Archive for the ‘Long Island Expressway’ Category
perfumes from
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Three Queens neighborhoods in one scuttle, now that’s what I’d refer to as a “long walk.” It’s everything I can do not to just end up at Newtown Creek every time I leave the house, so an effort is made not to do so.
That’s an N train on the Astoria Elevated tracks, found along 31st street. The cross street is Newtown Road, which I’ve been told is a pathway through the area that predates the arrival of the Europeans and that once followed the course of running water.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted this one on 39th street in Sunnyside, and found it comical. The reference is of course to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation at the Federal Dept. of Homeland Security. The reason I find it comical is the absolutism of the slogan. You really, really don’t want to abolish the Customs Dept., in particular. I’d be in favor of some reform when it comes to the Immigration Dept., but suspect that what I’d have in mind differs wildly from what the writer of this graffiti has in mind.
Y’know, I advise my leftie buddies all the time to be mindful about giving Tucker Carlson something to talk about on Fox, but there you go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over at the border of Blissville and Sunnyside, you’ll find the Long Island Expressway. I’ve always been fascinated by the design motifs and cues offered by the design teams at the “House of Moses” back in the 1940’s and 50’s. That’s Robert Moses, of course. I mean, it’s an inherently ugly thing – a highway off ramp – but there’s something esthetically pleasing in the design, to my eye at least.
More tomorrow.
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Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
abnormally impassive
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nothing matters, and nobody cares. The cogs of fate spin, and the inevitability is doom, so all you’ve got is now. Rejoice in the end of all things, as morals and reason are cast aside in the name of enjoying yourself. Find new ways to do so, with pleasures profane and ribald. Drink it. Eat it. Smoke it. Screw it. Swim in it. Do whatever you like. Do whatever feels good and damn the cost. Nothing matters, and nobody cares. More. More. More. That’s what Lucifer, with its mantra of free will, would tell you.
This whole sociopathic thing with me started with the Murder Hornets, remember that? Turns out that the medical world doesn’t use “sociopath” these days, and instead prefer the term “Antisocial Personality Disorder.” I stick with the dictionary version of the word, which indicates “extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.” That’s a goal state for me. Imagine it… no conscience.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since childhood I’ve always known that someday I’d be a doomsday prophet in Times Square, walking around with one of those sandwich boards that reads “The end is nigh.” I always imagined that I’d be wearing a spaghetti colander as a helmet, though. I’ve got the black sack cloth clothing, the wild look in the eye, all that. Call me Mitchathustra, for my whole life has led towards destitute doomsayer and troglodyte cave dweller. Tissue boxes make for good slippers, I’ll attest.
So, how’s about Christmas, huh? Ring ting tingling. There’s puppies. Lighten up, Bro, what d’ya say? Buzzkill. So dark.
Really, the healthiest thing to do at the moment is to just accept the fact that nothing matters and nobody cares. Any other point of view is simply shambolic and somewhat adolescent.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lovecraft opined in “The Call of Cthulhu” that “Mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.”
Of course, Lovecraft was a pretty ugly guy when you get down to it. Vicious racism, upper classism, and a host of other personality defects are preserved in his writing. Saying that, he certainly called out what the dissolution of American society would look like.
Happy Thursday, lords and ladies.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
mistily defined
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few weeks ago, three young fellows drove a car into the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek in Long Island City and died. Somebody has erected a roadside memorial at the spot that they drove into the water.
According to the cops, these three unfortunates were proceeding down Borden Avenue at a prodigious rate of speed. They didn’t make a certain turn and instead headed for this dead end under the Long Island Expressway, and their vehicle went airborne and into the water. The cops and Fire Dept. brought out divers and all sorts of equipment but couldn’t save the trio.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A view of the same spot, from about a block away.
The official narrative is that the speeding car hit skateboard ramps, which caused them to go airborne. Something I haven’t mentioned during the pandemic is the sudden and unofficial creation of a skate park on the Borden Avenue street end at Dutch Kills. I’ve encouraged everyone who either knew about it or was involved with it to apply for “Open Streets” status which would have seen barriers erected but nobody every listens to me until something awful has happened. That’s when they admit I was right.
“Yes Commissioner, this is a great idea but Greenpoint has a history of industrial fires so maybe putting that high pressure gas main in this spot is a bad idea, next week there’s going to be a recycling plant fire directly across the street and next month a semi is going to drive through the sewer plant’s fence and land where the main is meant to go.” “Yes, City Council Member, but building out 35,000 units of residential without creating a single new hospital bed is short sighted… what if a plague sets up in NYC, which according to our history happens every so often…” “Yes, Mayor, but decking the Sunnyside Yards will be fiendishly expensive and you’re running the risk of radicalizing the otherwise stable and predictable political system of Western Queens and destabilizing…”
Call me Ezekiel, for I am a prophet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As to the narrative revolving around this traffic accident, which cost three young men their lives… I seriously doubt the skateboard ramp theory since – as you can see – the ramp is quite intact and anything a car might touch when it’s moving at 100 mph generally doesn’t remain intact.
Why do I care? Nothing matters, nobody else cares, and we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. Get yours, I’m going to get mine, and then get the ‘eff out of this hellhole. I’m done.
As a note, today’s the anniversary of the General Slocum disaster.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
remotely preceding
Monday’s, amirite?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My dream for Dutch Kills, post superfund, involves carnivorous plants. Just imagine how cool it would to visit this Long Island City tributary of the fabulous Newtown Creek and look down on a quivering shoreline with thousands of tiny mouths snapping their flowery jaws at you. You’d carry a bit of meat there – jerky, raw, whatever – tossing it down towards the undulating banks of green, purple, and scarlet iridescence. Small birds and rats would become stuck in the vegetative glue and winding tendrils of this carpet of carnivores, and we certainly wouldn’t have to worry about mosquitoes or gnats anymore here in the Degnon Terminal. Speciation wise, I’m thinking pitcher plants, sundews, bladderworts, and or butterworts.
