Archive for the ‘Long Island City’ Category
likewise thought
From Dutch Kills, the neighborhood.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Marching home one recent afternoon, a humble narrator was confronted with a scene that beggared description. A taxi pulled over to the side of the road, 39th avenue actually, and the driver jumped out and went into a bodega. He left his car door wide open, and the engine running. “Steal me” was the first thing that came to mind, but bear in mind that I grew up in Brooklyn, so I think “Steal Me” a lot.
Please, steal me, is what this scene says.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lucifer lays little Easter Eggs like this in front of me all the time. Temptation, temptation. I’m certain that I would be sitting in the back seat of an NYPD crusader shortly after jumping in the front seat of this cab, but… man alive… this is two blocks from Queens Plaza, and you leave your door not only open… but the engine running as well? The taxi should have been stolen just to teach the guy a lesson.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The driver eventually sauntered out of the bodega – emerging with a cup of coffee. The fellow resumed his station behind the wheel, and turned back into traffic. A humble narrator blurted out, using my best Brookleiner accent, “Hey, dis is New York City, Yo. Da fuck were’s you tinking?”.
He replied that since nothing happened, I was crazy, and inquired whether or not I needed a ride somewhere.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
There are two Newtown Creek walking tours, and a Magic Lantern show, coming up.
Saturday, May 31st, Plank Road with Newtown Creek Alliance.
Click here for tickets and more info.
Saturday, June 7th, 13 Steps around Dutch Kills with Atlas Obscura.
Click here for tickets and more info.
Wednesday, June 11th, Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show with Brooklyn Brainery.
Click here for tickets and more info.
strange pursuits
Why be a jerk?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This morning, the first thing I saw was an older woman (late 50’s, I’d guess) disposing of some garbage by throwing it into the tree pit in front of my house.
As it would be an impossibility for one such as myself not to chide or comment on such an act, I offered “Hey, where do you live? I’ll come to your place and throw garbage in front of your house.” She smiled, and kept on walking, never once thinking that she should pick up her discarded shit and drop it into the litter basket on the corner which was within eye shot.
What the hell is wrong with people? How is this ok?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One attempts to live a life which will have minimal negative impact upon others. All of my efforts in recent years are bound around the idea of “What would Superman do” in any given situation, a moral rubric which serves me pretty well in ethical gray areas. If the Kent wouldn’t do it, why would you?
The human infestation hereabouts, however, doesn’t seem to subscribe to any other dictum than selfishness and wild abandon in the public space. All the while of course, as they leave a stream of litter behind them, they’ll tell you that Queens is going to hell in a a hand basket and that “things aren’t the way they used to be.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s not a law and order kind of thing, we’d all need a personal cop to keep us in line if it were. The depersonalizations of modern life, led by corporatists and sophist political operators, are where I ascribe blame. Somebody else’s problem is all of our problem in tight quarters like New York City. Where things have gone to hell in a hand basket is precisely between our ears, and I have no idea what Superman would do with that.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
admittedly supercilious
Vampire target #1, Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you ask our local elected officials, or the commander of the local NYPD precinct house, they will deny that hordes of stinking Vampires congregate on Vernon blvd. nearby its intersections with with 45th Road and 45th Avenue in LIC, shortly after sunset. It’s part of their responsibilities, to hide such things from the citizenry.
The war torn intersection on Vernon is where the New York Blood Center’s LIC facility is located, and the plague of vampires drawn to it nightly might just be the reason that the “Bloods” gang is so prevalent in the Queensbridge Houses, just a few blocks away. The Bloods have a bad reputation in the neighborhood, but they are amongst the finest Vampire fighters that Queens has ever produced autochthonously.
from nybloodcenter.org
The coordinated leadership of NYBC’s geographic blood services operations ensures some 2,000 units of blood products are collected each day and distributed to more than 20 million people in New York City, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Our National Cord Blood Program at the Howard P. Milstein National Cord Blood Center has distributed cord blood units throughout the U.S. and internationally, with more than 4,900 units shipped to 220-plus transplant centers in 38 countries spanning six continents. World-class researchers at NYBC’s Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute lead the way in pioneering blood research focused on global health issues, from HIV and hepatitis to malaria and thalassemia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in the day, as it were, it was the Italian Gangsters who did battle with the undead around these parts. Mafioso proficiency in battling the undead is the reason why the Vatican has long tolerated the presence of the Black Hand in Italy, after all, but things have changed and the old guard has given way to the new. Rumors are that the night time security personnel employed by the Blood Center in LIC are all ex military, with a preference given toward those who were assigned to duties in the Philippines (due to the huge Aswang problem which plagues the island nation). Word has it that were their exploits and experiences made public, the nation itself would be shaken to the core.
