Archive for the ‘Broadway’ Category
whisper more
It’s National Crunchy Taco Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has two surviving memories from early childhood. The first involves being imprisoned in a playpen while my mother vacuumed the garishly colored (typical of the early 1970’s) carpet of my parent’s bedroom, and I must have been two or three years old. The other is sitting on my grandfather’s lap at the conclusion of a family dinner during the Nixon administration, an era when the family meal typically concluded with coffee and cake. I remember Grandpa grabbing my little kid hand, which was grasping a cookie, and then helping me dip it into his black coffee.
To this day, I’m still a black coffee guy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The aforementioned cookie wasn’t oatmeal raisin, instead it was something which members of my family refer to as an “Ida Cookie.” My Dad’s oldest sister, and the de facto matriarch of clan Waxman, was named Ida and she was a well practiced baker. Aunt Ida would routinely show up at everyone’s house with pounds and pounds of baked goods. Nearly everything she baked was designed to be quaffed with hot caffeinated beverages, and for one reason or another, if she had overlooked something to the point of it nearly becoming charcoal, we would all fight over possession of that particular cookie. “Char” was big with the family.
Ida also made amazing apple cakes, pies, and especially variants on the cookies. The most highly prized item she offered was something called a “raisin rock,” which was often shattered by knives rather than sliced.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady of the Pentacle has been sharpening her baking skills in recent years. It started out when one of her advertising clients, a nationally known brand, required the production of example foodstuffs for marketing purposes but had no budget for doing it “the right way,” which in advertising speak means hiring a chef and a food stylist. Accordingly, Our Lady built up her skill set and began manufacturing items such as the spread seen above. I’d occasionally wave the camera around at her creations, although she did most of the photography, and we puchased a few low end umbrella lights to augment the process.
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cavitating motions
It’s National Banana Bread Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A shot of a friendly parrot today, but only a single one – as I still haven’t dug myself out of a hole which I currently find myself in. FYI, a humble narrator is involved in that most harrowing of all projects which an artist of any stripe can venture into – the creation of a portfolio to showcase past work and procure future employment. This is a vast endeavor, ripe with psychological recrimination and personal ennui. It’s also “all consuming,” but I should be done with the meat of it by the end of this week at which point postings of a more substantial sort will be coming your way.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
long quay
It’s Australia Day, in the Commonwealth of Australia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m likely the only person in Astoria, Queens who exclaims “Hey, that’s the DEP” when he hears a random series of clinks and metallic groans coming from outside. I’m also likely to be the only person who grabs his camera and gets in on the action. It was the eleventh of January, a Wednesday, when it all started – a brand new Astoria Hullabaloo, and the first one of 2017, too. It was unseasonably warm that day in Astoria, and sunny.
Me? My names Mitch. I’m a shmuck with a camera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Astoria’s Broadway in the shot above, in the 40’s. It’s a shopping strip, with tracks of the NYC Subway’s IND Queens Blvd. line running beneath it. The subway stations hereabouts opened on the 19th of August in 1933, and were paid for (in part) by money sent from the Federal Work Projects Administration during the New Deal. The modern day, as in 21st century, designation for the lines that pass by underneath are the “R” and “M.” In the recent past, the “V” and “G” lines used to service these stations as well.
The tracks have to be a good thirty to forty feet down below the roadway and housed in a cut and cover tunnel. The intervening void between the tracks and the asphalt hosts a heterogenous collection of wires, electrical equipment, concrete vaults, and lots of pipes. The pipes are why the DEP were on scene, but more on that in a moment.
Personally, I had to exit the area to attend a meeting, but later when I got home…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on the corner of Broadway and 45th street, here in Astoria, water was observed bubbling and spurting out of the street. A completely different DEP crew had shown up and they were settling down into the task of digging their way into the asphalt. They had all sorts of lovely equipment with them, which normally makes me jealous. What didn’t make me jealous was the fact that the temperature had dropped and there was now a slow drizzle of rain falling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was also positively ecstatic that a jackhammer was being used just one block from my house, at night, but what are you going to do? Water main breaks have to be addressed.
BTW, whereas I’m actually quite adversarial with the people in the fancy suits that run the DEP (Newtown Creek makes you mean), I’ve got nothing but praise for the “dirty fingernail” folks who do the actual hard work which keeps NYC both wet and dry. Never met a DEP worker I didn’t like, in fact. I’ve met a few Commissioners and other brass who I’d like to feed head first into a pit of zombies, but the workers are generally “A-OK.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Thursday the 12th of January, one had a bit of a busy day. A few errands in the neighborhood were accomplished before I had to go and take a picture of something for someone, and I noticed that several fire hydrants had been fully opened and were discharging into the gutter. This aroused no end of curiousity and amusement on the part of the neighbors.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fun part was watching people who had their noses deeply buried in their phones suddenly realize that they had walked into several inches of water running towards the sewer grates.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m surmising here, but what I think was going on was that the DEP crew needed to empty the water in the affected pipe over on 45th street and did so by opening the fire hydrant.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Good news is that the streets around here have never been cleaner than they were on the morning of Thursday, January 12th.
