Archive for the ‘Brooklyn’ Category
plainly audible
Back and forth, back and forth, it never ends.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Meeting season seems to be upon us all, wherein the various affiliations, causes, and organizations which I’m involved with want to get together in a room somewhere and discuss policy, plans, and or problems related to the issues of the day. Somehow this almost always involves me having to scuttle to Long Island City or Greenpoint at an inconvenient time, but it does allow for intervals on the journey to do a little shooting. Pictured above, a Long Island Railroad Mainline train set on its way from the City to points east, and crossing through the Sunnyside Yards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Intrigued as I’ve been with long exposure shooting for the last several months, an endeavor which is usually carried out at night, whenever I’ve got a spot I can do a long exposure during daylight hours, I take it. That’s about two seconds of accumulated time from Queens Plaza in the shot above. I found a nicely positioned steel bracket which braces the construction scaffolding at one of the tower apartment construction sites on which to brace the camera, lock in the focus, and hold down the shutter button while watching the Fords roll by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An even longer exposure from the other night on Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, alongside the Unnamed Canal sub tributary of the fabulous Newtown Creek. It depicts a somewhat abandoned Department of Sanitation Marine Transfer Station which sits on the shoreline street end of North Henry Street (whose north/south path is interrupted by the sewer plant). The fences were locked up about a year or so ago, and you used to be able to go in there and explore. I think they’re using it to warehouse “stuff” now, but can’t really say for sure. At the very least, they’ve fixed the lights inside the thing.
Upcoming Tours and Events
April 29 – Bushwick-Ridgewood borderline Walking Tour – with Newtown Historical Society.
Join Kevin Walsh and Mitch Waxman as they take us along the border of Brooklyn and Queens, Bushwick and Ridgewood, with stops at English Kills, an historic colonial Dutch home, and all kinds of fun and quirky locations. End with an optional dinner on Myrtle Avenue before heading back to the Myrtle-Wyckoff subway station. Tix are only $5 so reserve your space today!
Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
haggard aspect
I’m an idiot, but it’s kind of fun inside my head.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, last week I was going to some “thing” in Greenpoint, and found myself walking along Meserole Avenue. At 128 Meserole, you’ll notice the 1880’s era church building which was once occupied by the Faith Gospel Church but which, since the 1950’s, has been the HQ of the Pentecostal congregation of the “Church of God.” (as a note, thanks to my pal and Greenpoint historian Geoff Cobb, who filled me in on the identity of the original tenants of 128 Meserole) What caught my eye, in truth, was the lettering on the side of the church van, which I initially read not as “Church of God of Greenpoint” but instead as “Church of, God of Greenpoint.”
This filled me with a sarcastic glee, as I began to contemplate what worship of the God of Greenpoint – or GOG – might entail. I’m sure yoga would be a part of the ceremonial liturgy, and that the priestesses would be devastatingly beautiful hipster women with full sleeve tattoos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mr. Cobb informed me that the original 19th century congregation housed here were evangelicals who pursued missionary activities. As mentioned above, the current occupants are Pentecostals. The building sits just outside the Greenpoint Historic District, and the reason that I had to ask Mr. Cobb for his help was that any attempt at discovering the story of the structure quickly resulted in hundreds and hundreds of Real Estate Industrial Complex web pages which reduced 128 Meserole down to mere equity valuations. From the REIC’s POV, the actual worth of any historic cultural institution’s domicile is reduced to mere money, and everything is just a commodity to be bought or sold.
The God of Greenpoint might just be Mammon. Maybe Asmodeus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There very well might be some pagan deity who could claim the title of “God of Greenpoint,” an elder devil reviled by the Keskachauge who wanders the subterrene caverns beneath the neighborhood seeking a pathway to the surface. The ancestral Lenape culture, which the Keskachauge were a part of, acknowledged spirits both dark and light. The God of Greenpoint… could it be slithering around in deep set tidal and hydrological voids, where centuried petroleum products sit atop the water table, beneath the thick crystalline crust and elluvial underpinnings which support our concretized modernity? If GOG dwells below North Brooklyn, then where is MAGOG?
Who can guess, all there is, that could be buried down there?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
village elders
It’s hard to wake up sometimes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had a bizarre dream last night, wherein a sentence of death by poisoning was handed out to me by a tribunal of masked judges who were wearing powdered wigs. The specific toxin was Belladonna, which was administered via a wound opened up in my right thumb. I have no idea if this is how Belladonna would be administered, but dream logic is what it is. In the dream, after having the poison introduced by a Rastafarian wearing a Corrections Dept. uniform, I was told that I had three hours to live and I was released “back into the wild” as it were to die on the streets of the City. I spent my time visiting old friends and haunts, eventually making it to a bridge over Newtown Creek, where everything began to grow dim and a humble narrator exited the narrative.
In this somnambulist fantasy, a wild hallucination which occurred after finding myself suddenly unconscious last night, my travels in the city were accompanied by a growing numbness in the right arm, whose thumb was the point of inoculation. Waking this morning, which temporally concurred with that moment in the dream when death was arriving, I discovered that I had my arm wrapped around my head in a quite uncomfortable position which impeded the normal circulation of the vital fluids and that the limb was quite numb.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sleep is an odd thing, I’ve always thought. Medical professionals assure me that it’s entirely normal, but ever since I’ve been a child, one has been suspicious of the entire phenomena. Sudden fatigue, a clouding over of the mental faculty, a loss of consiousness followed by intervals of nearly a third of a day spent wildly hallucinating? It just ain’t right. There has to be a cure.
