Archive for the ‘Blissville’ Category
cosmic continua
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This week’s posts start and end with trains. There’s your “Chekhov’s Gun” for you, laid out all nice and obvious. Pictured above is an out of service Long Island Rail Road train which has been stored at the Blissville Yard in Long Island City’s Blissville section for about a year. It recently received a new coat of graffiti, and I’ve shown it to you in the past when its last iterative coating of street art was applied.
A humble narrator is in a bit of a mood at the moment. Controversy and politics amongst those of us who scurry about trying to pick up the crumbs that drop from the master’s table has broken out. If you’re reading this and know what I’m referring to, I’d opine that you should leave me out of your arguing. Don’t make me come over there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Stupid, selfish, and self obsessed – that’s how I’d describe the mythological “noble” character of this country of ours in modernity. We’ve always been absolute monsters to each other, despite what the National narrative teaches. An iconoclastic fad is underway at the moment, dedicated to tearing down the firmament of our national sense of self. Extreme ideologies with no grounding in historical custom or law has been loosed upon a poorly educated and incurious population. Take a breath, y’all, huh?
Luckily, summer is coming, which indicates that I’ve got a roughly 60 day long break from having to attend any meetings regarding governmental bullshit nearing. This whole cycle of bullshit we’ve all been dealing with for the last decade or so should be coming to an end within the next couple of weeks, which will kick off a new cycle of bullshit. By the end of June, after the electoral primaries, we’ll know who the new god kings of Queens are going to be and exactly where and when they want their asses to be publicly kissed or when they privately want smoke blown up their alimentary.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Railroad Avenue, in the Blissville section of Long Island City, a tree can be observed. It’s the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil on Newtown Creek. Same species as the one in Eden, just not as knowledgable a fruit. Go figure. One recently encountered a cast off fruiting of this tree, just lying there on the side of the road. Like the great shit sandwich that is our culture, I had to take a bite. As a note, there were no serpents slithering about.
No more Mister Nice Guy, that’s what I said once the scales fell from my eyes. I wasn’t that nice to start with, so…
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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.
hieroglyphed dial
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Green Asphalt company operates out of a property in the Blissville section of Long Island City, along the inscrutable Newtown Creek. Green Asphalt is in the recycling business, ultimately. When the NYC DOT or its contractors are resurfacing a road, milling machines are brought in first, which scratch away the top layers of “road armor” which are collected in dump trucks. That road armor is asphalt, which is an admixture of concrete and petroleum oil and tar. It seems that asphalt can be renewed, rather than dumped, using an industrial process involving very hot steam and lots of machinery.
Green Asphalt operates within the regulatory framework of NYC’s 2010 Solid Waste Management policy. They divert literally millions of tons of asphalt from expensively going into landfills. They also employ a lot of Unionized Blue Collar employees. Win.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s some of the equipment they have deployed over in Blissville. My colleagues and I from Newtown Creek Alliance were invited to attend a presentation and open site day the company offered. There was a neat shwag bag on offer, and they gave us coffee and sandwiches during the event. The Deputy Borough President of Queens attended, as did a few of the other “powers that be” here in the World’s Borough.
Overall, some pretty nice people run the show over there, working in an ecologically important role. It’s a heavy industry, yes, and one that’s currently entirely truck based (they’re going to be expanding use of their maritime bulkhead along the Creek soon) but before companies like Green Asphalt came along, NYC used to pay through the nose for dumping asphalt in landfills located in distant places.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post, by the way, is where the “adventures of vaccinated Mitch” really start. Like a bat let out of a cage is how I’d describe the last few weeks of activity. These photos were gathered at the end of April, shortly after the second shot had fully soaked in. I’ve been in 4 of the 5 Boroughs just in the last few weeks, traveling on boats and trains and of course by foot.
What’s been really weird for me has been being awake during the daylight hours after the long nocturnal interval.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
those obeisances
Wednesdays happen, buddy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Already this week have I described to you my plan to line the banks of Dutch Kills with carnivore vegetables and a squirming menagerie of giant spiders, bats, and a truly diverse group of reptiles. Additionally, my plans to acquire and live within a massive battle tank called the “Mobile Oppression Platform” have been discussed.
