Archive for the ‘Midtown’ Category
gleaming vividly over
Damnation isn’t a mass market kind of product, it’s personalized and tailored to fit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It has long been my assertion, when discussing subjects involving the occult and or supranatural, that there is no “one size fits all” sort of thing to describe hell. Demons are geniuses, in the Greek sense of the word, and hell doesn’t have specific zip codes for specific sins. For one such as myself, the legendary torments of Gehenna would take the form of either a never ending subway trip or waiting for train to arrive whilst needing to urinate. If you’ve been at the 34th street IND station during the summer months while needing to piss, I’m sure you’ll agree with me.
It is my firm belief, in fact, that many of the characters you meet down in the transit labyrinth are in fact damned souls – which would actually explain a lot of things – the running water, that weird smell, why it’s so warm down there. Aquinas and Origen both described hell as the absence and tacit abandonment of God itself, and if there’s any place that you can be assured that God has abandoned you – it’s the 42nd street subway complex.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The guy selling candy bars and magazines who spends his days and nights in a concrete box on the NQR platform? I’ll allow you to speculate what he did while alive to deserve this afterlife.
I get in trouble with some of you occasionally for referring to “God” as an “it.” I’m all for anthromorphising non human extra-dimensional intelligences and all, but should this entity actually exist – it’s an “it” and not a he or a she. Agnosticism has always served me best, and there are philosophical currents in Buddhism which advise that spending too much of your life pondering spiritual matters is not what the universe – or “it” – intended when they incarnated you into the meatspace which back me up on this idea. If there is an afterlife, I’ll have to pay my check when I leave the table, but in the meantime I intend to continue eating and drinking heartily until the bad news comes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in a prior post, for some reason I’ve begun to mentally refer to Manhattan as “Manchuquo” which is coincidentally similar to the name which the Japanese Empire assigned to its holdings in Manchuria during the 1930’s and 40’s. At any rate, while standing on a platform in what I believe to be the first circle of hell – The NYC Subway system – in Manchuquo, it occurred to me that’s it’s been a while since I read Aquinas, or Marcus Aurelius. Have to find and download some audiobooks for those two – simply for the reason that I can win rhetorical arguments with the NYC EDC by quoting them.
Hell, I need to listen to something intelligent while wandering around the City of Greater New York… Do you suppose that if the Subway is – as asserted – the first circle of hell, that Manhattan might just be purgatory?
It certainly does feel like it.
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Saturday, May 21st at 3:30 p.m. –
A Return to The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek,
with Atlas Obscura, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
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pedantic overexposure
Manhattan is an “only when necessary” destination.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the little diatribes I’m known for concerns Manhattan, specifically the section of it found below 96th street and above the Battery. Once, this was an interesting place. There is still some interesting architecture to observe, of course, but the chances of encountering anything that isn’t crass and or exploitative are pretty much nil these days. Seven bucks for a hot dog? Really?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The only reason a humble narrator ever goes there anymore involves where my physicians have set up their offices, the catching of a ferry to Staten Island, or attending some harbor related function.
It’s sanitized, Manhattan is, and having had all of its edges sanded down has resulted in it becoming quite bland. Rich people and tourists are, by definition, not terribly interesting. Most of what you’ll find at the street level – shop wise, has become banal. The entire island was once brightly colored, but there has been so much bleach applied to it over the years…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent appointment with my team of Doctors required me to visit the island, and I took the opportunity to perambulate from 59th street to Union Square – roughly two miles. Two miles in North Brooklyn or Western Queens would have seen me return to HQ with literally hundreds of shots of interesting things I’d encountered. The Manhattan walk resulted in about 15 shots.
Above, a film crew at work nearby Union Square Park, is included simply because it’s part of a larger series of “Photographing Photographers while they’re Photographing.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thankfully, after a clean bill of health was pronounced by the professional staff at my Doctor’s office, a chariot back to the bountiful vistas of Queens arrived at the Subway station just as I did. The best part of visiting Manhattan is leaving it behind.
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deserved imprisonment
A few shots from the Shining City, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While on the way to Old St. Pat’s for the Irish language mass a week or two ago, a bit of my spare Manhattan time was filled by wandering about. Over in the East Village, one of my favorite bits of historical neon – the Block Drugs sign – was observed and recorded.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had taken the 7 from Queens to Manhattan, which deposited me in midtown. I had elected to walk down Park Avenue for one reason or another. One of the reasons was that since Park is a bit wider than most of Manhattan’s north south streets – there would be available light rather than perpetual shadow.
Don’t worry, the Mayor’s new Mandatory Inclusionary Housing rules and zoning changes will soon eliminate any shard of pesky sunlight which might strike the ground.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Always on the lookout for something “iconic,” this early morning lineup of taxis at Grand Central Terminal caught my eye as I scuttled forth from the 7 train’s exit.