I’d also like to see all sorts of lizard living here. The little gecko looking buggers you see at the cemeteries in Woodside and Maspeth somehow survive the winters, so let’s get a bunch of whatever the hell they are are start up a colony here. Also, we could use more bats, so bats. Giant spiders too. You get enough bats and giant spiders, you might be able to seed in some dog sized monitor lizards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once we’ve established a sticky mat of flesh hungry plantings, populated every nook and cranny with eye licking lizards, web spurting Araneae, and every utility pole has a house designed for creepy bats – then we can begin a vetting process for mad scientists to take up residence in the ruins of some of these old factories. It’s been too long since somebody attempted to build their own race of atomic mutants back here in Long Island City. I’m wondering what a cross between a Coyote and a Baboon might look like. What could go wrong? We can tell everyone they’re artists.
Think of all the corollary industries which would prosper due to the super science sector basing itself here in LIC – clone tanks, giant electrodes, lightning gathering kites, steel restraining clamps – all of this could be made locally. I mean… weed and sodomy are now totally legal, we need to find a new frontier. I think “mad science” might be it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Giant robot work, however, is something which would need to be suppressed for climate change related issues. Purely biological, or even partially cybernetic, abominations are probably ok but we need to remember what happened over in Maspeth during the 1950’s after the aluminum plant was abandoned. It took the Marines an entire summer to get that one under control, and the area around Haberman has never fully recovered.
If you want to work with robots, I’d suggest instead finding a way to first control ants and then improvising a method for aggrandizing them to the size of cargo vans (you’d want to do it in that particular order, btw). Giant robots tend to get busted up by the military and then end up in a landfill, whereas you can compost the corpses of giant insects. Think about the future.
Even mad scientists need to be ecologically conscious these days, lords and ladies.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
apoplectic snort
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The endless marching about in a limited area constrained by how far I can walk on any given day is about to come to an end, thanks to the forthcoming second shot of vaccine juice I’m set to receive at the end of this month. Holy smokes, I never thought I’d miss the Subway, but there you are.
On the particular evening these shots were gathered, a humble narrator was in Long Island City’s Degnon Terminal zone. That’s Degnon as in Michael Degnon, a late 19th and early 20th century construction czar. Degnon enjoyed several lucrative Government contracts during the 20 years surrounding the year 1900, including installing the masonry cladding of the Williamsburg Bridge towers, completing the construction of the East River IRT tunnels which the 7 line subway runs through (which had been started by William Steinway and then August Belmont), and a massive land reclamation project surrounding the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek in LIC. The Degnon Terminal, as he called the latter reclamation project, involved a concurrence of rail, road, and water freight infrastructure that was baked into a multi acre campus of gigantic factory buildings. The factories in this area were constructed using an at the time novel construction technique that used lumber “forms” and steel rebar to shape poured concrete into walls. The Loose Wiles biscuit company, Everready Battery, Chicle Gum and other mega factories in LIC were all a part of the Degnon terminal, which was built at the same time that the nearby Sunnyside Yards were being constructed by the Pennsylvania Rail Road Company. The Degnon Terminal had a rail system that interfaced with the Yards, so all of the PRR and their subsidiary Long Island Railroad tracks were de facto networked to it as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Every culture since the beginning of civilization has had to develop a system for organizing and concentrating its resources towards some common goal. In Southeast Asia, you’ll find religious institutions which are older than the Roman Empire who still handle the water resovoir and canal delivery systems for rice paddies, for instance. Even the Soviets had a system for concentrating and focusing resources on their projects. In the United States, financial capital is concentrated via bond offerings and stock shares on one end, or by tax receipts and a combination of private and public banking and lending institutions on the other. The Degnon Terminal became a focus point for every sort of investment scenario available at the time.
That building in the shot above, the self storage warehouse with the green accent, used to be the largest part of the nine building General Electric Vehicle Company complex in LIC. That’s where they manufactured electric cars and trucks, in 1915. Like the Degnon Terminal, it was built and funded using private capital, meaning stock or bond market and perhaps commercial bank loans.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The large steel truss in the shot above, however, which transverses the Degnon Terminal high over Borden Avenue was built with public capital and NY State “Authority” issued bonds. It’s the Queens Midtown Expressway section of the larger Long Island Expressway, which became folded into Robert Moses’s TBTA or a Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (the LIE terminates at the Queens Midtown Tunnel). The funding for this construction was arrived at by the issuance of municipal and TBTA bonds which were offered to investors through the purview of a commercial banking entity. The banks loved Robert Moses, since he always paid his many debts on time. To be fair, Moses was backed up by the river of dimes and nickels collected at the toll plazas of the Triborough Bridge and eventually at the QM Tunnel’s toll plaza.
This pedantry is offered in response to a recent conversation a humble narrator was privy to between some of the self identifying Democratic Socialists of Queens, who seem to think that Socialism means that money – where you get it, how you manage it, who spends it and on what – doesn’t matter and will matter less in their new dialectic. Even the citizens of the Soviet Union paid income taxes, and if the Marxist Leninists in Moscow wanted to build a new tractor factory they had to figure out a way to concentrate their financial and material resources to build the thing. It wasn’t straight up analogous to the Lord of the Flies type of capitalism practiced in the USA, of course, but they had a system.
Everybody has a system, even if it involves enslaving a subject nation to build you a pyramid, or tithing people to finance a cathedral. Socialist countries have central banks, investment methodologies, and an economy.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, March 8th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 