Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
Panhandling? Mebbee.
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yes, we’re ending this week all ‘pastoral’ like.
For all the people who ask me ‘why Pittsburgh?,’ scenes like the one above are a part of ‘why.’ The name of this state I’m in means ‘Penn’s Woods’ after all, and it’s a not very long drive to leave behind the passive aggressive streets of the Paris of Appalachia to take a walk in a well manicured section of the ‘sylvania.’ If you wanted actual woods, that’s about another 25-30 minutes away in an any direction, this is a wooded corridor through an otherwise suburban area.
As described yesterday, a trailhead which I did not know existed was recently discovered as being about a 15 minute drive from HQ. The facility is called as the ‘Panhandle Trail.’ This particular trailhead, dubbed ‘Walkers Mill’ is found in Collier Township. There’s all sorts of indications that this area used to host a rock quarry, but I haven’t been able to find historic specifics. I’m am of the opinion that the ‘Walkers Mill’ nomen likely emanates from one of the legal founders of the town, in 1911, a fellow who was called J.J. Walker.
Saying that, I’m making broad inferences off of a scarce bit of research, so take that one with a grain of salt. I generally don’t ’deep dive’ these days unless I’m trying to prove a point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is always fascinated by the Appalachian layer cake you can observe here in Western Pennsylvania. One of the oldest mountain ranges on earth, the Appalachia are. Supposedly, these sort of rocks are heavily embedded with fossils of both a micro and macroscopic nature. They’re also valuable from a chemical perspective, having preserved climate data in their layers which go back as far as a billion years, and varying amounts of hydrocarbons can be found in the stack too. Coal, oils, gas. This trail has a feature called ‘Fossil Cliff’ which I’m intrigued by.
Unfortunately, I had a doctor’s appointment to get to, and the alarm on my phone chimed out (I’m currently using Black Flag’s ‘My War’ as the alarm tone) and that let me know it was time to go and get my 6 month in X-Ray for the busted ankle. An intention was to show the Doc what the ankle looked like after some exercise, instead of being all pink and fresh while directly out of a resting period. I offered the Doc my step count from the walk, and he seemed pleased with the orthopedic healing progress and my efforts. My exercise plan for the next six months was offered approval, as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s absolute Heaven for me to be able to do this sort of thing again, after my long autumn and winter of oft times extremely painful recovery from the injury to my ankle. The muscular atrophy in my upper things is a leave behind, which I’m assiduously attacking right now on a nearly daily basis. Just yesterday, I walked up a flight of stairs without clutching for dear life on the bannister, for instance.
The weather is also beginning to warm up here in Pittsburgh, now. My Doctor approved plan is to start up my old routine again, the one where there’s three short walks of about an hour splayed out during the week, and one long ass marathon scuttle on the weekends. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, I’ll be once again ‘turning the earth under my feet.’
Back next week with something different, 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.
Remains, of a day
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given my current limitations, it’s not surprising that this week at Newtown Pentacle ends as several others have recently, with an ‘odds and ends’ post as I’ve used up most of the images needed for narrative.
Looking ‘Under the hood,’ as it were, one of the many things I’m doing while walking along with the camera is thinking about how to string the photos I’m gathering up narratively. ‘Establishing shot,’ zoomed in subject, background, etc. I’ve got a whole shot list rotating in my head the entire way, and when I see something interesting that might support a post of its own, I gather a few detailed shots of whatever’s caught my attention.
Due to aforementioned limitations, the broken ankle and recovery thereof, I keep on finding myself running a bit short – at the moment – on fresh photos. Hence these odds and ends posts which utilize shots that didn’t quite fit into or tell the stories I wanted to tell.
I like the shot above, of CSX #3473, for a variety of reasons, but it doesn’t ‘tell a story’ given that its background is so generic.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I learned this talking about Newtown Creek for all those years. If a shot of the creek was facing westwards you’d see some facet of Manhattan’s skyline and it would instantly ‘place’ the waterway’s location and thereby tell a story. I’ve shot photos of that concrete factory above, but from onboard the Birmingham Bridge with the Downtown Pittsburgh office towers visible in the background.
Admittedly, Pittsburgh has nothing as iconic or familiar as an Empire State Building on which to hang its hat, but the concrete factory doesn’t seem to float in an unidentifiable void as it does in the shot above. Saying that, I did like the shot enough to upload it to Flickr, but it didn’t necessarily tell a story.
One of the things I’ve put a lot of thought into during this interval of uselessness is how to describe what it is I actually do. It boils down, your humble narrator has decided, to storytelling. Back when I did comics, or worked on Madison Avenue, or conducted tours of New York Harbor and Newtown Creek, even what I’m still doing here, is storytelling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s one of the anchor piers for the South 10th street bridge over the Monongahela River, sitting alongside Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Heritage Trail, at an entrance to the City’s Color Park in a late afternoon. That’s ‘where,’ ‘what,’ and ‘when’ for you, but with no ‘why’ or ‘how’ which I’d direct you to prior posts this week if you’re curious about. If I threw in the fact that my ankle hurt, there’d be some conflict and urgency mixed into the story. The best and most efficient story ever written, in terms of narrative structure, is the children’s tale ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ It’s got it all, including conflict and pathos.
