Archive for the ‘newtown creek’ Category
disordered condition
Don’t like it, but I have to leave Queens occasionally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had to go into the City to visit the accountant the other day, one of the few ties I still have to my old neighborhood in Manhattan. For over a decade a humble narrator was centered in a small apartment with very cheap rent on the corner of West 100th street and Broadway, a white walled box which served my needs when I was working as a corporate drone in the advertising salt mines. NYC was just getting started on its current vector back then, when a series of NBC sitcoms presented Manhattan as a viable or desirable option for midwesterners to consider. Come to the City, where you’ll have “Friends” and meet quirky characters like “Kramer” or get lucky and have some “Sex in the City.” I blame “Seinfeld” for kicking off this whole gentrification business.
I’ve always been fascinated by media portrayals of New York City, and the pop cultural interpretations thereof. Beginning in the 1960’s, Hollywood began telling you that this was a place you didn’t want to be. Fun City indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A mostly forgotten but well done Police procedural series offered in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s was called “Naked City.” It’s tag line was “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” Heavy handed on the social justice storylines, Naked City nevertheless is the prototype for later procedurals like “Law and Order” and like that long running production, was shot on location all over NYC. If you can find it, check out a few episodes and pay attention to the background landscape details. Shot during the era of urban renewal and slum clearance, Robert Moses’s various initiatives can be seen in the backgrounds, with the foreground filled by soon to famous actors playing their first major roles. There’s one with Al Pacino in it, who’s climax occurs with the raw steel of the United Nations building visible in Manhattan’s former “Blood Alley” section.
Fascinating window into the past, televised fiction can be. At the rate which NYC constantly demolishes and rebuilds itself, you have to take anything you can get in terms of what once was, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My beloved Creek is picture above, from the pigeon poop encrusted stairways of the Pulaski Bridge in LIC. Speaking of “demolishing and rebuilding itself,” let’s just say that I have seen the plans for what’s coming next, and that the area between LIC’s 2nd Street and the Pulaski/Borden Avenue and Newtown Creek (including the LIRR station) is – indeed – next. You’ll hear about it soon, I believe.
Get your pics now, lords and ladies. Tick tock.
“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.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
in argument
It’s not luck or preparation, just good timing with me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Returning to Astoria after a recent sojourn to the fabulous Newtown Creek, one elected to cross the waterway at a point some 1.3 miles from its intersection with the East River. Luckily, that’s where the City of Greater New York maintains that chunk of our collective property which they call the “John J. Byrne memorial bridge” or as it’s known more simply to everybody else – the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.
As I was nearing the apogee of the span, descending traffic barrier signal arms accompanied by bells and flashing lights provided indication that this double bascule draw bridge was about to open up and allow a maritime passage. What fun!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gazing through the security fencing, a humble narrator did spy a barge and tug plying the contaminant rich waters of the Newtown Creek. The barge was set up to act as a platform for a crane, by all appearances. Perhaps it was coming from the nearby Kosciuszcko Bridge project, but that’s just idle speculation.
It’s a big old creek, Newtown is, with lots and lots going on all the time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
With the bridge open and the always heavy flow of automotive and truck traffic halted, one took the opportunity to run around on the roadway without the fear of getting squished. You can just see the top of that crane moving alongside the Brooklyn side roadway bascule, above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYC DOT bridge tender was definitely keeping an eye on me, to which I say “fair enough.” Imagine the sight of one such as myself, darting to and fro across the concrete roadway, hooting and hollering in my revel, camera waving about and filthy black raincoat whipping in the breeze.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Then the joy came to an end, as all joy must. A return to the ultra mundane occurred as the bridge returned to its resting state. One set his feet solidly to work and strode defiantly into Blissville, eyes fixed on the north, where Astoria eternally awaits.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
March!
That’s the Long island Expressway there, incidentally, at Borden Avenue and Van Dam. I love this point of view on it.
“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.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
virtually beyond
My beloved Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has always indulged in the habit of taking periodic breaks from visiting that flooded valley of wonder called the Newtown Creek, in pursuance of occasionally allowing my immune system to scale back a bit to normal NYC levels. Now, New York is a pig sty, and often these days it feels like it’s dirtier than it’s been in decades. As a culture, we’ve done a great job of using “Public Service Announcements” to convince the citizenry of the the efficacy of condom usage, smoking cessation, and to get teenagers in the habit of not getting pregnant as often as in generations formerly. What we’ve stopped doing, however, is convincing people that littering is bad.
Street litter ends up in the sewer grates, and then into the water. It causes the NYC DEP, who operate that science fiction like sewer plant in Greenpoint – pictured above – no end of problems. They have to strain the solids from the otherwise liquidic flow which they refer to as “honey.” These solids become landfill, ultimately, which they would have anyway if just placed in those garbage baskets on nearly every street corner – they just wouldn’t be biohazardous waste as well, having been mingled with poop and sewage in the pipes.
That’s a lot of “funk.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That is what’s referred to as the “BP Amoco” tanks in Greenpoint, pictured above, although the facility has recently changed ownership. For the life of me, while I’m writing this I can’t remember the name of the new corporate entity who bought it. That’s a distribution yard. Petroleum products are barged in by a tugboat, off loaded into those tanks you see, and then pumped into delivery trucks for the proverbial “last mile.”