All of this walking around at night over the last year in particular got me curious about all of these empty “not in service” buses I saw roaming around and inquiries were made. These buses, as it turns out, ain’t empty.
Today, I will reveal a deeply concealed municipal secret – the fact that the MTA provides late night bus service for ghosts, phantoms, and spectral entities. They don’t discriminate based on what sort of disembodied intelligence you might manifest as, the MTA doesn’t, in accordance with NYS law.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The route starts in Brooklyn, at the Cemetery of the Evergreens, and it stops nearby each and every one of the green islands that compose the “Cemetery Belt.” Last stop and turnaround occurs at St. Michael’s in Astoria. It’s a strictly dusk to dawn route, naturally. It seems that the newly minted MTA, shortly after it was created by Governor Nelson Rockefeller back in 1965, discovered that one of the private several bus companies it absorbed was a charter service employed by a Brownsville based Theosophical Society. The line is funded by a covenanted trust fund which this organization had set up back in the mid 1920’s. Contractually speaking, whomsoever the owners of this bus route end up being at any time in the future, they are obliged to run nocturnal service between the various polyandrions of Brooklyn and Queens if they desire access to the surprisingly large amount of money managed by this trust. NYS Law respects covenants and contracts deeply, and financial covenants are virtually immortal. So too, are certain commuters.
As to the veiled purpose, intent, or goals of the Brownsville Theosophical Society or the identity of its mysterious acolytes – that’s lost to time. A century later, MTA is still shuttling the spirits of our ancestors about at night, doing the bidding of the long disbanded BTS. Internally, MTA drops the “Theosophical” from BTS’s Brownsville Theosophical Society designation, and they refer to the line as the “Q-BS.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “not in service” banner on the bus route display screens are just there to keep the living from getting too interested, and the last thing you’d want to do is ride the haunted bus anyway. Haven’t you heard that demon possession is way up since the pandemic hit? I have. Word has it that the driver’s Union demands hazard pay for their members assigned to this route, and that the operator’s booth is armored with medallions, amulets, holy symbols, even garlands of garlic.
Now… the real question is why you would want to create easy egress for the tomb legions to communicate with each other. What benefits are arrived at from this ghastly congress? Where does the bus go for maintenance and how can they know whether or not some distaff spirit hasn’t decided to just stay onboard? How do you handle fare control and ticketing? Who were the BTS?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
eye holes
Tuesday, inevitably.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All of this walking is a drag. What a humble narrator wants, nay needs, is a set of wheels. I don’t want one of your Camry’s or Buick’s either, what I want is a truly onerous vehicle. The sort of thing George Peppard and Ernest Borgnine would roll around with after a nuclear apocalypse in a 1970’s movie of the week. A vehicle with a dashboard switch for electrifying the fenders, puncture and bullet proof tires, and some sort of sonic deterrent anti-crowd mechanism mounted on the roof. I’d call it my “mobile oppression platform” or “MOP.” It would be a mighty vehicle, armored enough to drive through schools, and the entire thing would be outfitted with cameras to record the indignation of those unlucky enough to exist outside of it.
Within, I’d recreate a 1960’s American split level ranch house. Decor wise, it would look a great deal like Mike and Carol Brady’s place on the old tv show about their bunch, but with odd panels of knobs and blinking lights which control the external defensive mechanisms – flame throwers, barbed wire whips, steam jets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Me and the MOP would be constantly moving, mainly to avoid answering the NYPD’s questions about the puddles of scarlet viscera we’d be scattering. Hull armor notwithstanding, personal security is no joke. “Van Life” has become a “thing” and particularly so during the pandemic. I’m seeing literally hundreds of RV’s and specially kitted out cargo vans that people are living in all over Brooklyn and Queens these days. Go to YouTube and type “van life” into the search bar and you’ll soon discover that this is a “thing.”