Back next week with something different, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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 #052
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On February 21 of 2013, Newtown Pentacle subscribers saw ‘somehow impelled’ arrive in their inboxes, which described part of a walk down Northern Boulevard, and explored my fascination with photographing car washes. Before I left Queens, the gas station which this car wash was a part of had been shuttered, the buildings were awaiting demolition and environmental remediation for the tanks, and is likely ‘affordable housing’ by now. Corner of 39th and Northern… can it still be there?
These archive posts are reaching into Newtown Pentacle’s backups, and are pulling posts that went public on this date, in their respective years, going back to 2009. For anyone who hasn’t heard the news, I broke my left ankle at the end of September, and I’m not screwing around with ice and snow if I don’t absolutely have to. Pittsburgh has been regularly coated with the white stuff for the last few weeks, which has really crimped into my ability to be out and about. #1 priority is the ankle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This 2019 post, dubbed ‘radical profundity’ visited Flashing Creek. I used to really get around, huh?
‘What does it have to do with Newtown Creek’ is a question I often asked myself, in pursuit of avoiding ‘mission drift’ and not getting sucked into the hot passions and political seasons of the day. Focus is difficult in a feature rich environment, and especially so when negotiating the endless sea of political frenzy. It often annoyed people, me refusing to pick up their flag and run with whatever madness they happened to be pushing that day, week, or month. Everybody forgets their movement a year later, as they’ve usually moved on to new ecstasies, scandals, and outrages.
People who identify as ‘leftists’ have a real hard time staying on one topic for long, in my experience.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In 2022, ‘rumour ran’ brought y’all to the Sunnyside Yards at night. That is the Harold Interlocking pictured above, which is one of the most important bits of infrastructure in the entire country. There are surveyors holes in the fences of the yards, and I had all of them inventoried. My walks to Newtown Creek from Astoria always crossed some section of the Sunnyside Yards, and I never missed an opportunity to get in a few shots of the place.
Back next week, hopefully with fresh photos and views of the Paris of Appalachia, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
Coldly driven
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since your humble narrator is kind of married to his car these days, due to recovering from the injuries associated with a broken ankle, I’ve decided to try and make the best of it. While moving through my day, the camera bag is sitting in the passenger seat with the zippers open and when something catches my eye – and I can do so safely – an exposure is cracked out. In the case of the shot above, I was moving through a Pittsburgh neighborhood called ‘South Side Flats.’
I’ve had to get clever with Google Maps, btw. Its calculations often send you hurtling directly into traffic jams that the program itself creates since it’s telling thousands of other drivers to go the same way as you. Additionally, whereas the route it suggests is often ‘mile for mile’ the shortest one, the software seldom takes into account that trading a mile or so in extra travel time means that you don’t end up in a snarled traffic jam on one of the bridges leading out of the city at Rush Hour.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I lived in Brooklyn with Mom and Dad, the old man’s health had degenerated to the point where the docs told him that taking the subway to work was a bad idea for him. Couldn’t do the stairs anymore. I should also mention that where I grew up on the Flatlands/Canarsie border, we were equidistant between the 2/5 train terminus at Brooklyn College and the L train terminus at Rockaway Parkway. Either route meant a 30 minute bus ride just to get to the train, followed by an hour long ride into town. It was then decided that Pop was going to drive back and forth.
The old man got handicap plates right around when I was a senior in college, and I abandoned my commute (used to take the Command Bus ‘BM-1’ back and forth) in favor of driving in with Pops to first school and later to an Ad Agency office in Midtown. We’d switch off on driving. He always insisted on the direct approach, literally fighting Flatbush Avenue traffic all the way to the Manhattan Bridge. Me? I’d take us through Crown Heights and along Eastern Parkway, turn right on Nostrand and then left on Flushing and that led to a seldom used ‘side door’ to get on the bridge. When Dad drove, it took at least an hour. I’d get us there in 35 minutes without speeding. Basically, my Dad would have happily gone whichever way Google told him to, whereas I’m convinced that I’m smarter than Google – at least contextually.
I find the maps app very useful, but it does tend to put you on highways and routes you ‘over hill and dale’ when it doesn’t need to. In the case of the particular day these shots were taken, I was specifically avoiding its suggestions in order to drive on streets which I knew wouldn’t be iced over, or ones that offered high prominences to cross which would mean driving down a severe incline on the other side in winter weather.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back at HQ that night, after dinner, I decided that I wanted to set up the tripod and do a long shot looking back at the snow covered ‘community driveway’/alley behind mi casa. Alleys are given the street nomen ‘Way’ here. The alley itself is specifically referred to by the locals as a ‘paper alley’ which is technically the property of the Postal Service. My postman uses the front door, rather than the back, and whereas he seldom rings the bell it’s only one time, not twice. Yet another parable falls apart.
Back next week with (hopefully) some new stuff. Another snow event is meant to kick off tonight, but I’m literally dying to get out and do some shooting while on foot at this point, and leave the inert car parked while doing so.
One step, albeit a stiff and somewhat painful one, at a time.
“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 