Archive for the ‘NY 11101’ Category
normal thing
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nothing earth shattering today, lords and ladies, just a few unrelated shots cracked out in the last couple of weeks. Pictured is an anonymous but industrious dog walker with his pack of charges awaiting the arrival of another companion in Long Island City nearby 21st street.
from wikipedia
Professional dog walkers, both individuals and businesses, are paid by dog owners to walk their dogs for them. Some dog walkers will take many dogs for a walk at once, while others will not. Also growing in popularity is dog running. Dog runners are professionals who will take your dog running, usually between 1 and 10 miles for a set fee, usually not more than 2 dogs at a time. In some jurisdictions dog walking businesses must be licensed and have animal first-aid-trained employees. Professional dog walking services can be obtained locally or thorough online referral services.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Western Queensicans will quickly recognize this joint, housed in the Home Depot parking lot on Northern Blvd. Rocco’s does these absolutely ridiculous sausage sandwiches that are the stuff of cardiologist nightmare, and overstuffed with stewed onion. I was there at night picking up a couple of buckets of joint compound, at Home Depot that is- not Rocco’s, and decided to do some of the low light exercise which has occupied me all winter while running the errand.
from wikipedia
Ready-mixed joint compound is most commonly used in hanging drywall for new or remodeled homes. Application is simple and easy, usually never taking more than three or four coats. When used for new walls, joint compound effectively eliminates all blemishes from the surface of the drywall, such as drilled in screws, hanging tape, or drywall tape. Joint compound can be used to finish gypsum panel joints, corner bead, trim and fasteners, as well as skim coating. In addition, it is also very handy for fixing minor blemishes or damages to walls. It easily patches up holes, bumps, tears, and other minor damages.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This fruit stand in Manhattan, with hand written signs, was catching a shaft of light which hasn’t been claimed by the upper crust yet. That crazy bokeh blur in the shot is all lens. I’ve been playing around a lot lately with my kit, in accordance with an intention stated a while back to “do a Costanza” and shake up my shooting habits a bit.
from wikipedia
A fruit stand is a primarily open-air business venue that sells seasonal fruit and many fruit products from local business. It might also sell vegetables and various processed items derived from fruit. The fruit stand is a small business structure that is primarily run as an independent sole proprietorship, with very few franchises or branches of larger fruit stand conglomerates.
humanless region
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As one might have observed in recent media reports, the Mayor of New York City and certain hand picked lieutenants and allies deployed the “golden shovels” and officially “broke ground” at the so called Hunters Point South project in Long Island City. Funny, as construction has been going on around here for a while, mainly on improving the archaic sewer and water system.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On second street, there is a long ditch currently extant which reveals part of this work. Much of what is happening around here, I am led to believe, is closer to the East River. This assertion is easily proven if one is a customer of the East River Ferry, as the fence line one follows to the dock winds its way along the early phases of the construction site where this grandiose plumbing is being installed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spongy, the soil at Hunters Point has seen a lot of industrial tenants come and go over the centuries. At the penultimate southern terminus of the street is the notorious Newtown Creek, to the west is the squamous East River- which was known as the River of Sound to ancient mariners. Interestingly enough- the ground water, or at least the bits of it which have percolated into this pit, is not dissimilar in color or appearance to the very end of the Newtown Creek’s distant tributary English Kills in Bushwick.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Surprisingly, the “layer cake” normally observed in Long Island City street repairs was not visible. Like lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn, the streets are several centuries deep, and one will often see several layers of different pavement technologies on display. If one is very lucky and the street is very old- a layer of compacted and oiled earth, capped by a white chalky substance surmounted by a layer or two of gravel which lies under Belgian Blocks then cement and tar and then concrete and asphalt might be observed.
I’ve got a shot or two from Queens Plaza in which this layer cake is obviously encountered, for instance.
ever permitted
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pulsing and pallid, that corpulent jelly which comprises my physical domain and imprisons my conscious mind was carrying me down Jackson Avenue in Long Island City and past the fabled Court Square Diner, whereupon a face melting realization of a recent vehicular disaster confronted me. It would seem that the MTA department of the municipality has one less truck in its fleet roster.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As painful as it would be for them to encounter a creature such as myself, contact was made with the MTA employees who were vouchsafing the wreck while awaiting a tow vehicle which would secure its disposition.
