The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A humble narrator stumbled out of HQ in Pittsburgh’s Borough of Dormont at about five in the morning, fired up the Mobile Oppression Platform, and then drove through the entire state of Pennsylvania into New Jersey, and then across the George Washington and Triborough Bridges into NYC. I timed it right, and was traveling at 50 mph on the Harlem River Drive by mid afternoon.

All told, the drive is about 400 miles – and with bathroom and lunch breaks, costs about 7 hours of my life and a full tank of gasoline to execute. One wasn’t planning on returning to the corruption of the nest until the end of this year, but exigency is what it is.

Pictured above is the Maspeth Avenue Plank Road site, along the fabulous Newtown Creek. In my absence, decking and seating has been installed.

I had some family business to attend to, back in the old neighborhood, if you’re wondering.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I was staying at a friend’s place in Middle Village, but he wasn’t going to get home from work until well after 5 p.m., so I had a bit of time to kill.

The Maspeth Avenue Plank Road site has been discussed endlessly here at Newtown Pentacle.

When I first started offering walking tours of Newtown Creek’s uplands, this often flooded spot was hidden by invasive weeds and thorny brush. A buddy of mine, who works nearby, had a stack of wooden palettes he couldn’t get rid of, so we loaded them into the bed of his pickup and set them into the soil here to create a pathway. Literally recreating a plank road at Plank Road.

My pals at Newtown Creek Alliance have been working here since, executing no small amount of time and treasure to ensure that an intentional point of public access to Newtown Creek exists in Queens. In the intervening years, the place has become quite well used by workers and Maspeth residents for a variety of purposes. If you build it, they will come.

As you’d imagine, returning here was a bit of a ‘head trip’ for me.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

“Why bother, it’s a dump,” “they should just fill it in and pave it over”… I’ve heard it all from the people of Maspeth. The only way I ever found to motivate that part of the Newtown Creek world was to intone that Superfund money was going to go to the Hipsters in Brooklyn and Ridgewood (whom they generally hate), and Queens would get left out of the equation unless they got involved with the process. That side of the community, however, never really bothered to get involved with things here so my colleagues and I ‘took the bull by the horns’ for them instead.

Contemplative after my long drive, I took just a few photos. There’s very little on Newtown Creek which I haven’t exhaustively photographed – and especially so the Plank Road – which I’ve shot at every interval of the day, including the dead of night. This is where I photographed the implosion of the old Kosciuszcko Bridge from, as an example, and I’ve brought hundreds of curious lookie loos here on tours over the years.

It was weird, being here again. It almost felt like I was visiting my own grave. I always referred to this area as ‘the happy place,’ but instead I was filled with a deep melancholy, and possessed by reminisces of times past and absent friends.

Back tomorrow.

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“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.