Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
rocky slope
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An afternoon shot from up on the Kosciuszcko Bridge, looking downwards at the always fabulous Newtown Creek. As mentioned, one is making it a point of getting out and into the direct radiates of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself. On this particular day, I was meeting and then taking a walk with a friend from Brooklyn and catching up on the latest nuances of political struggle and activist community innuendo in Greenpoint. It’s a pressure cooker over there.
Why not crack out a few shots along the way?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since I wasn’t “considering and composing” these shots should be considered to be “snap shots” rather than photographs. Since 99% of the people reading this wouldn’t care about the artsy fartsy distinction between the two, I shouldn’t even mention it.
There’s a lot of nuance which goes into even a “snap shot” for me, but there’s a real difference in how you approach the capture. If that was a “photograph” I would have used a neutral density filter (and tripod) to slow down the exposure speed, which would have rendered the water as looking like a mirror rather than allowing all of those water ripples to form a distracting “busy” area. As mentioned, however, I was there to chat and any photos that fell out of the encounter were just a bonus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way back home, one scuttled through LIC and past Dutch Kills where possible evidences of “it” were observed. “It” is something that was described to me last year by some of the street people whom I converse with. In fact, I’ve got a small legion of people who irregularly report things about Newtown Creek to me. This particular methodology is something I picked up from Sherlock Holmes and the Batman comics.
You’d be surprised at what someone will tell you for the price of a bottle of cold beer and a bag of Fritos. Hidden knowledge is cheap these days.
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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.
horrible familiarity
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The only times I’m actually happy are when I’m operating the camera. Accordingly, one found himself lingering about on the Koscisuzcko Bridge recently awaiting the occlusion of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself behind the Manhattan shield wall. I had the whole kit and kaboodle with me for a change, and figured to make good use of the tripod I had been laboriously carrying around.
Funny thing about the new camera is that I really don’t need the tripod that often anymore and only carry it with me when a specific shot that requires it is in mind, such as the first image in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having accomplished my goal of “getting a nice sunset shot of the creek” after hanging around on the Kosciuszcko Bridge for awhile, I broke down the tripod setup and got back to normal handheld shooting. There’s a couple of other shooters I see up there periodically, an older guy who carries a Nikon and a young woman who favors the Sony system. My guess is that they’re both Greenpoint people. I’ve tried to chat about camera stuff briefly with the old guy, but there’s a language barrier we keep running into. The woman always has headphones on, which is a “tell” saying “I don’t want to chat.” Read the room, huh?
At any rate, gear safely stored for carrying, I pointed my toes towards Queens and began scuttling back towards home.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Naturally – thereby – after I had packed everything up and affixed a non zoom lens to the camera, the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge opened up about 3/4 of a mile to the west. Sigh.
More tomorrow 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.
equally himself
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering disdainfully through the universe’s garden spot, Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section, one struggles to maintain any sort of hope for the future. Jack ass Real Estate enthusiasts masquerading as altruists are the latest addition to the milieu that I have to deal with. Their entire point of view is built around a single disingenuous issue – “affordable housing” for people earning over $100,000 a year. When you point out that every bit of societal infrastructure (power, water, transit, education, healthcare) required to maintain a growing populace is currently failing and the installation of much of it dates back to an era before women were able to vote, they grow indignant. Everything is connected. NYC is complicated. The five boroughs are virtually a nation state unto themselves, and the NYPD’s headcount is larger than most country’s actual militaries. As an example, there are fewer active duty Royal Marines employed by the United Kingdom than there are NYPD officers. There’s 36,000 cops in NYC’s 5 boroughs versus 7,760 Royal Marines for all of Great Britain. I should mention that a Royal Marine is generally considered to be worth 20 regular soldiers, and that NYPD is trained for an entirely different mission so the numerical difference isn’t offered to suggest that the NYPD would win a fight with the British Royal Marines.
The entire British military establishment numbers about 200,000 active duty personnel. Their job is to protect the roughly 67 million people who live on the actual island, and the various bases and territories left over from the time of Empire. The Royal Marines are “tip of the spear” troops, meaning they are the equivalent of America’s Green Berets, Navy Seals, or Army Rangers in terms of training and lethality.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Where does “it” go when you flush your affordable toilet in your new condo? Who pays for the pipe and the sewer plant and what happens to “it” after it gets there? See those four pipes in the photo above? Largest single source of greenhouse gas in Brooklyn, bigger than all the highways and tunnels put together. What powers this sewer plant in Greenpoint and who does it serve? The answer to the former is a bit complex, but the latter is Manhattan below 96th street.
