Archive for the ‘Dutch Kills’ Category
amorphous blight
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few somewhat random shots from the end of a longish walk, depicting scenes familiar and loved.
Things I’m likely not going to be witnessing again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The empty corridor in Long Island City, an industrial zone blighted by the presence of the Long Island Expressway, which has suddenly become incredibly busy due to the pandemic influenced explosion of activity by last mile shipping companies like FedEx and UPS.
15 years ago, this empty corridor hosted a series of homeless camps built around shacks and abandoned cars.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was scary here, and particularly so at night. Not because of the homeless population, who are – generally speaking – not a threat to passerby. It was a deserted area, where young men from surrounding residential neighborhoods would gather to plan the nefarious part of their nights.
LIC is one of the photographic wonderlands which I’ve been absolutely honored to record.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Montauk Cutoff, which are abandoned LIRR rail tracks. My friends and I have been trying for years to get MTA to officially open the space to the public, despite the fact that the public uses them regularly as it is.
I was heading for the 7 line stop a few blocks away.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Views like the ones found in LIC are just unique. Especially so when the ground is saturated with moisture after a week of rain.
NYC never looks as good as it does when it’s wet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 7 carried me to Queensboro Plaza, where a transfer to the Astoria line W train was enacted and soon I was at 31st street and Broadway.
One scuttled down Broadway towards HQ, lost in a fog of recollections and memories. All the people… all the times good and bad…
“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.
final peril
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Every time might be the last time.” Dutch Kills, where I’ve spent so much time and effort over the last 15 years, is pictured in today’s post. I can’t help but be reminiscent.
The broiling hot summer days bringing tours through here, those frigid frost bitten mornings standing on one of these bridges with a camera and tripod waiting for the sun to rise, the late night walks, the scary moments of actual peril when I found myself confronted with the baser aspects of the street…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ll never forget the first time, when I followed a Google maps pathway here from Astoria. “Hey, I’m going to go check out this Newtown Creek joint I’ve heard about” is what I said to Our Lady of the Pentacle when leaving the house. “Be careful” she said. That’s how it started.
The warning to “be careful” always strikes me oddly. I’m the very definition of careful in everything I do. It can be offered that one of the biggest flaws in my personality is the amount of care I display, embed into, and enact in my daily round. My “care” actually borders on neuroticism. I take the OSHA motto of “how can I get hurt” that they drill into the industrial world quite seriously. Before I cross a street, I look three times, not two.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s my tree of paradise in the shot above, which I seem to have spent most of the pandemic months photographing. All of this is now somebody else’s’ problem. I can tell you who that somebody is – Will Elkins is Executive Director at Newtown Creek Alliance – and Will is “the man.” Smart and kind, Will has assembled a staff of amazing people at NCA, and they are the future. It’s time to stop talking about the past here, and to start talking about tomorrow. Will and the NCA staff are the people to do that.
I’m heading into the west, like one of Tolkien’s elves.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given the reflective mood I’m in at the moment, a statement I’d offer is this – it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve met some amazing people, done and seen things that not many other people have, and occasionally got to help people who needed help. No regrets. I never “took,” even when I found myself surrounded by high rank politicians and the “powers that are.” Always did I ask myself “What would Superman do?” and used that as a guidepost for any moral decisions.
That’s apparently a Night Heron in the shot above, but since I always get the name of a bird wrong when I try to say what kind of bird a bird is – so, it’s a three eyed lobe tickler.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you shine a light into the waters here at night, the surface starts boiling as the little nocturnal fishies in the water column fall into panic mode. They’re what that descendant of the dinosaurs pictured above was hunting in the darkness.
I’m currently looking for a job in Pennsylvania. Worst comes to worst, I’ll drive for Lyft or Uber until I get something solid. There’s always managing a Denny’s or something. I plan on staying away from anything political or nonprofit in nature. I just want to go to work, and then take pictures and explore the area the rest of the time while I’m figuring out my next incarnation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We are all different people at different times of our lives. I used to be a comic book artist and writer who worked on it obsessively all night, while maintaining a day job persona on Madison Avenue as a production artist and photo retoucher. The latter job title caused me to have to learn about photography in order to interact with the photographers whose work I was editing and processing. That got me started taking my own shots, which is what led me down the path to who I am currently. Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans, as the saying goes.
More tomorrow – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
unguessed companion
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A scuttle through the lonely corridors of Long Island City continues in todays post. The rain had stopped, but it was still kind of wet out. One was heading, ultimately, to a subway stop. This was one of the nights where I walk for a few miles and then take a train back to Astoria.
Every step and every thought was consumed by the forthcoming “escape from New York” which Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself have been planning since the beginning of the year.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were several things which needed to be accomplished first, as a predicate for the escape. I had stupidly allowed my driver’s license to expire, so I needed to deal with the DMV and sort that out. They rejected my expired drivers license – which they themselves had issued – as a valid form of ID, which is the sort of Kafkaesque thing you’d expect from New York State’s agencies. My passport was also expired, and since that’s a form of ID that they do take – that meant I had to dance with the Feds first to get that reinstated in order to drive again. Feds first, DMV second to get a learners permit, and then I had to sit through a driver’s ed class and subsequently take a road test. There’s no point in trying to fight a bureaucratic process, you just have to go with the flow.
