Archive for the ‘New York Harbor’ Category
Apotheosis Urbis
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Summing up what ended up being a solid month’s worth of posts describing a four day trip, at the start of June, wherein your humble narrator returned back to ‘the old neighborhood’ in New York City – so, today’s post seeks to gather it all together in one place.
Links to the published posts of this series will be offered inline below. You may have seen some of the embedded shots in today’s post before, although I did attempt to not repeat.
Long story short: flew out from Pittsburgh on an early morning flight, hung out with my Pal Val on the harbor and then headed upstate.
Returned from upstate on Day 2, went to Long Island City and Newtown Creek and eventually Woodside and Middle Village.
Back to the creek for Day 3, and after riding the L to Canarsie, dinner at a kosher deli with my cousins and then back to Middle Village.
Day 4 was LIC again, and a walk over the Queensboro Bridge before riding the 7, and visiting ‘hole reliable’ at Sunnyside Yards and then heading over to LaGuardia Airport, and then back to Pittsburgh.
Whirlwind!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I didn’t get a window seat on the plane to NYC, or on the one back to Pittsburgh, which was disappointing. Managed to get Newtown Creek in the bottom right of the shot above, but it’s blurry and weird looking due to the distortion of shooting through the plastic window at an angle.
Next time around, have to ensure that I’m at a window. If there is a next time, that is. I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean, visited the Alamo, gone to Yellowstone… there’s other stuff, too, that I’d like to take a picture of.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Day one in NYC produced a lot of photos, as is always the case when I’m out on the waters of New York Harbor with the camera.
Chronicles of June 3rd’s adventures started with ‘Homeboy,’ followed by ‘Puddle People,’ ‘Working the Harbor,’ ‘Surf and Turf,’ and ‘Next stop, Willoughby.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
June 4th saw NYC’s climate go sultry hot, and your humble narrator suffered through the heat while pushing himself forward. Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead, I always say.
June 4th also saw me returning to the ‘zone’ from upstate NY via Metro North in ‘Omphalos,’ returning to LIC and Newtown Creek in ‘Like every other bit of wind blown trash,’ plunging toward Blissville in ‘DUPBO 2025,’ heading towards the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge in ‘DUGABO awaits,’ and visiting the Borden Avenue street end along Dutch Kills in ‘DULIE 2025.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
June 5th, from a climatological point of view, was a difficult day to wake up in NYC. Hot, humid, swamp ass weather. Doesn’t matter, a humble narrator is fairly able to ignore and overcome environmental hazards, especially so at Newtown Creek. Lots of practice.
‘Estate Reality, Dutch Kills,’ ‘Old Friends,’ ‘DUGSBO and the plank road gooses,’ ‘The happy place,’ and ‘First DUKBO’ explore a longish walk that started at the Grand Street Bridge, then proceeded over the Kosciuszcko Bridge on my way to Newtown Creek Alliance HQ in Greenpoint.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
‘DUKBO 2 DUGABO,’ and ‘DUGABO 2 Canarsie’ finished out the cavalcade of horror and fear that I had seen and experienced on the 5th of June in NYC. My cousin drove me back to Middle Village, and the home of Hank the Elevator Guy, where I’d be staying the night.
My plan of ditching worn clothing into the trash along the way paid off mightily by this point, and after bidding my buddy Hank ‘adieu’ and offering my thanks for his hospitality, I set out on my way with just the camera bag to manage.
On the 6th, experiences and photos for ‘And on the fourth day,’ ‘Queensboro Pedestrian Path,’ and ‘Queens Plaza to Sunnyside Yards & LGA’ were gathered.
This was a heck of a trip, back to the old neighborhood.
Tomorrow – the Paris of Appalachia – at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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“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.
Surf and turf
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My Pal Val and I met up, after I flew in from Pittsburgh. She picked me up at LaGuardia airport, and we rode on the NYC Ferry from Astoria to Manhattan’s Pier 11. We then marched over to the Staten Island Ferry and were soon on… Staten Island… now you’re caught up.
I was absolutely famished, with the last caloric installation having occurred some 400 miles west of NYC, in Pittsburgh at about two in the morning. There’s only so far that a homemade egg sandwich is going to carry you, so we decided to grab some eats while in St. George.
That’s the predicate of how I ended up ordering a $20 Wagyu Beef burger at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. It was a good burger, but no burger is worth $20 except to a weary traveler in need of a hot shot of fat and protein to fill his empty fuel tank.
Good news about this spot were the views, which were spectacular.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was nice seeing the familiar ‘color way’ heraldries of NYC’s tug fleets again. Val and I finished our luncheon, and headed back into the terminal to catch a big orange boat back to Manhattan. Along the way, we spotted multiple tugs waiting their turn at dock.
My day was at roughly at the median point, and after landing in Manhattan, Val and I would be splitting up. She needed to catch a ferry back to Astoria to fetch her car, and I would be plunging right up the middle of Manhattan Island on the subway towards Midtown.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A couple of last shots of the maritime world were gathered, and I adjusted the intricate web of straps arranged about the torso. I was carrying a week’s worth of clothes in addition to my camera bag, and the camera itself was in my hand. My usual formula for this sort of ‘heavy carry’ looks like an old timey soldier’s setup – the camera and the clothes bag straps arranged in an X shape across my chest, with the knapsack/camera bag shoulder straps locking the two other straps into place while I was moving about.
