Archive for the ‘Citi Building Megalith’ Category
sounding concurrency
Long Island City, all right!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A late evening walk recently found me scuttling down Skillman Avenue in the direction of “proper” Long Island City, with the intention of gathering a few night shots. That’s the bike lane which the Bicycle Fanatics have designated as being the only possible way to vouchsafe entry to the Queensboro Bridge, and eliminate the lakes of cyclist blood which they describe as flowing freely in the streets due to the presence of automobiles. Their fix for this is to put as many bicycles in the path of as many automobiles as you can find, which in the case of Queens is Queens Plaza.
I found out why the Bicycle Fanatics don’t like the Northern Blvd. route that I’ve suggested a few times… turns out Northern is a NYS controlled road and their lapdog Mayor can’t grandstand there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The red light district of LIC isn’t so called for the usual reasons – involving ladies of the evening and the flesh trade. Instead… well… there’s a bunch of red lights installed on the construction sheds.
I’m sure that the red lights indicate something, as there’s regular white lights installed as well. If you’re in the subway, whenever you see a blue light, that means you’ve found a stairway leading to an exit of one kind or another installed along the tunnels. Always remember, a way out is also a way in, which is something that can come in handy in case of an illegal Space Alien invasion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unpredictability seems to have been the watchword of late here in Queens when the subject turns to the weather. It had been a fairly lovely evening when I started out, but a storm was going to herald the arrival of another temperature inversion and the first “spritz” of rain was beginning to appear in the air. One last tripod setup on Jackson Avenue, focused in on the Court Square station and the Sapphire Megalith of Long Island City was made serendipitous by the sudden passage of a NYCTA Bus through the frame.
Luckily, it got stuck at the light during one of the long exposure images which I was collecting all evening.
Upcoming Tours and Events
June 9th – 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.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
most unplaceable
Odds and ends, needles and thread.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On this day in 404 B.C., the Peloponnesian War ended when the Spartans crushed the Athenians with a naval blockade. Sometime later, in 1792 A.D. the French rolled out the guillotine for the first time, ending the life of a highwayman named Nicolas J. Pelletier. In 1859, ground was broken for the Suez Canal by French and English engineers. The Spanish American War officially began with a declaration by the United States Government on April 25 in 1898. In 1945, American and Soviet troops joined up at the River Elbe in Germany. In 1953, Crick and Watson publish their paper describing DNA, and in 1960 the US Navy Submarine Triton competes the first submerged circumnavigation of the earth. In 1983, Pioneer 10 travelled beyond the orbit of Pluto. In 1940, Al Pacino was born. So was Edward R. Murrow, but that was in 1908.
Today is also World Malaria Day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On this day in 1901, New York became the first state to require automobiles to carry license plates. During the First World War, the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign was launched in 1915. In 1945, what would become the United Nations sat down to chat, plan, and organize in San Francisco. Polaroid introduced the instant camera to customers in 1972, and the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990.
Personally, I’m stuck in front of the computer at HQ all day today and have an abundance of tasks to accomplish.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One will be writing tour descriptions for upcoming excursions around the fabled Newtown Creek and larger harbor, developing the shots I managed to squeak out last night before it started raining again, and generally servicing the needs of an increasingly elderly dog named Zuzu today. A busy few days are in front of me, which will be carrying the camera across the concretized realities of the great human hive, with everything culminating in a tour I’m conducting with my pal Kevin Walsh from Forgotten-NY for the Newtown Historical Society on Sunday. Link for tix is below, which are only $5.
Come with?
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
obscure trembling
There may be vampires there, but how can you avoid Queens Plaza?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Two of the proposals which Access Queens, a transit advocacy group which I’ve been working with for the last couple of years, has offered to the MTA to ameliorate the chaos which the forthcoming L train shutdown will bring to Queens when the masses of infinite Brooklyn are steered towards Long Island City are: a) extend the G line one stop from Court Square to the IND Queens Plaza station and b) allow a free “walking transfer” between the IRT Queensboro Plaza station upstairs (N, W, 7) to the IND station below (E, R, M).
In the case of the G extension, it would simply undo one stop’s worth of the cutbacks in service which the MTA created back in 2008 and allow Queensicans the opportunity to not have to use the particularly narrow and crowded platforms of the former 23rd Ely stop on the IND tracks at Court Square.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By MTA’s own numbers, which must always be taken with a grain of salt, the 7 line is at capacity by the time it rolls out of Woodside. The E and M lines are fairly close to the number of passengers one can expect to fit on board, and the R line is extremely crowded as well. When the L train shuts down for repairs of the Canarsie tunnel, MTA’s announced intentions are to add another car to the G and pulse the L’s cross river ridership into Court Square, where they’re meant to transfer to – you guessed it, the 7, E, or M lines. Court Square is a “Frankenstein” station, cobbled together from the IRT above and the IND below to satisfy the needs of real estate interests in LIC. The escalators and elevators in the station seldom operate reliably, and there’s a chaotic scene at work there during the busy times as masses of people move through corridors connecting the lines that can be as long as two city blocks.
