Archive for the ‘Coney Island’ Category
intuitive knack
Thursday, it seems.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Archive shots again today, as a humble narrator has a bit of a situation playing out here at HQ and Newtown Pentacle’s never ending cavalcade of adventure and imagery has had to take a back seat. Zuzu the dog is quite elderly, and quite ill at the moment. One has therefore been trying to spend as much time as possible with her. When you’ve got a dog like Zuzu in your life, you signed a contract with her when she was a puppy. She’s always been a very good girl, has made my life immeasurably better, and keeping her comfortable at the end of it all is my end of the bargain. Zuzu is 14 years old, and is a fairly large dog in all actuality despite my usual description of her as “my little dog.” She’s been suffering from arthritis and spinal issues for a few years.
Overall, things are looking pretty grim for her at this writing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The conqueror worm gets us all in the end, though.
Saying that, googling what to do in NYC if your dog dies is pretty depressing. There are private services that will collect and cremate the cadaver, but the City’s DSNY will take the body on garbage pickup day. Procedure, as described by the official 311 site, is to put your dog in a black plastic garbage bag and label it “dead dog.” The garbage guys will grab the body and then carry it off.
Jesus, that’s cold.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We almost lost her a few months ago, but Zuzu rallied and recovered. Last week she messed up her back and hasn’t been able to use her back legs at all for a few days. The palaver of finding a Vet who does house calls during a pandemic is playing out right now for Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself. Her regular doctor doesn’t do house calls.
“Tsuris,” that’s the Yiddish word for “troubles.”
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, August 24th. 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.
momentous talk
Tuesday photos from the before times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few more archive shots greet you today, captured during the before times. The shot above was captured prior to Antifa establishing its moon colony, or Jared Kushner’s daily release of a list of newly proscribed citizens to round up for ideological offenses. Good times, back then, in the before times. Bill De Blasio was still quite tall, not having been diminished by hubris, and Andrew Cuomo had not yet displayed his god level Sith Lord persona to the general public. Today is March 129th.
Managed to get out for a walk last night, and had a friend with me, so I didn’t take too many pics. Accordingly, today’s archive post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Is it legal to ride a cop horse while texting? I’ve wondered this since recording the shot above. Do as I say not as I do always seems to be the way with the gendarmes. Double parking, parking on sidewalks, blowing lights… set an example, I always say.
All I can say is that I wish I had a horsey to ride around on right now, as it would make me feel like a grown up fella. I’d gallop, trot, even gambol. That’s what I need… a horse. I’d name it Xavier, or X for short.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Coney Island pictured above. In the before time, a point would have made of performing a visitation to my ancestral estates on this side of Brooklyn but since those ubiquitous lunar based vandals at Antifa stole the ocean to teach us all a lesson – what’s the point?
Back tomorrow, stay cool, yo.
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, July 6th. 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 as we move into April and beyond, 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.
pocket flask
It’s International Lemon Drizzle Cake Day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My understanding is that there are isolated settlements, and pockets, of humanity which would be found to the north, west, and south of New York City but that just might be an old wives tale. Imagine… someplace which is not NYC… it boggles the mind. Do these semi mythological people wear skins and hunt with clubs? Are they the descendants of the Dutch who moved away when the English civilization took regency of our archipelago so long ago? Someday, one must mount an expedition and explore the dark continent found to the west, but for now… one is busy attempting to access a lead clad iron vault hidden away beneath the Steinway Branch Library at Broadway here in Astoria, wherein the Queens library system is rumored to store its collection of blasphemy riddled occult literature.
The Queens Library won’t admit, and will tacitly deny in fact, that a stout vault containing tomes of forbidden occult lore exists in Astoria, but you can’t fool a humble narrator… such wonders do exist, as does the dire information they contain. Why do you think the Greeks and Copts travelled from the orient and settled here? Grow up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Word has it that Dutch Sea Captain Peter Praa brought certain “artifacts” back from the southern Pacific island of Ponape, which he buried in discrete locations around a land grant he acquired from the Dutch East India people which once belonged to Dominie Everardus Bogardus. This land was later inherited by Praa’s great grandaughter Anna Hunter. Hunters Point in LIC, as we know it in modern times, is constantly riven by the crews of laborers who are scratching into the mud and rock found here. The cover story offered by officialdom is that these laborers are merely construction workers employed by the Real Estate Industrial Complex, but don’t believe what you’re told. They’re searching for Praa’s treasure, and their employers seek possession of those occluded secrets carried back to the west which the Dutch thought best left buried and forgotten.