We arrived back on Manhattan Island, and Val and I bid each other adieu.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I didn’t necessarily miss the subway all these months, and my only thoughts about the subject while sitting in that wheelchair were ‘glad I don’t have to deal with the subway right now.’
One decided to get off the Subway at Herald Square, and walk from 34th to 42nd in order to get to Grand Central Terminal. At least it used to be a terminal, before the LIRR opened up down below.
Does that reclassify the place as a station/terminal now? The terms are specific. For most of its existence, the last stop on Metro North (a public passenger service, nationalized from private rail companies by the noted Liberal and Socialist President Richard Nixon) was here, hence terminal.
Saying that, 7 train subway service has been passing through here for quite a long stretch, but that didn’t make it a ‘station.’ It’s all very confusing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Leaving ‘the system,’ I stepped back into the sunlight after riding the R to the 34th street hellmont, which is just a slight bit better experience than the one at 42nd street. I had swapped lenses while on the subway, and reentered the street level milieu with a 16mm wide angle prime on the camera. I wanted to ‘take it all in.’
The plan from this point involved getting to Grand Central and catching a Metro North train up to my buddy’s house in Cold Spring, upstate. That’s where I’d be spending the night, and given that I’d been awake for something like fourteen hours at this point, I was growing pretty fatigued.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My toes were pointed in the correct direction, and thereby I followed them. Grand Central was a 15-20 minute walk away (I’m moving a LOT slower than I used to, although the ankle was not at all getting in my way, my legs are still somewhat atrophied from the long recovery period) and I was intent on getting upstate and out of the City as quickly as possible.
More tomorrow.
“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.
Working the harbor
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In a lot of ways, I spent my time on a recent NYC visit reminding myself of who I actually am – or at least who I was. My activities on this visit weren’t consciously planned that way, but given the far flung nature of my activities in NYC, it was hard not to reminisce.
That’s the Manhattan Bridge above, and I served the City of Greater New York as a Parade Marshall for its centennial. I’ve also done hundreds of ‘on microphone’ narrations about that bridge on boat tours while passing under it. –
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Mexican Navy ship which allided with the Brooklyn Bridge.
If both objects are moving it’s a ‘collision,’ whereas if one object is moving it’s an ‘allision.’ A few people asked me, after the incident, what all the sailors were doing up in the masts. Here’s some shots from 2012’s ‘Op Sail,’ where you can see other tall ship sailors performing similar ‘parade duties.’
As a note: annoyingly, Flickr has altered their code in the last few weeks, which has caused a number of images on older posts to lose their previews. Not sure what to do about that at the moment, and I really do not want to dive into recoding 16 years worth of daily posts to start fixing links.
Hopefully, they’ll resolve this on the server end, but that’s why a bunch of previews are ‘404ing’ at the moment on older posts. Sigh… the future kind of sucks, doesn’t it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYC ferry docked at Pier 11, and my Pal Val and I began heading towards the big orange boat. It had been about 12 hours at this point, relative to waking up at 1 in the morning back in Pittsburgh. Fatigue was definitely setting in, as was the desire for luncheon.
It was nice to smell salt in the air again, although I was frankly overwhelmed by the sewerage smell several times. My environmental adaptations have faded in my absence from ‘Home Sweet Hell.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The big orange boat left its dock at Whitehall and started the thirty minutes long journey to St. George on… Staten Island…
Along the way, I was busy with the camera, spotting tugs and getting shots of the maritime show on hand. I’ve always been amazed at how seldom most New Yorkers take advantage of the ferries – if nothing else – just for a change of scenery and to get out on the water for cheap.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nearing Staten Island, and the Kill Van Kull (aka tugboat alley) was busily spitting shipping out into the main sections of the lower harbor, from Port Elizabeth Newark at Newark Bay.
Funny thing is that I haven’t thought about this sort of thing much, or at all, in the last 2.5 years. It was when I was sitting in that damned wheelchair after breaking my ankle that I began longing to see this again.
I alluded to this the other day, but this visit ‘home’ was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. Normally, I suppress and ignore my ‘feelings,’ as being over emotional in daily life is how you make stupid mistakes and often costly errors, while offending others. I realize that this is exactly the opposite of what mental health professionals advise, but it works for me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m like a mafioso in terms of ‘never let anyone know what you’re going to do or say next,’ and one of my little mottos is ‘do what you say, say what you do.’ What that means is that people who know me in real life are often puzzled by my seemingly random decision making process and pivots, and they are often treated to long polemics about my personal rules, and subjected to apologetic confessionals about when I break one of those rules – usually due to expedience.
The tyranny of ‘the now’ rules over most days.
Back tomorrow with more from NYC.
“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.
Homeboy
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It all started at one in the morning on a Tuesday.
