Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
inhuman squeals
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My recent walks have been far ranging. In a post Zuzu the dog world, one has been able to resume being out of the house for hours and hours as I don’t have to provide her with the acute care and attention she required during her decline. Accordingly, one has been poking his lens into all sorts of places and really burning the shoe leather up. I’ve got an app on my phone which approximates the mileage and “number of steps” it accompanies me through. Resumption of my old “one day out, one day in” schedule has occurred, and a predominance of my time and attentions are being focused on the Newtown Creek again.
According to an app on my phone, which is expertly programmed to guilt me out, I’m walking a bit less than I was this time last year. This time last year, however, you actually had to go to meetings rather than log into them, and those meetings usually take place miles and miles from HQ, and there wasn’t a respiratory plague going around. App chiding notwithstanding, the stamina and ability to march around for six to eight hours at a pop have recently returned. Hibernation is bad for you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Literally “DUKBO” or “Down Under the Kosciuszcko Bridge Onramp” in Maspeth is where this shot was gathered. Construction on the bridge is more or less finished at this point, but they are still turning the odd screw and tweaking this or that.
This is the 2.1 mile mark on the Newtown Creek, as in it’s that far back from the East River where I was standing. The Penny Bridge site is visible in the shot above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The former property of Phelps Dodge, which occupied this section of the creek in one corporate guise or another for more than a century, the water quality in this area is both complex and poor. The original 19th century owner of this property was General Chemical, which manufactured several exquisitely toxic but lovely chemical cocktails here but their mainstay was sulfuric acid. Phelps Dodge turned the acid factory into a copper refinery, which persisted here well into the late 20th century. There’s a food wholesaler based here now.
Apparently they’re down a shopping cart.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, September 14th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
sane harborage
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, one was wandering through Blissville. For one reason or another, a humble narrator decided it would be good to get a few shots of the enormous masonry wall offered by First Calvary cemetery for the amusement of passerby on Review Avenue.
My understanding of the function of this structure is that it acts as a retaining wall. Laurel Hill, the landform which Calvary was carved into starting in 1848, used to slope down towards Newtown Creek. Review Avenue is a “cut” and the engineers who worked for the Church probably had to worry about mudslides when laying out the place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The wall itself is enormous, and based on observation from within the cemetery and atop it, around ten feet thick at the top and an unknown width at bottom. It’s composed on concrete and boulders, and likely bottoms out several yards under the level of the street and sidewalk. The boulders are typical glacial till, likely harvested from native soils, and nothing special.
My intention when shooting this was in theoretical pursuance of doing a cutaway illustration of the wall and subterrene, which was going to be accompanied by a bit of narrative reminiscent of an HP Lovecraft short story called “The Statement of Randolph Carter” wherein the exploration of a mortuary complex’s underground chambers results in a typically horrifying conclusion for a Lovecraft tale. That’s my actual thought process leading up to actuating the camera shutter.
That’s when I spotted them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When queried as to why I always have a camera with me, the answer is usually “if I don’t have this, then a ufo would land in the intersection and Bigfoot and Elvis would disembark from it.” Usually, a camera is your best defense against anything interesting happening within eyeshot.
These two defied that maxim, however, and they are to be applauded.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They seemed to be a couple, these two, just picking their way along the rock wall.
So intent on their task were they that notice of the strange old fellow with a camera trained on them standing across the street and laughing hysterically didn’t seem to register. This genuinely amused me, and I like to believe that one of them said to the other that “the floor is lava.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They never got more than five or six feet off the lava, I would mention.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I’m often quoted as saying – you never know what you’re going to see at Calvary Cemetery. Even when the place has remained inexplicably closed to the public at exactly the moment when its acres of green space have been most needed, the people of LIC will make it their own.
Awesome sauce.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, September 14th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
invincible evil
Feels like Monday, but it’s Tuesday, pal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been freely ranging about the City for the last week, as mentioned, and visiting several places which have been left unobserved during the pandemic months. That FDNY Fleet Services Wrecker was spotted in Greenpoint when I was on my way to the Newtown Creek Nature Walk, for instance.
Generally speaking, the Fire Department has the coolest gear in the entire municipal sphere. The Cops have cool toys too, mind you, but FDNY seems to have at least one of everything and they keep their stuff “mint.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This tree is found on the block I live on in Astoria. It’s in front of a noisome fellow whom the block’s lifers call “John the Pollock.” John doesn’t like dogs pooping or pissing in his tree pit, and has been the subject of much online conversation due to his habit of seeding the grass with pepper flakes and other irritants to discourage the canines from explorations. I don’t know if John is responsible for this scene or not.
Everybody in my neighborhood seems to have some sort of descriptive nickname. At the local bar, we have an abundance of fellows named “Chris.” There’s Croatian Chris, Crazy Chris, Glazier Chris, Real Estate Chris, Pharmaceutical Chris, and Substance Abuse Chris, amongst others. The latter Chris recently got carted off by an FDNY ambulance and I haven’t seen him for at least a week. Hope he’s ok. I asked after him with Vlad the waiter and Sean the Carpenter, but nobody has seen Substance Abuse Chris. Hopefully he doesn’t just disappear like Mattie the Vampire did.
…Astoria…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One plan which a humble narrator did manage to actuate recently was the caper where I ride the NYC Ferry and get out on the water, but more on that in subsequent postings. On my way to the ferry, the gate was open at an Ice Cream Truck storage and maintenance yard on Broadway at the corner of Vernon, so this shot was gathered.
The branding on these trucks is “New York Ice Cream” which indicates they were part of the breakaway faction of Mister Softee drivers who formed the “Master Softee” outfit. The Masters were sued by the Mister people in federal court over infringing on their trademark jingle and branding, hence the refit to New York Ice Cream.
More tomorrow.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, September 7th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
prism clusters
Labor Day
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One last archive post today, before a flood of all new stuff begins filtering your way, this one depicting one of the people who keep our entire societal machine functioning.
Ask your self – which side are you on, boy, which side are you on? If you don’t get the reference, then the bankers and corporatists continue to succeed in the diminution and destruction of the Organized Labor movement in these United States. Your Dad and certainly your Grandpa would recognize the lyric.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, September 7th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
unplumbed voids
Nobody ever says “Thank God, it’s Wednesday.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Three archive shots greet you today, all of which are rail based. Pictured above is the New York & Atlantic engine 400, which I got to ride on last year. The tracks it rides on are part of the Bushwick Branch, which is itself a part of the larger Long Island Railroad system.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few miles west of the first shot, which depicts a freight train, is the LIRR’S Blissville Yard in Long Island City. Oddly enough, there was a defunct passenger train being stored at this freight yard on the Lower Montauk tracks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A different kind of train, those are IRT Flushing line subways sitting on the tracks in Roosevelt/Corona – I’m never sure where one starts and the other ends – in between rush hours.
Back tomorrow.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, August 24th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
