Archive for the ‘DUPBO’ Category
DUGABO awaits
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post begins in DUPBO, or ‘Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp,’ and ends in DUGABO – ‘Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.’ I’ve caught a lot of crap from the mouth breather crowd over in Maspeth for these terms over the years, but there you are. ‘Eff’ them. You have to refer to ‘zones’ along the Newtown Creek somehow, with some sort of geographical reference for an otherwise fairly unfamiliar area.
As mentioned in prior posts, I was walking with a couple of the ‘new guys’ at Newtown Creek Alliance, chatting and telling stories. Sometimes histories instead of tales, but I was trying to pass on my legendarily combative view of the Creek situation to them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the view of the fairly ancient Long Island Railroad yard at Hunters Point, which dates back to 1870. As mentioned in a prior posts, the MTA seems to have found the funding to build a flood wall around the facility. It’s as ugly and ‘anti street’ as they could possibly manage.
This is the part of today’s post where I say ‘Bah!’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, at Railroad Avenue and Van Dam Street in Blissville, that’s what the picture above delivers. We walked down to Railroad Avenue, and since leaving NYC I’ve discovered that almost every major city in the United States has a ‘Railroad Avenue.’ Universally, they all suck as far as being dirty and the place where polluting industries like waste transfer stations ot asphalt and concrete factories set up. I mean, this is logical, given that ‘Railroad Avenue’ has rail tracks.
At Newtown Creek, in the Blissville section of Long Island City, only Waste Management regularly uses the rail – everything else here is truck based.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ll be talking about that giant monster of a last mile warehouse facility that’s going up along Dutch Kills in a subsequent post, but I’ve included this shot just to bring home the scale of the structure. Huge!
Is it connected to the industrial canal it sits alongside? Is it connected to the freight tracks which it neighbors? What exactly does the NYC Economic Development Corporation do, other than letting developers run amok with no requirements or ‘buy ins’ so as to not be the worst possible neighbors?
I’m told there’s going to be six active loading bays within the building, with exterior truck parking that can accomodate 118 semis. Y’all do know that semis don’t turn off their engines while waiting for a chance to deliver cargo, right? That at any given moment there will be at least a hundred heavy trucks just sitting there and idling alongside the Long Island Expressway? That there is no way for those trucks to get here without traveling through Sunnyside, Woodside, Astoria, Maspeth, Ridgewood, or Greenpoint? That one maritime barge would carry the equivalent cargo of 38 of those trucks? It isn’t bike lanes that are causing the traffic to increase by about 5% per year.
Ok, twice today – ‘Bah!”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The two fellows from NCA had to head back to HQ, at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, and get back to work saving the world. Me? I had something that I wanted to see, so I headed back into Queens and in the direction of the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek.
Evening would find me in Woodside meeting up with that crew of knuckleheads whom I call friends, but the afternoon still held a few destinations which I wanted to get shots of.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I wasn’t wearing the NCA hat which was a standard part of my ‘uniform’ all those years. Instead I had on the flash orange ball cap which I’ve taken to wearing in Pennsylvania, as I often find myself walking in woodlands and don’t want to get shot at by hunters. At least, any more than is necessary.
Back tomorrow.
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DUPBO 2025
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Well hello there, my ribbon of municipal neglect, my undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens, my beloved creek. That’s some of the many ways I refer to Newtown Creek, by the way.
Sometimes, a wizard has to return to his place of power.
I met up with a couple of the ‘new guys’ at Newtown Creek Alliance, who were hired after I headed out of New York to Pittsburgh. Hart and Gus, they were named. Nice guys, very young. We were going to take a walk for a couple of hours along the Creek, but first up I wanted to get a look at the new Hunters Point Boat House.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was an unnecessarily contentious project, I’d mention, with a lot of Queens, and waterfront, politics involved. Newtown Creek Alliance teamed up with the Hunters Point Park Conservancy for a bid, which ended up succeeding, to run this space. Another group, whom I was quite friendly with, had been attempting to gain control of this spot for a long while and NCA’s decision to gain the space put me in a tight spot.
At the time, I was on the board of NCA, but was also quite intimate with the strategies of the other group. Conflict of interest? Yessir.
I followed the practice of the community boards regarding such conflicts, which is ‘disclose, discuss, don’t vote.’ Thereby I had a conversation with each and everyone involved in the process, explained my conflict of interest, and let them know that when this topic came up I’d leave the room. This was uncomfortable for all involved, but that’s officially the ‘right thing’ to do from a ‘Robert’s Rules of Order’ POV.
I’m sure that some members of that other group, whose goals and programming are both worthy and admirable, are likely reading this. It would be appreciated if mention of this situation didn’t result in a resumption of anonymized trolling, across the internet and wherever I might post a photo or a comment.
Again.
If ‘you’ are reading this, yeah, I know that it was you. I can tell, as anonymizer sites can’t disguise that deadly skill you have behind the keyboard when writing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As part of a fairly recent buildout, at what used to the Budweiser distributorship and Daily News Printing Plant property in Hunters Point, which was later used as a hub by the ‘God’s Love We Deliver’ outfit, is now a luxury condo building, with a waterfront area called ‘Brewer’s Park.’ It’s the standard concrete with planters design you see all across the modern waterfronts of NYC.
Used to have to crash through bushes and climb fences in this area…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Pulaski Bridge is backed up by one of the new and truly massive structures rising along Borden Avenue.
