Archive for the ‘Astoria’ Category
discoursed of
All access, indeed!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in bit more than six years of prior posts, one has a certain fascination with those things which others ignore. The history of NYC can literally be found right there beneath your feet, especially once you learn how to read the signs and sigils left behind by earlier generations. Access, or Manhole covers, are everywhere. Research has shown that Federal Roadway regulations state a preference for State and Local governments to either replace an access cover with an exact copy from the original foundry, or just leave the old one in place. This means, since most of these things were put in place before the World Wars of the early 20th century, that there are iron or steel discs adorning the “via publica” which can tell the tale of Municpal organization, consolidation, dissolution, and indeed gentrification scattered about.
Pictured above, an access cover put in place by the Bureau of Sewers, Borough of Queens found in Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Blissville, also in Queens, an access cover which once belonged to the New York & Queens Electric Light & Power Company, which is one of the consolidated parts of Consolidated Edison. NY&Q EL&Pco. was created in 1900, and quickly bought up most of the smaller players in electrical generation and supply in western Queens. Most of NY&Q EL&Pco.’s common stock was actually held by the Consolidated Gas Company of New York. In 1918, the NY&Q EL&Pco. merged with the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn. The new entity merged with the Edison company of Brooklyn, Inc. Eventually, after decades of this sort of merger and acquisitions nonsense, you get to Con Ed. On it.
The circles, I am told, are standard indicators that electrical equipment will be found below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An odd one spotted on West 24th street in Manhattan, which quite obviously belongs to everybody’s favorite corporation – Time Warner Cable. It bears their modern logo, and is quite interesting as there aren’t thousands of wires splayed through the trees and bending utility poles, which is that squamous corporation’s tell tale calling sign is in Queens and Brooklyn. I guess the City people don’t want their blocks all cluttered up so the wires are in the ground where they belong.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Queens Plaza, sometime between 1912 and 1923, this NYM cover was placed. The New York Municipal Railway Corporation was formed in pursuance of contract 4 of the dual contracts era of the New York City Subway construction era, and was originally connected to the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) company. In 1923, NYM merged with the New York Consolidated Railroad and formed the New York Rapid Transit Company. It also stopped working on “BRT” or Brooklyn Rapid Transit and instead got busy on the “BMT” or Brooklyn Manhattan Transit situation.
The BMT became the New York City Board of Transportation’s problem in 1940.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A precursor agency of the modern DEP was the Department of Water Supply.
The DEP was formed in 1983, incidentally, combining several independent bureaucracies into one massive agency which handles the delivery of potable water to the City, the operations and maintenance of the storm water and sanitary sewers, and a bunch of stuff that doesn’t involve getting wet – like noise complaints, air issues, chemical spills, and those sorts of things.
DEP also spends a lot of effort figuring out ways to obscure what they’re doing from the reckoning eyes of regulators and citizens. The DEP accounts for something close to a third of NYC’s budget, has a navy, operates courts and police departments in upstate New York on Resovoir lands, and ultimately reports to a Robert Moses style “Authority” and the Mayor of New York City. The Water Board Authority, whose board is composed of political appointees (The DEP Commisioner plus 4 mayoral and 2 gubernatorial appointments), can borrow a theoretically unlimited amount of money in your name – doesn’t have to tell you who they borrowed it from – and will raise your water rates to pay the interest. They are the permanent government. Kafka would recognize the DEP.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another “Authority” who can borrow freely in your name, once upon a time the New York City Transit Authority was known as “Rapid Transit New York City” and that was when this smallish “RTS NYC” hatch cover was embedded in the pavement. The particular specimen pictured above is found on Broadway somewhere near the hazy borders of Jackson Heights and Woodside in the 60’s.
The City’s RTC NYC purchased the BMT and IRT in 1940, and in June of 1953, the New York State Legislature created the New York City Transit Authority to rescue the nearly bankrupted agency. In 1968, NYCTA was folded into the State’s new Metropolitan Transportation Authority, along with LIRR and twelve other counties worth of rail and bus operations. That’s how, long story short, MTA became New York City Transit’s parent agency.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We were once a plain spoken people, we New Yorkers. Once upon a time it was simply the “N.Y.C. SEWER” department. Today, it’s a division of DEP called “Bureau of Water and Sewer Operations.” Guess it sounds better on your resume when trying to pick up a lucrative Singaporean consulting gig after you’ve done your 25.
