Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
small village
Literally in a dark place, me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, over the weekend one was trekking through Industrial Maspeth. After catching up with a couple of old friends in Ridgewood later in the day, one began scuttling back to Astoria well after the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself had disappeared behind New Jersey. There’s only one efficient way to get “here” from “there” on foot, but luckily the walk is figuratively and literally all downhill from Ridgewood. My path carried me back into the hoary shadows of Industrial Maspeth, my happy place.
By the way, if you want to do something daring and scary – try to cross the intersection of Metropolitan and Flushing Avenues at night… brrr…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One always feels vulnerable in this place, even when the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself still hangs wanly in the sky. There’s always someone – or something – watching as I scuttle by. Paranoid wonderings pollute the thoughts of one such as myself in these times. Delusional visions of getting grabbed and dragged, shuttled off to some storage vault or basement room and left to expire by some nefarious character, abound in the area between the ears and behind the eyes. There’s also sharp pieces of metal protruding from the pavement in random spots which you need to watch out for, as well as some of the watery eyed derelicts who establish temporary camps at the edges of habitability.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be hidden around here?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Eerie and deserted by its diurnal army of laborers, industrial Maspeth nevertheless still serves as a thoroughfare for vehicular traffic preparing to exchange the streets of Queens for those of North Brooklyn, but in this lawless no man’s land of nighted warehouses they seldom offer anything other than a reluctant acknowledgement to traffic law. They eschew lane ordinances, roll through stop signs at speed, and can be observed laughing hysterically while blowing through traffic signals and ignoring intersectional regulations while traveling at cyclonic velocities.
The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume, which wouldn’t be forgotten.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are homes hereabouts, wholesome structures populated by those both stout and stubborn, and families whose multigenerational presence at the edges of Industrial Maspeth defy the impressions gathered by one such as myself. With the filthy black raincoat flapping about behind me, the arrangement of my sweatshirt hood and raised coat collar combinine with a usually shaved pate, and one lends no other impression to a casual viewer than that of a corpulent and aged vulture hybrid scuttling by in the dark. Essentially, who am I to cast the first stone? I’m some weirdo who likes wandering around in the dark with a camera while imagining that monsters, and witches, and a serial killer are chasing after me.
The reason that I love this area so much is its distinct lack of reflective surfaces, wherein true horror is revealed.
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trips for
Twirling, ever twirling, that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The venerable Grand Street Bridge is pictured above, as seen from the northern fork of the East Branch tributary of Newtown Creek. The East Branch doesn’t seem like much of a tributary today, terminating as it does in a supermarket parking lot (for the north fork) and at an open sewer on Metropolitan Avenue (the southern fork). Once upon a time…
As a note, one of my colleagues recently informed me that a high ranking DEP official complained to him about our common use of the term “open sewer,” and opined that modern day wastewater engineers feel that the term demeans their trade and is offensive. One point eight billion gallons of untreated sewage being released annually into Newtown Creek offends me, let alone the totality of NYC’s entire wastewater output in the harbor. Engineer that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Trekking through industrial Maspeth for the first time in a few weeks, obvious indications that the Queens Cobbler has been busy in the first month of 2018 were apparent. For those of you new to the story, a theorized serial killer is active in the neighborhoods surrounding Newtown Creek who leaves beyond trophies of their kills on area streets. The trophy is always a single shoe, seemingly cast aside in the tidal surges of garbage and litter which abound in these parts.
Western Queens is full of dark secrets. The vampires of Queens Plaza, the thing unearthed beneath Burger Jorissen’s grist mill during the construction of the Sunnsyide Yards… Curly Joe knew the score.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the particular day these shots were captured, industrial Maspeth was busy defrosting itself. The sidewalks became slippery again as formerly gelatinous petroleum products that are regularly spilled hereabouts regained their liquid state, due to the higher atmospheric temperatures, and that odd combination of smells which the area is known for began to nebulously recombine forming a mephitic olfactory profile. The smell of fine marijuanas, roasting on open fires, was omnipresent as well, but it was late afternoon on a Saturday. If a man works hard, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of stress relief after the work day has ended, right?
