Archive for the ‘Freedom Tower’ Category
ornate and exotic
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Maddeningly, lucky captures like the ones featured in today’s posting have been pretty rare for me of late, but here’s three from the proverbial “right place, right time.” Whilst crossing the devastations of Laurel Hill last week, enroute to a meeting in Brooklyn, those dense atmospheric conditions which had all but occluded the visual presence of Manhattan, just an hour earlier, suddenly cleared up. The burning thermonuclear eye of god itself omnipotently bathed the accursed earth in its radiation, driving away the rain laden clouds.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, I was skulking and scuttling the periphery, along an obscure pavement, of the polyandrion of the Roman Catholic Church- called Calvary. Bearing witness to this sudden explosion of majesty and inadvertent stage lighting, for one such as myself, was fraught with danger. Having grown increasingly nocturnal over the winter months, your humble narrator let slip an audibly fearful hiss when that light- which had traveled 93 million miles in seconds and was aimed directly at me- struck my shadow tempered skin. At once, I was moving eastward- and toward safe harbor in the perennial shadows of DUKBO (Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp) scuttled I.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, as it was late in the day, this luminous event was short lived and the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself now floated low to the horizon in the northwestern sky. Enormous volatility in the air and surrounding cloud systems lent an effusive quality to its emanations, which oddly framed the so called Freedom Tower- a megalith nearing completion on the site of national tragedy and aspiration. To one such as myself, however, such things are better left for others to contemplate, enjoy, and discuss. There is no place for me in the company of others. My place is here, along the Newtown Creek, and amongst the tomb legions.
rhythmical promise
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recently, occasion carried me down to Long Island City, where my stated goal was to catch the venerable East River Ferry and attend a meeting in Brooklyn Heights. It is somewhat ironic, to me at least, that the only mass transit pathway between two points on the western tip of Long Island that doesn’t involve transversing Manhattan is to use a ferry service set up to carry folks from the former to the latter. Unfortunately, just as I arrived at the dock, the boat was leaving, which in many ways is a metaphor for my entire life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was no tragedy, as it offered an opportunity to linger and play around with some of that night photography I was talking about at the start of the week. Manhattan can be quite lovely when viewed from outside of itself, and some effort went into the endeavor. The Empire State Building, a shining beacon of hope erected during the deep despair of the Great Depression, never disappoints.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For some reason, the Freedom Tower will always be the name I call the building at One World Trade Center. Future generations will just call it whatever name they inherit from us, and Freedom Tower reminds me of those early days of the Terror War when terms like “blowback”, “freedom fries”, and “new normal” were coined. I think it’s important to remember that time, and that some symbolism is valuable even for the jaded mindset of modernity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Such ruminations came to end, when the East River Ferry showed up. Their service has really matured in the last year, although the dock at Long Island City is in dire condition. It is temporary, of course, as the Hunters Point South development project surrounds and engulfs all in a shroud of ongoing construction.
mournful mist
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few days before the storm, your humble narrator found himself bobbing around on the Newtown Creek onboard the Riverkeeper boat. While Captain John Lipscomb and his crew performed their function and fulfilled their patrol mission objectives, I was casting my lens around the waterway when I spotted this tug and barge. A fitting subject for another Maritime Sunday at this, your Newtown Pentacle, thought I.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The barge which the tug is handling is a “clean oil barge” which contains some 10,000 gallons of refined fuel. The tug is the Hubert Bays, an independent tug operated by Marine Environmental Transportation LLC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Likely, the tug was headed for the Bayside depot on English Kills, which is the facility landlubbers will recognize as located on Metropolitan Avenue nearby its intersection with Grand Street at the crux or angle between Williamsburg and Bushwick.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oddly, there wasn’t too much to be found detailing the specifics about Hubert Bays, which is kind of anomalous for a vessel operating in NY Harbor. It seems to be flagged in Austria, which is also kind of odd.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m sure that the operators or crew of the tug will find this post when they google themselves. To these parties, I would ask, please fill us in on yourselves. That’s one fine looking tug and barge combination you’ve got, and a certain humble narrator hates mysteries.
certain phases
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is another one of the shots I’ve been chasing all summer. It is not an easy thing to photograph a lit up moving thing from another moving thing, at night, and capture the background in acceptable sharpness- even on Maritime Sunday.
The Newtown Pentacle 