Archive for the ‘Flushing’ Category
heavy features
A few shots from NYC’s most photogenic subway line.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, a post was offered at this – your Newtown Pentacle – describing the 99th anniversary of the opening of the IRT Flushing Line’s Corona Extension. That’s the 11 stops between Queensboro Plaza and what’s now called 103rd Corona Plaza on the 7. My intention for that post was to show you every station, which I did in fact visit and shoot… but you know me… a week late and a dollar short.
Speaking of, I’m running a bit late today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Large groupings of photos – in the case of the 7 line shots, I came home with something close to a thousand individual captures which have been boiled down to around 200 – create a sort of roadblock for me. They need to be treated as one continuous shoot during the developing process (I shoot in RAW format, so every shot gets a little love and attention). Procedurally, it works like this – an initial pass to cull out over and underexposed or just junk shots, followed by key wording and then cropping. At the end of the procedural stuff I finally get to do the “developing” stage which is the photoshop equivalent of what you film people used to do in the dark room when pulling prints. Once that’s done I can finally start spawning the final incarnations of the things you see, and upload them to the web for dissemination.
When you’re starting with a thousand individual images, this ends up taking a lot of time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I ended up riding the 7 for several hours last week, between Willets Point and Queensboro Plaza. To me, at least, it was worth the effort.
Speaking of transit, tonight at 6:30 at Riccardos by the Bridge in Astoria, there’s a meeting to plan a centennial celebration for the Hell Gate Bridge which I intend on attending. Come with?
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outer banks
Flushing Cemetery, in Today’s Post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that, back in 1853, the 20 acre Purchase Farm was bought and repurposed for usage as Flushing Cemetery. In 1875, the Whitehead Duryea Farm’s 50 acres were incorporated into the property, which more or less created the modern shape of the institution (there were a few minor additions added here and there). Flushing is a bit of the “unknown country” for me, and I usually just refer people to Queens Borough Historian and Flushing native Dr. Jack Eichenbaum when the subject arises.
Not too long ago, my pal Cav and I jumped into his “automobile” and went to check Flushing Cemetery out as the best curative for ignorance is investigation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cursory research reveal there to be around 41,000 people whose last address is here. There are several notables, including musicians, actors, and revered statesmen interred in Flushing Cemetery. The place was in a VERY good state of repair during my visit to the place during the last weeks of 2016’s winter.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The plots and sections we visited revealed a large number of German sounding names on them, and the dates on the monuments ran a gamut from the middle 19th to early 21st centuries.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The marble monuments showed the “rotting” sort of decay that is caused by acid rain and subsequent water infiltration, causing their carven screeds to be obscured, unreadable, or lost. You see this sort of thing in a more advanced form at Calvary Cemetery in Blissville, where certain monuments have the appearance of melted ice cream. Observationally, granite monuments seem to endure longer in NYC’s peculiar and polluted atmospherics.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fellow who plotted out the cemetery back in 1853 was a Civil Engineer named Horace Daniels, and he seems to have embraced using a lot of curving paths. It’s likely there’s a ton of original design elements missing from the scene above – railings, statuary, plantings, etc.
Flushing used to be known for horticulture, “back in the day.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Bowne plot was stumbled upon, specifically the Walter Bowne one. Yes, Bowne House, Bowne Street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I won’t attempt to tell you anything else about the Bownes, as Flushing is outside of my area of expertise.
I just came here on a day trip, and would advise that you seek out and chat with Dr. Jack Eichenbaum. Dr. Jack can discuss the Bownes in greater detail and scope than I can. The East River and Newtown Creek coastlines are where my knowledge of Queens history is both detailed and well studied.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Quite Lovely” thought a humble narrator, upon noticing a surviving iron railing on the Bowne Plot, with its cast iron chains designed with the appearance of a tasseled rope.