It ain’t Jack Frost nipping at your nose in Industrial Maspeth, its hydrogen sulfide.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moving inexorably south east, a humble narrator again encountered the calling card of the Queens Cobbler, displayed pretty as you please on those concretized devastations which form the flood plane for all the existential horror found in these parts. One does not allow himself to forget the rumors handed down to me by the Slavic centenarians of Maspeth, which hint at certain events in the early 1950’s that drew the attention and a deployment of certain United States Marine Corps specialized units.
As the story goes, something colossal rose from the Newtown Creek after nightfall, an abominable and mutated reptilian thing said to be capable of swallowing a horse in one gulp. Federal authorities conspired with the office of the Queens Borough President (Maurice A. FitzGerald) to keep things quiet until the Marines arrived, saying that there had been a gas leak and an explosion which required a temporary evacuation of residents and laborers. That’s how the BP explained away the artillery fire, saying it was just a gas leak. Hang around in the bars of Maspeth, or at the Clinton Diner, and you might hear a different telling of what went down at the United Enameling and Stamping Co. property on that summer night in 1950. Some that you’d ask, and certainly every Government official, will deny such an event ever happened.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried in the mud and sediments of the Newtown Creek?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, the biggest hazard to the mammalian way of life along the Newtown Creek in Industrial Maspeth isn’t actually the possible presence of a serial killer who leaves single shoes in his wake, rumors of a giant mutated turtle called Creeky, the probable witch cult who cast off numerous artifacts in area cemeteries, or the endemic environmental pollution and ongoing release of billions of gallons of untreated sewage into the waterway every time it rains. It’s the trucks.
Pictured above is a fairly indestructible safety cone, whose purpose is the visual indication of “no go” areas for drivers, smashed flat and torn asunder by truck tires.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Later that same day… over in Ridgewood.
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cannot give
Another set of shots from the Newtown Creek frozone.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week I showed you what it looks like when Brooklyn’s English Kills freezes over, today it’s the polar paradise which Dutch Kills in LIC became after that recent spell of super cold weather that’s in focus. Both waterways are tributaries of the fabulous Newtown Creek, and the “kills” bit is Old Dutch for “creek.” The English and Dutch parts of the names are meant to indicate where the various ethnicities of European settlers sited themselves.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dutch Kills, as we know it today, is a canalized post industrial waterway surrounded by stout factory and warehouse structures and crossed by multiple bridges, with the current shape of things dating back to the creation of the surrounding Degnon Terminal in the late nineteen-teens. It attained its modern characteristics by 1921, and the last big addition to Dutch Kills was the installation of the Midtown Tunnel and Long Island Expressway way back in 1940.
That’s the LIE, or at least the Queens Midtown Expressway section of the it, pictured above. Close to 90,000 vehicle trips a day pass over the water here, yet most people you meet say they have never heard of the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Like English Kills in Bushwick, Dutch Kills here in LIC was contained nearly completely by a layer of plate ice when I visited it last Wednesday. The ice was already “rotting” as the air temperatures returned to seasonal norms, and the weak tidal action witnessed in Dutch Kills was breaking it into distinct floes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just like English Kills, certain areas which have been observed as being highly biologically active due to the presence of sewage sediment mounds during warmer climes were fully melted and flowing. The status of those unknown things which slither and slide and slop about in the bottom sediments during these unfrozen times remains a mystery.
There are some things you really do not want to know, after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on the Borden Avenue Bridge, just to the south of the vantage point in the previous shots – which is offered by the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge – the rot of the ice was a bit more pronounced. An analogous appearance vaguely reminiscent of an otherwise wholesome slice of Swiss Cheese came to mind.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The structure pictured in the first shot of today’s post, as well as in the last one presented above, is called a “dolphin.” It’s rooted deeply in the substrata of Dutch Kills and constructed of creosoted lumber piles. The purpose of these things is to protect the movable bridges they adjoin from an allision, accidental contact with passing maritime traffic. If both the boat and bridge were moving it be a collision, allision is if a moving object strikes a stationary one.