Note: It isn’t fair to inflict my nauseous presence on the unsuspecting innocents who surround me, nor is it alright to ask them to endure the many disgusting qualities of what might be described as my “vocalizations.” Selfishly, I elected to attempt contact with one of the humans, in an attempt to find out what happened. Apologies offered to all offended parties. Don’t hurt me.
Queries as to the well being of the driver were answered by assurances of continuing good health, but adherence to an institutional policy which required visiting a hospital to professionally confirm and assess said status was obeyed and that was where the driver found himself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A smell of refined petroleum derivates hung in the air, and once contact with this clearly shaken employee of the great human hive was reliably completed, my camera found itself employed. Indications offered by that stalwart representative opined that the municipal truck was operated in accordance with traffic regulation, but that another large vehicle was not, which resulted in a collision.
The area is well patrolled by security cameras, one would presume this will be an easy supposition to corroborate thusly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The reportage continued that the MTA truck had careened off the second vehicle and the driver lost control of the heavy vehicle. The truck’s wild course carried it away from the equator of the street and in the process it eliminated a metal lamp post and crashed up on the pedestrian lane, known colloquially and conventionally as the sidewalk.
Nervous anticipation nagged at me, as wild paranoid wonderings about sparks falling from the elevated subway tracks mixing with… the petroleum vapors… no… such things do not happen… At this moment, my headphones were back in place and playing through a long list of songs- thats when this random ditty started piping directly into my auditory orifices.
I spun around and started walking toward Astoria in a loose dog trot.
lost perspective
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back and forth, forth and back.
On yet another of my perambulations twixt ancient Greenpoint and Astoria, the path which presented itself carried me down Greenpoint Avenue and upon the loathsome expanse of the Long Island Expressway did I find myself staring aghast at. Shivering from chills which were not atmospheric in origin, a humble narrator feverishly crossed the pedestrian pathway between the on and off ramps, an island of safety in a sea of automotive sharks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the northern side of the street, yet another singular and abandoned example of the cobblers art was discovered.
Individual shoes are noticed nearly everywhere these days, by one such as myself, so much so that it seems as if some sort of sinister game might be afoot. Is there be some sort of registry for such matters? Some sort of federal list? Can an amputated consumer product such as a shoe be traced back to an owner? Detective fictions opine that this is the case, but who can guess?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wild speculation rules my reactions to these abandoned shoe sightings, lending fuel to flights of blasphemous fancy and outrageous possibility. Commonalities in the sightings of these orphaned singlets include their presence on out of the way, commonly traveled but seldom walked, streets. Most examples seem gently used (with the exception of the damage on the example today,) and that they are conspicuous.
There doesn’t seem to be a bias toward either the left nor right model.
ecstasies and horrors
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Peculiar shapes framing the opalescent moon- no doubt due to a dynamic weather system, rather than some external force, intelligence, or madness inducing entity of supra normal scope which can exist only in the imaginings of a madman- caught my attention while returning to Astoria from the hoary lanes of Greenpoint. It seems sometimes that one spends most of his time occupied in perambulating between the two communities and those happy neighborhoods which adjoin the two.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Trying to ignore the shining parallelogram of clouds which lent our world’s largest satellite a menacing cast, your humble narrator elected to continue working on the whole “night photography” thing, and began fumbling about with camera settings and nervously whispering to myself. Skillman Avenue, normally a well traveled and busy thoroughfare in Western Queens which adjoins the Sunnyside Rail Yard, is a ghost town at night, although there is a feeling of being watched.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was not being paranoid either, as dozens of security cameras actually were watching me. Whether someone is ultimately watching the camera feed is another matter, of course, but the machines notice all things. They especially notice a weirdo in a black raincoat waving a camera around in near total darkness. Such thinking kept my mind off the menace of the lunar threat, and the curious way that the parallelogram in the sky unsettled me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One supposes that he is just too fragile for this world, a stunted flower straining out from the cracks which mar a post industrial field of pavement. Perhaps it is fated that I follow my ancestors into convalescence and begin the search for an institution of charitable design which might house and insulate me from the terrible possibilities which lurk at the edge of sanity- for if one finds himself a selenophobic, may he not be accused of being a lunatic?
The Newtown Pentacle 