Archive for the ‘Midtown’ Category
Project Firebox 67
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While visiting the Shining City of Manhattan recently, this decapitated Firebox was encountered along Broadway in the west 50’s. A policy of so called benign neglect and reduced maintenance budgets, which betray the anti Firebox prejudices of a certain Mayoral administration, have resulted in the startling condition of what appears to be an early 20th century Gamewell alarm box. Perhaps the stalk and husk of the sentinel can be used to display a touch screen, of some kind, which could be used to direct tourists towards designated shopping centers or the nearest Shake Shack.
Also- TOURS:
Glittering Realms– April 20, 2013 Newtown Creek walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Atlas Obscura, tickets now on sale.
13 Steps around Dutch Kills– May 4, 2013 Newtown Creek walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Atlas Obscura, tickets now on sale.
Hidden Harbor: Newtown Creek tour with Mitch Waxman presented by the Working Harbor Committee, departs Pier 17 in Manhattan May 26,2013 at ten a.m. Limited seating available, order advance tickets now. Group rates available.
fainting and gasping
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hot Dog!
New York City sure is full of them.
Food carts are everywhere in the City these days, selling everything that’s bad for you. Sugary Soda Pop, high salt pretzels, even fatty waffles and doughnuts. Makes you wonder sometimes. Out here in Queens, our food carts do grilled chicken on a stick or shaved ice flavored with fresh squeezed. Only places I reliably see actual Hot Dog food carts seem to be around the places that Manhattan folks go- Shea Stadium Citifield or that big mall in Elmhurst.
from shopqueenscenter.com
You take Manhattan, we’ll take Queens Center – with hundreds of top retail names, a delectable food court and an easy-to-shop, easy-to-love vibe. If you want it, it’s probably here, from A to Z. Stores like American Eagle and Aldo to Baker’s Shoes, Bath and Body Works, Charlotte Russe, Club Monaco, Coach, The Disney Store all the way up the alphabet to Urban Outfitters, Victoria’s Secret and White House/Black Market. Factor in a huge H&M, Modell’s Sporting Goods, Macy’s, JCPenney and more, and the Queens Center experience truly delivers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A principle of design which has been in vogue for much of my “career” in advertising and publishing has been “less is more.”
A somewhat decadent notion which was no doubt invented by Czech or German socialist tea drinkers, the theory dictates that graphic communication is best accomplished with as few elements and in as simple a manner and design as possible. Notice the violations of this in the shot above, wherein the words “Hot Dog” appear no less than seven distinct times.
from wikipedia
The term “dog” has been used as a synonym for sausage since 1884 and accusations that sausage makers used dog meat date to at least 1845. In the early 20th century, consumption of dog meat in Germany was common. The suspicion that sausages contained dog meat was “occasionally justified”.
According to a myth, the use of the complete phrase “hot dog” in reference to sausage was coined by the newspaper cartoonist Thomas Aloysius “TAD” Dorgan around 1900 in a cartoon recording the sale of hot dogs during a New York Giants baseball game at the Polo Grounds. However, TAD’s earliest usage of “hot dog” was not in reference to a baseball game at the Polo Grounds, but to a bicycle race at Madison Square Garden, in The New York Evening Journal December 12, 1906, by which time the term “hot dog” in reference to sausage was already in use. In addition, no copy of the apocryphal cartoon has ever been found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hot Dog carts spend their days in Manhattan, of course, where they earn.
Just like the rest of us.
What most of the folks who partake in the salty cylinders of fat which are fired out of these weapons of commerce, and what they really don’t want to know, is where the carts are at night. Some stay in town, traveling uptown and toward the Hudson. Most head to Brooklyn and Queens. Many make a bee line to grimy warehouses along Northern Blvd., or Court Square in LIC, or to factory workshops and open air yards which adjoin that infamous exemplar of municipal neglect known simply and everlastingly as the Newtown Creek.
from wikipedia
The first food carts probably came into being at the time of the early Greek and Roman civilisations, with traders converting old hand-carts and smaller animal drawn carts into mobile trading units. Carts have the distinct advantage of being able to be moved should a location not be productive in sales, as well as transporting goods to/from storage to the place chosen from which to trade.
However, the use of carts exploded with the coming of the railways. Firstly, highly mobile customers required food and drink to keep them warm within the early open carriages. Secondly locomotives needed to stop regularly to take on coal and water, and hence allow their passengers use the toilets, eat and drink. Thirdly, few early trains had any form of buffet or dining car. Finally, when passengers did arrive at their destination, or at a point when they needed to switch trains or modes of transport, some refresehment was required, particularly for poorer passengers who could not afford to stay in the railway-owned hotels. This expansion lead to a mutually successful relationship, with some of the first concession stands and laws developing from mobile traders operating from restricted railway property. This form of concession based operation can be seen still in may countries, but at its most original in the under developed stations and infrastructure of Africa and South East Asia
impious catacombs
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Journeying to the Shining City is not an activity which one such as myself enjoys. Traveling locomotively through these mouldering catacombs of concrete and steel while using the so called Subway is inherently unsettling, but being delivered to one of the deeply situated stations such as the 59th and Lex stop is utterly disturbing.