At any rate, by late spring, I was a licensed driver again in the State of New York. Our Lady and myself had decided on our destination after somewhat extensive travel using Amtrak in 2021, but now we had to buy a car. You can’t move to America from the Archipelago City off of its eastern shore without a car.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The car thing was unnecessarily complicated and took many months, due to the supply chain issues you keep hearing about on the news. We placed our order in early July, and received the unit in middle October, roughly two weeks after these photos were captured. A Toyota RAV4 hybrid, if you’re curious. Gets great mileage, 41mpg on average. A fill up gives me just under 600 miles of range per tank. City driving, it runs electric most of the time for the stop and go. Comfortable ride.
There’s all sorts of gizmos and systems onboard which I’m still figuring out how to operate. The difficulty in finding street parking in Queens is overstated, if you’re patient enough you’ll find a spot. It’s no better or worse than it was the last time I had a car in my charge, which was back in the early 1990’s. Sucked then, sucks now. It’s New York City, where nothing is easy. Get used to it or get out. I’m opting for the second option.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the computer systems which the new car offers is absolutely terrifying but works fantastically well – radar guided cruise control. When you’re on a highway and you engage it, this system maintains a designated following distance from the car in front of you. It slows down and speeds up automatically, and the sensors in the car read the painted lane indicators on the road and automatically keep you centered in your lane and the system makes steering adjustments for you. You still need to have your hands on the wheel, and the car nags at you if it doesn’t sense input from the driver, but the thing can actually drive itself to a certain extent.
Like I said, terrifying.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve already put more than a 1,000 miles on the odometer in the last three weeks, but to be fair – there was a trip back and forth to Pittsburgh. We’ve signed a lease there, and by Christmas, I’ll no longer be a New Yorker.
There’s been a couple of really nice moments in the interim, however, where my friends have gone “all in” to say goodbye. Newtown Creek Alliance awarded me with the “Reveal” award at our annual “Tidal Toast” gala and fundraiser, and my pals at the John J. Harvey Fireboat brought a big group of my friends and I out for one last Newtown Creek boat tour.
I’ll show you photos from the latter at some future date.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve removed myself from the many obligations which I found myself in for the last few years in preparation for this great escape – Community Board, Access Queens, Newtown Creek CAG executive committee, Working Harbor Committee Board. I’ll be stepping down from the board of Newtown Creek Alliance next week, as well. It’s all over.
Time to close the cover on this chapter. Pittsburgh, a rough beast is shambling towards you, clothed in black sack cloth. It’s name is Mitch.
“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.
gleaming rows
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off – Newtown Creek Alliance will be honoring John Lipscomb of Riverkeeper, Christine Holowacz, and… your humble narrator… this coming Thursday night (the 20th) at the annual “Tidal Toast” fundraising event. Ticketing information can be found here, and the tax deductible donation of your ticket money will help to fund NCA’s ongoing mission to Reveal, Restore, and Revitalize Newtown Creek. NCA has been at the center of my public life over the last 15 years, and I hope you can make it. This is officially my finale, in terms of public facing events, and the end of this chapter of my life.
An afternoon walk that I found myself on, during the afternoon and evening of the 16th of September, ended up becoming a fairly long and extensive affair. I was “everywhere.” Pictured above is the collapsing bulkhead at 29th street, along Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary. Foremost in my mind these days is the fact that every time I’m visiting one of my “old familiar places,” it might be the last time given that I’m moving away from NYC in the now very near future.
I’ve been talking publicly about this for several months now, of course, but as the timeline grows short, and the seminal date wherein my life inextricably alters is near.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back at HQ in Astoria, it’s all business for me right now. I’ve torn apart most of the habitation, and there are piles and piles of cardboard boxes everywhere. Most of our furniture is in the process of becoming “gone,” at the time you’re reading this. So are the piles of books and comics which I’ve been storing for apparently no reason at all, given that I’ve never reread the things once they went into a box or onto a shelf. Saying that, there’s just something heretical to me about throwing out a book. Beyond all that, these are just “things,” manufactured items in the circular material continuum of a consumer based capitalist system. They have the value we assign to them, ultimately.
Ultimately, I don’t want to pay a mover to transport useless or unused items 400 miles westwards and then store them until I die. The less I take, the less it costs me. Believe me when I tell you that I’m keeping too much stuff anyway. Sentimentalism costs money.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everybody keeps on asking what I’m going to do in Pittsburgh, and will I keep up with updating the Newtown Pentacle. Then they ask me if I’m going to rename it Pittsburgh Pentacle or something. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but for the time being I’m going to keep in publishing here as long as it’s feasible. There’s a few ideas I’m toying around with, but another big change that’s hopefully about to occur – as this post is being written – is that I’m soon going to be a car owner. I’ve got a lot of new bills associated with that one – loan payments, insurance etc., and thereby my financial situation is altered in significant ways. I’ve got a new set of bills to pay, and financial homeostasis demands that my freelancing life give way to a salaried staff job somewhere. Regular tides, and all that.
