Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
polychromatic rhythm
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
520 Kingsland Avenue, found along the fabulous Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, hosts a 26,000 square foot green roof. Green roofs drink storm water and improve an environmental condition called the “Maspeth Urban Heat Island Effect” which can see atmospheric temperatures in unplanted areas rise 10-15 degrees higher than in surrounding neighborhoods. Given that the phenomena was named for another Newtown Creek neighborhood, you see why Newtown Creek Alliance and our allies cared enough to do something about it.
As I often say – I like deeds, not words. Shit gets done on the Creek. Not taking personal credit for that, as a note, we have some pretty dedicated and capable people in our gaggle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The main section of the roof is dedicated to pollinator plants, whereas other sections have different functions and aren’t designed to be “public facing.” This is what we mean when saying that Newtown Creek must remain industrial, but there’s a simple series of steps that can benefit several factors. 520 Kingsland is a functioning tv studio – which means high paying union wages. It’s an artist studio, and the HQ for non profit entities like Newtown Creek Alliance. It also diverts thousands of gallons of precipitation away from the combined sewer outfalls network of sewer pipes, and lowers the ambient temperatures both inside and outside the building.
It’s this sort of multiphasic approach to urban spaces that can be a game changer for New York City, and provide inspiration for other post industrial American municipalities.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you may have guessed by now, I’m a fan of this project.
Also, as you may have guessed by now, I was really grooving on the solitude I was enjoying up there to ruminate and contemplate. Unfortunately, as it was a cloudless day, the brutal amount of sunlight raining down on me was taking a toll. The Romans fashioned a god out of this sensation, one whose cult was in a serious competition with Christianity as to who would become the official state religion of their Empire. We’ve still got a Roman Catholic Church two thousand years later, and not many people have ever heard of Sol Invictus – the Warrior Sun – so there you are.
“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.
possible dream
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent occasion found a humble narrator all by himself for several hours at Newtown Creek Alliance HQ at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section. A former Mobil Oil facility, this building is now owned by the Broadway Stages company. Downstairs, they have a working television production studio. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be a secret or something, but this is currently where Queen Latifah is filming “The Equalizer” television show. There’s often craft service leftovers for us to enjoy left in the lobby, and on this afternoon there were donuts. TV donuts.
An artist has a studio on the third floor, and on the fourth and fifth floors you’ll find the Kingsland Wildflowers Green Roof.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you’d imagine, one such as myself finds his way here regularly for meetings and events and NCA related business. I’m seldom here by myself, and certainly not for the four to five hours interval recently enjoyed. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, no interlopers asking what kind of camera I was using, and I got busy.
I was using filters and everything. It’s not as easy as you’d think to get high around Newtown Creek, after all. Can’t waste the opportunity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The next few days here at Newtown Pentacle will display shots gathered during this interval. One rolled through his entire bag of tricks this time around. My hope, which was ultimately squashed, was that I’d catch the 911 tribute lights being turned on (which tells you how long ago these shots were captured, so oops). Saying that, I’m still pleased with what I came home with.
Back tomorrow with more, 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.
idiomatic voice
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You don’t need to resort to filters or camera tricks to create a perfect mirror out of the waters of Newtown Creek, about three miles back from the East River. One of the core environmental problems back here is “flow.” Historically, there were dozens of small creeks and streams that flowed down out of the hills in Bushwick and Ridgewood and fed fresh water into the English Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, but colonization/industrialization/gentrification has turned them all into underground sewers. Natural springs were either capped or exploited. The water here rises and falls with the East River tide, but there’s virtually zero “laminar” or horizontal flow.
Anything that ends up in the water precipitates vertically down, building a sediment bed which is currently 15-20 feet thick that is referred to as “Black Mayonnaise.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To combat this lack of current, and the low oxygen levels inherent in still or standing water, the State commanded the City to build an aeration system which seems to be fairly useless. Expensively useless would also be a phrase that applies. I keep on bringing up the creation of small waterfalls, the engineered kind where water flows and splashes down concrete steps. Hydrological engineering for the bulkheads to accommodate the water’s flow via the introduction of compression and expansion zones is something else I ponder.
