Archive for the ‘DUKBO’ Category
offhand solution
Easter, a great weekend for probable trespassing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ask any of the Urban Explorer types who have encountered your humble narrator over the years, and they’ll recount my lecture about doing things nice and legal. I still adhere to this philosophy, in general, but when I specifically request access to photograph a site – through proper channels – and my request is ignored… over and over and over… well…
What’s a boy to do? You come to Newtown Creek, and you don’t even invite me over for a coffee? Ok, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, your Union employees left the gates wide open on Easter weekend. This is kind of disturbing, but not unusual. One Christmas, some dummy left the gates to the Sunnyside Yard open and unguarded. This is the sort of thing that I know, and y’all don’t, because you live in an office and I live in the street. That’s the BQE back there, and I could have had unchallenged access to its foundations. I’m a good guy, but… what if I wasn’t?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Second, the contractor who’s doing the demo work for y’all really needs to train on addressing dust remediation, which is defined as setting up a hose and a lawn sprinkler in this sort of situation. They never do this at Brownfield sites around Newtown Creek, because they think nobody is watching, but one just needs to smell the “Breeze” to know who the demo contractor at work is.
I’ve been watching them for years.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Third, It might be smart to secure spots like this one, wherein the structural integrity of a building has been compromised. Don’t worry, I didn’t enter the site, but there was no reason for me not to other than common sense. There were no safety cones, no signs proscribing proper “PPE,” and certainly no security around. I even yelled out “security” at the top of my lungs. Did y’all capture that on camera?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At your front door, I could have easily slipped inside the job site on a sunny Saturday afternoon – unchallenged. The only thing holding me back from doing so was… well… respect. I never cross a fence line, as I’m like a Vampire, and need to be invited in before I can do my work.
So, the question is this… Are you going to allow me and the readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – a chance to peer in periodically, or are we just going to play cat and mouse for the next decade? Either way, I’ll get my shots. Up to y’all.
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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.
typical denizen
Beneath the sodium light of a salty moon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Today, in 1881, the bleeding heart Russian author Dostoyevsky died from a triad of pulmonary hemorrhages. In 1913, a mysterious series of fireballs streaked across a 7,000 mile long patch of the night sky, which scientific opinion described as the break up of a previously unobserved natural Earth satellite – a tiny moon. It’s also Ash Monday, aka “Clean Monday,” which kicks off the liturgical calendar for Easter in certain variants of Christianity. Queensicans rejoice on February 9th, for on this day in 1956 – Mookie Wilson entered this world.
For me, it’s just Monday. I hate Mondays.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whenever it has been possible, as the weather has been decidedly antibiotic, one has engaged in the usual pursuit of hidden knowledge around the dustier sections of North Brooklyn and Western Queens. Most of the aforementioned objects of my interest have been a bit better hidden than usual, given the blanket of snow and ice which occludes the pavement. Luckily, the Real Estate Industrial Complex is at work in Greenpoint converting the toxic East River shoreline of that ancient village into a residential zone. A protective wall of condominiums will rise, ones so stout that they can protect neighborhood streets from fire and flood alike.
A few of them will be residential transformers, I imagine, able to turn into giant robots who will defend Greenpoint and Stuyvesant town against an attack. They will be known as CondoBots. That earth mover you see in the shot above? Yep, that’s a small one, and it calls itself Payloader.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The latest bit of hidden knowledge I’m working on, incidentally, is figuring out where all the hidden or filled in tributaries of Newtown Creek are or were. One branch of Maspeth Creek used to terminate at the locus of 58’s – avenue, street, road – nearby the Clinton or Goodfellas Diner. Under the Kosciuszko Bridge, on the Queens side, there was a largish tributary that flowed south out of the heights of Sunnyside, and ran between Laurel and Berlin Hills on its path to Newtown Creek. It’s “map work” and since I have zero budget for acquiring facsimiles of historical plottings, quite difficult and slow going. Headway has been made, however, and all will be revealed soon enough.
It’s all so depressing, really. Look at what happened to Dostoyevsky, who died of a bleeding heart.