When the Department of Sanitation, which I believe was originally styled as the Dept. of Street Cleaning at its creation on May 30,1881 (but didn’t do a very good job of it until Col. Waring took over in 1894), this was actually how they did their thing. Those old school sanitation workers with the brushes and pails that had wheels? Yep, they’d open Manhattan’s hydrants up and use their brooms to move all the trash either towards the sewers or down to the rivers, which were and are essentially the same thing. They started calling it the Department of Sanitation in 1929, if you’re curious.
This is about NYC DEP, though, a municipal agency which was created in 1983 out of multiple City agencies that governed water supply and sewerage, amongst other things.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One sped off to my aforementioned appointment, pointed my camera at the intended target, and then headed back to Astoria later that afternoon. Hoping to see more of the Hullabaloo, one walked up 45th street towards Broadway and found that the DEP crews were still hard at work on solving the case of the Astoria Water Pipe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Upon arriving at the corner, one discovered that they had dug quite a hole, having brought in lots more labor and some heavy equipment. They had encountered a snag apparently, discovering that whoever had installed the damaged pipe (which could have been anytime between about 1875 and now, actually) had done so in an incorrect fashion.
They had to dig their way into the concrete barrel vault of the sewer in order to repair the leaking water main.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was one heck of a prodigious hole, however, and I complimented the foreman on his crew’s efforts. Funny thing was that he asked me who I was after noticing the camera hanging by my side, and seemed to recognize my name. That was sort of weird.
I asked if I could get a couple of shots of the hole, and he offered no objection.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They were all gone the morning of Friday the 13th, the street was patched with fresh asphalt, and garbage was again building up in middens along the curbs – normal, in other words – for Astoria, Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yet another Hullabaloo, here in the ancient village.
One gathered up my little dog Zuzu for her constitutional stroll, and as we wandered down the pavement, I was wondering “Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there,” while Zuzu the dog grew apprehensive as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself began to drop away. She sniffed something on the air she did not like.
It was Friday the 13th eve, after all.
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ascending node
It’s National Creampuff day, here in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Christmastoria exemplified is how I describe the shot above.
An early entrant into my Astoria Tumbleweeds category, this tiny holiday tree was properly disposed of, and kind of summed up my mood for the holiday season which has now thankfully passed into memory. Just wasn’t feeling it this year, I wasn’t. Weather, social obligation… a lot of things were happening all through December that just got in the way of solitarily marching around Queens and critiquing things I saw which absolutely nobody asked for – nor cared about – my opinion on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I did manage to get out here and there, stealing an hour or two for myself. These were short walks, mainly, without any specific destination or goal. All in the name of just kicking my feet about and getting a little exercise. It’s an odd thing for me to leave the house and come back with only a couple of images on the camera. That’s mighty Triborough, of course, as seen from the corner of Astoria Blvd. and 31st street one sunny afternoon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, after Christmas came and went, the weather wasn’t too bad – for short intervals – and I decided to get busy.
Getting busy is what I’m all about at the moment, incidentally. Buckle up, the Newtown Pentacle is back in session.
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loathsome tittering
Astoria, Queens rules – In today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering about in the dark and cold, as one is wont to do, this inflatable snowman was encountered on Northern Blvd. at the angle between Astoria and Sunnyside. For those of you who don’t “speak Mitch,” an angle is the borderland between two neighborhoods where you’re neither here nor there. These “angles” are usually where the old municipal borders between the town and villages of Western Queens were found – prior to the creation of Long Island City in 1870, or the consolidation of the greater city in 1898. These angles are where Robert Moses would usually site his roads, as is the case with the border between Sunnyside and Blissville or Woodside and Maspeth where the LIE was built, or between Long Island City and Maspeth when the BQE was routed.
I’ve always ascribed this to Robert Moses having been clever enough to play the politicians of both communities off of each other, which got him better deals and concessions from each. These ward bosses and assemblymen and town Mayors could then report back to their constituents that not only didn’t they allow Moses to dig a trench through the center of their town but that Old Man Moses had promised them that building jobs would be available for anyone that the elected official put forward. That’s how you build a city!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also spotted while picking my lonely way through the nighted devastations was this pair of taxis gassing up before starting (or ending, perhaps) their shifts. Urban ephemera is what I’m all about these days – gas stations, car washes, minor bridges.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Longtime readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – might remember that there was an electrical transformer fire on my corner back in July of 2016, which was described in this post. This set off a whole slew of work by Con Ed and its contractors here in Astoria, some of which is discussed in this post. During the intervening months since the event, multiple crews of workers have randomly shown up on the corner, then dug a new trench down into the street, did some sort of stuff, and then filled in their new hole. Two to three random weeks later, another bunch of guys in orange vests shows up and then they repeat the process.
The latest passel of work involves the replacement of a lamp post, which must have been shorted out during the transformer fire. Pictured above is a crew who have dug the most recent trench, this time going from the transformer to the affected lamp pole. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the lamp pole now seems to have power, the newly installed LED luminaire mounted on the pole is displaying a red bar rather bright bluish white light. The red bar is the “trouble” signal that repairs are needed, I’m told.
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The Newtown Pentacle 