NYC has a fairly archaic system, sewer wise. It was state of the art back when Germany had a Kaiser, but the combined sewer system has major drawbacks in our modern time. A quarter inch of rain translates into a billion gallons of water, citywide, moving through the system. Since our sanitary and storm sewers feed into the same pipes, the mixed flow of liquid happiness is far greater than our sewer plants can handle all at once and it gets released directly into area waterways – like my beloved Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The access cover pictured above sports six sided bits on its face (hexagons), which indicates there’s some sort of telephone infrastructure under it. Mysterious, to me, is the titanic amount of force and weight required to break one of these cast iron things on Astoria’s Broadway near the 46th street station of the R and M lines. Famously, a 1950’s nuclear test (Operation Plumbob) launched a manhole cover, which resided on a shaft near the blast site, at six times the velocity which would be required to escape Earth’s gravity. The discus was never recovered.
At the end of it all, there will be rats, roaches, and manhole covers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You see these all over Long Island City, and they are my favorites. My understanding of the process involved in creating one of these designs is that it’s a pretty straight forward sculptural one. A carving is made which serves as the “positive” for molds. The molds then have molten metal poured into them, creating a casting. The red hot casting is cooled, and undergoes a finishing round of polishing and grinding. The reason that so many of these access covers are as ancient as they are is that foundries generally discard positives and molds after the order has been fulfilled. Most of these foundries aren’t even in existence anymore, either. You don’t meet many blacksmiths or forge stokers in Bushwick or Williamsburg these days, not even artisanal ones.
As stated at the start of this post, the federal highway people prefer for the original cover to stay in place, or be replaced with an exact duplicate. Sans the original mold, that ain’t gonna happen.
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full joys
On it, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not too long ago, some of the neighbors here in Astoria were experiencing electrical problems. The redoubtable employees of the Consolidated Edison Corporation began to appear in great numbers, arrange orange safety cones, and get busy. Luckily, for the 48-72 hours that their repairs took to administer, their idling trucks were directly in front of Newtown Pentacle HQ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Famously, what roused me from mere proletarian to activist and “neighborhood crank” was the Great Astoria Blackout of 2006. For an entire week, this neighborhood was without power at the height of summer, and blue fire was erupting from manholes and transformer vaults. People died in the heat, and it seemed as if no one in City Hall cared. Ever since, one pays quite a bit of attention to power supply issues here in the neighborhood.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The initial swarm of Con Ed employees was soon replaced by one of their emergency units. Like DC Comic’s Flash – the emergency unit is clad in red. Also like the Flash, these workers are meta humans who move faster than the human eye can follow. Often, all you can see is a blur. Guess that’s why they get paid the big bucks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It took around 15 seconds for the junior member of this crew to assemble the safety cordon for the work site.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A more senior member moved even faster, opening the access cover to a hidden transformer vault and deploying a ladder and other equipment into it in the blink of an eye.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My upstairs neighbor Mario, who is a union guy and can get other adherents of organized labor to “spill the beans” with a few carefully placed “bro’s,” went out to get the story. It seems that some of the electrical supply cables, damaged by the surges and fires of 2006 I would add, had finally given up the ghost and that three homes on the next block were entirely devoid of juice. He deduced this from slowing down an audio recording he made of the Con Ed guys answering him, which sounded like the buzzing of a fly in the original recording.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The speedsters were assigned the duty of drawing a new set of cables from the transformer vault, in front of HQ, roughly half a block to the affected properties. It seems that in addition to the underground rooms that house the step up transformers which handle the conversion from high voltage “direct” to residential “alternating” current, there are pipes and concrete tunnels through which these wires travel honeycombing the neighborhood. This does beggar the question as to why the high voltage cables that Con Ed hung about Astoria back in 2006 to restore service are still there, but there you go.
Welcome to Queens, now go fuck yourself, after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Couldn’t get a shot of what they were doing down there, but when I woke up the next morning, the Con Ed guys were sleeping in the idling truck and I’m told that the three properties on the next block had been re-energized.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
very secret
Election Day is upon us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unfortunately, this Election Day does not offer New Yorkers our dearly held desire to send Bill De Blasio back to his house in Park Slope. One can only dream, I guess.
The only Queensican election of any consequence this year is in the 23rd Council district, a race discussed in this Observer article. It will likely end up with Grodenchik as the winner, he’s the “establishment” candidate after all, but I do hope that Friedrich gets in as he would be an incendiary and rebel voice in the Council. Other than the Barrons from Brooklyn, there aren’t enough dissenting voices in Government these days, even if – like the Barrons – they are nutters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Democrats in Queens, the so called “Queens Machine,” are a megalithic party firmly in electoral control of the western side of a highly gerrymandered Borough. There are good ones and bad ones. I’m lucky enough to live in the districts of a few of the good ones, but I do find it kind of disturbing that the other parties basically throw their hat into the ring when election time comes. One likes debate, but then again I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn where a discussion about which bakery has the best rye bread can often escalate into a situation demanding the presence of the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of my neighbors don’t vote. Many of them are new(ish) immigrants who tell me that it doesn’t matter. They also inform that the best way to insure that you get called for jury duty is to register for the plebiscite. My response is “if you don’t vote, you forfeit your right to complain.” Also, one looks forward to voting against Bill De Blasio in his next polling, and ANYONE who supports his feckless and atavist agenda.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things which a humble narrator has said in the past, and continues to strongly believe is this – Politicians will support whomever supports them, and without a strong showing of the electorate and a contested popular vote, it will be only monetary contributions by which they can gauge their efforts.
