Archive for the ‘Court Square’ Category
trembling protest
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just the other day, one was strolling along Jackson Avenue in Long Island City and enjoying the late afternoon haze of auto exhaust when I decided to avoid a group of rough and aggressive looking youngsters by ducking down a dead end called Dutch Kills Street. Haughty and diffident, these unscrupulous looking minors had perhaps reached the third grade, but realizing that they have spent their short lifetime playing violent video games and were therefore potential killers, your humble narrator decided to walk the familiar path of ignominy and hide from them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Such physical cowardice has often proven to be the better part of valor for one such as myself, a shunned and awkward thing which resembles a man. Dutch Kills Street, where the native art form of Queens (illegal dumping) is practiced wholly, is overflown by structures sprouting out from the Great Machine at nearby Queens Plaza. Vehicular traffic departing and approaching the mighty Queensboro bridge hurtles along overhead, and the street grade lanes end at the fence lines of the titan Sunnyside Yards..
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the end of the street was observed another of the curious shoes which I’ve been noticing scattered around in similarly desolate locales over the last few months. Odd bordering on obsequious, the presence of just one half of the mated pair- again and again- just makes a little bell go off in my head when I see it. It is common to see all sorts of domestic and personal goods scattered about the neighborhoods surrounding the fabled Newtown Creek, but the homogeneity of these singular shoe sightings simply suggests something sinister and suspicious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rough looking group of third graders had noisily passed the intersection of Jackson and Dutch Kills, heading towards Tower Town down in Hunters Point. They were assembled in a “skirmish line” formation, walking abreast of each other while in the company of a group of women who seemed to have some measure of control over their movements. Some of these women had far younger children with them, who were being transported in bizarre cart like machines- whose appearance I did not like, I should add- which I found disconcerting. Your humble narrator hid behind a pile of trash for awhile, then fled the scene with haste.
found unconscious
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst roaming about Long Island City recently, one has come to the realization that the long economic doldrums affecting and stultifying the rapacious desires of the Real Estate Industrial Complex have seemingly come to an end. A recent flurry of high profile constructions, demolitions of centuried warehouses, and industrial tumult points to this fact.
Accordingly, this means that several long standing structures are likely not long for this world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator has little need for sprockets, bearings, or pulleys. However, this business on Jackson Avenue hosts a charming mid 20th century bit of signage which answers some need which dare not speak its name within me. A resume and history of “Century Rubber Supply” is beyond my capability or desire to delve into, and I’ve never shopped there, I just like their signage. Enormous construction efforts are underway all around the diminutive structure, and the rest of the block it occupies has shed itself of tenants.
In Long Island City, this indicates that the bell is tolling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The malign ideation that dwells within the Megalith and its infinite army of acolytes seem to be on the right side of history. Sooner than later, one fears, the idiosyncratic wonders of Long Island City will soon be entirely replaced by shield walls of glass and steel.
Bland homogenization which stinks of the Crypto Fascist theories of LeCorbusier ruling the future is my fear, but that’s an opinion, and like the anus- everyone has one.
A singular question which will stain the lips of all the still unborn Queensicans of future times, I fear, will be: “where might I buy some sprockets?”. The very old folk who remember an earlier time will remain silent when their children offer this query, lest what else may have been lost is asked about.
shines thinly
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Early will your humble narrator be rising today, with intentions of loitering about the neighborhood for an extended period. It’s been a few weeks since my last merry perambulation carried me across the Pentacle and I look forward to where my feet may take me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Supernal glories abound, sights to see and inventory. Queens is calling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, that thing which cannot possibly exist at the cupola of the Sapphire Megalith in Long Island City will be watching. What’s a Saturday without a sense of latent menace and paranoia, after all?
unmentionable spheres
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Psychological exhaustion, physical decline, and lowered expectations define me. Pedantic depression, paranoid wonderings, and oblique idiocy fills me. Aberrant behavior, heretical ideations, and thought crimes form and obviate into self fulfilling prophecies of dire future tidings. So doomed, your humble narrator nevertheless wanders the concrete devastation of the Newtown Pentacle, seeking what might find him.
from hplovecraft.com
It would not be the first time his sensations had been forced to bide uninterpreted—for was not his very act of plunging into the polyglot abyss of New York’s underworld a freak beyond sensible explanation? What could he tell the prosaic of the antique witcheries and grotesque marvels discernible to sensitive eyes amidst the poison cauldron where all the varied dregs of unwholesome ages mix their venom and perpetuate their obscene terrors? He had seen the hellish green flame of secret wonder in this blatant, evasive welter of outward greed and inward blasphemy, and had smiled gently when all the New-Yorkers he knew scoffed at his experiment in police work. They had been very witty and cynical, deriding his fantastic pursuit of unknowable mysteries and assuring him that in these days New York held nothing but cheapness and vulgarity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Embarrassed and awkward, the narration and conduct of interested enthusiasts and tourists on excursions through these blasted heaths and valleys surrounding a historical morass called the Newtown Creek over the last year has ameliorated the caul of profound loneliness one such as myself was born with. That interval, however, is at an end- for now- and omnipresent realities once again rule the day and torment the night. Sleep is no longer eagerly sought, the air is chill, and darkness arrives too early for my taste. All is not right.
from hplovecraft.com
I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Blissful and willful ignorance is craved, and my plans for the immediate future involve fading into the worm eaten woodwork for a time. Missives will continue to be offered at this location, but only by an accident or unforeseen coincidence will they describe interaction with others. Disgusting, the vast human hive has no claims on me for an interval, and into a calcified shell will your humble narrator withdraw.
