Archive for the ‘Manhattan’ Category
obstinate retort
random things I’ve seen.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My pals at the North Brooklyn Boat Club collect bricks and other things they find along the shorelines of the lugubrious Newtown Creek. Historic bricks are a whole topic in themselves, but the ones you find along the creek can be somewhat revelatory, as many of them were used in the furnaces of the industrial revolution. The company which manufactured these so called “refractory” ceramics was founded in 1854, and located on Richards street, between Van Dyke and Beard streets, in Red Hook.
Odds are that it was used for the retort of a manufactured gas plant, based on the sort of discoloring and wear pattern it exhibits. It’s also likely infiltrated with all sorts of heavy metals and arsenic compounds.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Blissville, along Greenpoint Avenue at the corner of Starr, this (reportedly) 1930 model building hosts a deli at the street level and two apartments above. There’s a basement as well, and I’ve found conflicting accounts regarding the date of construction, with NYC’s Buildings Department displaying a “CofO” listing the place as having been first occupied in 1917. The records regarding Queens at DOB are pretty spotty, if you ask me, and I chalk up their inaccuracies to the chaos of LIC & New York City Consolidation.
According to the DOB, the building Newtown Pentacle HQ occupies in Astoria is actually the parking lot of an Italian restaurant in Rego Park, as an example.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one is shot from the last car of an N train leaving Queens Plaza, through that trippy lenticular plastic that MTA believes will defeat the armies of chaos. I dream of getting on an N, or Q, with clean windows. It’s part of the reason why I like taking the C, as those older model cars still allow an unimpeded view of the tunnels.
Regardless of optical distortion, I like the shot above for some reason.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Simply put, the shot above describes the proper Brooklyn pronunciation of the word “fifth.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in Queens, which is the only place in NYC where a private property owner can get away with hanging his own sign on the pedestrian sidewalk admonishing passerby to make way for his workers and their heavy equipment. Look out for forklifts indeed.
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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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with dreams
Constrained and contained.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The winter blues are upon us all, one fears. Dark skies and so on, combined with recurrent viral infections polluting the local outlook. Not so at this, your Newtown Pentacle. This week it’s not about the blues, rather it’s the purples, and reds, bright green, and lemon yellows. Every image that will greet you this week is chosen not for some narrative purpose, rather it’s a public service whose purpose is to help combat your SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and virus addled days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This week you’ll be greeted by a series of shots culled from the archives, accompanied by a bit of text discussing that which is pictured, when warranted. Above, a barbed wire fence line in Blissville, Queens. Behind it rises the former headquarters of the General Electric Vehicle Company, which manufactured electric automobiles and trucks in LIC back at the start of the 20th century. I described the saga of GEVC in this post, which is actually a few years old at this point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Williamsburg Bridge is actually the reason that there’s a Municipal Art Society, as the span was considered to be such an abomination when constructed that the gentry of the early 20th century wished to ensure that nothing like it ever occurred again. Personally, I don’t consider it that bad, although I prefer the venerable Manhattan and spectacular Queensboro bridges – speaking from a strictly esthetic point of view.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s at the bottom of the barrel, January, in terms of the wheel of the year. What one such as myself craves is color, saturated and bright. If all I can get is artificiality, I’ll take it.
If this Astoria vending machine, which is the sort designed to tempt a passerby to drop a few coins in pursuance of a stuffed animal which might be obtained via the use of a metallic claw, is all I can get – I’ll take it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The former Williamsburgh Savings Bank, over in North Brooklyn, has been laboriously restored to the glories typical of the era of France’s Second Empire. Luxurious detail and slavishly applied color is found on the domed ceilings of the place, both of which are sure to brighten up your wintry malaise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back to LIC’s Blissville, in the shot above, and a religious parade committed by a small army of Bolivians at St. Raphael’s on Greenpoint Avenue. If this quartet of dancers cannot brighten a January day, I don’t know what can.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yuyzel on da cruss, as my Grandmother would have described the statuary above, is found at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan. The cruciform is backed up by stained glass which provides for a bit of color at one of my favorite and most cinematic spots in NYC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can’t go wrong with Times Square if you’re looking to brighten up and color up your mid January. Of course, since it’s actually everything that’s wrong with modern NYC made manifest, a trip there might just backfire. Come to think of it, Times Square has always represented everything that was wrong with NYC, at least in the 20th and 21st centuries.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
FDNY always lights things up when they’re working, come to think of it.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
unsupervised circuit
Life long relationships, ending, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in the late 1980’s, my first job in advertising involved making photostat enlargements and reductions for the senior designers, art directors, and production artists at an agency which specialized in “B2B” marketing involving food service. My job title was “stat boy” and my function, beyond shooting “stats” in a darkroom, was to support whatever the more senior people needed. I worked directly for the “Studio Manager,” who was a friend from College that had graduated a couple of years ahead of me and offered me my first “leg up” into the business. He would often remind me that “shit rolls down hill” and accordingly I would end up performing menial tasks that he was too busy for – ensuring that our supply closet was stocked with pads of paper or paste up supplies, running job bags around the agency for sign off’s and approvals from the various powers that be, that sort of stuff. Think Jimmy Olsen at the Daily Planet, that was me back then. Overall, the job was worth doing, and it taught me a lot about how to survive as an artist in NYC.
One day, the Studio Manager sat me down in front of a brand new Macintosh computer, handed off a pile of floppy disks, and the task was to install a suite of software on the new Mac – which was the very first one that the agency had purchased. That was the first time that I ever opened a new program called “Photoshop” and it was also the first step towards what I ended up doing for a living as a digital production artist and photo retoucher. I’ve seen the entire conversion of the industry from “paste up and mechanicals” to full digital and web production over the intervening decades.