Were the option to transfer at a station purpose built for massive crowds of people moving through it, aka the IND tracks at Queens Plaza with their wide platforms, the situation would be somewhat manageable. At Court Square, it’s the proverbial ten pound load being crammed into an already full five pound box.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I first moved to Astoria about fifteen years ago, I was startled to discover that there was no mechanism in place to facilitate a transfer between the upstairs IRT and downstairs IND platforms. Given that in Manhattan the N and W lines share trackage with the R… well, I guess that logic often has little to do with the way that MTA operates.
One is continually surprised that MTA (the A is for adventure, you know) still operates the NYCTA system as if it were the age of the dual contracts, and that after a half decade of absolute control over both the A and B divisions of the Subway they maintain the distinction. One would imagine, if private capital was involved, that after fifty years there would be greater interoperability at least in terms of fare control – let alone maintaining two seperate fleets of rolling stock to accommodate a few inches of variance in platform depth.
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
induced hypoplasia
Odds and ends, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Normally, when one refers to “street furniture,” the term applies to lamp posts, fire hydrants, benches, or any of the other bolted to the sidewalk bits of kit that the City of Greater New York installs here and there. In Western Queens, and especially in any of the neighborhoods which were once part of the independent municipality called “Long Island City,” street furniture is a cast off chair or couch which has been abandoned on the curb. The one above has been resident at the corner of Steinway Street and “terty fourt avensues” for a while now.
As a note, I have a personal preference for fabric covered furniture rather than items which are clad in plastics or animal skins. During the summer months, you end up “sticking” to them and getting up from such an accoutrement can be quite uncomfortable. For any of you reading this who have been planning on buying a living room set, my advice has been offered.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Sunnyside Yards scene above was captured from the vantage offered by one of the many, many fence holes which one such as myself maintains a catalog of. This is late in the afternoon, when a significant number of train sets are being stored at the coach yard. New Jersey Transit, Amtrak, and the Long Island Railroad store rolling stock here in LIC in between the rush hours. When the “busy time” arrives, these train sets will begin to either start rolling through the tunnels to Manhattan or head eastwards towards Woodside and Jamaica to fulfill their purpose.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It laughs at us, the thing which dwells in the cupola of the sapphire megalith of Long Island City. Looking down at the pedantic world of men through its three lobed burning eye, this inhuman thing which does not breathe nor sleep but instead only hungers has been hanging in the sky above LIC since 1992, when this great dagger was driven into the heart of Queens.
As above, so below. Rumor has it that some fifty stories below the poison mud and concrete devastations of Long Island City is where you’ll find the actual forges and fiery engines of gentrification, stoked and tended to by this impossible entity’s armies of acolytes.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
strange hills
Shots from high over Greenpoint today, and a few things to do!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the end of last week, which was a doozy incidentally (I actually had to wear a suit and tie one night), one had a chance to head over to Greenpoint and get high. High above the ground, that is. The shot above looks east over some oil industry infrastructure towards the new Kosciuszcko Bridge from the rooftop at 520 Kingsland Avenue. Newtown Creek Alliance, the Audubon Society, and Broadway Stages have created a green roof there that these shots were captured from.
We need a lot of green roofs around the Newtown Creek, lords and ladies. That’s one of the points made over and over in the recently released visioning plan which NCA and Riverkeeper have just released.
Check out the Riverkeeper/Newtown Creek Alliance Visioning Plan,
which can be accessed at this link.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, your Newtown Pentacle focused in on the Blissville section of LIC, but I’m hardly the only person to have fallen in love with the people and place. A fellow named a Hank Linhart has been bitten by the Blissville bug too, and produced a fantastic short film documentary about the place. I met Hank at a screening he did for the movie at the Greater Astoria Historic Society last autumn, and promised him that I’d find a spot to showcase it along the Creek.
So, what are you doing this Thursday on the 22nd of March? Want to come see a movie for free?
Film Screening: Blissville Stories
Thursday, March 22nd, 7:30pm – 520 Kingsland Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11222
Please join NCA as we host a screening of “Blissville Stories,” a documentary film about the Queens neighborhood bounded by the Newtown Creek, the Long Island Expressway, and Calvary Cemetery. We will be joined by filmmaker Hank Linhart. More info about the Blissville Stories can be found here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot looks southwest, over the sewer plant towards Manhattan. The middle section of the shot isn’t out of focus, rather you’re looking through jets of methane which are produced by the plant which the NYC DEP burns off. I’ve called it Brooklyn’s invisible flame in the past.
Finally – 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 underway on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. Keep an eye on the NCA events page for more information.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 