Archive for December 2022
myriad other
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
November 7th, and one back in NYC – I had to move the car for alternate side, so I went to a point of elevation nearby HQ for an hour and shot a bunch of train photos not unlike the one above. I also ran out a pretty large panorama shot, which you can look at here.
I’m working on a City focused transliteration of the Bible which I dub “The New Yorker Testament” wherein the lord rests on the third day as there’s no alternate side, and it’s got a “good spot.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
November 9th, I had a few minutes to spend on my own pursuits and needed some “head space” from all the have-to’s of moving out of the City, after making my last run to the scrap yard. I hopped in the car and headed over to my beloved Creek.
While in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section, at Apollo Street and while shooting the photo above, I noticed a freight train moving westwards along the Lower Montauk Tracks of the Long Island Railroad, on the Queens side of Newtown Creek, and thought “hey, I’ve got a car now, I can do this.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Using routes familiar and loved, one zoomed over to Maspeth’s Haberman siding and got there just as this GATX freight unit was heading back towards the Fresh Pond yard. Win!
More next week, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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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.
stole timid
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You want to know what heavy traffic is like? When the driver of a car on a highway has the time and opportunity to stick a camera through his car’s moon roof and take night photos, that’s what heavy traffic is like. After our all day drive from Pittsburgh to NYC which moved at 70-75 mph for hundreds of miles, we ground down into the evertraffic leading to the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey. I had crossed half of the state of New Jersey in the time it took me to go the last ten miles on my way to that bridge. Uggh.
These pinch points leading to the landform of Long Island, with Brooklyn and Queens on its western edge, are the strategic weak points of NYC. The real estate people have managed to cut off all of the water access for freight traffic on the Hudson and East River frontages because “affordable housing,” so it’s up to trucks to feed and supply the millions who live on a very Long Island.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Port Elizabeth Newark is thankfully growing by about 5-7% per year, and the port is the largest single driver of the regional economy of the NYC Metropolitan Area, after Wall Street. Unlike Wall Street, the port is constrained in its growth by the fact of these pinch points. All of that commercial activity has to flow into and across NYC to reach first Brooklyn and Queens, and then continue on to Nassau and Suffolk via either the Verrazzano Bridge on the south or the combination of the George Washington and Triborough Bridges on the north. These trucks sit and idle on neighborhood streets during their transit, painting the City with diesel soot.
Bike lanes ain’t gonna save ya, NYC. It ain’t Uber or AirBNB or any of the other entities which the politicians and activists like to blame that’s causing the traffic. It’s last mile delivery services like FedEx, Amazon, and UPS on the small scale and semi tractor trailers on the large. As the local economy expands, so does truck traffic, unless something changes.
Annoyingly, something like 40% of the truck traffic required to feed these growing local economies of NYC’s urban and suburban zones thereby travels through Northern Manhattan with the rest moving through Staten Island and Brooklyn. Think about that one, and mention it to either Mayor “YIMBY Swagger,” or Governor “Spread the Money Around to make the Building Trade Council happy” and ask them about it when you’re graced with their august presence.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s funny, the way that the internet works. Writing critiques about the policy situation in NYC, and the endemic political corruption of this new Tammany Hall system, has algorithmically caused Google and other services to read that as a cue to feed me Republican propaganda. Jordan Peterson, Tim Pool, Ben Shapiro, and other noxious voices from that side of the aisle populate my feeds these days. That’s annoying, and illustrates how the internet breeds political polarization.
I’m not a Fascist sympathizer or “on the right,” rather I’m what I’ve always been – a centrist liberal not afraid enough of the “L” word to say “Progressive.” You know who was a progressive? Robert Moses. Nelson Rockefeller too.
I believe that if something isn’t hurting somebody else it should be legal, and that if an existing law or set of policies is restricting somebody else’s freedoms we should get rid of those laws. More freedom is better than less. I also believe that it’s often best to do nothing at all, from a Governmental point of view. I will opine that the Government of New York City is bought and paid for by “big real estate” and that the shit flies which populate that industrial sector will move on to the next turd as soon as NYC has been destroyed by them, when the Politicians they fund are no longer offering them tax breaks which create 30-40% margins for new construction. All of the crap the “electeds” spout to the press falls apart behind the curtain, and they consort with characters whom they would publicly castigate.
Really, ask your Councilmember what it’s like working with Jared Kushner, or Larry Silverstein, or Donald Trump on “affordable housing” real estate projects, and then watch them run away from you while talking about systemic something or some sort of justice thingie.
“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.
thereafter amidst
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The day before we were scheduled to head back to NYC from Pittsburgh, Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself had decided to leave the car parked at the AirBNB we were staying in and we headed out on foot for a bit of a celebratory bar crawl on one of the “main streets” in Dormont, where we had just signed a lease. I’m pretty serious about not operating a vehicle while impaired by alcohol, at least at this stage of my life.
We visited a drinking establishment that specialized in mead and cider, where I enjoyed the hell out of a sour cherry juice infused glass of mead. I felt like a Viking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our revelry continued into the evening hours, and since it was a full moon I couldn’t resist cracking out a few shots. We headed back to the AirBNB and packed our stuff up for the trip back to “Home Sweet Hell.”