from greinermaltz.com
Long Island City, NY, May 2, 2005 — New York Blood Center (NYBC), one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit, blood distribution and service organizations has just inked a long-term lease for a 76,000 sq. ft. commercial property in Long Island City, NY.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By vampires, I don’t mean some shimmery Hollywood pretty boys, nor the bizarre Goth subculture encountered in certain Manhattan parlor and clubs. I mean stinking ghasts and objectionable revenants cloaked in the pallid soils of the graveyard, who hang about lonely crossroads and stalk isolated travelers or lonely mendicants. Personally, I spend the twilight hours safely ensconced in Astoria, behind hanging mats of garlic and cruciforms. There’s only so far that famous vibrant diversity of Queens can be embraced, after all, and I for one wish to see the bloodsuckers stay in Manhattan, where they belong.
from nypost.com
New York vampire hunter Joel Martin is A-positive that hundreds of bloodsuckers walk among us, often hanging — right-side up, that is — at downtown watering holes.
“It’s not at all like the ‘Twilight’ movies, but they’re right there in the city,” the Long Island occultist asserted. The downtown Draculas can be found in Gothic-themed bars in SoHo, TriBeCa and Greenwich Village, he said.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
obsequious jackanape
A quick one today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted the other day on Vernon Blvd. in Hunters Point’s tower town. I’m a bit ragged from this weekend’s back to back tours with Atlas Obscura and Brooklyn Brainery, so forgive a humble narrator’s inability to supply a meaningful post today. Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
beckoning beyonds
Confused paranoia and insensate musing, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My feet hurt, as does a knee or two.
Worries abound, all sorts of existential threats present themselves daily. The neighbors are worrisome and curious, and many of them were born to foreign communists. Some hail from terribly artificial nation states whose judicial system is built around medieval religious law, like Italy. There are public defecators and licentious drunks without, a riot of noise erupts constantly, and my dog has been curiously alert and watching the western sky of late. This Russia/Ukraine thing is also noisome, but we need the Russians, just in case Earth is ever invaded by an alien army.
For the same reason, we must preserve the felid specie of Tigers – for service as shock troops on the front lines of a true world war.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Surely, the universe has never been more unsettling than at the present moment, one can sense that the gears of fate and the clockwork of dharma spin inexorably toward doom, with a state of jellyfish like psychic dissolution awaiting the human infestation. Fearfully, willingly, entering into a dark age of ignorance and intolerant barbarism simply in the name of forgetting the horrible truths of our time.
How one longs for the good old days of centuries past. Things are so much worse now than they were a mere hundred years ago, during the opening shots of the “World War,” don’t you think?
Note: One prefers referring to WW1 to as “Phase One of the second Thirty Years War.” The First World War was merely a consolidation and clearing away of the medieval system, removing the decayed Austro Hungarian, Chinese, and Turkish Imperial players from the chess board and making room for the modern big guns to step up in Phase Two.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Alright, a hundred years back is a bad example. Let’s do two hundred years then, in… 1814…
OK, 1714… 1614… Jeez… 1514, well, let’s just say things in the present might not be as dire, loathsome, or squamous as we might believe them to be. Things could be a lot worse. An invasion fleet of alien starships could be driving asteroids at us from just beyond Mars, shelling our cities and killing the oceans. There could be bacterial analogues, born in the horrible mouldering slopes of an alien world, festering in the throats and orifices of our livestock or offspring.
Of course, were some star born army of conquerors to arrive upon the earth with lascivious or malicious intent, tiger riding Russian troops will be there to answer them.
I think that’s fairly obvious.
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up,
one in LIC, Queens and one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Glittering Realms: Brooklyn’s Greenpoint with Atlas Obscura, on Saturday May 17th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor: Queen’s LIC with Brooklyn Brainery, on Sunday May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 