Archive for the ‘Long Island City’ Category
rumour ran
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in prior posts, one has been making a real effort to keep up with kicking his feet about the neighborhood, and maintain a regular schedule of long and short walks. One of the stops I always make on my way to somewhere else is at the Sunnyside Yards, here in Long Island City.
“Hey asshole, why do you call it LIC when the word “Sunnyside” is in the rail coach yard’s name? You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about thereby, and all you say is false” is the sort of thing you’ll see in the comments section here occasionally.
If it’s west of Woodside Avenue, north of Newtown Creek, and south of Bowery Bay – it’s technically Long Island City. Astoria, Long Island City Heights Sunnyside, Hunters Point, and Blissville are all LIC – as in they were part of the pre 1898 municipal entity which dubbed itself as LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunnyside and Astoria have since become “kind of” their own thing. I refer to Northern Blvd. and the yards as “LIC” as they stand apart from the residential and mixed usage zones of Sunnyside and Astoria. Skillman Avenue west of 39th street is LIC, whereas east of 39th street it’s Sunnyside – for instance. I can say the same thing about Queens Blvd. west of about 37th street, which is where it stops being Sunnyside and starts being LIC.
The blurred lines and neighborhood borders of Queens are endlessly fascinating. Woodside and Winfield, or Astoria and East Elmhurst will yield subjective one side of the street versus the other opinions from the Queensican Commentariat. I call these gray zones “the angles between neighborhoods.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One actually sweats this assignation of nomenclature. The real estate people will claim that parts of Brooklyn which are closer to Nassau County than they are the East River are “Williamsburg” or “Bushwick” or my favorite – “Ridgewood,” which is actually found in Queens. Remember when a whole section of Manhattan went from being “midtown” to “West Chelsea” about twenty years ago?
I generally rely on what things used to be called prior to the REBNY era, which is before the real estate marketing people began assigning twee names to undesirable locations. Heck, I actually prefer the pre-1898 city consolidation names, in truth.
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“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.
solid crag
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What had drawn me to the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek on this particular night in early January was the presence and promise of snow, and the hope that my favorite little tree might have some adorning its branches. No such luck, unfortunately, but that didn’t stop me from getting a shot of it anyway.
I’ve been shooting that little tree in every season for a couple of years now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way back to HQ, curlicues of snow blowing off of a factory building’s roof nearby the Sunnyside Yards caught my attentions. I did wish that I was carrying a zoom lens with me, but my “night kit” is typically two fairly bright lenses – an 85mm f2 and a 35mm f1.8.
I like to travel light whenever it’s possible these days. Generally, unless I know it’s going to be a day when I need “reach” or that conditions will be changing at every corner, I leave the big and heavy zoom lenses at home. Besides, if I’m using the zooms at night, I pretty much have to rig up with the tripod if I don’t want to be in sky high ISO ranges. It’s also the difference between carrying around a 1.5 pound camera bag versus carrying an 8-9 pound one, ultimately.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just as I crossed over into Astoria, one encountered another neato ride. This particular “Bobcat” was outfitted with a snow plow, and there were several plow vehicles parked nearby – parts of a private outfit who had been clearing the large parking lots connected to an electronics store and a movie theater.
This would be my ride, if it was street legal. Instead of a plow, I’d have cameras mounted to its front end.
Back next week with more, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
insipid novels
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The first decent snowfall of this year was at the end of the first week in January, and like the heavy fog which drew me over to Astoria Park, the weather system produced an interesting series of atmospheric conditions. This time around, I left HQ in the late afternoon, as I had timed this “long walk” to the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek in Long Island City to coincide with sunset. Luckily, the storm which had just dumped the snow was still visible, but moving quickly away towards the south.
High clouds equal lots of color in the sunset, low clouds mean murky and muddy skies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Far and away, my favorite part of Newtown Creek is Dutch Kills. Lots of bridges which offer points of view over the water, and a feature rich landscape of fairly low lying industrial buildings that don’t block the light. I’m quite fond of other spots on the creek, Industrial Maspeth and the area surrounding the Kosciuszcko Bridge are “happy hunting grounds” for the camera. What all of my favorites have in common is some form of access to the shoreline without having to climb a fence or trespass on private property to get there.
Dutch Kills is my jam, though. It’s the first section of Newtown Creek that I explored and studied, all those years ago, and is a relatively “easy reach” for me when I’m headed out for a walk from HQ in Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The leftie contingent of politicians here in Queens hate capitalism, but they love big real estate, which is a dichotomous situation. They believe in the “YIMBY” or “yes in my back yard” ideation, which states that in order to have “affordable housing” you need to demolish the existing and currently affordable housing stock, and then replace it with luxury condo buildings which will offer a small percentage of rooms in the new structures as “below market rate” “affordable apartments.” Given that “below market rate” is often offered at a 25-35% higher in rent price than what they replaced…
Nothing matters, and nobody cares.
Hey, check it out – from what the YIMBY’s refer to as “a transit rich corridor along Borden Avenue” you can see the sewer plant in Brooklyn, looking south past the tracks of the garbage train, and a giant recycling oriented waste transfer station which is down the block from an even bigger facility that handles putrescent garbage, alongside a Federal Superfund Site. Or, as the real estate people refer to it – the Borden Avenue Corridor.
“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.
strange dolphins
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A short walk found a humble narrator at one of his many holes. That’s a fence hole at the Sunnyside Yards, you pervert. Jeez.
I got there just as a LIRR train was rattling through the Harold Interlocking on its way to Manhattan, and since I had just updated the firmware on my camera to a new version that Canon claimed to have programmed vehicle based focus tracking into, I figured that this would be an ideal opportunity to test out the improvements to my technology.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, this was a short walk. I scuttled up 39th street, past the hole mentioned above, then hung a right on Skillman Avenue and walked past a taxi depot which uses street parking spots to store their vehicles for free. The bike people use this term all the time – free car storage – to describe street parking. It’s an effective bit of political language, since it reframes something ubiquitous into an issue oriented phrase. For me, though, I see “free car storage” with a different lens.
Private businesses parking their commercial vehicles for free, and government agencies doing the same thing, eat up hundreds of parking spots which they’re not paying for. The vast amount of space eaten up by the NYC DOT’s vehicle fleets along Queens Blvd. just pisses me off, given that they’re the ones whose policies reflect a desire to eliminate as much citizen parking as is possible. Who watches the watchmen, huh? Me, that’s who.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I swung through Queens Plaza, then started scuttling along the diagonal lots along Northern Blvd. on my way back to Astoria. Along the way, this FDNY Ambulance caught my attention with its ribald strobing.
This is just about the day in middle December when the Covid Omicron spike was really getting started and ramping up. This time around, unlike March and April of 2020, you didn’t see all that many people getting carted off to Hospital. Hmm. It’s almost like the vaccines did their job and kept people from getting dangerously sick from the virus.
That can’t be true, though, because Jewish Space Lasers.
“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.
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.
“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 