Island City – has always been one of the two far points that I focus on when I want everything in a certain part of a shot to be “tack sharp.” The engineering of a lens has a “hyper focal” distance built into it, which essentially means that when it’s focused on “infinity” at a particular aperture setting, everything between a certain point in front of the lens and infinity will contain the field of focus. In the shot above, and at the aperture I was using, that field was about twenty feet away from me. Notice the blur of the signal pole, which was about ten feet from me.
The other far point is the Empire State Building, which you used to be able to see from everywhere in Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One continued on. This was one of the walks which saw me carrying a light kit bag – one bright prime lens on the camera, another in the bag. I did have a little camera support gizmo with me, but didn’t end up using it at all on this walk, as I was in a handheld kind of mood.
Although I didn’t intend to walk all the way to Dutch Kills on this particular evening, it seems that’s where I was heading to.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the time I crossed Queens Boulevard, it was “proper dark” out.
Well, the night time is the right time, I always say…
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.
cryptical hill
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my little aphorisms is “NYC never looks better than it does while it’s raining.” My walk in the rain on October 3rd carried a humble narrator fairly far afield of Astoria’s 31st street, where I started.
Having crossed under the vampire infested steel carrying the elevated subways above – while dodging bicycles, cars, and guys riding on those big wheel things at Queens Plaza – one had entered the brave new world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you’re planning on stealing the sky, the first thing you have to do is rename something to break association with the past. For those well over the age of consent – let’s say you were alive during the Reagan Administration, for instance – the phrase “Queens Plaza” doesn’t have a great brand association. Lots of sordid stuff and institutional memories are packed into those two words. The “South Bronx” has the same problem.
Call the adjoining area “Court Square” instead, for instance.
So, back to stealing the sky. You’re going to need some help.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You’ll need to carefully shape your spending during election periods, and not just in the immediate vicinity. You’re going to have to go to a few functions in Albany too. Sit downs with labor organizations will need to happen as well, and with the connected parasites in the local non profit industrial complex. Maybe set up a couple of your own pet non profits in the area – art organizations, religious groups, that sort of thing. Make them love you and your donations, even when you show up to community board hearings in a white stretch hummer outfitted with an LED light kit. Doesn’t matter what the neighborhood thinks, the bosses like your money.
By this point, the players are coming to you. What you really need, though, is an advocate in City Hall to ask for rezonings or an exception. You’ll have to give them some political meat, so you have your architect draw in a bunch of one room elevator shaft adjacent apartments which will satisfy their need to announce “affordable housing.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Land will be yours. Whatever small potatoes business that’s currently housed on that land is either cheaply bought out or your friend in City Hall will relocate them with costs paid to Hunts Point in the Bronx or maybe Sunset Park’s Bush Terminal.
Soon… soon your dreams will come true, when you’ve privatized the sky. People will pay big money to see the sky, especially after your politician buddies have muddied the environmental history of the site where your sky stealing edifice will rise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long Island City. This shot is from the “historic district,” where the row houses of the architects Root and Rust are protected landmarks. This block where the domestic mailing address of Long Island City’s last Mayor – Patrick “BattleAx” Gleason – was. Gleason famously warned that once the Manhattan people got a hold of Queens…
So, you’ve stolen the sky – what’s next. Well… you started that non profit, right? Why not feed it a little bit of money and turn it into a lobbyist organization? You made a lot of money stealing the sky, why not go for another section of it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The roadblocks you hit – like going to those damned fundraisers in Albany, that jerk loser on the Community Board who held you up over public space, the whole zoning thing… why doesn’t NYC just allow you to build, and build, and build – until the entire sky has been blotted out? The entire system needs to be streamlined. You’re the one Ayn Rand wrote about, after all.
Unleash your lobbyists, have them say “Yes, in My Back Yard.”
“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.
favouring sign
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On October 3rd, it had been raining for days and would continue to do so for a couple more. One was climbing the walls at HQ, so an umbrella was deployed and to augment its function – I thought out a route wherein the built environment would aid me in my quest to not get soaked. 31st street in Astoria has an elevated subway track, and large warehouse and residential buildings which provide rain shadows.
Rain shadows, you ask?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I spend a lot of my time out of doors, wandering through inclement weather. The build environment has specific effects upon meteorological phenomena, at ground level. The rain shadow of a building is often visible, in that yard or two of sidewalk where the wall meets the pavement which will be drier than the rest. You still get rained on, but not as much as in the middle of the sidewalk.
I’ve got all kinds of NYC tips. My best one is “just keep moving.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are still a few spots where you can see the sky in LIC, but those are mainly because the undeveloped property where the lapse occurs is owned by the Government and either the politicians haven’t decided which one of their sponsors to sell it to for $1, or there’s some horrible need that one agency or another has for the parcel.
Hey, we need a place to burn truck tires in your neighborhood. Do it for the City, Queens. Same thing with homeless shelters and waste transfer stations and power plants and sewer plants and railroads and bridges and highways and airports and…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The new Queens Plaza is a dystopia.
Mirror box rhombuses thrust rudely at the stolen sky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The noise levels in this part of Queens, which is now zoned for the densest form of residential, would be considered an environmental crime in Europe. Multiple subway lines, above and below, scream through the liminal spaces of the elevated tracks.
On the street, traffic of every sort and description.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thanks to the residential conversion of this former industrial zone, pedestrian traffic volume here is now considerable. Said pedestrians, like a humble narrator did, must weave their steps between traffic islands set into the flow of automotive and bicycle traffic pulsing from the Queensboro Bridge.
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.
brood capriciously
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sometimes you get lucky, as I did on September 29th.
It had been raining for a couple of days, and the clouds began to clear just before sunset. One set out for a short constitutional walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The light was staggering. Saturated and warm.
As soon as I got to Northern Blvd. I knew where I’d be heading.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunnyside Yards, which is within throwing distance of HQ.
Just as I got there, it looked like the sky had caught on fire.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I made my way to “Hole Reliable” just as an LIRR train set was passing beneath it.
Continued on, a humble narrator did.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Skillman Avenue at Honeywell, just as the light show was ending.
This was a short walk, stretching my legs, as it were, so I headed back to Northern Blvd. intending to head back to Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the time I got to another one of my catalog of fence holes, dusk was giving way to night.
“Every time might be the last time.”
“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 