I had a 6 a.m. flight, leaving Pittsburgh International AirPort and bound for LaGuardia. Had to bathe, eat breakfast, and double check my packed bags. An Uber picked me up at 3:30 a.m. and I was at the airport by 4:05.
Got through security, which is a bit of a ‘thing’ when you’ve got a camera bag with you, and was soon cooling my heels at the gate drinking an expensive cup of coffee, purchased at the terminal. The plane landed on time, and my Pal Val picked me up in her car. The plan was to park her auto nearby the ferry stop in Astoria, and then board a boat for a NY Harbor Photo Safari.
I needed to smell salt water again, Y’see.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I will admit to getting a bit emotional at times during the four days I was back home. It had more to do with the broken ankle situation, and reclaiming the walking physicality I’ve been working so assiduously to regain, than any sort of homesickness. Really felt like the end of the ankle story had finally arrived. Seeing my friends and colleagues again was just icing on the cake.
Physically speaking, I was running on adrenaline and caffeine. Back in Pittsburgh, I’m sleeping a solid eight hours a night. Get up early, go to bed early. It’s not like NYC back in Pittsburgh, as they roll up the sidewalks by nine or ten even on a weekend in the Paris of Appalachia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An interesting wrinkle discovered during this visit was that my environmental adaptations have faded away. As the folk wisdom states ‘if you live by the sea, you don’t smell the salt or hear the waves,’ meaning that your brain ‘tunes out’ environmental background stimuli which it deems unimportant.
What that means is that I could smell it, all of it. I could hear it, I could feel it. Everything stunk, the entire city with its standing wave of 15-20 decibels noise, and the mixed aroma of garbage, deep fat fryers, and human shit.
The East River smelled like an unflushed toilet to me, although it wasn’t ‘in a state’ or anything. Nothing’s changed on the waterway, my perceptions of it have.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The cops appeared, as they always do in NYC, while the ferry navigated first to Roosevelt Island and then to Long Island City.
That’s another thing which is quite different in Pennsylvania – far fewer cops. One of my neighbors suggested we start up a bonfire in his back yard. I said no, claiming that NYPD would show up and hand out tickets and the. conduct warrant checks. My neighbor reminded me that we were in Pittsburgh. I laughed and said ‘you’ve never met the NYPD, have you?’
The ferry continued down the East River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the last things I’d do before heading back to Pittsburgh would involve the Queensboro Bridge’s newly opened pedestrian walkway, as a note, but you’re not going to see those photos for a while. During the four days I was in NYC, I walked close to thirty miles and shot close to 2,200 exposures – with much of that distance was expressed around a certain waterway which provides the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens, as you’d imagine.
One of the goals for this trip was to test out my newly reconstructed ankle, and determine exactly how screwed I am moving forward. I brought the joint back to my testing environment, for a shake down cruise, basically.
I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was a not insignificant amount of swelling going on after returning back to Pittsburgh 96 hours later, but it’s also the first time that I’ve asked the assembly and meat and metal which my ankle has become to ‘push’ for multiple consecutive days in a row without any sort of rest period.
The past couple of months have seen ‘exercise days’ and ‘photo walks’ separated from each other by at least 72 hours of recovery time, post facto. All in all, the joint held up to my abuse and I didn’t find myself walking like the Batman villain Penguin again.
Back tomorrow with more from NYC.
“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.
Archives post #051
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As threatened, today brings you an ‘archives’ post, as a continuing spate of winter weather has absolutely grounded all of my ambitions and I’ve got nothing new to present today.
On February 20th in 2014, a similar climatological situation saw me offering a post on a few of my favorite NYC bridges. Check out ‘approaching triumph’ if you’re interested in such matters.
As established during the hermitage which saw me recovering from the busted ankle, the conceit underlying exactly which posts I’m pulling out of backup for a second look is entirely calendrical in nature. Everything presented as a part of these archives posts were published on this date, in their respective years, sometime between 2009 and 2025.
Yes, I’ve been doing this blog for a pretty long time now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On this date in 2018, ‘scarcely be’ described the scene, as observed in the dead of night, at the fabulous Newtown Creek’s Grand Street Bridge where the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens can be both experienced and surmounted. Miss those nights, wandering around the concrete devastations all by myself. This was when I still was using headphones when scuttling about, a habit I had to drop during COVID when things starting getting weird out there.
There were just a few times that I thought I was in trouble during that interval, and I either got lucky or the other guy decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble to jump me. There was one interaction with a creature of the streets that was extremely disturbing, one I’ve mentioned only to a few close friends and my old bartender in Astoria. Weird shit, yo.
Don’t ask, won’t talk about it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In 2020, ‘those miniscules’ was published here, which confessed to a bout of trespassing around Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary. The focus for these shots was the DB Cabin rail bridge. What you don’t see in these shots is who I was trespassing with, an elected official who represented this section of LIC whom I was attempting to ‘sell’ the concept of converting the Montauk Cutoff into public space. Didn’t happen, and now the cutoff is basically a homeless camp. Good show, NYC.
Back tomorrow, likely with another archives post. Good news is that the weather is meant to cure up around Pittsburgh over the next week, meaning I get to resume my happiness.
“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 