June 18, 2025 11:00 am
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In a lot of ways, I spent my time on a recent NYC visit reminding myself of who I actually am – or at least who I was. My activities on this visit weren’t consciously planned that way, but given the far flung nature of my activities in NYC, it was hard not to reminisce.
That’s the Manhattan Bridge above, and I served the City of Greater New York as a Parade Marshall for its centennial. I’ve also done hundreds of ‘on microphone’ narrations about that bridge on boat tours while passing under it. –
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Mexican Navy ship which allided with the Brooklyn Bridge.
If both objects are moving it’s a ‘collision,’ whereas if one object is moving it’s an ‘allision.’ A few people asked me, after the incident, what all the sailors were doing up in the masts. Here’s some shots from 2012’s ‘Op Sail,’ where you can see other tall ship sailors performing similar ‘parade duties.’
As a note: annoyingly, Flickr has altered their code in the last few weeks, which has caused a number of images on older posts to lose their previews. Not sure what to do about that at the moment, and I really do not want to dive into recoding 16 years worth of daily posts to start fixing links.
Hopefully, they’ll resolve this on the server end, but that’s why a bunch of previews are ‘404ing’ at the moment on older posts. Sigh… the future kind of sucks, doesn’t it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYC ferry docked at Pier 11, and my Pal Val and I began heading towards the big orange boat. It had been about 12 hours at this point, relative to waking up at 1 in the morning back in Pittsburgh. Fatigue was definitely setting in, as was the desire for luncheon.
It was nice to smell salt in the air again, although I was frankly overwhelmed by the sewerage smell several times. My environmental adaptations have faded in my absence from ‘Home Sweet Hell.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The big orange boat left its dock at Whitehall and started the thirty minutes long journey to St. George on… Staten Island…
Along the way, I was busy with the camera, spotting tugs and getting shots of the maritime show on hand. I’ve always been amazed at how seldom most New Yorkers take advantage of the ferries – if nothing else – just for a change of scenery and to get out on the water for cheap.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nearing Staten Island, and the Kill Van Kull (aka tugboat alley) was busily spitting shipping out into the main sections of the lower harbor, from Port Elizabeth Newark at Newark Bay.
Funny thing is that I haven’t thought about this sort of thing much, or at all, in the last 2.5 years. It was when I was sitting in that damned wheelchair after breaking my ankle that I began longing to see this again.
I alluded to this the other day, but this visit ‘home’ was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. Normally, I suppress and ignore my ‘feelings,’ as being over emotional in daily life is how you make stupid mistakes and often costly errors, while offending others. I realize that this is exactly the opposite of what mental health professionals advise, but it works for me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m like a mafioso in terms of ‘never let anyone know what you’re going to do or say next,’ and one of my little mottos is ‘do what you say, say what you do.’ What that means is that people who know me in real life are often puzzled by my seemingly random decision making process and pivots, and they are often treated to long polemics about my personal rules, and subjected to apologetic confessionals about when I break one of those rules – usually due to expedience.
The tyranny of ‘the now’ rules over most days.
Back tomorrow with more from NYC.
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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.
Posted by Mitch Waxman
Categories: East River, New York Harbor, Tugboat
Tags: #nyharbor, New York City, photowalk, Pickman, Tugboat
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