The Newtown Pentacle

Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi

Archive for the ‘Photowalk’ Category

Project Firebox 97

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An ongoing catalog of New York’s endangered Fireboxes.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This bad boy hangs out on a corner in Maspeth, Queens. Should have stayed in school, but you can’t complain about the road you’re on when you get started. Kay sera sera. Props to the scarlet.

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Written by Mitch Waxman

November 23, 2013 at 7:30 am

not conjecture

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Preternatural darkness and solemnitude, that’s the ticket.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Under assault from all quarters, condemned to waiting for everyone else to finish eating before I might scoop up discarded scraps from beneath the master’s table, go I. Seldom considered except as an after thought, your humble narrator is nevertheless always watching from the depth of shadow, day and night alike- staring out through a monocular lens. If most knew what I’ve met lurking out here, in the night, they would stoutly lock their windows and doors. Shadowed groups of anonymous men huddle in doorways, whispering to each other in languages which were ancient in the Americas in the uncounted millennia before Columbus, lit only by sodium lamps on high.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A wandering mendicant, clad in a filthy black raincoat and armored in a skin of calcified scar tissue, the cold waste offers naught but nepenthe to one such as myself. Industrial quarters, such as the ill fortuned section of Long Island City pictured in todays posting which are routinely transversed and travelled by this lonely pedestrian, offer nothing but opportunity when the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself is occluded by the earth. The sodium lamp illumination be damned, City Hall has declared, and all the street lamps will soon be replaced with newer and so called energy efficient ones. One worries about the impending arrival of these LED street lamps in NYC, and the sociological and psychological effects which the cold flicker and narrow wavelengths of light typically offered by such devices will have on the human hive.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It is a firm belief, dearly held, that it is possible to induce madness architecturally. If this statement strikes you as hyperbole, consider how the crypto fascist teachings of LeCorbusier led to the creation of the monolithic columns of the city housing projects and the cultural degradations suffered by those whom fate has entrapped within them. When all of NewYork is awash in LED light, with its peculiarly cool color and perceptual flickering bouncing to and from the mirror walls of condominium towers, what will their strange radiances do to the minds of those of us who dwell in the deep nocturne? Don’t worry about me, I like it dark and scary, and enjoy the expressions of madness and the exultation of chaos which the humans create.

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Written by Mitch Waxman

November 19, 2013 at 11:10 am

no exit

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Maritime Sunday leaves every thirty minutes.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The seldom considered Staten Island Ferry – the most popular tourist destination in New York City – transiting forth and back from St. George on… Staten Island… to the Whitehall terminal located on the island of Manhattan. This shot from the archives depicts the latter leg of the transit, and provides for the opportunity to offer a rousing Maritime Sunday “huzzah” to the crews that handle the job.

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no fooling

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It’s trash time, here in the Newtown Pentacle.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Packer trucks are what the garbage guys call vehicles like the familiar DSNY conveyances. Municipal vehicles whose ubiquity and constant presence renders them nearly invisible, they hide in plain sight, and most of us only notice them when they don’t show up or if we are instead stuck behind them in traffic. An archive shot, I acquired this one nearby Queens Blvd. at the border of Woodside.

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Written by Mitch Waxman

November 14, 2013 at 7:30 am

wildly over

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Maritime Sunday navigates out from the archives.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Buchanan 1 was built in 1967 and weighs 191 tons. This photo is from 2007, and pulled from the extensive Newtown Pentacle photographic archives of NY Harbor. A humble narrator is currently enjoying a little “me time” and apologizes for the occasional recycling of older content, but even a motormouth like me needs to take a short break now and again. Anyway, Maritime Sunday.

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Written by Mitch Waxman

November 10, 2013 at 7:39 am