Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
scrawled message
Where I belong, leave my body here when I die.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I can now confirm that Dutch Kills is still where it was the last time I saw it. That was after the broken toe literally swept my leg out from under me. Despite the injury, I had to conduct a walking tour, or as I called it then – a limping tour – just two days after breaking the damned phalange. Only time ever that I fell down when conducting a tour. Ultimately, though, i screwed up by displaying weakness to the people in my life. Must never display weakness, because others will take advantage of it. If I’m taken advantage of, I have to respond in a widely inappropriate and disproportionate manner. Ask everyone who knows me – every single day is the first day in prison with me. I’m not locked up in here with you, you’re locked up in here with me. It’s exhausting, really, being me.
That’s the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge in the foreground, with the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek and the Long Island Expressway in the back. The original draw bridge on this site was made of wood, and was opened and closed by the actions of a donkey walking on a wooden wheel. Happy place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Irving Subway Grate site continues to decompose, an island of calm in the chaotic development landscape of LIC. Just down the block, the patrons of what has been described to me as the second worst strip club in Queens were smoking the weed while I was shooting this. I’ve never been a strip club guy, as a note. Not saying it’s bad if you are, but like the Karaoke and Dance Club scenes, it’s just not for me. I also don’t see the point of Casinos, loathe musical theatre, and avoid poetry readings.
I like irish bars, poisoned and highly industrial waterways, junk yards, waste transfer stations, sewer plants, and cargo docks. These are the places I belong.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking westwards along Borden Avenue, and its eponymous bridge, towards the Empire State Building. Back when I started wandering around Newtown Creek, you could easily navigate the surrounding neighborhoods by the position of three large structures – Manhattan’s Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, and the Citigroup Megalith at LIC’s Court Square. Recent real estate development has obscured the Megalith and Chrysler Building, hiding then behind banalities. Luckily, the Empire State is still visible, although it’s silhouette is often ruined these days by the architecturally dubious Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s west side.
This is where I plan to someday celebrate the detestation of the water lizard, when the corporeal residue of my body is tossed – like every other bit of wind blown trash in New York City – into Newtown Creek.
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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.
acrid scent
I’m the thing on your doorstep at night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Want to have people notice you? Stand on the corner of Skillman Avenue behind a tripod, while photographing scenes like the one above. People will literally walk directly in front of the camera lens and good naturedly ask you what you’re recording. “Right now, madam, your midsection” is something you can say. That’s why I had to stand there for about twenty minutes the other night, waiting for another 7 train to transit above. Shot needed the 7, after all, not some random woman’s abdomen. If you happen across a photographer who is set up with a tripod and all the other junk, and you’re feeling conversational, maybe it would make sense for you not to stand directly in front of their camera? As mentioned, hate for everyone and everything at the moment.
My goal, as mentioned in yesterday’s post, was to get down to Dutch Kills in LIC, which is one of my happy places. I need happy places at the moment.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Hell is other people” as the saying goes. Of course, without the other people, these shots would have been gathered in a primeval and legendarily mosquito rich swamp that was supposedly avoided by the native americans. This section of LIC was historically undeveloped until the early 20th century, when the fields of both construction technology and financial capital management had finally attained levels sufficient to not just conquer but totally annihilate the natural environment. You can destroy an ecosystem the old fashioned way (Rome was great at this task), but to totally erase any trace of flowing or flooding water, you need modern tools and lots of money. The Pennsylvania Railroad, Michael Degnon, and the City of Greater New York itself had both requirements sorted out back “in the day.”
This corner is where, instead of some nosey lady, I got to smile and wave at a couple of cops who were mildly curious about my activities. Not curious enough to roll down the window, or get out of the car, just curious enough to stare at me for a few minutes. I waved, smiled, and flipped the tail of my filthy black raincoat at them. Shaking their heads, they drove off.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally. When I say that I can only be happy when I’m in places like 29th street in LIC, a blasted railroad access route that masquerades as a proper city street. The bulkheads along the water side of the street have been collapsing for a couple of years now, but no one cares. The waters of the industrialized canal called Dutch Kills, which have tested positive for both Gonorrhea and Typhus, are poison but no one cares. Sick little trees line the banks, wicking up the heavy metals and other pollutants from the landfill used to conquer the swamp. I care.
Nepenthe.
“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.
physician whispered
Pedestrian unfriendly, I tell you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “angles’ between neighborhoods, which is the term I use for those “neither here nor there” spots you encounter around Queens, are seldom friendly to pedestrian pursuits. The corner of Northern Blvd. and 31st street, where Northern also transmogrifies into its ancestral name of Jackson Avenue, forms the angle between the Dutch Kills and Astoria zones. Y’know what? I’m not going to fall into the trap of describing the exact borders of Astoria, Woodside, Ravenswood, Dutch Kills, or Astoria.
If I did, somebody or group of bodies would excoriate and ridicule, scold or dismiss. One such as myself is too delicate of constitution to chance recrimination.
Fascination with the trails of light offered by automotive traffic continues. Additionally, given how dark and forbidding this section of Jackson Avenue normally is – due to a lack of street lighting at night and those overhead subway tracks during the day – the only time you get to visualize and marvel at the high flying structural steel is at night, due to those vehicle lights strobing about the utilitarian landscape.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured is the corner of Jackson Avenue and 29th street, where the head waters of Newtown Creek’s tributary Dutch Kills were once found, and the waterway lent its name to this section of Long Island City. That was before LIC separated itself from Newtown, and NYC consolidation, or the Queensboro Bridge, or Sunnyside Yards, or the Dual Contracts era of subway construction, or the highways – forever reshaped this fairly ancient part of Queens. There’s still a low point in the pavement where the waterway once collected into a pond, but in the deeps below all you’ll find are electrical cables, sewers, and the cut and cover tunnel which carries the tracks of the IND subways below. The tracks above, for those unfamiliar, carry rolling stock of the Astoria line subway emanating from the Queensboro Bridge towards a terminal stop at Ditmars Blvd.
