Archive for the ‘DUGABO’ Category
untold agony
Hoary Greenpoint, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last weekend, the light was spectacular over in Greenpoint, and since I seldom find myself there in the early part of the afternoon – advantage was taken. Manhattan Avenue’s tenements and apartment buildings are framed by Saint Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church in the shot above. St. Anthony’s hosts both a rectory and a convent. The Church is built in the high victorian gothic style, with a 240 foot high steeple, and it laid its cornerstone back in 1873.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Linoleum signage on Manhattan Avenue, for the J. Josephs Sons Co. – a former appliance store. This is vestigial, and part of the character of the street which will shortly be cleansed by the bland homogeneity offered by the Real Estate Industrial Complex’s desire to eradicate all character from the streets of New York City in the name of lining the sidewalks with glass boxes. I cannot imagine what future generations will think.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on North Henry Street, a seldom seen point of view on the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment plant. This is a quite industrial spot, with a biofuel company and a recycling operation found along the bulkheads of the Newtown Creek. It’s also the “back door” to the sewer plant, where the contractors come and go.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
May 3, 2015 –
DUBPO, Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp
with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman, a free tour offered as part of Janeswalk 2015, click here for tickets.
May 31, 2015 –
Newtown Creek Boat Tour
with Working Harbor Committee and Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman, click here for tickets.
laugh or frown
My beloved Creek, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yesterday, the Newtown Creek Alliance held an event over on the North Henry Street side of DUGABO (Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp) in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section. The point of the gathering was to imagine the future of a small inlet canal which NCA has been referring to as “No Name Canal,” but I defer to NOAA and the Coast Guard who call it “Unnamed Canal.” There’s an fairly abandoned DSNY Marine Transfer Station there, and your humble narrator entertained himself with a bit of illegal trespass. Of course, since this is City owned property, and I’m a citizen of said City, it’s mine (and yours) and therefore I was actually exploring my own property.
Our uniformed employees in the offices of lower Manhattan always seem to forget that they are – in fact – servants, and that this land is ours – not theirs – so I like to remind them of this fact periodically. This makes me fantastically popular on Chambers Street, btw.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oddly enough, there was a tremendous midden of animal bones on the dock. May of them were clearly sun bleached chicken leg bones, and some had butcher cuts. The quantity was striking, and some specimens were clearly mammal bones – seemingly from large cats or small dogs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One cannot even begin to speculate about the origins of this ossuary pile found on Municipal land in Greenpoint, along the languid Newtown Creek.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
May 3, 2015 –
DUBPO, Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp
with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman, a free tour offered as part of Janeswalk 2015, click here for tickets.
May 31, 2015 –
Newtown Creek Boat Tour
with Working Harbor Committee and Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman, click here for tickets.
very confines
Over in DUGABO…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last Saturday, whilst wandering about in between snow storms, this outfall was spotted pouring into Newtown Creek. This is the terminus of Greenpoint Avenue alongside the Bridge, a lane which was coincidentally the path of an earlier Greenpoint Avenue Bridge – one that allowed rail to cross over from the LIRR tracks in Queens – which is today a fairly abandoned spot. The water is snow melt, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s street drains all over the place which bear the screed “drains directly into waterways” and this is what it looks like when they do. The drain in question is actually visible, as is the melting snow pack which is feeding it. Along with the melt water, it’s carrying road salt and as well as all the litter and junk which line the curbs. The frustrating part of this scene is that the brand spanking new Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment plant is just a block away and that this drain isn’t connected to it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Amongst the many interesting people I’ve met along the Newtown Creek, some of them work for the so called “potentially responsible parties” named as being responsible for the cleanup in the Superfund agreement. Over and over, these folks have pointed out that the ongoing “point source” situation that these outfalls maintained by the City DEP present makes their court mandated mission a fools errand. You can remove the Black Mayonnaise, which is the colloquial term for the historic pollution that forms the sediment bed of the Creek, but without addressing the antiquated sewer system it won’t be twenty years before the Newtown Creek is again lined with toxic junk.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
afterward gave
More photos from an ice choked Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The scene, as witnessed in DUGABO – Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp, along Newtown Creek’s so called Marion Reach. Vast sheets of ice, carried by the languid tidal action of the Creek, headed towards the East River. These shots were captured during the brief warmup on Sunday last, and let me tell something that photos cannot convey – the smell was… even by Newtown Creek standards… incredible.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a combined sewer outfall on the Queens side, right where those ripples you see in the shot above are emanating from. With melt water feeding the system, it was releasing a month’s worth of frozen stink. The smell of raw sewage is unique, and has no odiferous analogue. Like the smell of death, you instantly recoil from it, and the best way to describe it is to compare it to the taste sensation enjoyed when licking a 9 volt battery’s contact leads.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These piles are on the Brooklyn side, nearby the Metro bio fuel plant on Kingsland Avenue. Speaking of oil, I heard back from the NYS DEC about the flowing oil I reported and described in yesterday’s post nearby the Pulaski Bridge. They believe the material observed was actually creosote oil being released from the wooden “Dolphins” which protect the bridge from allision with maritime traffic.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Tugboat Ireland seems to have taken up a somewhat permanent residence on Newtown Creek, and was tied up at the Tidewater building. My understanding is that the former petroleum facility is now owned by the Broadway Stages company, and is being used for theatrical productions as an industrial set. Perhaps the Broadway Stages people bought Ireland as well? If so, that’s some expensive window dressing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
heavy and reeling
It’s all so depressing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Leaden footsteps carried me across the ice choked devastations of the Newtown Pentacle over the weekend. One desired to see his beloved Creek, after all. My destination and goal was the East River and getting the shots displayed in yesterday’s post, depicting the FDNY’s Firefighter 2 battling a blaze along the coastline of North Brooklyn, so a laconic scuttle was enacted through the cold waste. It was soon decided that the indolent life style of a home bound winter hermit has damaged my muscle tone and badly affected overall stamina. I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It took everything I had to endure the cold, which easily penetrated through the twenty nine pounds of thermal underwears, sweaters, boots, and street cassock (a pet name for the filthy black raincoat) hanging in a sickening fashion about me, as if they weren’t present. One could barely stand at certain points, and the only thing keeping my feet moving past the once upon a time location of the venerable Penny Bridge was the fear of becoming frozen to the sidewalk were I to collapse. Sometimes, one must lean into it, embracing physiological entropy. My beloved Creek sensed my weakness and fatigue, and allowed me to enjoy the ecstasies of her gestalt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If I have a place anywhere upon the earth where a wellspring of energy might be tapped into, where the lines of lei are arranged in my favor, it’s here at Penny Bridge. Calvary, First Calvary, is across the street and my beloved Creek splashes her gelatinous analog for water upon the oil stained bulkheads about a thousand feet away. Here, in the cold waste, was nepenthe experienced. Officially, one is “back on the beat” and this – your Newtown Pentacle – is back in session. Enough of this wintry sloth, a humble narrator is tired of the boredom, and the Newtown Creek offers thrills both salacious and sublime.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 