The Newtown Pentacle

It’s National Pie Day, thanks to the American Pie Council, in these United States.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

People think I’m exaggerating, all the time, about the poison earth surrounding my beloved Creek.

They say it can’t possibly be as horrible as I say it is along the Newtown Creek. Thing is, they’ve never been here during the workday, but instead visited on some nice Saturday in July. To understand the horror of it all, you need to see it, smell it, experience it – personally. That’s why I do my walking tours, but the walking routes I take the public out on are as safe a set of paths as you can possibly scout through the Newtown Creek Industrial Districts. As a note – whenever I’ve got a regulator or political official out with me, I take them to places which are best described as “hell.” I figure that since these officials, and their forebears, are pretty much responsible for letting all of this happen in the first place that they should experience it in toto.

Before I continue… should you decide to come and explore these areas for yourself, I accept zero responsibility or liability for you doing so. I’m telling you point blank, stay away from the borderland of industrial Bushwick and Ridgewood, and the corner of Scott and Randolph in particular. You can easily get hurt, or worse. It’s Mordor up in here, with giant trucks whizzing around, which scare away rodents of unusual size – critters who are oddly used to being out in the daylight. There’s a whole set of rules around here that you aren’t necessarily privy to either. It’s too late for me, but save yourself.

Stay away from the Scott Avenue footbridge zone, yo, this shit’s nasty.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the Scott Avenue Footbridge pictured above, incidentally, which provides one with an interesting vantage point to observe the area from. It’s a bit like a hunting stand providing an elevated POV in the middle of some savanna. The bridge itself is typical of the Long Island Railroad footbridge model you’ll find all over Queens. A steel and concrete structure that provides pedestrian egress high over one of their train lines. In the case of this particular bridge, which is quite dilapidated I would add, the train tracks it overflies are the Bushwick Branch of the LIRR.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Almost every other time that I’ve stood on this footbridge during the last decade, the New York and Atlantic freight operation has had literally hundreds of rail cars lined up along it – which compose the so called “Garbage Train.” Like all of the sections of North Brooklyn which touch the Newtown Creek, gentrification is under way in Bushwick. Large numbers of people are moving in just a few blocks east of here. Flushing Avenue’s intersection with St. Nichols is just a few blocks east of here – the heart of the “Brooklyn thing” which the real estate guys are so into.

Notably, the real estate guys will sometimes refer to this area as Williamsburg, rather than Bushwick or East Williamsburgh, to prospective clients. Eventually, “Williamsburg” will extend into Nassau County.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This little neighborhood of blue collar laborers, however, is rife with hazard for the unwary. As has often been mentioned, the “working guys” have a protocol for handling themselves around heavy equipment and such, and not being privy to its mores makes you quite vulnerable to random accident. For instance – never, NEVER, cross in front of a piece of equipment – whether it truck, forklift, whatever – without stopping and waiting for the operator to acknowledge you and wave you on. Can’t tell you how many people I see just darting in front of construction equipment.

Also, advice offered to everybody crossing Northern Blvd. back in Queens is to stand behind a pole or something while you’re waiting for the light to change. Same thing applies in Queens Plaza, and the western extent of Queens Blvd. which feeds into it.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s a waste transfer station, or twenty, hereabouts. The garbage guys will tell you “it’s got to go somewhere,” and in the case of the Newtown Creek watershed and surrounding industrial districts, about a third of New York City’s garbage comes here every day. Trucks come in full and leave empty, leaving behind tons and tons of construction debris, recyclables, and putrescent waste.

Have I ever mentioned that I don’t seem to get sick that much, almost as if my immune system is all jacked up and running at maximum speed for some reason?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Looking north-west (ish) you’ll notice the everpresent Sapphire Megalith of Long Island City.

One navigates about the Newtown Creek via triangulation of position between the Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan, the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan, and the Sapphire Megalith in LIC.

To wit – if you want to go the waterfront of the East River in LIC from Ridgewood or Maspeth, find a spot where the Empire State and the Megalith seem to line up and head in that direction. Going to Astoria? Keep the Megalith and Empire State on the left. Williamsburg? Freedom Tower at center with Empire State on your right and the Megalith behind you. When they finish all that horrible construction in LIC, I’ll have to decide on a new landmark, as the megalith won’t be the tallest building in Queens much longer.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Close to the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Scott is a NYC Department of Public Works access – or manhole – cover embedded in the sidewalk. DPW is one of the many agencies that were compressed into the DEP back in 1983, and out here in North Brooklyn, DPW was the inheritor of the City of Brooklyn’s 19th century sewerage projects which were all consolidated into the City of Greater New York’s holdings in 1898. It’s an intersecting sewer, which my “understanding of” indicates that below will be found some vault like structure that leads into a big pipe on one side, which is fed by a series of smaller pipes located on the other – but I don’t know that because I haven’t been down there.

The smaller pipes do feed in from upland sources, and in the case of this spot, those sources can be as far away as East New York and Canarsie. That’s something I actually do know since I’ve argued about it with officialdom.

The big pipe empties into the East Branch of the Newtown Creek across the street, at a “the size of a semi truck trailer” open sewer that’s called “Combined Sewer Outfall NC-083.” This CSO pollutes the water here with some 586 million gallons of untreated sewage a year, which is a debatable and out of date number that’s attibutable to official sources. It’s amongst the largest of the 400 CSO’s in the City, just as a note. A major contributor, roughly 20%, to the approximately billion and half gallons of raw sewage that flows into Newtown Creek annually, can be accessed below this hatch.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

BPF? A water main cover which is close proximity to the “intersecting sewer” hatch featured above, the “BPF Water” thing torments one such as myself. Does “BP” stand for “Borough President,” and if so, “Borough President” what? Is it “Brooklyn” or something else?

Arghhhhh. Something which I don’t know every detail of around the Creek? I’m a complete failure, and now everybody knows it.

Sometimes, if I didn’t make this “job” of mine up out of thin air, I’d complain about how little I get paid for the sheer angst of not knowing what the legend on some random water main cover means.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Tittering laughter was heard, carried by an easterly breeeze, as one approached Metropolitan Avenue.

My theory is that some inhuman thing with a three lobed burning eye – housed in the cupola of a sapphire megalith found miles away – made this sound as it giggled at the frustrations of a humble narrator.

Back tomorrow, with something completely different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

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