from hplovecraft.com
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To the graveyards, and beneath the bridges will your humble narrator hie, where hideous countenance and bizarre behaviors will go unnoticed. Sallow and shrunken, diseased and confused, once more shall only a filthy black raincoat be noticed as it flaps away in those shrill winds which plague and scourge the ancient towns and villages surrounding the Newtown Creek. Always must I remain, appropriately, an outsider.
from hplovecraft.com
I had known that he now remained mostly shut in the attic laboratory with that accursed electrical machine, eating little and excluding even the servants, but I had not thought that a brief period of ten weeks could so alter and disfigure any human creature. It is not pleasant to see a stout man suddenly grown thin, and it is even worse when the baggy skin becomes yellowed or greyed, the eyes sunken, circled, and uncannily glowing, the forehead veined and corrugated, and the hands tremulous and twitching. And if added to this there be a repellent unkemptness; a wild disorder of dress, a bushiness of dark hair white at the roots, and an unchecked growth of pure white beard on a face once clean-shaven, the cumulative effect is quite shocking.
lands adjacent
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Found along Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, in the stretch between 21st Street and Queens Plaza, there are several truncated little blocks. Part of an earlier street grid pre dating the 20th century and the Queensboro Bridge, some host residences while others are partly residential while others are entirely industrial. All of these lanes share one commonality, which is ending where the Sunnyside Yard begins. Dutch Kills Street starts at Jackson Avenue and ends a mere block later at the fenced in rail yard.
from wikipedia
Dutch Kills is an area within Long Island City, in the New York City borough of Queens. It was a hamlet, named for its navigable tributary of Newtown Creek, that occupied what today is centrally Queensboro Plaza. Dutch Kills was an important road hub during the American Revolutionary War, and the site of a British Army garrison from 1776 to 1783. The area supported farms during the 19th Century, and was finally consolidated in 1870 with the villages of Astoria, Ravenswood, Hunters Point and Blissville to form Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Perpetual shadow stains the street here, titan masonry is sky flung and the steel of mighty Queensboro’s exit ramps is singing high above the pavement. Tumultuous passings of rail on the other side of an overgrown fence declare themselves loudly, and all around is evidence of poor drainage. A lonely dead end, it is one of the places where the residents of Queens enjoy indulging in the two art forms that the Borough is known for- illegal dumping and graffiti.
from wikipedia
The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) completed construction of the yard in 1910. At that time Sunnyside was the largest coach yard in the world, occupying 192 acres (0.78 km2) and containing 25.7 mi (41.4 km) of track. The yard served as the main train storage and service point for PRR trains serving New York City. It is connected to Pennsylvania Station in Midtown Manhattan by the East River Tunnels. The Sunnyside North Yard initially had 45 tracks with a capacity of 526 cars. The South Yard had 45 tracks with a 552 car capacity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lurking menace is sensed here, the surety that one is being watched from cover. A risible smell colors the air, one which betrays the odors of mold and rot and urine. It is odd to be so close to the center of the human infestation, yet so totally alone. It would be very easy to disappear here, and imagined perils spring into the forefront of ones mind. The shining promise of the Degnon Terminal glowers with ambition and thwarted aspiration, providing backdrop and counterpoint.
from nytimes.com
PROGRESS is the watchword of Queens Borough at the present time, especially of the Queensboro Bridge Plaza and the adjacent parts of Long Island City. Never before have there been so many striking object lessons of this forward movement in that long-neglected borough as may be seen today within a few blocks of the spacious approach to the bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some poor soul calls this place their own, living in a makeshift shanty. So many of the “working homeless” are observed around these back alleys and forgotten corners, lonely vagabonds ekeing out a subsistence living while living in squalor, surviving by craft and guile. What strange experiences and odd tales could they relate about what happens in the dark of night, here on Dutch Kills Street?
from wikipedia
Modern homelessness started as a result of economic stresses in society and reductions in the availability of affordable housing such as single room occupancies (SROs) for poorer people. In the United States, in the 1970s, the deinstitutionalisation of patients from state psychiatric hospitals was a precipitating factor which seeded the homeless population, especially in urban areas such as New York City.
The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 was a predisposing factor in setting the stage for homelessness in the United States. Long term psychiatric patients were released from state hospitals into SROs and supposed to be sent to community mental health centers for treatment and follow-up. It never quite worked out properly, the community mental health centers mostly did not materialize, and this population largely was found living in the streets soon thereafter with no sustainable support system.
Also, as real estate prices and neighborhood pressure increased to move these people out of their areas, the SROs diminished in number, putting most of their residents in the streets. Other populations were mixed in later, such as people losing their homes for economic reasons, and those with addictions (although alcoholic hobos had been visible as homeless people since the 1890s, and those stereotypes fueled public perceptions of homeless people in general), the elderly, and others.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Although nothing of the sort was observed on this visit, one often sees candles and small altars to unknown gods in these places. Offerings of coins, foodstuffs, and cigars have often been noted amongst these arrangements. Peasant superstition and magicks are often the recourse of the desperate and desolated, however.
from wikipedia
Beliefs in witchcraft, and resulting witch-hunts, existed in many cultures worldwide and still exist in some today, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. in the witch smellers in Bantu culture). Historically these beliefs were notable in Early Modern Europe of the 14th to 18th century, where witchcraft came to be seen as a vast diabolical conspiracy against Christianity, and accusations of witchcraft led to large-scale witch-hunts, especially in Germanic Europe.
The “witch-cult hypothesis”, a controversial theory that European witchcraft was a suppressed pagan religion, was popular in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since the mid-20th century, Witchcraft has become the self-designation of a branch of neopaganism, especially in the Wicca tradition following Gerald Gardner, who claimed a religious tradition of Witchcraft with pre-Christian roots.
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming walking and boat tours of Newtown Creek
July 8th, 2012- Atlas Obscura Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
(note: there was just one ticket left for this one when I hit “publish”)
for July 8th tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
The Newtown Pentacle 