Archive for the ‘Long Island City’ Category
sane harborage
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, one was wandering through Blissville. For one reason or another, a humble narrator decided it would be good to get a few shots of the enormous masonry wall offered by First Calvary cemetery for the amusement of passerby on Review Avenue.
My understanding of the function of this structure is that it acts as a retaining wall. Laurel Hill, the landform which Calvary was carved into starting in 1848, used to slope down towards Newtown Creek. Review Avenue is a “cut” and the engineers who worked for the Church probably had to worry about mudslides when laying out the place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The wall itself is enormous, and based on observation from within the cemetery and atop it, around ten feet thick at the top and an unknown width at bottom. It’s composed on concrete and boulders, and likely bottoms out several yards under the level of the street and sidewalk. The boulders are typical glacial till, likely harvested from native soils, and nothing special.
My intention when shooting this was in theoretical pursuance of doing a cutaway illustration of the wall and subterrene, which was going to be accompanied by a bit of narrative reminiscent of an HP Lovecraft short story called “The Statement of Randolph Carter” wherein the exploration of a mortuary complex’s underground chambers results in a typically horrifying conclusion for a Lovecraft tale. That’s my actual thought process leading up to actuating the camera shutter.
That’s when I spotted them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When queried as to why I always have a camera with me, the answer is usually “if I don’t have this, then a ufo would land in the intersection and Bigfoot and Elvis would disembark from it.” Usually, a camera is your best defense against anything interesting happening within eyeshot.
These two defied that maxim, however, and they are to be applauded.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They seemed to be a couple, these two, just picking their way along the rock wall.
So intent on their task were they that notice of the strange old fellow with a camera trained on them standing across the street and laughing hysterically didn’t seem to register. This genuinely amused me, and I like to believe that one of them said to the other that “the floor is lava.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They never got more than five or six feet off the lava, I would mention.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I’m often quoted as saying – you never know what you’re going to see at Calvary Cemetery. Even when the place has remained inexplicably closed to the public at exactly the moment when its acres of green space have been most needed, the people of LIC will make it their own.
Awesome sauce.
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, September 14th. 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.
unplumbed voids
Nobody ever says “Thank God, it’s Wednesday.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Three archive shots greet you today, all of which are rail based. Pictured above is the New York & Atlantic engine 400, which I got to ride on last year. The tracks it rides on are part of the Bushwick Branch, which is itself a part of the larger Long Island Railroad system.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few miles west of the first shot, which depicts a freight train, is the LIRR’S Blissville Yard in Long Island City. Oddly enough, there was a defunct passenger train being stored at this freight yard on the Lower Montauk tracks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A different kind of train, those are IRT Flushing line subways sitting on the tracks in Roosevelt/Corona – I’m never sure where one starts and the other ends – in between rush hours.
Back tomorrow.
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, August 24th. 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.
human toothmarks
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUPBO, or Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp, is a section of the fabulous Newtown Creek which I haven’t been paying too much attention to during the pandemic months. It’s a bit more “populated” than I’ve been comfortable being around, what with the homeless colony that’s popped up on the LIC side. There’s several RV’s you’ll notice down there, which a few humans and several rather bark prone doggies are living in, and that violates my goal of going to places where nobody else is. What this city needs is a good…
As you can see, there was a full moon on the night these shots were gathered, with the one above looking due East towards Calvary Cemetery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Pulaski Bridge pictured above, a double bascule drawbridge owned and operated by the NYC DOT. Fundamentally speaking, this section of Newtown Creek isn’t the environmental horror show you encounter further east, rather it’s more akin to the environmental horror show that is the East River. A recent assertion by one of the Superfund Investigatory teams was that there were more “chemicals of concern” entering the Creek in this zone via the East River than from the upland post industrial properties. This, of course, causes me to wonder and ponder whether or not the East River itself should be considered a Superfund site.
When you start peeling a banana, you’re sort of committed to eating the thing, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the Hunters Point Yard of the Long Island Railroad, which adjoins the Pulaski, I noticed these work trains sitting and idling. Can’t tell you what they were up to, but it’s likely that track and right of way maintenance was on the dance card.
Back tomorrow with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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, August 10th. 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.
moldering structure
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Let me tell ya, I really seem to freak out the security guards when I whip out the tripod and set up the camera. It’s always surprised me how people react when they see a camera. I once got chased by a group of old ladies here in Astoria, who saw me taking a picture of St. Irene’s church and then logically concluded that I was a terrorist. Luckily they were pretty old, so I lost them after a few blocks. Homeland Security indeed.