For me, they provide essential design elements and focal points for the framing of photos at a frozen superfund site, hidden at the very center of New York City.
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formula filled
My creek also puts on a show when I’ve been away from her too long.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my practices, developed over the last decade or so, is to take a Newtown Creek break periodically and “allow my liver to return to a normal size.” I’m joking about the liver, but one does enjoy a bit of detox occasionally, and allowing the poisons I’ve accrued a chance to leach out. This is a luxury one enjoys, as he doesn’t live along Newtown Creek, others aren’t so lucky. Pictured above is roll on/ roll off garbage truck carrying a bin, spotted at a waste transfer station owned by a friend of mine which fairly straddles the border of Brooklyn and Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Marching along Metropolitan Avenue, one squealed with delight as the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge began to open. This used to be quite a frequent occurrence “back in the day.” These days there’s only one regular maritime customer back here on the English Kills tributary, which is Bayside Fuel.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The timing of the bridge opening was bizarre, occurring at precisely the time of one of the heaviest traffic intervals in this section of North Brooklyn, about 6:30 p.m.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That odd timing, however, allowed one to stand in the middle of Metropolitan Avenue without getting squished.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I believe that the tug pictured above is the Mary H., which normally handles the Bayside duty, but it’s hard to say as I didn’t get any of its markings. I did manage to focus in on the captain in his wheelhouse, however, so “win.”
As a note, the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge spans the English Kills tributary of the larger Newtown Creek at a navigational mark 3.4 miles eastwards of the East River. Metropolitan Avenue was originally created as a private toll road about 1814, and was called the Williamsburgh and Jamaica Turnpike. The owners of the toll road, and the original bridge, were two brothers whose family name was Masters. That’s why you’ll occasionally see references to the road as the “Masters Turnpike” and the “Masters Bridge” in the historical record, if like me, you stay up until 4 in the morning reading old municipal journals and reports from the Chambers of Commerce of Brooklyn or Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My conceit is to call this area of Newtown Creek surrounding the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge “DUMABO.” That’s short for “Down Under the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge,” as I believe we need to be ahead of the real estate people on these sorts of things.
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ignorantly spared
Back on the job.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since the recent extreme cold spell has broken, a humble narrator has found himself marching about again, and boy are my dogs barking. On Tuesday, a stroll over to Bushwick East Williamsburg was enacted and the farthest reaches of the Newtown Creek at English Kills were observed. As expected, the waterway was frozen over.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Toxic ice. You don’t get to say that particular phrase that too often, but that’s what you’re looking at in the shot above. English Kills is the far eastern terminus of Newtown Creek, which branches off of the East River nearly 3.8 miles from the larger waterbody. These shots were gathered at about 3.7 miles back.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That big sewer outfall at the end of the tributary is the 3.8 mile terminus mark, and the north/south street seen beyond the fencelines is Johnson Avenue. The surrounding neighborhood is gentrifying (dictionary definition of gentrifying), but on a fairly small scale as compared to points found to the west like LIC and Greenpoint.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One decided to hang around the neighborhood for a bit and stretch my legs after the long interval of being trapped in the house by inclement clime, and visit a few of my favorite places. This shot is from the Scott Avenue footbridge, which spans the LIRR’s Bushwick Branch freight tracks, just as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself was dipping behind New Jersey to the west.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Heading over towards Metropolitan Avenue, and another of the dead end tributaries of Newtown Creek – the East Branch, one discovered that this section of the water was similarly locked in a decidedly polar state.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ice was decaying faster in both waterways where it touched the open sewer outfalls, no doubt due to the flow of melt water laden with road salt coming in from as far away as Canarsie. This untreated sewage is quite biologically active as well, and the metabolism of the microscopic entities contained in the water column likely helps to warm it up a bit.
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The Newtown Pentacle 