Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
inverse geometry
Monday is da shizzle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What a busy weekend! This vaccinated thing is going great so far. More on that in a subsequent post.
The first two shots in today’s post were gathered in Long Island City, specifically the stretch of Borden Avenue which the Queens Midtown Expressway truss has positively loomed over since 1940, in the beginning of March. I tell you, lords and ladies, that the normal problem here at Newtown Pentacle is not being able to generate images quickly enough. Since I haven’t had as much to do during the pandemic, one thing I’ve kept busy with is shooting photos. I’m a good month ahead of myself these days, which is neat, but as the world starts back up I plan to get a bit more in sync with the seasons and current events.
Fed-Ex, like the other “last mile shipping” companies including Amazon and UPS, have been extremely busy for the last year. They’re also massively expanding their footprint around Newtown Creek. Newtown Creek Alliance recently worked with a graduate student named Geoff Storr on a policy brief about this expansion – which you can check out by clicking here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering around LIC, one of the things that jumps at me is the absolute sin of the wasted space under the Queens Midtown Expressway section of the Long Island Expressway. Specifically, this is the zone between Van Dam Street and the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Empty, used for illegal parking, illegal dumping, ugly.
There’s gotta be a better way!
A humble narrator is in the early stages of annoying an entirely different branch of the Government than the usual ones about this subject. In this case, the agency of record is the New York State Department of Transportation. I figure that since they’re all done with the Kosciuszcko Bridge project they must be looking for something new to do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way back to HQ on a particularly pleasant evening, this chunk of construction equipment was noticed. This is part of the same operation which I’ve talked about before, who are working out a contract to bring the crosswalks and corners into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This involves “rekajiggering” the curb, pouring new concrete for the corner, and installing a “rumble strip” pad to provide tactile feedback to sight compromised or wheelchair users.
It provides me with something to take pictures of, so “win.”
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.
whirling fancy
Thursday has stumbled in again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One found himself in the “happy place,” as I refer to industrial Maspeth, during an extremely low tide. Pictured above is Maspeth Creek, with its exposed mounds of Black Mayonnaise. Maspeth Creek is one of the sections of the larger Newtown Creek which I’d like to see “delisted” as a navigable waterway (according to Coast Guard) and reclassified as an “environmental benefit” area. All of us at Newtown Creek Alliance can talk endlessly about the benefits that such a conversion would bring not just to the entire Newtown Creek waterway but also the industrial business zone surrounding it. Essentially, creating a tidal salt marsh environment here would be so beneficial that it could help offset the impact that the many, many truck based heavy industries of Maspeth create. A guy can dream, huh?
It was aromatic, to say the least, when this shot was gathered.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few blocks away, at the Maspeth Plank Road site, you can actually see how low this tide was. It looks like you could just walk out and touch the wooden artifacts of the bridge which once crossed the Newtown Creek between Furman Island and Greenpoint’s Maspeth Avenue, but I would have sunk to mid thigh into the mire. Normally, all of that pebbly sediment is sitting under a few feet of water.
Wish I could say that I planned on hitting this low tide, but it was pure luck and coincidence – I was just out taking a long walk in a place with a virtually zero night time population.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For the photography curious, these are all handheld shots. The newish camera I’m sporting these days, the Canon R6, coupled with a couple of fairly “bright” lenses is allowing me to leave the tripod at home when I don’t intend on doing either long exposures or any of the fancy pants focus stacking stuff. I’m not leaving all that behind, of course, but it’s been great fun to leave HQ with just two prime lenses and a camera in tow.
That, lords and ladies, is your Newtown Pentacle Thursday installment.
“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.
shifting hints
Wednesday… sigh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My weekly walk to Dutch Kills, or the “happy hunting grounds” as I call them, allowed for another shot of that tenacious little tree I’m obsessed with. Dutch Kills is a tributary of the larger Newtown Creek, which itself is a tributary of the East River, which is in turn an estuarial tributary where the Hudson River and Long Island Sound combine. Dutch Kills is contained entirely within Long Island City’s Degnon Terminal section, here in Queens.
This area has been my “go-to” for many years, and never so much as during the Pandemic year.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If my intentions play out this week as planned, I won’t be visiting Dutch Kills, rather I’m out wandering around the City as I’m supposedly fully vaxxed by now – some 14-15 days after the second Pfizer shot made me start to think about X-Boxes all the time.
That little mud flat is part of a NYC DEP experiment in creating wetland environmental plantings here. There’s a few spots on Dutch Kills in which a staggering amount of money was spent in pursuance of planting native speciations, with the hope that it would provide environmental anchoring for shellfish and other critters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the far end of the canal, you find a turning basin, which introduces a “T” shape to the northern extent of Dutch Kills. A turning basin is an area where a ship or tug and barge combination has an opportunity to reverse course by turning their bow to the direction they’re going in, which is a lot more efficient than reversing course.