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nearly total
Humbug.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everyone’s got a cool ride, it seems. Your humble narrator would particularly like a somewhat militarized version of the DSNY Earth Mover pictured above. Mine would be painted black, with an illustration of a dragon riding sword chick (wearing boob armor like Red Sonja, natch) dueling with a witch in front of an impossibly large full moon on the scoop. A less dated motif for my earth mover would be to entirely cover it in googly eyes that jiggled about as I drove around and… y’know… moved earth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This goldenrod VW micro bus hasn’t moved from this spot on 43rd street in Maspeth for at least a couple of months now, and I’m beginning to suspect a Dr. Who sort of thing might be going on. Is this Volkswagen bigger on the inside, despite what I remember about the automotive line’s interior dimensions? What’s odd, actually, is the fact that a brightly colored machine can remain in this location for so long without becoming soiled by the ambient airborne particulates and pollutants which distinguishes this part of the ancient village. The BQE is literally on the next corner, and Newtown Creek is just down the hill.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on Northern Boulevard, this fellow was spotted providing the motive force required to actuate his ride along the busy thoroughfare. One applauds the desire to become energy independent, but cautions against this sort of thing. Northern Boulevard is an automotive death machine, from the pedestrian point of view, and you are far better off being inside of a giant metal box than without.
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worse because
DUKBO, in Queens, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“The truth of our times, as told in graphic narrative” requires a lot of boots on the ground time, and a lot of that is spent wandering through industrial hinterlands like DUKBO.
Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp, Brooklyn side – was described recently in this space.
The NY State DOT contacted a humble narrator regarding my christening of the water body that has appeared on Gardner Avenue and used to be Cherry Street as “Lake Skanska.” It seems that my assertion that the water was the byproduct of their demolition project was incorrect, and they asked me to share with the readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – that a broken fire hydrant belonging to the NYC DEP was the culprit behind Lake Skanska.
Today, the shots are from the Queens side of DUKBO.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
43rd street will soon be “used to be 43rd street” when the sweeping changes that the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement project will bring begin. The demolition of the factory buildings currently underway on “used to be Cherry Street” will be replicated here.
The State of New York has already purchased the properties and relocated the corporate entities which have existed in this shadowland angle between Maspeth and Blissville which was once known as Berlin, which were found along 43rd street, which itself was once called “The Shell Road.”
My understanding of the Kosciuszko Bridge plan is that the new structure will be taking a small step to the east of the current 1939 vintage span, hence the “used to be” nomenclature I’ve assigned to both Cherry Street in Brooklyn and 43rd Street here in Maspeth. These little street ends at 55th avenue, and 54th drive, avenue, and road are soon to be “kaput.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ll miss the whimsical stuff here in DUKBO, although I imagine the working guys and Calvary Cemetery will still be quite present when the new bridge is finished. Given the City’s current leanings, of course, it would be just like the Manhattan folks to try and site a few homeless shelters out here after the project is done, especially if they could get the State to pay for the construction. Either that or they’ll invite some real estate industrial complex type to build a condo tower, out here in DUKBO.
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equal and largest
More scenery from DUKBO, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Brooklyn’s DUKBO, or Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp, is an agglutination of waste transfer stations, trucking companies, and the heaviest of industries. It sits beyond the Meeker Avenue Plumes, just east of the Newtown Creek Petroleum district and the Greenpoint Oil Spill. It is bisected and defined by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume, and the dust carried upon the breeze is rife with volatile organic compounds and asbestos.
Other than that, it’s very nice, and totally “metal.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, DUKBO is the site of a huge infrastructure project which is just beginning – the replacement of the 1939 vintage Kosciuszko Bridge. The path of the new bridge will carry it through what used to be Cherry Street. The factories and industrial buildings which line Cherry Street are in the process of being demolished, and the rubble carted away. Who will miss the live poultry warehouse that once stood here, and the streams of chicken feces which once pooled laconically in the street, other than me?
One decided to have one last look at the place, in anticipation of last week’s “Poison Cauldron with Atlas Obscura” walk, before the Skanska Kiewit team kick into high gear in the coming months and this part of Brooklyn becomes a no-go zone due to the construction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One will miss these concrete devastations, along with that old blue beast of a bridge. As I understand the plan, the new bridge will stand on Cherry Street itself, span Newtown Creek albeit at a far lower altitude than the current structure, and enter Queens at about 43rd street. On the Maspeth side, no where near this level of activity has started yet, by the way. There’s a bunch of what seem to be union carpenters at work in the former NYPD tow yard, but I haven’t seen any demolition work going on.
Yet.
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