That’s also just about the dead bang center of the Greenpoint Oil Spill, in relation to the bulkheads of Newtown Creek that you’re looking at, at Greenpoint’s Apollo Street. Just east of here is the spot where the US Coast Guard spotted oil oozing from the bulkheads in the 1970’s, kicking off a decades long process which would eventually result in the entirety of Newtown Creek being named as a Federal Superfund site.
There’s a sediment bed down there under the water which contains a lot of gunk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one is looking across the Newtown Creek at Long Island City from the bulkheads at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Brooklyn, where Newtown Creek Alliance is now headquartered. That’s Sims Metal Recycling on the Queens side. From a maritime point of view, this is still an acutely active and well navigated section of the Newtown Creek. There’s multiple daily visits to the nearby Whale Creek tributary by NYC DEP sludge boats, tug and barge activity due to the presence of Sims in Queens, and Allocco Recycling in Greenpoint.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – a single barge carries the equivalent cargo of up to thirty eight semi trucks. That’s a lot of junk!
As you may have guessed by now, break time is over, and I’m once again communing with my beloved Newtown 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.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
morbid shade
A long overdue visit to Calvary Cemetery, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Consecrated by Archbishop “Dagger” John Hughes in 1848, who personally conducted the first interment (of literally millions) here in LIC’s Calvary Cemetery, this was and is the primary burying ground of the Roman Catholic Church in NYC. That first funeral was for an Irish immigrant named Esther Ennis, who is said to have died of a broken heart at her flat on Manhattan’s Clinton Street. Pictured above and below are views of the original part of the RC Church’s sprawling funereal complex, the “Saint Calixtus” or “First Calvary” division, found in the Blissville section of Long Island City. There are three other sections of Calvary, which are found nearby in the neighboring community of Woodside to the east. That large dome poking up through the bare tree limbs in the shot above is the Almirall Chapel, built in 1908.
The dome is forty feet across, eighty eight feet tall, and is capped by a statue of Christ the Redeemer created by a sculptress named Merro Beatrice Wilson. Ms. Wilson’s gender is mentioned for a reason, as it’s a pretty extraordinary thing for the Roman Catholic Church of that era to have handed out such a prominent assignment to a female artist. Conversely, the New York Archdiocese of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a very different organization than it is now, politically speaking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
During the second half of the 19th century, it was not uncommon for Calvary Cemetery to handle anywhere between fifty and one hundred funerals a day. The chaplain of the cemetery, named Reverend Hennessy, lived in a house found on the northeastern side of the grounds along with his staff – who were apparently monks and young priests.
Hennessy is also buried at the cemetery he devoted himself to, incidentally. His monument is white marble, adorned with delicate carvings depicting his priestly vestments. The monument hasn’t weathered well, what with the acidic rain and industrial pollutants produced by nearby factories found along the notorious Newtown Creek. Generally, marble in Calvary looks like melting ice cream, whereas granite seems to be fairly invulnerable to the atmospherics.
Fashions come and go. Hemlines, sideburns, hairstyles etc. Same thing occurs with mortuary architecture. A fad or fashion which seems, evidentiary speaking, to have occurred between the 1870’s and about 1900 was to erect enormous obelisk markers for subterrene family tombs. There’s a plane of these obelisks, right in the center of the place. Hawks like to hang out on them, waiting for rabbits to pop up from underground hidey-holes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking roughly westward, towards Manhattan. You can just see Newtown Creek and the Pulaski Bridge peeking out from above the memorial stones. This particular section of the cemetery has been used as the set for dozens and dozens of television and movie funerals. Vito Corleone’s funeral happened to the east of this spot, nearby the Johnston Memorial, but this is where Spider Man’s Uncle Ben, Batman’s parents… i can’t even begin to list them all.
By the way – Is it just me, or has the Manhattan skyline been utterly screwed up forever by Hudson Yards and that monstrosity going up behind the Chrysler Building?
“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.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
summoned something
Blissville, baby, Blissville.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the “have to’s” last week, mentioned yesterday, was to help a friend and sometimes colleague – who is both an ornithological enthusiast and a professional advocate for the feathered population of New York City – around a certain cemetery in Blissville which a humble narrator has grown quite familiar with. A “birding” expedition was in the offing, and one offered to help her with a good pathway through the place which would visit places where I had observed flocking occur in the past.
As is my habit, the camera was deployed for action. Observe above: the pavement along Review Avenue, which is meant for both bikes and pedestrians to use… I have got to get one of those “Game of Thrones” style shame bells, man.
Shame… DING… NYC DOT… DING… Shame…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While I was cooling my heels waiting for my friend to show up, the usual Newtown Creek/DUGABO/Greenpoint Avenue Bridge traffic madness was unfolding. The shot above depicts two television prop cars. You can tell they’re tv props, as the NYPD cruiser is designated as “27th pct.” There isn’t a 27th pct., except on TV, and it’s the one that the “Law and Order” family of shows is based in.
This is about the time my friend showed up, so we headed off to the cemetery to forge a path for her ornithological type pursuits.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Y’know what? It’s been a really, really long time since I’ve been in Calvary Cemetery, here in LIC’s Blissville section, alongside that fabulous cataract of municipal neglect known to all the children of Brooklyn and Queens as the lugubrious Newtown Creek. It’s also been a long time since I wrote a sentence in that manner.
Y’know what else? June of this year, the Newtown Pentacle will be ten years old.
“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.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
The Newtown Pentacle 