Archive for the ‘kosciuszko bridge’ Category
spent potential
Are those drums I hear?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Western Queens is under assault by the powers that be in Manhattan. Blissville gets a homeless shelter population which outnumbers actual residents by more than two to one? Check. The LIC Core rezoning is on the way, which will extend the residential towers of Hunters Point and Queens Plaza all the way up Northern Blvd. to Steinway Street? Check. Traffic on the highways – namely the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Long Island Expressway, Grand Central Parkway – higher than ever? Check.
Did anyone in Queens ever ask for any of this, or is it just the dream of people who work in Lower Manhattan office buildings and at Columbia University?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Do we receive literal mountains of garbage and recyclables curbside collected by DSNY on a daily basis? Check. Do the truck fleets of both DSNY and private carters transverse our residential neighborhoods on a daily basis? Check. Do we host power plants, and sewage plants, and waste transfer stations? Check. Is our transit system failing? Check. Did the Manhattan people export Fed Ex Ground and other truck based businesses to Western Queens the last time they decided to deck over a rail yard at Hudson Yards in the City?
Check.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYC EDC is moving forward with their quixotic plan to deck over the Sunnyside Yards, lords and ladies.
EDC has told me in the past that bringing construction materials in by rail is not an option, to a rail yard, which means it will be trucked in. Is that through Manhattan via George Washington and then Triborough Bridges? Midtown Tunnel? They do not intend on building new hospital beds, nor expanding fire and police service, or new transit stops and lines while installing half the population of Boulder, Colorado into our neighborhoods.
Have I mentioned that Sunnyside Yards has been added to the list of “PRP’s” or Potentially Responsible Parties in the Newtown Creek Superfund? Check.
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May 12th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
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Tickets and more details here.
May 17th – Port Newark Boat Tour – with Working Harbor Committee.
For an exciting adventure, go behind the scenes of the bustling Port of NY & NJ on our Hidden Harbor Tour® of Port Newark! Get an insider’s view of the 3rd largest port in the nation, where container ships dock and unload their goods from around the world. See how the working harbor really works and learn about what all those ships and tugs do. See giant container terminals, oil docks, dry dock repair, and more! Tickets and more details here.
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rolled down
Down with the night, yo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As opined yesterday, the wrought iron fence posts of First Calvary Cemetery are just the right size to stick a camera lens through. In that prior post wherein my keen observational prowess was offered, focus was given to the estimable Kosciuszcko Bridge project, while today’s set of images are a few night shots of the cemetery itself. Unless you are an absolute fanatical maniac on the subject of eating carrots or half Kryptonian, these shots are just a smidge broader than the perceptual range of human vision. The light sources are environmental, incidentally.
All I saw, with the naked eye as it were, was a silhouette of the cemetery against the skyline of the Shining City to the west.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were a few examples of the long exposures one returned to HQ with, wherein the camera’s sensitivity to light was enhanced in different ways, which rendered out as sort of cartoonish, and overexposed the lit up Manhattan skyline into a white blob. Saying that, I was able to reclaim an excruciating amount of detail from the shadowed areas but the images were in “the uncanny valley,” meaning that they looked utterly fake and overtly “digital.”
You can’t put a landscape picture of Calvary Cemetery up on the web without some recognizable part of the skyline in it, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Laurel Hill Blvd., here at the angle between Industrial Maspeth and Blissville, however – if you “go wide” the section of Manhattan between the Battery and 57th street can all be captured in one shot.
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no prophet
Back in the dark, in Blissville.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, Newtown Creek Alliance organized an event in Ridgewood at a local pub which was both a “meet and greet” and an informational event. After it ended, my pal Hank the Elevator Guy offered me a ride towards Astoria in his automobile, but I asked for and instead received a quick lift over to DUKBO.
Hank the Elevator Guy was concerned for my safety, and asked if I was armed. I was, with a camera and tripod. What are you kidding, it’s Newtown Creek – that’s my house. The Kosciuszcko Bridge beckoned, so I headed over to Laurel Hill Blvd. alongside First Calvary Cemetery and got busy with the clicking and the whirring.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYS DOT and their contractors are using a pretty good chunk of Laurel Hill Blvd. to store or park construction equipment, and the spot you’re looking at above used to be pretty much where the 1939 K-Bridge stood until it was demolished last year. One attended a meeting with officials from the agency not too long ago, and they indicated that the second phase of the project was on schedule and we’d be seeing both steel and concrete starting to rise out of the site this summer.
They say that everything should be wrapping up in the next 24 months or so.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One sort of lingered about in the area, as I wasn’t being molested or eyeballed by private security. My plan, as you’ll discern from the shots in today’s post, was to accomplish the latest in a series of long exposure shots I’ve been creating all winter. Also, the climate was comfortable, atmospherically speaking.
Also, in that meeting with the NYS DOT, the head of the project indicated that the footbridge connecting 43rd street on Sunnyside’s southern extant with Blissville’s Laurel Hill Blvd. was not only completely rebuilt but was open for business. Additionally, a style of fencing inspired by the wrought iron of the cemetery fence had been installed on the structure, ideal for sticking a camera lens through, unlike the original model which was clad in chain link.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The things I was told turned out to be true, and one enjoyed not just the opportunity to gain a bit of elevation over the deck but to also see the new bridge from a different set of angles than have been available for the last couple of years. This shot looks south over the redesigned approach ramp – connecting the Long Island Expressway off ramp to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway onramp, the latter being the road that the K-Bridge carries across Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of the LIE, that’s what it looks like from the pedestrian ramp/overpass that they’ve just built. The old structure was clad in chain link fencing, and despite there being a couple of “Bernie Holes,” here and there – POV options were always limited up here.