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terrible injuries
Aching, painful butt? Get outside, I say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recently, one forced himself off the couch, dared the frigid antibiome of Queens, and moved. Movement is difficult in this sort of weather, as one needs to swaddle himself in insulation. Sometimes I like to weigh myself unclothed, just out of the shower, and then get back on the scale after getting dressed. One recent day, I realized that I was wearing twenty seven pounds of clothes. We are all forced to carry baggage, I reckon, but no one is encouraging me to just sit on the couch so I picked myself up and went out – into the cold waste.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This crow was spotted over in Flushing, walking a cart of harvested alloys towards an Iron Triangle scrap yard for conversion into cash. He’s walking in a vehicle lane on the Roosevelt Avenue Bridge, which is ill considered – “vision zero” wise. Just before and about a minute after this shot was captured, vehicles moving at speed nearly struck him, dual events which really seemed to tick him off. The auto drivers offered the crazy notion that he should be using the pedestrian lane. Chalk this one up to “user error,” I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Roaming into the park via the pedestrian bridge that connects the LIRR station with the Subway stop at Citifield, many sevens were present, but it was seven sevens that were focused upon. This is the MTA’s Corona Yard, which is next door to an MTA Bus terminal. All very exciting, except for the fact that due to track work, the train wasn’t running on the day I shot this and that I live way over in Astoria. Probably why there’s so many of them just standing around and apparently looking for something to do.
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all pantheons
Hey, youse, whatcha taking pixchas of? Comere, ahlls gis yes someting to take pixchas of right heres…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The first time that a camera was used as a weapon of war, not for propaganda or image capture but as a bludgeon, was during the First World War. A century ago, a British infantryman who was completely out of ammunition on the Western Front swung his Kodak Brownie stoutly around for 17 straight hours, holding off a German division singlehandedly before succumbing to his injuries.
I’m making that up of course, to illustrate the ridiculous nature of people’s reactions when they see a camera being used these days. Folks don’t react in the same manner to cell phone cameras, mind you, dslr’s must awaken some ancestral memory of one eyed predators stalking our primate predecessors. At any rate, here we go again with the Subway pics.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Compared to the shooting protocol I’ve been perfecting for the underground system, down in the tubes, the 7 line is a piece of cake. Above ground through most of Queens, every one of its platforms (except Hunters Point, which has its own virtues) offer fantastic points of view. The shot above is the Corona Yard, nearby Flushing Meadow Corona Park and Citifield, on the pedestrian bridge between the LIRR station and the 7 line’s stadium stop.
Whilst shooting this one, some faceless security guard asked me “what are you taking pictures of?”. Gesturing to the yard, I said “the trains.” He offered that it was disallowed, noticing such things and capturing the reflected light streaming off of them. Not desiring to discuss constitutional law with a fellow in a rented cop suit, I instructed him to summon the police. He declined and began to harass a teenaged skateboarder instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While on Skillman Avenue near Queens Plaza recently, the 7 came sliding in over the intersection and the deployed camera was called to action. An older woman, whose logical decision making process is clearly flawed – she made the decision to drive into Manhattan at rush hour – called out to me from her idling automobile, offering a question.
Her query was “are you a terrorist?”. I affirmed the negative on that one, and asked if she had remembered to turn the oven off before she left the house. I’m a real stinker like that, she was probably worried about it for the rest of the day. Seriously though Queensicans, leave me the hell alone when I’m working, because that’s what photographers are doing when we have those one eyed predator weapons systems pressed to our faces.
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damp rock
I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For the last couple of weeks, an abundance of “business” has occupied my days and nights. Nothing I’ve had to do has been too extreme, but a surfeit of multiple hour long tasks has plagued me. Today, one needs to prepare to see the accountant later in the week and tie off last years tax obligations, but a point will be made to experience some “r&r” in the afternoon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news is that after all these tasks are accomplished, I can get back to doing actual work. You know, the whole “walk around Queens and explore its amazing and oft occluded past” thing. The even better new is that a whole series of excursions which will allow me to share this wonderful place with others are coming as well, and some of them will even be free events.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit when so overwhelmed, Newtown Pentacle will be going into single image mode for the next few days. Keeping up with content discovery and capture is a bear sometimes, especially when constricted by the never ending series of storms and lousy weather which has so far made 2014 remarkable.
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