Just because a tale is fantastic, unbelievable, or inconceivably byzantine doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Sheesh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Secrets and lies, secrets and lies. There are sections of the Newtown Creek about which even the otherwise overly transparent officials overseeing the Superfund proceedings will not opine. When questions arise about these isolated spots, they grow pale and elusive, avoiding your gaze and changing the subject quickly. What have they found in the muck and mire, in certain stretches of the waterway, particularly on the Brooklyn side, where the pirate Blackbeard is said to have buried a cache of stolen booty? The 19th century tales told by the toll bridge attendants of the Penny Bridge? The man like things with frog heads which they reported as loping out of the water in the dead of night and howling at the moon? Myths and old wives tales, if you believe the powers that be.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
inviolably private
Continuing from a visit to Coney Island, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Described laboriously in prior posts, one took the Brighton (or Q) Line Subway from Astoria, Queens to the former site of the Dreamland Amusement Park in Brooklyn’s Coney Island, which has housed the NY Aquarium since 1957, and then decided to turn east in a moment of whimsy.
I was headed for Ocean Parkway and Brighton Beach Avenue when I encountered something kind of odd in the grassy border of the Coney Island Boardwalk along Surf Avenue just before it loops into Ocean Parkway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An enormous concrete sculpture of a giant squid, with its tentacles playing out over a fish.
In the shot above, Im standing on the squid.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oddly enough since its in a NYC Parks Dept. property, and I looked around quite a bit for information on this item, I couldn’t find any sort of documentation on it. It had all the appearances of emanating from the Parks playground design people employed by Robert Moses back in the 1950’s and 60’s – concrete construction and all, but there’s “bupkis” online information about it. That’s weird.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some enterprising Brooklynite has painted the fish caught in the squid’s tentacles to resemble the Nemo character from the Disney “Finding Nemo” movie franchise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If anybody out there knows anything about this, and Andrea Coyle of GANYC or Sergey Kadinsky – I think Im talking to one of you, please share.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was now on a mission in South East Brooklyn, which carried me in a generally eastern direction, and I soon found myself turning onto Brighton Beach Avenue and under the elevated tracks of the Brighton Line.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Famously, this area has become overwhelmingly Russian in the last few decades, and the storefront signs were all in Cyrillic. Brighton Beach wasn’t my destination, of course, and I was just passing through the community on my way to another one of my old haunts.
More on that in a future post, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, July 23, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking tour,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
Tuesday, July 26, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. –
Glittering Realms Walking tour,
with NYC H2O. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, July 27, 1st trip – 4:50 p.m. 2nd trip – 6:50 p.m. –
2 Newtown Creek Boat Tours,
with Open House NY. Click here for more details.
Saturday, July 30, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
DUPBO Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
wrenching sound
Coney Island Aquarium, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NY Aquarium is based in Coney Island, Brooklyn.
It is the very definition of the “House of Moses” as it was NYC’s master builder Robert Moses who actually created the modern institution. Moses had ousted the Aquarium from its former home on the Battery in Manhattan, at Castle Clinton, when he was pushing to build his Brooklyn Battery Bridge (one of his few defeats, but he got to take over the tunnel project instead) back in 1941. In early June of 1957, Moses unveiled the NY Aquarium here in South Eastern Brooklyn, right next door to the landmarked “Cyclone” roller coaster which predated it by around thirty years and which is pictured above.
As an aside, the Aquarium is the former location of the semi legendary “Dreamland” Amusement park.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Currently operated by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages all of NYC’s premiere animal prisons, the Aquarium was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy and is frankly a shadow of its former self. The good news is that there’s a significant amount of construction going on at the site, which should restore the place to its former glory, but there’s not all that much to see hereabouts at the moment. Regardless, due to my NYCID card granted free membership to all the WCS managed properties, I had free admission, so in I went.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The bathysphere located outside the Aquarium has to have had every Brooklyn school kid of the last sixty years climb on it.
It’s an artifact of the 1930’s, this pressure capsule, and was used by a zoologist name Beebe and an engineer named Barton (who designed, built, and maintained the thing) to “deep dive” and observe critters in the depths of the sea. It set records for depth back in 1934, as a point of interest, and the bathysphere is said to have descended some 3,028 feet down into the water.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just after entering, you encounter a dark chamber filled with tanks of various sorts of itchyan critters. It’s pretty darkly lit in there, and as the room is packed with little kids losing their minds at the sights, you need to be pretty careful where you step to avoid squishing any of the kids as they bounce off the walls.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m no ichthyologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s a ray. This critter was in the largest of the tanks. One is curious about the “behind the scenes” stuff maintaining these tanks – the filters, aeration, and circulation systems alone must represent a volume of water 2/3 larger than what you see in the tank. There were pretty big populations of fish swimming around in these displays, so there has to be some pretty interesting plumbing connected to it, IMHO.