Back 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.
tenants thereof
Hie, Tuesday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One question about NYC which non “lifers” don’t ask, a pondering query which has been mentioned in prior posts over the years, is what happened to all of those packs of feral dogs which used to wander about? Back in the 1970’s and 80’s, you needed to have dog fighting skills if you intended on walking through the sort of places I do. A lot of these puppers were former guard dogs, or runaways, or wild born strays. Speciation wise, you’d generally see large breeds at the head of the pack with the smaller dogs acting like naval corvettes protecting the flanks. You know my little missive “that in the neighborhood I grew up in you only ran when something was chasing you”? In my neighborhood, more often than not that “thing” was a pack of wild dogs. Seriously, if you walked down E. 59th bet Flatlands and Avenue J…
My supposition is that the heavy discounting of closed circuit television security camera systems in the early 1990’s is what put the guard dogs out of work. Without the need for guard dogs to protect your property, the feral population of dogs decreased to their current day level of near zero. Often do I ponder whether or not the abundance of raccoons, opossums, geese and other critters whose utter novelty is remarkable in the modern era is due to the lack of canine hunters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another one which I ponder while endlessly dogging my way through the cold waste involves prostitutes. Used to be that working gals were everywhere you looked, prior to “Giuliani Time” as we referred to it “back in the day.” Just the other night, I wandered past what appeared to be a transaction based personal training assignation along the railroad tracks in Maspeth. The presumptively post coital participants split up afterwards, with the female soon finding shelter in the cab of a passing truck, and the male member headed off to the nearby regional HQ of a well known last mile delivery business. I don’t think they were talking politics, if you know what I’m saying, and they were both pulling their pants up, so… Can’t say for sure it was transactional, but it sure looked like it. Talk about rail fanning, huh?
Williamsburg was notorious for its “in your face” street prostitution during the late 80’s and 90’s, but I remember driving home from work from an uptown job in Manhattan and predictably hitting traffic jams caused by potential clientele pulling over to negotiate with the various entrepreneurs and service providers walking the streets in lingerie. There was a huge pimping operation on Park Avenue in the high 30’s in Murray Hill, and in the 8th and 9th Avenue sections of Hells Kitchen in the 40’s and 30’s. In Brooklyn, I can tell you that Coney Island and Brighton Beach also hosted a remarkable number of individual entrepreneurs who operated in this “personal touch” space. Crack, bro, made people do a lot of weird shit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lastly, the overarching question in my mind these days is “why so serious”? If somebody calls me a name – let’s use the one that motherflower reminds you of – am I going to empower the assignation by arguing that I don’t flower my mother or just ignore them entirely? In my experience, there is no worse “dis” than ignoring someone. If you want to argue with me in an abusive fashion, I refuse to engage. Physical threats? Same thing, turn around and walk away. The last time somebody told me he was going to “kick my ass,” I responded with the infuriating phrase “use your words, instead.” Given that this particular fellow had a fiery swastika planted in a base of yarmulke wearing skulls and the motto “a good start” tattooed on his back, what sense would it have made trying to either reason with or beat some sense into him? Why so serious? It’s better to mock and laugh at iceholes than it is to fight with them, since you’re giving them what they want. Try shaming them instead, and shaming anyone who suborns such behavioral tics or overtly offensive skin decorations.
TLDR: who let the dogs out, where the ladies at, check yo self fore yo wreck yo self.
“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.
translate itself
Lo, Monday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Industrial Maspeth is my happy place. Every visit fills me with ineluctable joy. A recent tiptoe through the industrial tulips, a few weeks back, found a humble narrator negotiating icy streets, mountainous piles of gray black snow, and heavy truck traffic on his nocturnal path to Newtown Creek. One has long offered the opinion that NYC never looks as good as it does when it’s wet, as evinced above. This is from 48th street, aka “the Shell Road,” which was a colonial era pathway from north to south paved with crushed oyster shells. Pictured is a lonely FDNY alarm box, sitting on a patch of sidewalk which barely exists anymore due to the expansion of corporate fencing.
The Shell Road slouches gently in altitude, down from the distant prominence of Greenpoint Avenue to the dark havens of Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
People do live here in industrial Maspeth. I’m always surprised, finding a well cared for 1 or 2 family semi attached home plunked down in the middle of some otherwise hellacious industrial stretch. There might be constant noise and pollution, but there isn’t alternate side parking to contend with here in the industrial buisness zone, and it’s pretty quiet on the weekends. Want to park a boat on the street, bro? You do you.
Dichotomies abound, of course. When most say “Maspeth,” what one pictures are pretty as you please blocks of tract housing which have a somewhat suburban aspect that neighbors schools and shopping. When I say Maspeth, I’m picturing what’s generally referred to as “West Maspeth” in modernity, and it’s the darkest of the hillside thickets surrounding the fabulous Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “Happy Place” has been nepenthe for a humble narrator during the plague year, a place where I can freely breathe sans mask or precautions due to the utter lack of population hereabout. I will also admit to enjoying the esthetics.
Night time walks around this area demand the usage of a safety vest or some other reflective material to signal your presence to the truck drivers and heavy equipment operators. A recent “hack” to my camera bag introduced a strip of reflective fabric tape to the bag’s strap, which Our Lady of the Pentacle handled for me using her darning skills. Hey, when you’re known for wearing all black clothing with a filthy black raincoat over it all, it can’t hurt to be a little bit visible.
“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.