Don’t vote? You just gave a billionaire even more influence.
Didn’t have time to vote? You just gave REBNY and apostate “progressives” like Bill De Blasio even more “mandate” to rape our communities and serve the interests of foreign investors and big money.
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rose oddly
Halloween sights from the Times Square of Astoria, 2015.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As has become our holiday tradition – Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself, along with a small group of people who can tolerate my presence for short intervals, headed over to the local corner pub and sat down with a few buckets of candy on Halloween. Our Lady and the others distribute the sweet stuff to the mobs of costumed “yutes” and after I check with and get the permission of parent or guardian to do so, I take some photos.
The ones in today’s post were my favorites, but if you want to check out the whole set – here’s the link to them on flickr.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sugar skulls and “Dias de Los muertes” iconography is a growing theme for Astoria costumers, as you’d suspect, given our growing and welcome population of Mexican and Central Americans. I love the visual style of this particular folk tradition.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The superhero costumes available in shops these days are light years beyond what was available when I was a kid, back in the ’70’s, when the Don Post company offered plastic smocks with the characters name on them and weird PVC face masks that always seemed to have sharp edges on mouth and eye holes.
Check out that kid in the lion costume.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lot of Jokers were out and about, but this young lady was clearly the most “all in.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady had many, many customers for her candy. There were times when it felt like a relentless horde of zombies were attacking her.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bunch of the very young kids had literally no idea what was happening, but knew something involving candy was afoot. The toddler pictured above came very close to winning Halloween.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Astoria is all about family, and as you can see in the shot above, in some units – every member of the clan was done up in holiday dress for Halloween.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yep, adorable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As it grew dark, the crowds continued to throb about. A weird thing about Astoria, or my section of it at least, is that the kids don’t trick or treat on the side streets at private homes.
They mainly stick to the avenues (like Broadway), and trick or treat at the mom and pop shops. I’m told that it’s part of the modern day fear of “stranger danger” and the parent’s assumption that every adult male whom the child encounters is likely a pervert or child molester.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the night moved on, the grown ups began to exhibit. This group of happy footed Penguins seemed to be on the way to a party. The chill of the night air, and the fact that we had spent something like six hours at the Doyle’s Corner Bar, contributed to a general agreement amongst my group that it was time to cut things off and head back to HQ to order a pizza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last call, and it was time to head on home with camera and Our Lady in tow. That’s Hank the Elevator Guy in the shot above, incidentally, an oft mentioned but seldom pictured resident of this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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neither plan
The day of days of nearly upon us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The other night, one met this fellow at the corner of Steinway and Broadway. He was howling mad about bicyclists running red lights, and admonished the delivery guys when they ignored the intentions of egress and pause offered by the corner based signal lights of the NYC DOT. I asked if he was going to a party, to which he replied “No, why do you ask?”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Food Bazaar on Norhern Blvd. is having a bit of concrete work done – filling in the cracks, grinding the edges lifted by tree roots, and fixing those weird rough spots that develop as the stuff weathers. Amidst the maze of safety tape adorning the project, whose screed “caution” is something that most everybody hereabouts abandons with some regularity, this barrier was spotted. I like a good sign as much as the next guy, but the proximity of the pavement to the sign is over the top. Obviously, the sidewalk is close.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The burning thermonuclear eye of God itself hung itself in the sky right behind this lamp post when I was out getting lunch the other day, allowing for a fairly smooth gradation of light across the afternoon sky. Got me to thinking about the latent dread I’m experiencing regarding the day that the DOT gets around to replacing Astoria’s current sodium bulb lamps with those new fangled LED ones which have started turning up in the tonier sections of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Luckily, Astoria is in Queens, which means that we will be the last priority for the City, just as with everything else.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saturday will see Halloween occur here in Astoria. A humble narrators plan entails assuming my regular station at the Times Square of Astoria – 42nd and Broadway – at the Doyle’s Corner pub. I will be photographing all costumed comers who agree to pose, masked passerby, and of course – the alcoholic antics of the Burrachos.
My plan is to get there around 2 and stay until the early evening, so if you’re in the neighborhood and costumed, stop on by and get yourself photographed. Unless the weather is ungodly, I’ll be sitting at an outdoor table right by the door. If the shot turns out nice, you might just find yourself published at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 