“All depends on what sort of job I get in Western Pennsylvania,” that’s my answer to the Newtown Pentacle question. Saying all that, I’d be loathe to give up on broadcasting my various adventures. Have no doubt that adventure awaits, though. I can’t sit still. Let’s see.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the “meantime” of the next several weeks, however, I’ll continue to scuttle around and point the camera at things. Pictured is the Borden Avenue Bridge in Long Island City, crossing the Dutch Kills tributary of the lugubrious Newtown Creek. For some reason, the last few weeks I’ve found myself turning the camera sideways for “portrait format” shots. 99.9% of what I’ve shot over the last ten years has been “landscape format,” and I’m desirous of getting a few vertical ones in before I go into the west like one of Tolkien’s elves.
“Every time, right now, might be the last time.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has friends who try to trip him up along Newtown Creek, pointing at this nearby thing or that distant one on the horizon and asking “what’s that?”. I’ve become so familiar with this place, and its features, that trying to trip me up on the subject is a fool’s errand.
What are you asking me about – the Crane company, the Van Iderstine’s property, the nearby NYS DEC’s crank case oil remediation wells, the Railroad Avenue corridor, Waste Management, or maybe Green Asphalt? Maybe you want to know about the first major petroleum refinery in the United States that opened in 1837, just east of here? Lower Montauk tracks of the Long Island Railroad, or “Deadman’s Curve?” Blissville?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Kosciuszcko Bridge pictured above, the new one(s). I got to walk around on it, before it opened, with Carolyn Maloney and Eric Adams amongst others. I was there when Andrew Cuomo cut the ribbon for the new span, standing alongside a group of politicians who would now deny that they ever met him in person, despite the fact that “day of” they formed a little line and then waited on it patiently for their turn to kiss his ass.
Of course, I wasn’t done walking around Queens yet on the 16th of September, and since I was standing on the “LIC/Maspeth” line, I decided to just scuttle on…
More tomorrow, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
fired spectacularly
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As alluded to yesterday, the bulkhead situation along the 29th street side of Dutch Kills most definitely got worse in the 2 weeks or so that I hadn’t been there. Unfortunately, I was not about to try and get some shots of it in the dark as it was way too risky due to the degradation of the shoreline. Saying that, I came back a couple of days later, during the afternoon, and documented the scene. I’ll show y’all that in the future.
Meantime, I visited all of my usual “stations of the cross” at Dutch Kills. There’s my favorite tree.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At what used to be the campus of “Irving Subway Grate,” another concrete factory is building its equipment and site. All the politicians are “very concerned” about the environment, but when it comes time to consider a heavy trucking based business from an industrial sector notorious for its product ending up in the water wanting to situate itself in LIC, they allow these businesses to set themselves up on the waterfront. Jobs. No requirement that they use their bulkheads, no preference or encouragement to use the nearby freight rail line. Nada.
Nothing matters, nobody cares.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The last meeting I attended as a Steering Committee member of the Newtown Creek Community Advisory Group was horrific. EPA offered a revised timeline of their Superfund project which pushed the “shovels in the ground” phase of the cleanup back to the 2040’s, with a 2050ish “done” date. Their team describe to the community how hard their jobs are, how many regulations they must oblige and how difficult that is, and how their efforts can basically be sent back to square one by reviews from anonymous “alphabet acronym” Federal level committees that no one has ever heard of. They don’t talk about how the Corporate and Governmental PRP’s – Potentially Responsible Parties – have run them around and around in circles for twelve years.
A blind elephant which only knows how to do one thing – moving forward slowly – and whose pathway can easily be nudged in one direction or another by regulatory or political nudging from the PRP’s Mahouts – that’s the EPA.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yeah, I’m kind of pissed off about their schedule. Everyone on the meeting call gave the EPA a bit of spleen about the timeline. Many, including myself, commented on how we’ll all be dead and how every member of the EPA team will be long retired from Federal service by the time they stick a shovel into the ground.
I found myself having to remind them that each and every day that goes by is another one during which children in the always growing residential neighborhoods surrounding Newtown Creek are exposed to its poisons.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Doesn’t matter what they do. The scene you’re looking at above will be under water by 2050. I don’t believe in Santa Claus, and you don’t believe in climate change and rising sea levels. That’s cool.
I’m done, y’all. We had a window, and instead of addressing the existential issues that a metroplex built on a series of sandbar islands faces in the 21st century, we built “affordable” housing and jammed as many people as we could right in next to the water.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not exactly a cheer filled post, this.
My plan is to get out of here asap, and go live in the mountains. What’s your plan? I’m not saying you have to move on it right now, instead I’d predict you want to enact it within the next decade. That’s when things are going to start becoming fairly dicey from a weather point of view here in NYC. Your kids and grandkids are the ones who are going to have to deal and live with terms like “managed retreat.”
Me? I’m not a strong swimmer, so the safety of higher elevation is what I seek in my dotage.
“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 