Have a good Friday, all.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
squamous litanies
It’s a real migraine out there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Let’s face it, what we New Yorkers actually do is raise a hell of a ruckus wherever we are, but especially so when we’re at home. Personal experience of visiting relatively rural and quiet areas, like Vermont, reveals the effect on my hearing that living in this constant din has wrought. For 24-48 hours after leaving the City, there’s a high pitched phantom tone constantly present. I’ve always thought that the “wheeeeeee” sound, in addition to having a medical definition and name, is my brains attempt to filter out the constant rumble and thunder of city life – cerebral noise cancelling if you will.
All the engines, and generators, exhaust fans, jets, car tires on asphalt, buzzing things on utility poles, everybody talking, the subways, the chattering of millions of birds – the air is polluted not just with toxic gases and sewage bacteria rising on the breeze from out of the harbor – but with noise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s only during power outages and blizzards that you get to hear the City hush up for a while. I’d settle for regular powers like being able to effectively climb a ladder or balance my check book, but a humble narrator has often fantasized about possessing some sort of super power. My first choice would be invulnerability, of course, but a lot of the really interesting choices involve sight and perception. X-Ray vision? I’d worry about giving people cancer just by looking at them. Being able to fly without the invulnerability would actually be kind of dangerous.
What if you could visualize sound?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I know, that’s the sort of thing somebody would ask in a dorm room shortly after passing the bong, but still.
The BQE would probably look like something from Van Gogh, with crashing scalars creating fractal wavefronts which bounce and dance along the road itself and all the brick walls of the buildings which the highway weaves through. The East River would likely be a majestic sight, and would exhibit something akin to a sonic Jackson Pollack painting.
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lured and
Adventure and pedantic excitement, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavors found me at what I’m fairly sure is the western boundary of the former garden of Eden, the modern day Times Square. Often have I advanced the theory that Eden was not only in North America, but in Manhattan, and that the Tree of Knowledge was found in the dead bang center of 42nd street between 7th Avenue and Broadway opposite the Subway entrance on the south, and the news ticker on the north. Furthermore, it is my belief that Times Square is actually the geographic center – or Omphalos – of the universe itself, but esotericism and magick seldom apply to cartography.
I am sure that Adam and Eve would have headed in the direction of modern day Port Authority after eating the forbidden fruit, as original sin and mortal damnation are inextricably linked to that hellish terminal building and all the lost souls who dwell therein.
Somewhere deep below Port Authority is a forgotten and unmapped subway platform servicing the H, E, and LL lines, with transfers available only from the S, I, and N lines. One needs to ride the latter in the correct order, in order to arrive at the entrance leading to the former.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of the E, and hellish subterranean complexes filled with ironic punishments, here’s one entering Queens Plaza. MTA played one of its little jokes on me last week, when I found out that they had instituted a “you can’t get there, from here” rule for the local R train on a Saturday afternoon.
Putting the signage up on the platform, rather than at the turnstile? Well played, MTA, well played.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The melting snow last week saw Steinway Street here in Astoria offering water curtains slipping off of construction sheds, which was actually kind of magical when the sun was out. I say it all the time – “NYC never looks so good as it does when it’s wet.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unfortunately, and this happens every year, some escaped toy had frozen to death and its corpse emerged as the snow pack dissolved. Why people who own toys don’t install screens on their windows, I cannot fathom. Personally, I won’t let any of my toys out of the house without a leash, and they’re all “chipped.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst waiting for the bagel shepherds to accomplish the fashioning of breakfast one day, I was fascinated by the forensics offered by a tree pit on Astoria’s Broadway. Notice the normal sized human boot print and the gargantuan one superimposed at the top of the shot.
I can confirm that there very well might be a Sasquatch family living here in Astoria, which would make sense as every other tribe of the hominids maintains a residence hereabouts, but that their big feet are clad in galoshes. Vibrant Diversity includes cryptids, you know.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside, I met a Mariachi one night.
He seemed nice. He was certainly vibrant, I believe he said his name was Luis, but I can’t say a thing about whether he was diverse or not. We have a LOT of guys who work as Mariachi musicians hereabouts, and I know more than just one Luis who lives in Western Queens.
We discussed Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi movies” and the gentleman affirmed that his guitar case held a musical instrument rather than a series of automatic weapons by producing the thing and strumming out a tune.
Luis (?) The Mariachi told me that he was a classically trained guitarist who loved Bach, but paid his rent working as an entertainer at restauarants and parties. I commented that I’m a fan of the Moorish influenced 12 string Spanish Guitar genre, whereupon he informed me that there is no such thing as Spanish guitar – it’s “Mexican Guitar” – that’s all there is. After parting company, I immediately regretted not mentioning Bix Beiderbecke, given where our encounter took place on Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside.
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