The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This post begins in DUPBO, or ‘Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp,’ and ends in DUGABO – ‘Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.’ I’ve caught a lot of crap from the mouth breather crowd over in Maspeth for these terms over the years, but there you are. ‘Eff’ them. You have to refer to ‘zones’ along the Newtown Creek somehow, with some sort of geographical reference for an otherwise fairly unfamiliar area.

As mentioned in prior posts, I was walking with a couple of the ‘new guys’ at Newtown Creek Alliance, chatting and telling stories. Sometimes histories instead of tales, but I was trying to pass on my legendarily combative view of the Creek situation to them.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the view of the fairly ancient Long Island Railroad yard at Hunters Point, which dates back to 1870. As mentioned in a prior posts, the MTA seems to have found the funding to build a flood wall around the facility. It’s as ugly and ‘anti street’ as they could possibly manage.

This is the part of today’s post where I say ‘Bah!’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, at Railroad Avenue and Van Dam Street in Blissville, that’s what the picture above delivers. We walked down to Railroad Avenue, and since leaving NYC I’ve discovered that almost every major city in the United States has a ‘Railroad Avenue.’ Universally, they all suck as far as being dirty and the place where polluting industries like waste transfer stations ot asphalt and concrete factories set up. I mean, this is logical, given that ‘Railroad Avenue’ has rail tracks.

At Newtown Creek, in the Blissville section of Long Island City, only Waste Management regularly uses the rail – everything else here is truck based.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’ll be talking about that giant monster of a last mile warehouse facility that’s going up along Dutch Kills in a subsequent post, but I’ve included this shot just to bring home the scale of the structure. Huge!

Is it connected to the industrial canal it sits alongside? Is it connected to the freight tracks which it neighbors? What exactly does the NYC Economic Development Corporation do, other than letting developers run amok with no requirements or ‘buy ins’ so as to not be the worst possible neighbors?

I’m told there’s going to be six active loading bays within the building, with exterior truck parking that can accomodate 118 semis. Y’all do know that semis don’t turn off their engines while waiting for a chance to deliver cargo, right? That at any given moment there will be at least a hundred heavy trucks just sitting there and idling alongside the Long Island Expressway? That there is no way for those trucks to get here without traveling through Sunnyside, Woodside, Astoria, Maspeth, Ridgewood, or Greenpoint? That one maritime barge would carry the equivalent cargo of 38 of those trucks? It isn’t bike lanes that are causing the traffic to increase by about 5% per year.

Ok, twice today – ‘Bah!”

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The two fellows from NCA had to head back to HQ, at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, and get back to work saving the world. Me? I had something that I wanted to see, so I headed back into Queens and in the direction of the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek.

Evening would find me in Woodside meeting up with that crew of knuckleheads whom I call friends, but the afternoon still held a few destinations which I wanted to get shots of.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I wasn’t wearing the NCA hat which was a standard part of my ‘uniform’ all those years. Instead I had on the flash orange ball cap which I’ve taken to wearing in Pennsylvania, as I often find myself walking in woodlands and don’t want to get shot at by hunters. At least, any more than is necessary.

Back tomorrow.

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