For those not in the know, a “Bernie Hole” is a gap in chain link fencing which was opened sometime in the 1980’s or 90’s by my departed pal Bernie Ente. There’s still a few of them around the Creek, and I’m pretty much the only one he ever entrusted the location of most of them to. “Gotta get your shot,” he would opine.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crossing under the LIE overpass from Blissville into Sunnyside, a humble narrator did one last setup with the tripod and associated gear. I call areas like this “The House of Moses” after Robert Moses, who slammed his roads through neighborhoods and cemeteries all over New York City and in particular Western Queens.
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scarcely be
The world is an increasingly scary place, stay home.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunday nights, and in particular the hours directly before the midnight boundary with Monday is breached, are the only time that the Newtown Creek industrial zone slows down and takes a breath. For a few hours the constant river of vehicular traffic, industrial activity, and omnipresent noise ebb. Any other day or time, and you literally would not have the thirty seconds required for some of these night shots at the Grand Street Bridge to be recorded, due to the vibrations of passing traffic shaking and cavitating the 115 old swing bridge.
The shot above looks southwards towards Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking roughly westward, you can see the glowing eidolon known as the new Kosciuszcko Bridge about a mile away, the crane district of Maspeth on the right, and the English Kills tributary of Newtown Creek’s intersection with the main waterway and the East Branch tributary at center and left. At the bottom of the shot, in the unnaturally green waters of the East Branch, a tepid current was pulsing out from under the bridge which was – from an olfactory point of view – obviously carrying sewage towards the main stem of the Creek.
As a note, the water is lit up at the bottom of the shot by the street lamps of the Grand Street Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As intoned in a previous posting, concern about just how bright the light from the new Kosciuszcko Bridge is has been a subject of conversation of late – and more than once – amongst the Newtown Creek crowd. Light pollution, as it’s known, is meant to confuse the heck out of migratory birds. There’s actually initiatives at the “big” environmental groups to get Manhattan office buildings to dim their lights during certain times of the year in response. Given that Newtown Creek is part of the Atlantic flyover migratory route… well… who the hell cares – it’s Queens.
I guess we’re just going to wait and see what sort of evidentiary observations emerge regarding its effect.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Pentacle HQ is about two miles away from where the new K bridge crosses the water, and I can see this pillar of purple light punching into the clouds from there. I’ve seen reports on social media outlets proclaiming “lights in the sky” from Bushwick and Vinegar Hill and even Manhattan. Nobody in Queens can be bothered to pick up the phone and call either 311 or 911, as somebody else will do it or they just don’t want to get involved. Admittedly, these reports were offered by people who thought they were seeing UFO’s, but…
Just saying… if I don’t know what something is and it’s flying, it’s a UFO. I’d suggest an Internet rabbit hole term for you to follow, by the way, which are “USO” or “unknown submersible objects.” Seriously, google that. Hours of fun.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, I’ve always gravitated towards more home grown and provable horror. Like the mugger gang that used to operate at the Brooklyn side of the bridge back in the 1910’s, using black jacks and billy clubs to induce unconsciousness in their victims. After emptying the stricken of the contents of their pockets, the gang would toss them into the creek. This is the 1903 version of the Grand Street Bridge pictured above, which the gang is associated with. This bridge replaced earlier models, as discussed in this post.
In 1896, the cops found a Catholic priest name Leonard Syczek floating in the water alongside the 1890 version of the bridge, and wearing the sort of full ceremonial vestments required for conducting a Mass. There’s a story there which has never been fully revealed to me, but I suspect some sort of exorcism related tale will emerge eventually. Or, at least I hope one will.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Due to my weird imaginings and remembered tales, a growing state of panic set in and I realized that one of my spells was coming on. Drops and spikes in cerebral dopamine levels began to occur, and suddenly I had to pee really bad. My feet grew cold, my nose flushed full with snot, and a single tear formed in my left eye bitterly.
While composure was still mine, a phone app was engaged, and a driver was dispatched to shepherd me back to a place where doors can be firmly locked and vouchsafed against the outside world. I left my shoes in the hallway that night, lest I track something in which I had picked up along the banks of the Newtown Creek on a foggy and unusually warm night in February.
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last message
Night shots from the Penny Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the brand new Kosciuszcko Bridge in the shot above, which has recently replaced a 1939 model that was originally christened as the “New Penny Bridge.” The shot was gathered at the surviving masonry of the 1894 model Penny Bridge, aka the Meeker Avenue Street End. I’m increasingly concerned, incidentally, at how bright the decorative lighting of the new bridge is. Light pollution is a “thing,” after all.
On cloudy nights, you can spot the column of light rising from it miles away, back in Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The LED lighting the NYS DOT installed for the new bridge is weird and unnatural, which spews out artificial looking wavelengths of unbelievably saturated purples and blues bouncing all over the place. The good news about this odd ambience is that I’m able to focus in on that unmarked sewer which drains Calvary Cemetery over on the Queens side, but I wonder what the long term effects will be on critters living in the water column and on migratory birds.
When the second bridge opens and doubles the illumination, it’s going to look like a comic book around here at night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A longer shot, both in terms of exposure and camera sensitivity, again looking towards the Queens side of the former Penny Bridge. The mirror like quality of the water isn’t due solely to the long exposure, it was positively still out. Unseasonably warm, there was virtually zero wind or breeze.
You could actually discern changes in air pressure just by paying attention to the behavior of your ear drums.
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