Much will be made of the “need” for affordable housing built close to the urban core along the East River. Few will discuss the need to build new and to fortify existing mass transit. If you understand NYC history, you can say with zero qualification that the Government is shit at building housing. Conversely, Government is great at building roads and train lines and sewer plants. Let’s talk about getting the Government out of the real estate business, and back into the building schools and hospitals and transit space.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everything in NYC is interrelated. Nothing exists in a solitary silo. A new luxury apartment building, using modern construction technique, isn’t built here – it’s assembled here. Prefabricated sections are brought to the job site from a distant factory and lifted by crane into the correct spot. Those “wide load” sections have to get “here” from somewhere else. How do you do that, when the Real Estate people have eliminated port and rail infrastructure across the five boroughs in a systematic manner over the last fifty years? By heavy truck, of course. In a vastly interconnected system like NYC, a small change in one place causes ripples through others.
Those trucks, coming from distant factories, have to move through other people’s neighborhoods. They encounter obstacles like the elevated tracks of the 7 line on Queens Blvd. or the overpasses of highways. Since everyone is a fucking environmentalist these days, how about we calculate the amount of carbon these truck trips spend while idling in traffic in upper Manhattan on their way to the Triborough?
“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.
cosmic continua
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This week’s posts start and end with trains. There’s your “Chekhov’s Gun” for you, laid out all nice and obvious. Pictured above is an out of service Long Island Rail Road train which has been stored at the Blissville Yard in Long Island City’s Blissville section for about a year. It recently received a new coat of graffiti, and I’ve shown it to you in the past when its last iterative coating of street art was applied.
A humble narrator is in a bit of a mood at the moment. Controversy and politics amongst those of us who scurry about trying to pick up the crumbs that drop from the master’s table has broken out. If you’re reading this and know what I’m referring to, I’d opine that you should leave me out of your arguing. Don’t make me come over there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Stupid, selfish, and self obsessed – that’s how I’d describe the mythological “noble” character of this country of ours in modernity. We’ve always been absolute monsters to each other, despite what the National narrative teaches. An iconoclastic fad is underway at the moment, dedicated to tearing down the firmament of our national sense of self. Extreme ideologies with no grounding in historical custom or law has been loosed upon a poorly educated and incurious population. Take a breath, y’all, huh?
Luckily, summer is coming, which indicates that I’ve got a roughly 60 day long break from having to attend any meetings regarding governmental bullshit nearing. This whole cycle of bullshit we’ve all been dealing with for the last decade or so should be coming to an end within the next couple of weeks, which will kick off a new cycle of bullshit. By the end of June, after the electoral primaries, we’ll know who the new god kings of Queens are going to be and exactly where and when they want their asses to be publicly kissed or when they privately want smoke blown up their alimentary.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Railroad Avenue, in the Blissville section of Long Island City, a tree can be observed. It’s the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil on Newtown Creek. Same species as the one in Eden, just not as knowledgable a fruit. Go figure. One recently encountered a cast off fruiting of this tree, just lying there on the side of the road. Like the great shit sandwich that is our culture, I had to take a bite. As a note, there were no serpents slithering about.
No more Mister Nice Guy, that’s what I said once the scales fell from my eyes. I wasn’t that nice to start with, so…
“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.
flee because
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You might have heard about the tragic death of 3 young fellows last weekend at Dutch Kills in Long Island City. I don’t know much more than what the news presented, but apparently they were speeding down Borden Avenue and didn’t realize that a dead end was in front of them. They punched through the street end and their car ended up in the water, more or less directly under the Long Island Expressway.
Despite a massive FDNY and NYPD response, including divers, the three occupants of the car died. This sort of thing happens more often than you think it does, and it’s the third such occurrence I’m aware of in just the last decade or so.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
About ten years ago, a kid died driving into Newtown Creek at Apollo Street in Greenpoint. Similarly, about six to seven years ago several teenagers died in this manner at Astoria’s Luyster Creek. Now there’s three more. Is it bad driving? Yes. Is it lousy road design, certainly.
We’ve all “tsk tsk’d” about the race cars and the backfiring fart cars. The ATV and Dirt Bike mobs. There’s regularly illegal drag racing on Review Avenue a few blocks away, where another fatality occurred after a racer lost control of his car and smashed into a utility pole nearby the cemetery. Also in Maspeth, where businesses like Restaurant Depot have been forced to place heavy chains across their parking lot entrances and hire overnight security. Ridgewood, Greenpoint, East Williamsburg are experiencing this phenomena as well. We’ve got a regional command issue at work here, not a precinct sized one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On a happier note, I discovered that during the pandemic months somebody built a barber shop and beauty salon into a passenger van frame. The vehicle was sitting in front of a mechanic shop in Blissville, and I was captivated by the motto of “vibrant beauty.”
Back next week 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 