Archive for the ‘Long Island City’ Category
suddenly lost
Getting high in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, one of the environmental projects underwritten by GCEF (the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund) opened to the public at Brooklyn’s 520 Kingsland Avenue, alongside that loathsome exemplar of municipal neglect known as the Newtown Creek. In this case, the project is a green roof installed on top of a movie studio, specifically one of the production facilities owned and operated by the Broadway Stages company which is partially housed in a series of formerly industrial locations around Greenpoint and Long Island City. Broadway Stages has been buying up a LOT of property along the Creek in recent years.
Well, I guess the location is still industrial, it’s just a different kind of industry – entertainment rather than petrochemical. At any rate, 520 Kingsland Avenue is a few stories above the flood plain and whilst up there and on site, I got busy with the camera. You’ve seen this point of view before, incidentally – in a 2016 post where I told you about Brooklyn’s invisible flame back in June.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Can’t really talk about it quite yet, but let’s just say I’ll be able to take you up there in a couple of weeks on a couple of free tours. I’ll supply the link as soon as it’s public. The green roof at 520 Kingsland was designed with butterflies, of all things, in mind. Saying that it’s a pretty interesting space with neat little walkways weaving through plantings, and there are incredible views of the surrounding industrial zone to check out.
That’s part of Metro Fuel’s truck fleet in the shot above, for the curious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The real stunners, amongst the many points of view available from 520 Kingsland Avenue, are the ones in which the shining city of Manhattan provides the backdrop. This sort of urban pornography is possible due to two reasons: one is that the Greenpoint Landing Project is just kicking into gear, so the POV isn’t blocked by forty story residential palaces yet; the other is that the surrounding area is all 19th century landfill which is both low lying and quite flat.
This POV is looking due west from the 520 Kingsland Avenue rooftop, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Northwest POV, gazing across the lugubrious Newtown Creek in the direction of Long Island City’s Hunters Point section.
In the distance, you’ll notice the red and white banded smokestacks of the “Big Allis” power plant at 36th avenue in the Ravenswood section. The Citi building megalith, that sapphire dagger jammed in the heart of the place at Jackson Avenue’s intersection with Thomson Avenue, used to be the only large scale building in the area.
As an aside, a few years ago some group of urban planners/art fucks from Pratt University proposed Big Allis’s red and white stripes to me as a branding element for the western Queens waterfront. I had to inform them how we residents regarded the presence of an enormous power plant operating along our waterfront that serves Manhattan’s needs, and that it wasn’t exactly a popular symbol, locally speaking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The singularity of the Citi megalith has, of course, changed. The pace of real estate development in the last few years has been frenetic in LIC, as evinced in the shots above and below. Sometimes, in order to really take it all in, you need to leave Queens entirely – just to gain some perspective.
Funnily enough, this is what I usually say about Manhattan – the best part of “the City” is being outside of it and witnessing the shield wall of buildings from without. An inhuman scale landscape like Manhattan’s can’t be properly observed while you’re within the oppressive shadows of its canyon walls.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That white truss structure at center of the shot is the Long Island Expressway, which rises over Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary from its beginnings at the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Dutch Kills intersects with the main body of Newtown Creek about 3/4 of a mile back from the East River, and heads inland for the better part of a mile. The LIE traffic up on that truss bridge is flowing 106 feet over the water. The far right hand side of the shot above shows the construction going on at the intersection of Jackson Avenue and Queens Plaza, on the former West Chemicals Company site. Moving left, the rest of the construction is occurring along Jackson Avenue at Purves, Dutch Kills Street, and so on.
All of it is high end residential, incidentally, except for that squamous curvy faced one directly to the left of the orange one. That’s an office building which the NYC Dept. of Health has based itself in nearby Queens Plaza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my little adages, which I gleefully relate on my walking tours of the area, is a facet of NYS law – it dictates that if you were about to buy a home which is known to be “haunted by a ghost” by the current owner and or the surrounding community – the haunting needs to be disclosed before closing the sales contract.
If you’re buying a property that used to be a chemical factory, or a copper refinery, or some other heavy industrial pursuit that rendered the site a “brownfield” – you are under no obligation to disclose the environmental history to a buyer, however.
When you meet newer residents of LIC’s Tower Town or Brooklyn’s Greenpoint, and mention a nearby Federal Superfund site defined as “Newtown Creek” – they say “What’s that?”