The concept underlying the latter is that since water has an absolute limit on its top – atmospheric pressure – and another absolute limit at the hard bottom of the waterway, if you compress the water column horizontally the water will flow faster to its only egress. Same principle as holding a thumb over a garden hose’s outlet increases the pressure of the water. If the bulkheads included some sort of repeating scallop shape, it could theoretically create “flow” without having to power up pumps or impellers. That’s the theory, anyway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If improving Newtown Creek requires the use of a mechanism that needs to be fueled or powered, the improvement has already failed before it left the design phase. The physics of how water moves over, past, and through certain shapes embedded in its columnar body is what really matters to my eyes. Irrigation and petroleum pipeline professional engineers handle this sort of thing all the time, moving pressurized liquids around to where they’re needed. Pumping is largely accomplished with gravity and pipes that narrow and then widen.
Ehh. What do I know, I’m just some wandering mendicant with a camera.
“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.
apologetic hesitancy
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Grand Street Bridge pictured above, which I’d suggest you photograph soon if you were planning in doing so. The NYC DOT is going to be replacing it in the very near future, and this crossing of yet another Newtown Creek tributary – the East Branch – is going to look very different in just a few years time.
Oddly enough, at the start of the 20th and end of the 19th centuries, this was a very popular spot to commit suicide. There was a Catholic priest who did so here in his full ritual vestments, carrying his Mitre and everything. What?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of self destructive ideations, this sort of graffiti has been turning up all around the Creeklands in recent weeks. Allow me to decode this one for you – a “fat” lie plays into a certain political dog whistle which states that the only people who get sick or die from Covid are either overweight or already burdened with comorbidity factors like diabetes or heart disease. The “rugged individualism” types push this out there to let you know that they are too morally and physically strong for the virus to find a foothold in them. It’s like lord of the flies, I tell you.
Other lines from the same crowd include “I’ll get the shot when the illegals get it,” and “I’d gladly sacrifice my grandmother’s life for the sake of the economy.” As I’ve been opining for nearly two years now, don’t listen to Politicians about anything. Instead, observe what the most risk averse corporation in America does. Watch Disney.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Did you know that nobody has ever died on Disney property in either Florida’s Disneyworld or at any of their global parks, resorts, and cruise lines? A monorail operator employee of theirs was decapitated in an accident in Florida, and Disney’s EMT’s kept the guy’s heart beating until the stretcher wasn’t on their property anymore. He died in Orlando, not Disneyworld. Like I said, “risk averse.”
The chair pictured above was discovered on the approach to the Grand Street Bridge, and it was covered in barnacles (here’s a close up). The logical supposition is that somebody pulled this thing out of Newtown Creek. The good news is that there seem to be barnacles in the water.
“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.
portentous meanings
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One found himself at the Maspeth Avenue Plank Road site recently, attending and photographing a Newtown Creek Alliance cleanup event that occurred on a lovely Saturday afternoon. One of the property owners nearby this site has recently been compelled to do some remodeling of their shoreline. I’ve known about this for a bit, but given that I’m usually here either at sunset or after dark, haven’t explored the new situation.
It’s not a good idea to be poking around in the bushes after dark in Industrial Maspeth, and especially so if you’re on foot and alone. Given that NCA had a fairly large group here, scooping garbage and debris off of the shoreline, I figured “why not?”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shoreline in this spot has been fairly impassable during my years at Newtown Creek, and largely ignored by the industrial operation which worked busily on the other side of a large concrete and steel fence. An artist I know had briefly set up a small structure back here which he used as a hangout and ad hoc painting studio. That structure had been taken over by some mendicant in the last year or two. Artist, structure, and mendicant are all gone now and there’s all sorts of geographically appropriate plantings here now.
This is where I got into the fight with a raccoon back in 2020, during which I had to poke at the thing with my tripod.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the mouth of English Kills, the Newtown Creek tributary that flows all the way back to Johnson Avenue in Bushwick. It’s also where water quality along the Creek sharply drops off. If you think Newtown Creek is bad, as everybody including the Federal Government does, you should see English Kills. Yuck.
Back tomorrow with more from my beloved Creek.
“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 