I’ve spent most of my professional life in front of an Apple computer – this post is being written on an iPad, for instance, and every photo you’ve ever seen from me was edited and processed on a desktop Mac tower.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For a while there, things weren’t going so good for Apple. A lot of bad decisions, coupled with horrendous customer relations, had almost put the computer manufacturer out of business.
Steve Jobs returned to the company, and brought it back from the brink. The phones came along, and Apple suddenly became a mainstream company, and flush with cash. Jobs died, and a new management team took over at Apple, who have unfortunately returned the company to the bad old days. Form has taken primacy over function with this new team, and the entire concept of producing something which could be termed a “professional workstation” began to suffer. Every refinement of the core operating system released over the last decade has been crafted with the idea that its only function is to “monetize” the device, as related to selling me commercial entertainment media, and they have specifically removed capabilities from the device which were and are “mission critical” to my professional life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent encounters with the company – one where they informed me that a three year old workstation was “obsolete” and that even a simple component replacement would be impossible by the end of this year, another where a two and half year old iPhone with a defective battery (factory issues at the time of manufacture) was also obsolete – have soured me on the whole idea of Apple. The applications which I use in my daily round, the so called “Adobe Suite,” have become platform independent in the decades since a humble narrator was commanded to install them at that B2B agency off of floppy disks, and I’m not at all sure that I want to continue paying premium prices for a device which is considered obsolete by its manufacturer less than 36 months after opening the box.
Why buy a Ducati when a Buick will do?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots, of midtown Manhattan, were gathered while killing time and ruminating on my relationship with Apple at the end of December.
I was waiting out a battery replacement for the aforementioned iPhone, which – it should be mentioned – was performed flawlessly and took exactly one hour, but cost approximately one seventh of what I originally paid for the device. I pushed the folks at the Apple Store for a replacement device, but was told that this would be impossible, but that I could trade my old phone in for a couple of hundred bucks which could be applied towards the purchase of a new one (which would leave a $500 differential). Alternatively, they offered me entry into a contractual program, which would entail me giving the company $30 a month forever afterwards, that would ensure that whenever they released a new model I would receive one. That would mean a $360 per annum payment to Apple, forever and ever.
That’s a corporate tax, and the last straw, frankly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is less than sanguine about being overly exploited by a corporation, but if the service is desirable or needed… I have no problem paying my accountant, nor doctors, nor my local bartender, baker, or butcher what they’re due. Should my bakery suddenly announce that they will require me to pay them a monthly stipend for the privilege of returning moldy bread, however, I will find a new place to shop for my cookies and pie.
Sometimes, one must address the costs of things costing too much, and remember that the costs of customer retention are not too much for a large company. There are other options, always. I’ll miss Apple.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
squamous aspiration
Constantly disappointing, and complaining, that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Winter boredom is anathema to one such as myself. The cold and dark, the thirty five pounds of insulation, the constant flux between the dry and cold air of the out of doors contrasted with the high temperature and humidity found within. The constancy of a drippy nose. Bah.
It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me why some feel the need to jack the heat up to the mid 80’s inside of structures, knowing full well that inhabitants and visitors will be wearing clothing appropriate for the out of doors. The worst culprit on this front seems to be the subway system, where you’ll step off of a station platform whose atmospheric temperature is commensurate with the freezing of water and suddenly find yourself in a hurtling metal box whose ambient air mass is heated to something approaching that of an afternoon in July. Add in the sniffling, coughing, and dripping orifices of the mob…
Well, I’ve often opined that what this City needs is a good plague – and I’m fairly certain that one will eventually start on a Subway in Queens during middle January. Don’t touch that subway pole, if you can help it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ultimately, one is awaiting a particularly personal moment which occurs every year, when a humble narrator’s boredom grows so intense that he has little choice but to brave the cold and head back outside. At this juncture, however, the moment hasn’t arrived, and one has been spending his time reading about the Second Empire period of French history, Otto Von Bismarck, and researching the chemicals which the seething cauldrons of industry produce that are classified as petroleum or coal distillates. One does a lot of reading during this time of the year.
I’ve also read up a bit on Kazakhstan, the Crimean Tartars, and the Deccan Plain on the Indian subcontinent. Briefly, I also looked into the Chicago stock yards and the post civil war meat packing industry as well as the suffragettes of 19th century Brooklyn Heights. I continue to study the rise and fall of the Roman Catholic empire in New York City, which is fascinating. Also reiterated will be the fact that if you enjoy gelatin based desserts – never, ever, inquire too deeply as to what gelatin actually is nor how it is produced for you will never, ever, eat it afterwards. Jello brand gelatin was invented by Peter Cooper in a glue factory on Newtown Creek in the 19th century, which is all you really need to know about it. Isenglass is also soul chilling.
Sexy stuff, I know, but the so called “fin de siècle” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are when the foundations of our modern civilization were laid down and it remains a certain benchmark from a cultural point of view. Labor unions, representative government (both socialist and capitalist), industrial warfare – all of it was imagined up back then. It’s also when the environment surrounding us began to die off due to anthropogenic reasons. The dominoes were lined up, quite unconsciously, back then for the end of our world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Fin de siècle” is a French expression which gained popularity in the first decade of the 20th century, a part of the run up to the Great War, which indicated that the “end of the cycle” or “end of an age” was apparent. It’s part of a phenomena known as millennial fatalism, wherein a culture believes that the “end of the world” nears. It’s difficult to not think that our culture may have reached its breaking point, given what we see on the nightly news. The fatalism and general horror which the various news organizations pump into our heads is, of course, not accidental. Don’t forget that most of the news gathering and dissemination companies are owned and operated by defense contractors.
I’ve always been an optimist, however. What other choice have you got, ultimately? Winter will come and go, and then… flowers and puppies. That’s the way that the wheel of the year spins, after all.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 