Upcoming tours and events:
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
furtive signs
Triffids at Newtown Creek?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last weekend, I was enacting my usual pilgrimage back from Greenpoint to Astoria and since it was a nice day I decided to take the long way home and visit Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary as it had been a good 72 hours since the last time I was there. That’s the Queens Midtown Expressway truss bridge of the larger Long Island Expressway highway complex at its highest altitude, some 106 feet over the water.
In truth, the Dutch Kills route is actually a bit of a shortcut for me, as the route is a good number of blocks shorter than taking the Greenpoint Avenue pathway eastwards through Blissville and Sunnyside due to the somewhat triangular relationship between Northern Blvd. and GP avenue. I like to cut down 27th street from Borden Avenue, in order to access Skillman Avenue, which runs roughly parallel to Northern Blvd. until 39th street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was on 27th street, right in front of what was once known as Irving Subway Grate, that I spotted this bizarre plant. One would like to imagine two distinct scenarios to describe it – one involving extraterrestrial spores settling down upon LIC and spawning an alien vegetable, the other is that the mutagenic chemicals swirling around in the waters of Dutch Kills have perverted and created a new and debased form of life.
It’s probably something that a botanist would instantly recognize, but please – allow me my little fantasies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These seed pods, or perhaps fruit, were heavily armored. They were fairly large, at about 3-5 inches in length.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Were they not shaped like the pincers of an insect, or crab, I would have produced my trusty pocket knife and cut one open to reveal what was inside. Instead, I was fearful that I might get pinched by some autonomic reaction so I stayed at a safe distance. What if they were man eating Triffids in some juvenile form?
You can’t be too careful around Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What were they? Only that impossible thing, which cannot possibly be real, hiding in the cupola of the sapphire megalith of Long Island City that stares down upon the world of men through its three lobed burning eye, can know for sure.
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
worldly affairs
More adventures with the new lens, the Sigma 50-100 f1.8.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in prior posts, I recently acquired a new lens which I’ve been running around the City and using profusely in the hope of learning its ways. This is one of those posts where I pull back the curtain and talk about how, exactly, I shoot the photos which have populated the better than 2,000 posts published at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
The shot above was captured recently at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and well after dark. It was captured hand held with the lens wide open at f1.8, and the camera set to 1/50th of a second and the ISO sensitivity at 6400. Needless to say, it was quite dark, and that I was in the Navy Yard legally. That’s the actual color of the light, incidentally. The new lens is a real performer in this kind of setting, and there’s enough “brains” chipped into it that I was able to use it on autofocus rather than manual setting despite the low light. Those “army sniper” body posture techniques which I’ve mentioned in the past really come in handy when you’re trying to shoot something at under 1/100th of a second shutter speed. One of those “sniper techniques” is to squeeze the trigger after exhaling, for instance, as your body is steadier when in between breaths than during.
In my experience, 1/50th is the absolute lower limit for steadying handheld shots, which is due to my age and particular physiology. Younger and steadier people might be able to pull off 1/30th, but that’s right around where your pulse begins to interfere with the capture process and you’ve entered tripod territory.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Sigma 50-100 performs admirably in daylight as well, the shot above depicting a train in Queens Plaza was captured at ISO 400, f5.6, and at 1/640th of a second. Color rendition from Sigma’s art series lens family is always a bit oversaturated and garish, which – as I’ve said in the past is something I quite like – but I do find myself dialing the saturation back a bit when developing the daylight shots I gather with it.
The Sigma is HEAVY, weighing in at almost four pounds, incidentally. It’s quite a workout lugging the thing around for the 3-4 hour photowalk sessions I normally engage in, and for the first couple of weeks I was carrying it around with me my “carry arm” was quite sore when I arrived back home. While discussing the weight of the thing with my pal “Mumbly Joe the Union Insulator” at the local pub here in Astoria, who carries a massive tool kit around with him, he proferred that whenever you add a new tool to your kit it always feels like you’ve added a cinder block to your bag, but eventually you get used to it. At least that’s what I think he said, like I said – Mumbly Joe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This somewhat sad shot of a Barbie brand bicycle lying astride the rocky shoreline of Hells Gate, in Astoria, was captured at 1/320th of a second shutter speed, at f5.6, and at ISO 200. It was also shot with the Sigma, and there’s a gnarly set of circumstances herein to capture – due to those bright white tires and the super saturated magentas of the bike coupled with the reflective translucency of the water. There’s a bunch of different exposure parameters at work in that photo, which form the compromises of the exposure triangle presented above.