Remember – years ago – when I told you that the NYC Dept. of City Planning had begun using the term ‘Borden Avenue Corridor’? Whenever City Planning starts using the term ‘corridor,’ you should begin to worry about what’s coming next. When I moved away, they were just starting to float the term ‘Northern Blvd. Corridor,’ regarding the stretch between Woodside and Queens Plaza.
My understanding is that the large structure pictured above is some sort of theatrical production facility, with large sound stages contained within. For reference, this building sits in the former footprint of Fresh Direct.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I couldn’t help but visit the LIRR Wheelspur Yard since I was in the neighborhood, here in DUPBO (Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp).
The homeless colony under the bridge has now taken the form of parked ‘RV’s’ which are permanently sitting there. A little wrinkle of NYC’s parking laws is that if your vehicle has commercial plates (RV’s are classified as trucks or buses, so commercial plates) you can park indefinitely in an ‘M1’ manufacturing zone. Zero enforcement. There are thereby colonies of RV’s all around the Creeklands, which is something that really got started during the COVID lockdowns.
Unless you’ve pissed off Bob Holden or Julie Won or Lincoln Restler, odds are you’ll never see a cop writing a parking ticket around the creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A last stop in DUPBO involved a portrait shot of an old friend, the LIRR engine that’s always running in case of an emergency at the nearby Sunnyside Yards or along the LIRR Main Line. If a train breaks down, this unit will go take over and move the affected train set to a side tracks so as not to block Sunnyside Yards Harold Interlocking – the busiest train junction in the United States.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Archive #011
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Progress continues here in Pittsburgh, as far the recovery from the broken left ankle injury goes. To wit, this is the first of these archive posts that I didn’t have to throw together in a panic on the morning it was meant to publish. What that also means that is that my thought processes are recovering, and the sensory ‘noise’ introduced by the pain transmitting up from the ankle and foot is beginning to fall off a bit. This is being written on Saturday the 19th, btw.
Back in 2009, I was walking over the Pulaski Bridge – spanning the fabulous Newtown Creek – when the bridge opened for maritime traffic, as described in this posting from October 21 of that year. I find this sort of thing exciting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m hoping to be able to drive again fairly soon. What’s been holding me back is the physical reality of getting down the same flight of stairs that I broke my ankle on, then out the door to the driveway, and finally getting into the car without killing myself or incurring any new injuries. It’s a palaver, every little thing is. Taking a dump requires ten minutes of planning and careful execution just to get into position on the porcelain.
October 21 in 2012 is when this post was published, which discussed a random tugboat that I encountered while out on NY Harbor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The last time I experienced the lack of purpose I do now was during COVID, but at least then I was able to go out at night and walk the deserted sidewalks of the concrete devastations in LIC. No walkie for me for a long while, with long walks not being possible on an even longer timeline. I might have to switch over to bike riding!
This 2020 post ruminated upon getting what you want and not having to act like some boring and ideological ass to achieve it.
“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.
revenant mother
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
November 15th found Alternate Side Parking regulations working against a humble narrator’s happiness again, and the Mobile Oppression Platform – as I’ve nicknamed my car – needed to be somewhere other than where it was. Thereby, one planned out yet another trash run, heading full bore at both the paper recycling guy, and the metals and electronics guy. One deleted roughly a third of all his material possessions during the ramp up to moving.
Since I was already out and about and at Newtown Creek… why not?Every time might be the last time, after all.
First up was DUPBO. Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp. That’s the Vernon Avenue street end. Not Boulevard, mind you. This street end is a one block avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One navigated the ‘MOP’ or “Mobile Oppression Platform” about, shooting out the window of the vehicle with my zoom lens like some common paparazzi. Free time like the interval experienced on this particular day became increasingly rare for a humble narrator right around this part of November.
The big move to Pittsburgh loomed. Suddenly, an avalanche of “have to’s” erupted and all my attentions were drawn to the exigent circumstances thereby presented.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Every time might be the last time, as I’ve been saying, and you know what? As it turns out, this was pretty much the last time for DUPBO, and for visiting First Calvary Cemetery in Queens’ Blissville section.
I’m totally faklempt about this fact. 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.
proper edge
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
October 27th found a humble narrator driving back from an assignation in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section. As part of the big move to Pittsburgh, one decided to inventory literally every possession and scrap of paper which has accumulated into HQ over the years and decide whether or not I wanted to move it 400 miles west with me or not. This process revealed a staggering amount of electronics waste – cables, old computers which I’d been keeping for parts, gizmos and gadgets. Lots of stuff made of metal also didn’t make the cut. Thereby, several carloads of gear were transported to one of the local scrapyards for recycling or whatever. There’s also a lot of paper which went to a different recycling company found along Newtown Creek.
On my way back to Astoria from one of these junk yards one recent afternoon, one decided to try and grab a few last shots of places familiar and loved. The first two are from “DUPBO” or “Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Said onramp is pictured above. I get asked all the time about the off ramp to nowhere on the Pulaski, which I’m told was originally meant to connect to the Long Island Expressway. Apparently they ran out of money to complete that, in the late 1950’s when this bridge was erected.
Wish I could have lingered, but there’s been so much to do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way back to Astoria, I did find a minute or two while waiting at traffic lights to stick the camera up through the car’s moon roof.
Depicted above, the Queensboro Bridge and the nearby TerraCotta House, as seen from Vernon Boulevard.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 