It’s a pretty challenging environment to shoot inside the Aquarium, incidentally, as the tank walls seem to be composed of some sort of thick plastic which created a lot of visual artifacts and light refraction. It’s also, as mentioned, fairly dark in there, and the light levels are set for the comfort of the inhabitants of the tanks rather than for their observers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My “bright lens” which is capable of large apertures such as f1.8 was deployed, and I used one hand as both a light baffle and pad for the lens as I brought it nearly up to the tank. The light baffle part was to control reflection from light sources behind the camera, the “pad” was to avoid directly touching the glass. I had autofocus on, and was “spraying and praying” the shots. Worked out fairly well, with a roughly 40% success rate, as far as image fidelity goes.
That’s some sort of weird tentacle monster above, might be related to certain star spawned deities who are both the key and the gate, and in whom all are one. Y’know, the thousand faced goat from the woods.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In another of the tanks there were what looked like schools of Cichlids, in sort of simulated lake environment. That’s what they looked like to me at least, but as mentioned, I’m no ichthyologist.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some truly enormous river fish were observed in another tank. I’ve seen smaller specimens of this critter on sale at tropical fish stores in the past, and they’re all jaw.
One of my college jobs, incidentally, was working as an Aquarium Service technician. I’d show up in rich guy’s manhattan offices who had contracted with my boss, and I’d do all the fish tank maintenance chores for them (deep filtering, water change, chemical tests for ph and ammonia levels, assess fish health, mechanics of tank, etc.) I did a couple of Chinese restaurants in midtown as well, which were huge all day jobs on 500 gallon custom salt water tanks. Back in college, I was also a fine art mover, a clerk at a fotomat, a dishwasher – pretty much anything I could do for money I did. Once I took a job shoveling poop.
Told you that visiting this part of Brooklyn made me nostalgic.
Outside of the interior section of the Aquarium, there was a lonely looking and somewhat shy harbor seal, an otter, and a pack of penguins. The Walrus had the day off, according to the signage. Frankly they weren’t too active and nothing interesting happened when I pointed a camera at them, so…
Sharks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A temporary tank is housing the Aquarium’s collection of various shark specie.
Were Sharks capable of any thought beyond “kill” or “hunt” I might feel sorry for them, but they’re not, so I don’t. Apparently a new Shark enclosure is under construction which should make them as happy as Sharks are capable of being when they’re not killing.
Affordable housing for Sharks, this?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The only thought going through my head while struggling to get a few decent shots of these predators was the movie character “Dr. Evil” asking his henchmen to outfit his sharks with “fricking Lasers.” Like tigers, we must maintain the Shark specie in case Aliens ever invade the Earth. The Tigers will be ridden by Russian Special Forces Soldiers, of course, and will shot at the arriving fleet of starships in the warheads of missiles to greet the arriving conquerors with the unique brand of hospitality that Russians offer to invaders. I also like to think that it will be Maori Warriors from New Zealand who will ride laser and space suit equipped sharks into battle with the extraterrestrial armies. I should mention that while I was shooting the Sharks, I was listening to Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper,” so…
Personally speaking, a welcome will be offered to our new overlords, as the only mount I have to ride into battle on would be an increasingly lazy dog named Zuzu.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Remember my little explanation of how to guard against backlit reflections in photo situations like these?
This is what happens when you don’t do that, but I thought it made for a neat effect. Almost looks like a double exposure, but it’s just the reflection on the curved glass as the killers slipped by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having accomplished a minor goal, one’s spirits were high and an exit through the Aquarium’s Coney Island Boardwalk portal was engaged. All told, I was at the facility for about an hour.
It was fun, and a I look forward to returning when the WCS has built the new enclosures and fully recovered from Sandy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Trying to decide what to do with myself, as I’d just spent equal amounts of time at the Aquarium and on the train ride to Coney Island from Astoria, a definite course of action was decided upon.
Before you ask, those box thingies on the stilts in the shot above house the Beach’s “comfort stations” and provide the Parks Dept. folks with offices. They run taxpayers about $2 million each, and these are two of the 35 of them being installed on city beaches. They’re built by the Deluxe Building Systems Corp., have galvanized steel frames to withstand the salty atmosphere and weather events, and are brand spanking new.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I turned eastwards, as a silly idea suddenly occurred to me, and the desire for luncheon began to rumble.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, July 23, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking tour,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
Tuesday, July 26, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. –
Glittering Realms Walking tour,
with NYC H2O. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, July 27, 1st trip – 4:50 p.m. 2nd trip – 6:50 p.m. –
2 Newtown Creek Boat Tours,
with Open House NY. Click here for more details.
Saturday, July 30, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
DUPBO Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 