Obviously, none of these people are from Brooklyn, where certain habits acquired during the 1980’s saw people like me breaking glass bottles and cementing them to the window’s outside sills to keep the crackheads out. Inside, you’d keep a collection of hollow metal things which would make a clattering sound should someone knock them over while climbing through your window – allowing you enough time to grab one of the many weapons you had hidden around the apartment for easy use. What? You don’t have a pipe dressed up in electrical tape sticking out from under your mattress? What are you, some kind of hippie?
Nobody, and I mean nobody, will make it into the Mobile Oppression Platform uninvited. I’ll have trained guard Ferrets with fricking lasers mounted on their heads inside. Moe, Larry, Curly – three of them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’d really like the MOP to have some sort of anti-gravity plate mounted on the bottom, as such kit would allow me to float about Damnation Alley with nary a care. Wheeled vehicles are stuck to the ground, after all, which means they consume a lot of fuel. Despite the fantastic amount of energy a nuclear reactor would offer, you still need a considerable amount of ancillary equipment to convert that energy into available electric or mechanical energy and that would impede the MOP’s mid century modern decor within. I’d like to install an engine thereby which spews as much pollution as possible, and burns bricks of sulphur just for effect.
I imagine the MOP as being about the length of three city buses, and about twenty five feet in height. There would be antennae as well, but you can always rig those back. This wouldn’t be a vehicle, this would be an Iron Man suit you sit inside of, my Mobile Oppression Platform.
I’m waiting for my stimulus check from the Patriarchy to arrive, then heading over to Northern Blvd. to go MOP shopping.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
undreamed of
It’s called Thursday, if you’re bold enough to speak its name.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s Gas Station day at Newtown Pentacle. The one above is the first thing you see when entering Long Island City after crossing Newtown Creek on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge and it’s in the Blissville neighborhood. Remember the long gas lines after Hurricane Sandy back in 2012? They sure do at this gas station, as a 2012 customer lost their patience when the pumps got shut off, produced a firearm and proceeded to murder somebody who worked here. I think there’s different owners for the franchise location, and if memory serves – I don’t think it used to be a Gulf filling station. Might have been a Sunoco. Have to look in my archives.
Motherflowers. People walk around like they’re safe or something… what this City really needs is a good plague… oh… whoopsies…
Wonder how many of the other things we used to say while milling about in front of CBGB’s will come true someday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One hasn’t got a murder story to tell about this gas station, found at the corner of 49th and Greenpoint Avenues at the risible border of Blissville and Sunnyside, nearby the Long Island Expressway. A Mobil franchised filling station, this is a deucedly difficult setup to photograph. Something about the contrasty lighting and “red, white, and blue” neon brand colors necessitates a complicated and somewhat contradictory exposure triangle for the capture.
49th Avenue proceeds in a generally westerly direction, transversing from the altitudinal prominence of Laurel Hill, which Greenpoint Avenue rides along and Calvary Cemetery sits atop. 49th Avenue crosses Van Dam Street, and in doing so transmogrifies into Hunters Point Avenue shortly before crossing the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, and then regains it’s numerical dub at 21st street nearby the 7 train station.
It’s all very complicated.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you start with homicide, that’s all people want to hear about. This Sunnyside/LIC gas station on Queens Boulevard also sports a car wash, but I don’t have any tales of death or dismemberment associated with it in my quiver.
Another one of the weighty questions I’ve got about Queens is “where does LIC stop and Sunnyside begin”? I kind of place “proper” Sunnyside at no farther west than 36th or 37th street along Queens Blvd. If you’re south of Queens Blvd., however, Sunnyside continues all the way to the LIE. The eastern border is definitely Woodside Avenue/58th street, and Northern Blvd. provides another hard border for the area. Saying that, I consider Northern Blvd. to be an “LIC corridor” just like Skillman Avenue west of 39th street is, all the way from 31st street to Broadway.
Of course, any neighborhood in Queens whose zip code starts with a “111” is part of the historic municipality of Long Island City, which actually includes all of Astoria and most of Sunnyside – or at least the 11104 part of it.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, March 15th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 