As mentioned in the past, the drive between Pittsburgh and NYC encompasses roughly 400 miles. The highways post speed limits that are largely 70 mph, but in practice traffic is moving quite a bit faster than that. It’s an all day drive, when you factor in bathroom breaks and meals. You don’t find yourself in any sort of traffic nightmare until you’re about 40-50 miles from the Hudson River in New Jersey as it’s mostly a rural route. This is one of those drives where the highway exits are spaced out 30-50 miles from each other.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At one of the “rest” stops we took, I spotted this construction vehicle and instantly regretted the choice I made in buying a Toyota instead of a TerraMac. Look at that thing! Gah. Zombie deterrent of the highest order, Bro.
At any rate, we arrived back in NYC safe and sound, and began to really tear into the remaining work and packing up we needed to do to escape New York. I ended up throwing out about half of the material goods I’ve accumulated over the decades spent here in NYC, judging everything against a rubric of “do I really want to pay a mover to drive this thing 400 miles west.” A lot of personal archaeological finds occurred during this process. I found the letter that my high school girlfriend sent me to announce our break up, several yarmulkes which came into my possession at family weddings and Bar Mitzvah‘s, and all the other minutiae of life which I had been holding onto for decades.
November would end up being a very busy month, in terms of “have to’s.” Multiple runs to the scrap yard to dispose of electronics and metallic items we weren’t going to take with us, then there was a bunch of paper which went to a different scrap yard, all that sort of stuff. The camera was with me for all of this, but seldom did I hit the shutter.
So much to do…
“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.
steep mysterious
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
November 3rd and 4th found Our Lady of the Pentacle and a humble narrator wandering about in the South Hills section of Pittsburgh, and viewing a series of available rentals. There were a couple of real gems – buildings with great bones – as they say – which would seriously benefit from an investment in the modernization of the house’s physical plant but which didn’t fit our aims. We saw places with old fixtures, creaky stairs, and windows which seemed like they were about to fall away from the walls. We also saw a few “modern” places which also weren’t quite what we were looking for, neighborhood wise.
Luckily, Our Lady had expertly used the Zillow service to find the ideal landing pad for us in Pittsburgh, and we then secured the new address with a lease. This particular post is actually being written in that space, in the finished basement which is going to be my new office space. We now live in the Borough of Dormont, in the City of Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, I actually need to come back to NYC next weekend to manage the movers and tie down a few loose ends. Truly am I looking forward to driving the 400 miles back and forth, a humble narrator sarcastically offers. As of next week’s Wednesday, I’m no longer going to be a New Yorker. Well… I’ll always be an “I’M WALKIN HERE” New Yorker, but there you go.
We signed the lease for the new digs and then all of a sudden our calendars were clear. It was decided to go exploring a bit so we hopped into the car and set about that purpose.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Carnegie is another one of the many communities that are part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan setup. I had noticed an interesting series of Church towers while driving past the community on a highway, which I wanted to take a closer look at, and we headed over there for a bit of an “explore.”
Funnily enough, that building in the shot above houses the Carnegie Historical Society, and that white car in front of it is my own. We randomly parked in front of the place, and when I got out of the car, the showrunner of the Carnegie Historical Society was standing in the doorway, and broadly smiling at me like he had been expecting us to show up.
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.
clustered towers
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
November 2nd found Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself waking up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. As mentioned in Friday’s post, it was a particularly foggy morning, but we had a mission. This trip to the Paris of the Midwest involved finding a rental property for us to land in, and we had a combination of professional realtor and Zillow appointments to oblige. You gotta eat, though, and on our way to a local diner for a heavy breakfast the car was parked in a multi story lot building which sits alongside the streetcar or “T” Red Line.
I know, it’s crazy. The Government types don’t want you to take your car into the city center to alleviate congestion, so they’ve set up for pay parking nearby mass transit lines rather than shaming you for not riding a bike into the City. Lots of people ride bikes here, and use them to commute (there’s bike and scooter share systems), but they’re not the answer to cancer or the cure for baldness like the bicycle people will tell you they are back in NYC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T is a smallish transit system, at least as compared to the Subways of NYC. It’s not 24 hour, but it offers fairly frequent service. Pittsburgh, historically, used to have an enormous web of street car or “trolley” systems prior to the age of the automobile, and the Eisenhower era’s Interstate Highway projects. You still see iron trolley poles all over the place, and I’ve read about streetcar lines that went all the way out to the exurbs like Butler – which is about fifty miles to the north of the City Center.
I should mention that I’m just starting to learn about this place which we’ve chosen to make our new home. Ignorance of this new place has been a fascinating experience for one such as myself, who can walk around Brooklyn and Queens and tell you where a building contractor sourced the bricks from for this structure or that one. It’s going to be a lot of fun to learn about Pittsburgh, I tell’s ya.
For instance – driving etiquette is different here. Look up the “Pittsburgh Left” as an example.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After we quaffed breakfast, we had a half hour or so to kill before our first appointment, and since there was an incredible Roman Catholic Church with a huge graveyard nearby, I drove us into the cemetery to take a quick lookie look.
Everything I’m up to at this stage of the process is basically scouting, but there’s LOTS of photographic opportunity here. After previous visits to the area, we had narrowed our search down to the South Hills area – a series of medium density suburbs found in the 5-10 miles from City Center zone. We felt an affinity for the neighborhoods found in the South Hills Borough of Dormont, in particular, so that’s where our focus point was placed.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 