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
uncanny subjects
Ain’t nothing like taking a walk in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was merely strolling about one recent afternoon, when a sudden whimsy manifested and my perambulatory route was altered to include a southerly crossing of Crescent Street. Musing upon the loquacious, and having just dodged the dizzying passing of two tiny boys who were running down the pavement towards the next corner, the looming megalith and that thing which cannot exist in its cupola suddenly seized upon my every attention.
That devilish intelligence, with its singular but three lobed burning eye that has stared down upon Queens in unoccluded fashion for so long, has had its view suddenly blotted out by the irritating industry of man and a red hot real estate market.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of what’s rising in LIC these days are glass boxes of questionable architectural virtue, and quite bland to my tastes. I want something a bit more “Gotham City” in LIC, with robust stone walls and an impressive facade. What do I know about architecture, though? I know’s what’s I like’s.
That’s the (seemingly) nearly complete Hephaistos Building Supply building which is found on the corner of Crescent street and 37th avenue. Normally, buildings in LIC shoot upwards and are finished in pretty quick order, but this project has been going on for years. I’ve been paying attention to the construction project for some reason, and now I know why.
There seems to be a Greek temple at the cornice of it, and how cool is that?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I say that this project has been proceeding slowly, just as a “for instance,” the shot above is from May of 2014. Somewhere in the archives I’ve got shots of the raw steel girders standing here for what must have been a couple of years.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hephaistos Building Supply has a storefront down the block on 37th avenue’s intersection with 24th street. Can’t tell you much about the company other than it seems to be an Astoria based supplier of construction materials, specifically selling their wares to the professional contractor’s market.
That, and they built what looks like a Greek temple on their roof. If anyone from Hephaistos Building Supply is reading this, I’d love to get some shots from up there on that roof of yours.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Interestingly, Hephaistos Building Supply uses the original transliteration of the name of the Hellenic God of “blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes,” although it’s meant to get a little tilde over the “e” – Ἥφαιστος Hēphaistos.” There’s apparently evidence that Hēphaistos was worshipped in very early times, dating back to the Bronze Age (and possibly the oldest city in Europe) city of Knossos on the island of Crete. Classical Age worship of the God Hēphaistos was centered around Lemnos, but the Romans (who called the God “Vulcan”) were convinced he maintained a workshop under Mount Aetna.
Hēphaistos was an Olympian. This page at theoi.com has an interesting series of anecdotes from ancient literature describing the worship and veneration of the God of smiths in antiquity. As far as modern veneration here at the very southern edge of Astoria, Queens, where it bumps up against the northern borders of the Dutch Kills section?
Who can say? I haven’t been invited to that party as of yet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My path down Crescent Street proving fruitful, one continued in the general direction of Queens Plaza. The light was lovely, and the visible sections of the flood plain of the former wetlands of Sunwick Creek, where the Big Allis power plant squamously spreads, were beautifully illuminated.
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
tangible miasma
The native art form of Queens, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long has one postulated that the native art form of Queens is illegal dumping. It is accomplished with a compositional flair and attention to detail that Brooklyn and the Bronx can only dream of. When you spend as much time as I do around the Newtown Creek and the concrete devastations surrounding it, this becomes obvious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was heading over to Greenpoint recently, to accomplish some sort of folderol, when the tableau above was observed in LIC’s Blissville section. This was on Greenpoint Avenue, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The dumped mattresses exhibited the tell tale signs of a bedbug infestation, so I was using my telephoto zoom lens to capture shots of it – not wanting to get closer to the things than I needed to.
Bedbugs… brrr…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m not sure if bedbugs can leap, or jump, or propel themselves through the atmospheric void in some unknown manner which would indicate that they can fly like Superman, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
Bedbugs, or “vantzen” as my grandmother would have called them, are grotesque human predators. Vampire insects. The stains on the mattress covers are actually produced by their fecal matter and are literally digested human blood.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Grossed out, I propelled myself across the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge which spans the lugubrious Newtown Creek. Whatever ails you, parasite wise, will likely be cured by the therapeutic poisons of the Newtown Creek. If Newtown Creek doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger… that’s what I tell myself all the time.
Newtown Creek, is there anything you can’t do?
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 