Archive for the ‘East River’ Category
foul emanation
The best thing about Manhattan is seeing it from somewhere else.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A couple of Saturdays ago, one found himself at Hunters Point in anticipation of the so called “Manhattanhenge” event. Largely rained out and occluded by stormy weather on the actual date of the astronomical curiousity, it nevertheless provided me with the excuse to tote the tripod and camera down to the east river and do some long exposure shots of the shining city.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was actually a day early for the “full monty” of Manhattanhenge, but that didn’t really bother me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rest of Memorial Day weekend was filled in with social obligation, and this was my only opportunity to hang around the water for a spell. Back tomorrow with something a bit more substantial than some pretty pictures.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
and dauntless
Things I’ve been lucky enough to see, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That Working Harbor Committee Students tour I mentioned the other day? One of the cool things I got to see while onboard was the FDNY’s Fireboat Three Forty Three doing some kind of exercise. There seemed to be a heck of a security presence, more so than usual, in Lower Manhattan and on the water last week.
They were probably performing security sweeps in preparation for Fleet Week, I imagine.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The thrilling moment when your train arrives, which signals that the moment when the ordeal of standing on the platform is over, and that the ordeal of riding the train is about to begin. For some reason, the Lexington Avenue tunnels seem to be lit theatrically, which always lends the appearance of the 4 or 5 into 59th Street a certain dramatic flair.
Hey, @MTA – maybe that’s the answer to all your problems – theatrical lighting!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not sure if the shot above has been presented before, but when you’re talking about lighting, Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights does not disappoint.
Sorry for the short post today, but I’ve got to go get my notes ready for tonight’s Working Harbor “Brooklyn Waterfront: Past and Present” boat tour.
Upcoming Events and Tours
TONIGHT – Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
Saturday, June 4, 11:00 a.m. -1:30 p.m. –
DUPBO: Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
be ready
Green Acres, that’s the place for me?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I grew up in a place called Brooklyn. I lived there nearly half my life, followed by a decade in Manhattan, and the most recent portion has been in Queens. Occasionally, I’ve visited… Staten Island… and the Bronx. The only time I’ve ever spent outside the City were a) day trips to various Aunts and Uncles who lived in New Jersey, Maryland, or Long Island when I was a kid, b) business trips around the Eastern Seaboard back when I was drawing comics, c) or on vacations with Our Lady of the Pentacle. When the news of the day reaches me, my first question always revolves around “how does this affect me?” This selfish interpretation of events makes me an archetypal New Yorker.
All told, I’ve probably spent all but an aggregate of maybe 3-4 months of my entire existence (nearly five decades now) outside of the Megalopolis. I always say that if I moved away, it would be ceding victory to the City that it had finally beaten the tar out of me.
I guess that makes me a “City Boy.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, I’ve considered it a privilege to live my life at the very navel – the omphalos, if you will – of the American Civilization, but when I mention the fact that my experience in life is fairly well limited to the Megalopolis – a lot of people I mention this to get a sad or pitiful look in their eyes. My environmentalist buddies, in particular, will offer to take me camping or something with them so I can experience the wonders of untamed nature.
Blecchhh.
I went camping once, just once. I ended up sleeping in the car as it had doors which locked, it was dry, and there were cushioned seats. A day trip to the woods sounds like fun, but with a sunburn and mosquito bites, and the “Brooklyn” wiseass in me offers that I have an apartment with a bed in it. Like I said – City Boy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve often reminded people that the ocean is a giant stomach desperate to digest you, that woodlands are full of ticks and bears and other critters which are specifically designed to overpower and consume you, that there’s a reason our ancestors paved over everything, and that the entire history of mankind – up until the 1970’s – was about not just taming nature but utterly subjugating it. Look at the shot above for confirmation of this fact, which is the epitome of what was once called “Progress.”
Now, I’m not saying that my antipathy towards clouds of biting insects and giant Pleistocene era predators is normal, nor necessarily desirable, nor something you should make a part of yourself. If you enjoy this sort of activity – Mazel Tov. I like hanging out in Astoria and nursing a pint at my local. What I’m trying to get to is this:
The littoral environment hereabouts is somehow recovering from the centuries long hammer blows of open sewage, ocean dumping of garbage, and industrial effluent which it was been hit with. The continued existence of our own species is directly tied to this recovery, IMHO, which is why this City Boy has found himself constantly talking about environmental issues. If we can’t control and promote environmental health in the built environment of NYC, where a switch or lever can be thrown to control nearly everything you can think of – where else can you figure out how to fix the future?