That horrors which lurk and twist and squirm through and within the subterranean deeps of the schist of Manhattan are merely rumors, of course, the stuff of diseased fancy and Hollywood epic. It does not pay dividends to ponder ones fate, should the lights go out when one is… down there… with… them.
from wikipedia
Rats primarily find food and shelter at human places and therefore interact with humans in various ways. More often than not, rats are found in corner stores in New York. In particular, the city’s rats adapt to practices and habits among New Yorkers for disposing of food waste. Curbside overnight disposal from residences, stores, subway and restaurants, as well as littering, contribute to the sustenance of the city’s rats.
Rats have shown the ability to adapt to efforts to control them, and rat infestations have increased as a result of budget reductions, more wasteful disposal of food, etc. Rats in New York have been known to overrun restaurants after hours, crawl up sewer pipes and enter apartments through toilets. They have also attacked homeless people, eaten cadavers in the city morgue, and bitten infants to get food off their faces. In 2003, a fire station in Queens was condemned and demolished after rats had taken over the building.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Singular needs drew me into the gray monotonies of Manhattan’s vertical valleys. Hyper capitalist heaven, the area adjoining “Rockefeller Center” is long familiar to me. During my post collegiate years, when a night shift at a certain large investment bank supplied me with working capital, my employment was enacted within one of the “international” style office buildings which seem small and atavist in modernity.
from wikipedia
Rats are known to burrow extensively, both in the wild and in captivity, if given access to a suitable substrate. Rats generally begin a new burrow adjacent to an object or structure, as this provides a sturdy “roof” for the section of the burrow nearest to the ground’s surface. Burrows usually develop to eventually include multiple levels of tunnels, as well as a secondary entrance. Older male rats will generally not burrow, while young males and females will burrow vigorously.
Burrows provide rats with shelter and food storage, as well as safe, thermoregulated nest sites. Rats use their burrows to escape from perceived threats in the surrounding environment; for example, rats will retreat to their burrows following a sudden, loud noise or while fleeing an intruder. Burrowing can therefore be described as a “pre-encounter defensive behavior”, as opposed to a “postencounter defensive behavior”, such as flight, freezing, or avoidance of a threatening stimulus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While walking to my destination on the Upper West Side, a certain intuition- one of being watched from afar- was upon me. Normally given to flights of paranoid imaginings, the sensation was ignored. Of course, given the crowds of tourists and normal every day New Yorkers flowing about, you’re bound to be watched by someone- or something- in this part of town.
Still, a nagging suspicion persisted that the surveillance sensed was somehow familiar.
from wikipedia
Saint Gertrude of Nivelles (also spelled Geretrude, Geretrudis, Gertrud) (ca. 621 – March 17, 659) was a seventh century abbess who, with her mother Itta, founded the monastery of Nivelles in present-day Belgium. While never formally canonized, Pope Clement XII declared her universal feast day to be March 17 in 1677. She is the patron saint of travelers, gardeners and cats, and against rats and mental illness.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spinning about on my heels, the shocking revelation that even here- in the anonymous crowds of Midtown- one was in plain view of a shocking thing which cannot possibly exist which lurks in the cupola of the Sapphire Megalith of Long Island City. One turned north of Broadway, hoping to evade the burning and singular gaze of its triple lobed eye.
from wikipedia
Paranoia [ˌpærəˈnɔɪ.ə] (adjective: paranoid [ˈpærə.nɔɪd]) is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. (e.g. “Everyone is out to get me.”) Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia. For example, an incident most people would view as an accident or coincidence, a paranoid person might believe was intentional.
enervated experience
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apologies for the mid day update, lords and ladies. Today’s Maritime Sunday post focuses in on an event which occurred several years ago. Mundane and ordinary, it all started when I saw the Carnival Miracle cruise ship maneuvered up the Hudson by the tug Miriam Moran.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The cruise ship piers on the Hudson, which are analogous to the West 40’s street grid in Manhattan, offer berthing opportunity to the gargantuan vessels of the modern cruise industry. Like a game of horizontal Tetris, however, these ships have to be rotated into position before they can lock into place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Functionally, this is not unlike wrestling a floating Chrysler Building into place, while fighting not just wind but river current as well. Such is the life of a tug captain and harbor pilot, of course, and their long experience in such matters make it seem commonplace.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the Miriam Moran post facto on the Hudson, after having accomplished its task.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 