Often, I’ve wondered which world is true – the waking one or the hallucinatory one. Given the nature of my dreams, with their wild implications and Freudian suggestions, I’d rather take the horrible reality of the two thirds of the day when I’m “woke” to the phantasmagoric and demon filled interval experienced during the other portion. One has never dreamt of puppies and green fields, nor playing the role of some sexual or heroic eidolon, rather it’s about stumbling into some colossal bit of industrial machinery and being passively filleted by wires and gears, or experiencing an even greater level of personal or professional humiliation than I normally have to endure.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is not sure about the “why and what” which the tribunal of masked judges condemned me for, due to the way that my dreams fade away soon after waking. One has friends who can relate their dreams as if they were describing a movie they had recently seen, whereas for me it’s a series of pressurized blasts of imagery and experience exploding forward in the manner of ocean waves. It’s not unknown for me to rise up from sleep screaming in terror at the horrors conjured, nor for Our Lady of the Pentacle to report that I had been mumbling in my sleep. One usually doesn’t talk about such things, but for some reason the one last night was both disturbing and persistent into the wakeful daylight. It’s probably because the physical effects of “sleeping funny” had left me with a numb arm, which needed a good “shaking out” to accommodate the return of normal blood flow and normal nervous function, but still. Last night I died alone in the cold on the Pulaski Bridge, after being sentenced by an anonymous tribunal for an unknown heresy.
What can I tell you, I’m all ‘effed up.
Upcoming Tours and Events
April 14 – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
April 15- Newtown Creekathon – with Newtown Creek Alliance.
That grueling 13 and change mile death march through the bowels of New York City known as the “Newtown Creekathon” will be held on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. This will be quite an undertaking, last year half the crowd tagged out before we hit the half way point. Have you got what it takes the walk the enitre Newtown Creek?
Click here to reserve a spot on the Creekathon.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
muffled oaths
More Astoria night time action, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An expressway “cloverleaf exchange” between the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the Grand Central Parkway, and the local street grid is found on Astoria Blvd. in the high 40’s and 50’s blocks A small industrial zone exists thereabouts, which is quite a busy place during working hours. At night, it’s a ghost town inhabited by rats, cats, and me.
Also, the one guy on a delivery bike who rode through the shot while the shutter was open.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I find these kinds of structures fascinating, there’s something about the curving steel and concrete which are lit by harsh sodium fixtures which I just can’t get enough of. The cool coloration of the City’s new LED street lamps provide for a very interesting color contrast, to my eye.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A point of pride for me is knowing where to find hidden byways like the stairs pictured above, which carry you over and through the tangle of high speed roads from one sidewalk plateau to another.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Said plateau is pictured in full above, roughly a full story of elevation from one level to the next.
As a kid growing up in south east Brooklyn, it was critical to know about places like this when fleeing random dangers or avoiding the attentions of law enforcement. My little group of idiots favored the usage of back yards and the jumping of divider fences, or just running across the roofs of connected homes and garages.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As an addendum to a recent conversation I had on social media with a bicycle enthusiast, who was aghast at my assertion that bike lanes in Astoria are superfluous as bike riders use every paved surface available to them, the red light trail over the sidewalk comes from the tail light of an electric bike which zipped past me at speed on the sidewalk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot looks down on the street where the first shot was captured. That’s the Brooklyn Queens Expressway running in the trench.
Robert Moses was entirely specific when assigning nomenclature to his roads, and it all depended on where he was getting to the money from to build them. Parkways have planted dividers and shoulders – built with “parks” money. Expressways have more exits feeding into local streets than Highways – or High Speed Ways – do. Thruways have even fewer exits, which can be 5-10 miles away from each other. The latter three were generally built with slum clearance or urban renewal funds. There was a method to that man’s madness, I tell you.
Upcoming Tours and Events
April 14 – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
April 15- Newtown Creekathon – with Newtown Creek Alliance.
That grueling 13 and change mile death march through the bowels of New York City known as the “Newtown Creekathon” will be held on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. This will be quite an undertaking, last year half the crowd tagged out before we hit the half way point. Have you got what it takes the walk the enitre Newtown Creek?
Click here to reserve a spot on the Creekathon.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
weird cadence
The night time is the Creek time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, one had a City based event to photograph last week and an event in Greenpoint the same evening. At the start of the Greenpoint leg of my day, I apologized to the filmmaker whose work Newtown Creek Alliance was screening that night (as well as my colleagues) as I’d be disappearing for a few minutes while the projector was running.
I’d already seen the film, at a screening held at the Greater Astoria Historic Society last year, and I had permission from the owner of the property where we were doing the event to get down to his bulkheads – which face out on the fabulous Newtown Creek – and crack out a few shots.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A former petrochemical based lubricant mill, found next door to a modern day biofuel depot, the site I was at is in the section of the Newtown Creek which one refers to as “DUGABO” or Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp. That crazy nor’easter had blown through the day before, leaving behind a layer of now rotting snow and slush.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next door at the biofuel company, specifically Metro Oil, an articulated tug and fuel barge were tied up and pumping material from the on shore storage tanks into the barge. On the horizon, in the shot above, is Calvary Cemetery in Blissville on the Queens side of Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking roughly northwards, that’s the Long Island Expressway behind Railroad Avenue, with the Sapphire megalith of Long Island City and all the new residential towers surrounding it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Northwest, and the Sims Metal Management facility.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
West towards the Shining City of Manhattan, past the Allocco Recycling company bulkheads.
Upcoming Tours and Events
Newtown Creekathon – hold the date for me on April 15th.
That grueling 13 and change mile death march through the bowels of New York City known as the “Newtown Creekathon” will be held on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. This will be quite an undertaking, last year half the crowd tagged out before we hit the half way point. Have you got what it takes the walk the enitre Newtown Creek?
Keep an eye on the NCA events page for more information.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 