In the distance is Queens Plaza, which is in the process of being converted over to high density residential usage from its former commercial and industrial zoning of the 20th century.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Realizing that I had missed a shot desired, one reversed course for a block to catch the illuminated passage of one of those Astoria line subways exiting the 31st street corridor and turning onto Jackson Avenue. Formerly, the Taxi Leasing company at the right of the shot enjoyed a gigantic parking lot for its fleet, but that lot has been developed into some new gargantua of a building. Might be rentals, or a hotel – I’m not sure. I met the fire safety director of a different hotel, while shooting this. He was out getting coffee, apparently. Nice guy.
More on Monday, 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.
nightmare pits
Down the Carridor once more.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found one desirous of some exercise with about two hours worth of time to get it. I left HQ and soon found myself scuttling down Northern Blvd. – or, as I call it: The Carridor. An abundance of used car lots, as well as a pernicious amount of automotive traffic, distinguishes the particular stretch of Northern Blvd., a section which one often inhabits. Until the 20th century, this part of the street was also called Jackson Avenue, just like the narrower continuation of it that snakes past the Queensboro Bridge and into LIC to its start at the corner of Vernon Blvd. The Carridor is part of NYS Route 25A, and continues eastwards from Vernon some 73 miles to Suffolk County’s Calverton. John C. Jackson is who the road was named for. The dates I’ve been able to track down for the creation of Northern Blvd., as a widened high speed road, start in 1927 and indicate that construction crews in Queens were busy throughout 1928 and possibly as late as 1929. This is hazy, though, and obscured by time.
Quite obviously, The Carridor is part of the House of Moses, as in Robert Moses.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While scuttling along, this jaunty and quite cool car was encountered over on 42nd street, nearby a mechanic shop and a motorcycle dealership. This block is “one of my spots” where I often check to see if interesting automobiles might be parked along the curb. With all the car dealerships in this section, you’ll often see historic cars or even specialty kit units like the one above.
One had screwed up when leaving the house, due to having made an attempt at maintaining his personal hygiene. I was wearing my lucky “NCA” baseball hat, which had recently been washed. When donning the thing before leaving HQ, I absentmindedly adjusted the fitting on it two notches too tight. Mistake.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
With my too tight hat cutting off blood flow, it soon induced a swooning vertigo in me, and the sort of mental state which normally occurs after a chance encounter with teenagers. Clear memory of the rest of my scuttle eludes, and I was forced to piece it all together after returning to HQ, from the contents of my camera’s memory card.
The horror…
“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.
intimate circle
Bulging and watery… eyes staring in from the darkness.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
How I’ve missed industrial Maspeth, at night, with its creepy unlit streets and often nonexistent sidewalks. The blind turns, the odiferous hint of marijuana oozing from the windows of passing cars, the discarded liquor bottles and illegal dumping… its been way too long, Queens.
Speaking of too long, as I mentioned at the start of this four day travelogue, I had left HQ in Astoria and scuttled over to the Kosciuszcko Bridge in pursuit of communion with my beloved Newtown Creek. As I was shooting the particular image above, it was noticed that my camera battery had only one bar of charge left in it. Additionally realized was that the first few drops of a prophesied rain event were beginning to pitter and patter into the automotive soot and finely shattered glass which forms those dusty dunes adorning the broken pavement of industrial Maspeth.
That’s odd, thought I, regarding the battery. Ok, I had been doing long exposure tripod shots for a bit, and it was medium cold out, but I so seldom have to change a battery “in the field” that it struck me as weird.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
No matter though, as a few quick actuations saw me sliding a fresh battery into the camera. I’ve always got at least one extra battery with me, one in the camera sack and another in a pants pocket. I got back to shooting, here along that malignant saraband which carrying automotive traffic between 43rd and 48th streets known as 54th Avenue, which intersects with an off ramp of the Long Island Expressway. This is a corner which the NYC DOT has missed changing the luminaire head of their street lamp over to the modern LED type, and an old style sodium lamp is pushing out orange illumination contrasting with the cold blue light of the newer system. Colormetrics! What fun. Go Mets, huh?
This is when I realized that all of the aches and pains which have been bedeviling me for the last few months had receded into an anhedonic amnesia. If you saw a creepy old guy in a black raincoat on the side of the road last week, cackling to himself briefly while working a camera, that was me feeling like me again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Making way towards Sunnyside, the rain began to drizzle insistently and I decided to had back to HQ in Astoria. One last shot of industrial Maspeth was recorded… that’s actually the corner where an Orthodox Yeshiva stood at the start of the 20th century. For some reason, the presence of a religious academy of that persuasion being based here/then is incongruous to me, and it’s story is something that’s on my research list. More to come at some point hence.
By the time I arrived at Queens Blvd., the drizzle had begun to set up into a proper rain and I decided to pull out my phone and summon a ride for the remaining interval. Somehow I had lost track of time, or perhaps I’m experiencing some sort of Newtown Creek induced missing time, as the clock revealed that it was 3 in the morning.
I was out and alone at the witching hour, in the rain, on a moonless night… and this too was… nepenthe.
“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 