In the case of the rather innocent shot above, depicting the former offices of Irving Subway Grate, I got to say “Hi” to somebody providing security services for the UPS shipping center across the street. At this particular time of night, UPS parks a good amount of its truck fleet in the street and on the sidewalk, and he must’ve figured I was screwing around with their illegally parked trucks. My retribution for this interruption of my photography “flow” involved a full 25 minute history of Irving Subway Grate and a more generalized 10 minute lecture about Newtown Creek. I could have hit him with a 25 minute history of the United Parcel Service company and the Teamsters, but decided to be merciful.
Mess with the bull, you get the horns. Mess with Mitch, you get a long ass historical lecture about something you never wanted to know anything about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Empty Corridor is the name I’ve given to the lonely streets you encounter under the 106 foot high steel truss bridge that carries the Long Island Expressway over LIC and Dutch Kills. There’s actually a lot going on down here, but the street scape is bare and unforgiving, hence the cognomen. Any vegetation you might encounter here is self seeded, “weed trees” as we would call it back in the old neighborhood. The street is pockmarked and broken, the sidewalks are shattered, and many times are impassable as businesses just take them over to store equipment or park trucks.
There’s also a smell, best described as “hot food garbage,” that permeates. High above, a constant mechanical tumult rings out, broadcasting vibrations down through the steel and singing a cacophonous din into the auditory realm. What can I tell you, it’s an expressway up there carrying millions of vehicle trips a year to and from Manhattan.
You think that’s going to be quiet?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Montauk Cutoff at the top of the shot above, an abandoned set of Long Island Railroad tracks which connect across Dutch Kills to the Lower Montauk tracks along Newtown Creek on one side, and the Sunnyside Yards on the other. At least, they used to do so, but the connection to Sunnyside Yards has been demolished and the bridge over Dutch Kills is now fenced off and is scheduled for demolition itself.
Several of us at Newtown Creek Alliance have been working on turning the Montauk Cutoff into public space for a while now, but… y’know… MTA.
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, August 10th. 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.
persistent presence
Monday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Anxious, that’s the way a humble narrator recently described his state of mind to a medical professional who was catechizing him. Anxious is how one has felt for quite a while now. The pressure valve one regularly turns to relieve a few atmospheres of this background anxiety involves exercise and solitude, but that isn’t some new survival strategy one has evolved during this interminable pandemic period, it’s rather my “go-to.” Were this a normal summer, things I’d be complaining right now about; A) I want a weekend off from doing tours, B) how hot it is, C) my desires to just “get out there” by myself with the camera.
This isn’t a normal summer, but I’ll still complain about “B” and “C.” One fo my “go-to’s” throughout the pandemic has been to follow a pathway out of Astoria and into the industrial zones of Long Island City. Unfortunately, a lot of other people have discovered the areas surrounding Newtown Creek in recent months. This too makes me anxious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve done a lot of cool stuff over the years, all of which caused me endless amounts of anxiety while in pursuit thereof. I’ve ghost hunted in Crete, for instance, which involved my father in law and I avoiding the attentions of shot gun toting bandits on a country road in Greece at 4 in the morning. I’ve worked on neat projects in the advertising world – a Times Square bill board, marquee ads placed in The NY Times magazine section, and for about 5 years everytime you walked into a Footlocker store to buy sneakers all that stuff on the walls and in the windows you saw promoting new shoes was probably something I had a hand in. There are comic books out there which I wrote and drew, and I was responsible for an entire comic company’s studio production schedule for a while. I’ve worked for major ad agencies, huge Wall Street companies, you name it. I’ve been happily married for decades, have friends whom I’ve been hanging out with since I was a teenager, and have multiple rings of friends and acquaintances that sound like a who’s who list of NYC. When I say it all out loud, it sounds like I’m bragging, but these are all things I’ve done. Saying that, every day when I wake up, it’s a “reset” and I have to find some way to justify my existence.
Right now, caught up in this wave of never ending tumult, it’s difficult to say that any of that stuff matters. Hence, anxiety.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One practices a thought modality which I call “branch logic.” It’s game theory, ultimately. Every action I take has two possible outcomes, which in turn offer further binary choices that branch off of whatever decision was undertaken. “If I cross Van Dam Street, when I get to the jail, I can either head north (Queens Plaza) or south (Greenpoint Avenue Bridge) – which is decision 1 – or just continue West towards decision 2. If I head west, I can go to Dutch Kills or follow it to Skillman Avenue. At Dutch Kills I can, or at Skillman I can… you get the idea. Interpersonally – I can punch this guy at the bar in the mouth, or I can just humor him. If I punch him, these two possibilities happen or if I humor him, another set of binaries occurs. This make the world somewhat predictable, which allows one to plan. If I save $20 a week, I’ll have a thousand bucks at the end of the year. If I have a thousand bucks in January, I can…
Thing is, and this is where all that anxiety is coming from, the world has become utterly and incomprehensibly unpredictable. I can’t predict anything more than two moves out right now, which is something that makes me anxious.
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, August 10th. 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 