Archive for the ‘Brooklyn’ Category
dismal eyrie
It’s Wednesday, the day of Woden (Odin), from the Old English word “Wōdnesdæg.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Street furniture. That’s the term coined by my old friend Ms. Heather at NY-Shitty for the abandoned or dumped furnishings or accoutrements you encounter while walking around the city. I always get a giggle out of that one, but in the case of this love seat encountered on the Pedestrian/Bike path of the Kosciuszcko Bridge, I have to respect the amount of physical labor it must have taken moving this fairly massive hunk of furniture to a prime viewing location fairly close to the center of the bridge.
A lot of muscle, time, and energy goes into illegal dumping. It’s so much simpler to throw things out in a legal fashion. The number of tires you see submerged in Newtown Creek is absolutely staggering, for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot looks down from the bridge on the truck yard of a company which calls itself Empire Merchants. They do the holy work of god, which is delivering liquor and beer to bars and retail shops. This company has a fairly large footprint in Greenpoint, with both enclosed warehouse spaces and large vehicle storage yards like the one pictured above. They’re officially a “distributor” as a note. “Last mile delivery” is the current buzz phrase for this sort of business.
I’d love to see them replace the surface of their parking lot with something a bit more environmentally friendly in order to drink up rain water, but this isn’t necessarily the place where you’d want a lot of water entering the underground. The Greenpoint Oil Spill is centered a few blocks away, and this particular spot sits on top of a different environmental nightmare – the Meeker Avenue Plumes. Said plumes are composed of dry cleaning chemicals spilled by a now out of business factory. The hard cap of asphalt and concrete insulating the ground water from surface flow actually helps keep those chemicals in a static position.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Part of a largish waste transfer station, one which handles all of the good stuff – paper, metals, and putrescents – but specializes in construction debris, is pictured above. One of the interesting things, for me, about the new Kosciuszcko Bridge walkway is the window it gives you onto this sort of scene.
For years, when walking by on the street, you’d be able to see peeks of this scene. The fellows who work here… well… let’s just say that they’ve never been friendly to the odd itinerant photographer and environmental activist who was just passing by.
Back tomorrow with something else, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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 3rd. 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.
essential salts
Monday, from the old German word “mōnandæg,” means day of the moon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A little bit of continuity with last Friday’s post is seen above, depicting the same tug and barge combination passing the Meeker Avenue/Penny Bridge street end along Newtown Creek. The difference in today’s shot are the three jet skis which got into the tug captain’s path, which sped past the combo. Yes. People are jet skiing in Newtown Creek nowadays. I know, I know.
If these recreationalists only knew about the rumors which have plagued me about “it” all summer. “It,” if “it” exists, would likely regard these jet skiers as little more than a snack.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For the shot above, I lengthened the exposure time in pursuit of getting the water all mirror like. Sometime in the next week or two, my plan is to acquire some polarized filter glass for the camera, which should aid in peering below the surface by reducing the reflected and scattering ambience of the sky.
Perhaps it will help me reveal its presence, if it does exist. Thing is… who can guess, all there is, that might be swimming around down in the gelatinous fathoms of the Newtown Creek?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A parting shot from the Kosciuszko Bridge walkway, captured as dusk was giving way to full night time.
More tomorrow, at your Newtown Pentacle.
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 3rd. 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.
undone once
Whoop-dee-doo, it’s Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It took a bit of hustle, but one got to Penny Bridge just in time for dusk. Found at the northern terminus of Meeker Avenue in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section, the Penny Bridge site is – as the name would imply – the former locale wherein one would, prior to 1939, encounter a movable bridge crossing Newtown Creek whose toll was famously a penny. The Penny Bridge’s purpose was negated by construction of the original Kosciuszcko Bridge, which was originally called the Meeker Avenue or New Penny Bridge. The Penny Bridge site has received a terrific amount of attention from my colleagues at Newtown Creek Alliance over the last few years. There are plantings, regular cleanups of illegal dumping, and there’s even a picnic table there. Check it out sometime, if you find yourself in the neighborhood. The deeded owner of the spot is actually the New York City Department of Transportation – the DOT – so it’s actually your property since they are merely our collective employees.
Get to Penny Bridge at the right time, and the shot above is one of the views you’ll receive.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking eastwards from Penny Bridge, you’ll see the new Kosciuszcko Bridge, with its unearthly chromatic radiation. The Brooklyn shore is on the right hand side of the shot, with Queens filling most of the frame. The Kosciuszcko Bridge marks the delineation between the Blissville section of Long Island City and the West Maspeth/Berlin section of Maspeth. The bridge carries the Brooklyn Queens Expressway over the Newtown Creek, and is found 2.1 miles from the East River.
The lighting package installed on the Kosciuszcko Bridge is currently rotating through a chromatic scale – yellow, green, blue, purple, red. One has been trying to discern if there’s a hidden message embedded in the frequencies of light and the order and speed of their repetitions. Often when staring at the weird colorations, a sudden irresistible desire to purchase NYS Savings Bonds rises in me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Careful attention is paid to the shadowed shorelines. Sooner or later, I will get a photo of something, something impossible. Again – rumor and innuendo, nothing solid enough to pass on. Yet.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
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, June 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 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.
great purgation
Greenpoint, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in prior posts, I have no idea as to how the medallion yellow taxi people are going to survive CoronAmerica. They were taking a real beating from the ride share business, as well as predatory financial speculators, before all this started. Here on Provost Street, nearby a taxi company’s HQ, there are hundreds and hundreds of these normally busy vehicles just sitting idle. At a similar facility closer to home in LIC, I noticed that many of the cabs had their medallions removed from the bonnet or hood plate, no doubt for safekeeping or possibly to oblige some obscure regulation.
One didn’t intend to spend much time here in Brooklyn, I was just looping through Greenpoint and circumnavigating the sewer plant on my way back to Queens after walking over the Pulaski Bridge. Incidentally, they’ve changed the name of the sewer plant again. It’s now the Newtown Creek Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility. Accordingly, from now on I’m just going to refer to it as “the sewer plant in Greenpoint” or something similar. Can you imagine being the person who answers the phone at someplace called “Newtown Creek Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility”?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Supply lines,” that’s what I was thinking while grabbing a shot of this semi tractor trailer truck parked opposite the sewer plant in Greenpoint. The “human factor” of our supply lines is something I worry about all the time. You can offer a long haul trucker all the money in the world to make a run, but he’s still going to have to convince his wife that it’s worth the risk for making the run into NYC. Our Lady of the Pentacle is British, and she receives a series of worried missives from friends and family overseas whenever a news report airs describing the center of the pandemic as being in Queens and literally two subway stops away from where we reside. The lurid newscasts are presenting us living in a war zone, here in the City. Can’t imagine how the rest of the country is reacting towards all of our bad news, and “supply chain” or “trucker’s wife” wise, what the effect of that will be.
Will our supply of Soy Milk be interrupted?
The truck carries the corporate branding of a company called Sunland Distribution, a Florida based company specialized in temperature controlled shipping.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One continued back towards Astoria, marching across the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge into LIC’s Blissville section. There seems to be a bit of bulkhead reconstruction going on at what was once part of the Mobil refinery on the Brooklyn side of Newtown Creek. ExxonMobil still maintains an operation or two just up the Creek from here, which are dedicated to operations revolving around the recovery of the Greenpoint Oil Spill.
More of the outside world tomorrow, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the end of the week of Monday, April 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 