NYC has always led the Nation, it’s the bow of the American ship. We need to find out, together, how to be a mega city for plants and animals and humans and commerce and be the global example on the subject of clean water in an urban environment. The City boy has spoken.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
Saturday, June 4, 11:00 a.m. -1:30 p.m. –
DUPBO: Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
squamous litanies
It’s a real migraine out there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Let’s face it, what we New Yorkers actually do is raise a hell of a ruckus wherever we are, but especially so when we’re at home. Personal experience of visiting relatively rural and quiet areas, like Vermont, reveals the effect on my hearing that living in this constant din has wrought. For 24-48 hours after leaving the City, there’s a high pitched phantom tone constantly present. I’ve always thought that the “wheeeeeee” sound, in addition to having a medical definition and name, is my brains attempt to filter out the constant rumble and thunder of city life – cerebral noise cancelling if you will.
All the engines, and generators, exhaust fans, jets, car tires on asphalt, buzzing things on utility poles, everybody talking, the subways, the chattering of millions of birds – the air is polluted not just with toxic gases and sewage bacteria rising on the breeze from out of the harbor – but with noise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s only during power outages and blizzards that you get to hear the City hush up for a while. I’d settle for regular powers like being able to effectively climb a ladder or balance my check book, but a humble narrator has often fantasized about possessing some sort of super power. My first choice would be invulnerability, of course, but a lot of the really interesting choices involve sight and perception. X-Ray vision? I’d worry about giving people cancer just by looking at them. Being able to fly without the invulnerability would actually be kind of dangerous.
What if you could visualize sound?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I know, that’s the sort of thing somebody would ask in a dorm room shortly after passing the bong, but still.
The BQE would probably look like something from Van Gogh, with crashing scalars creating fractal wavefronts which bounce and dance along the road itself and all the brick walls of the buildings which the highway weaves through. The East River would likely be a majestic sight, and would exhibit something akin to a sonic Jackson Pollack painting.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
if awakening
It’s going to be a fun year, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is false.
Every nuanced point of view, rhetorical platform, and political stance is plainly bullshit. Nothing is true, and the entire world refuses to admit it, for the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Conspiracists abound, and they just might be right – for there are, in fact, elite cabals who “rig the game.” We citizens are little more than the pigs at the stock yards of 19th century Chicago, whom workers attached to a mechanical wheel whose sole function was to dismember and commercialize every molecule of their bodies.
All roads lead to Calvary, and are paved not with good intentions, but suffering and humiliation instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is true.
The greatest City, of the greatest country, that the world has ever seen – the Megalopolis of the Proletarian mass – wherein “arebeit” truly does “macht frei.” If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Things are nearly perfect, and the system just needs a few conservatively applied tweaks to assure that all within its borders can live as they choose to. The strong will aid the weak, and through labor and sweat – all may partake in this glorious and great Metropolitan cornucopia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is false.
Living corpses are rejected from common consideration and abandoned to the frozen pavement, disincorporated and dissolute, awaiting only their eventual cremation. Incarceration and persecution is their lot, and deservedly so, for their iniquities. Shunned groups willingly subdivide themselves into ever smaller fractions, which accomplishes the work of political and corporate bosses. Swineherds in blue uniforms push and cajole the offending castes away from the notice of the gentry, lest delicate sensibilities be offended by their presence.
Every hour of every day, the noose is tightened.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is true.
Struggle and valiant effort provides one with a ladder to climb out of the gutter and neither luck nor familial heritage has nothing to do with success in the Metropolis. Gotham is naught but the survival of the fittest writ large in concrete and steel, and the trees who root themselves most soundly are those who will rise the highest. Even for the lesser specimens, the forest floor holds naught but untold riches waiting for those clever enough to recognize and reap the fecund value of compost.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is false.
Charlatans and confidence operations stand in shadowed doorways, waiting to hook some rube and roll through their pockets. Even the pillars of law and government are set up to remove as much of the filthy lucre from the working man’s pockets as they can get away with. Nobody cares what happens to you, and won’t offer a helping hand out of fear of having the spotlight of the super predators turn upon them. Better to shelter away from others, for engagement only means new troubles will be added to the list, and thicken the skin.
Scar tissue tends to be numbed to external sensation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is true.
Gaze upon the works of man, the great bridges, and the towers which do – in fact – scrape against the clouds. The electric glow, the sounds of a society which never stops moving, and a fascinating polyglot culture which offers music, and flavors, and smells which can be found everywhere and nowhere else on an entire planet. A direct line of descent, from Ur to Rome to Constantinople to Paris to London to Manhattan can be drawn, tracing the evolution of mankind from troglodyte ape, to human, to New Yorker.
Surely – this place is where the progress of civilization has, logically, been striving for.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator has made one resolution for this new year – it’s time to get serious, and to stop pretending that I’m just some kind of tourist in this horrible dichotomy which I’ve lived in for nearly half a century. Iconoclast tendencies will be given full reign, as will the black diamond of hatred in my heart be allowed to bloom. Time’s nearly up, and I’m tired of fooling around with liars and idiots.
All is false, all is true.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 