Archive for the ‘Photowalks’ Category
being wakeful
At Astoria’s edge, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunday last, a humble narrator checked the weather forecast and realized quickly that this was likely going to be a fairly ghastly week as far as weather goes, and so packed up the night kit for an evening walk. My destination was not too far from HQ, a pedestrian bridge over the Grand Central Parkway which also overlooks St. Michael’s cemetery.
The shot above looks eastwards from the pedestrian bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the pedestrian bridge pictured above. While I was shooting this, a bus discharged one of the families staying at the Westway Hotel homeless shelter on the other side of the parkway. They had a kid who couldn’t have been more than five who was absolutely fascinated by what I was doing, although mom and dad couldn’t have cared less that their kid was talking to strangers. Nice kid, I have to say, and I felt bad for him that his family was in the circumstance that they’re in. At least they landed in a shelter based in a neighborhood that has supermarkets and small businesses to find work in, unlike Blissville.
I wished them a happy Easter and got back to my business.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As per usual, I was wearing the high visibility vest, before you ask.
There’s a sidewalk along the local access road alongside the highway (looking westwards above) which is scary as hell to walk down. The crash barriers stop on the other side of St. Michael’s driveway, and then you’re walking down an increasingly narrow sidewalk which in some places is no more than two feet in depth while traffic shoots right past you at speed. I did actually walk it the other night, which in retrospect was kind of a stupid move.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking down on cemetery property, lit by street lamps and passing vehicle lights.
The last time I took a shot from this location, probably about five years ago, that grave with the disturbing subsidence and the two safety cones was in precisely the same condition as it is today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bit of a longer shot looking south across a row of mausoleums at St. Michael’s. There’s a famous 20th century Mafia Don buried in one of those marble temples, as a note. The actual inspiration for “the Godfather” Vito Corleone, Frank Costello. In 1974, a rival named Carmine Gallante was alleged to have to have detonated explosives at Costello’s grave to settle an old score and announce his return to “the syndicate” after a long jail sentence.
Of course, there’s no such thing as the Mafia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking back towards the Grand Central, eastwards towards the East Elmhurst neighborhood.
The Grand Central is one of the arterial roads built by Robert Moses back in the 1930’s to guarantee high volume usage of the Triborough Bridge’s toll plazas. His engineers carved a trench through Astoria to carry the Grand Central, forever dividing the community into the Ditmars side on the north, and the Broadway side to the south.
Upcoming Tours and Events
April 14 – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
April 15- Newtown Creekathon – with Newtown Creek Alliance.
That grueling 13 and change mile death march through the bowels of New York City known as the “Newtown Creekathon” will be held on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. This will be quite an undertaking, last year half the crowd tagged out before we hit the half way point. Have you got what it takes the walk the enitre Newtown Creek?
Click here to reserve a spot on the Creekathon.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
frigid gust
Like a scorching case of incurable venereal disease, the Sunnyside Yards deck story is back in the news.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just last week, Crains New York Business reported that a development team had been anointed by the NYC EDC to helm the next stage of decking over the Sunnyside Yards and building the Mayor’s Death Star in the LIC section of Western Queens. Representatives of the EDC informed me that this report was erroneous, and that no partner has yet been chosen to explore the pathway laid out in their 2017 feasibility study.
I informed them that the Federal EPA had recently added Sunnsyide Yards to the Newtown Creek Superfund site as a “PRP,” or Potentially Responsible Party, alongside Exxon Mobil, the NYC DEP, National Grid and others as being responsible for the environmental degradation of the waterway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Remember, decking over the Sunnyside Yards has long been a dream for the Manhattan based Real Estate Industrial Complex. It’s 183 square acres of land which proponents of development describe as “ugly,” a “scar,” and “a wasteland surrounded by under utilized potential.” I remind them that it’s actually surrounded by LIC, Astoria, Dutch Kills, and Sunnyside. Then I remind them of the promises about affordable housing and community space that Council Member De Blasio made about the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn and which never materialized, or the self same Council Member and later Public Advocate’s overt resistance to both Newtown Creek and Gowanus being included on the Superfund list in the first place.
Odd position for the self proclaimed man of the people to hold, and one wonders if his relationship with the Toll brothers, Forest City Ratner, and other real estate developers had anything to do with it? Bill De Blasio is the Donald Trump of the left, I would offer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are mutiple bridges crossing the Sunnsyide Yards, this one carries 39th street, which becomes Steinway Street on the other side of Northern Blvd. See that eight story building at the left? It’s the Standard Motor Products building, the one with the Brooklyn Grange Rooftop farm on top of it. According to renderings offered in the EDC feasibility study, the deck at Sunnyside Yards at 39th street would be start one story higher than it. That would be considered the zero altitude point for the measuring of the forty to sixty story tall residential towers which the document also discusses.
At 43rd street and Barnett Avenue, in Sunnyside Gardens, the deck would start at eleven to twelve stories over the current street grade in Sunnyside Gardens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One would actually prefer the deck structure to fully resemble the cinematic Death Star, a vast sphere of steel with an enormous cannon aimed at New Jersey set into its face, as opposed to the idea of seeing more of the banal glassine boxes typical of recent development activity in Long Island City go up. I’m sure the Mayor could tap Disney for a few campaign donations in return for the free advertising to finance the vainglorious Presidential ambitions he’s currently nursing – if he were to build his Death Star in Queens at Sunnyside Yards. He’d be able to claim that he built “affordable” housing in the Death Star.
The Mayor could start calling himself Darth Equity then.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My understanding is that the actual Sith Lord of New York – the Dark Prince of Albany – remains adamantly opposed to allowing the Mayor his folly here in Queens, but I’m positive it’s not out of altruism.
As a reminder, this decking project defeated the ambitions of Robert Moses, Nelson Rockefeller, and Michael Bloomberg as well as a host of lesser powers and potentates over the last century. Robert Moses, famously, threw his hands in the air and said “it’s just too complicated,” and that was just in terms of trying to site the Long Island Expressway over the yards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One looks forward to the day when Bill De Blasio is done sharing his wisdom and sage guidance with NYC, and moves on to share his special set of skills and insights with the rest of the country. Like Donald Trump, he will make a series of promises he never intends to honor, and will disappoint those who believe in his sophomoric and disingenuous promises. The reality that the Sunnyside Yards plan was actually offered by and reintroduced by Michael Bloomberg’s right hand man Dan Doctoroff in a NY Times Op-Ed in the current Mayor’s first year in office, rather than the idea having explosively emerged (in the manner of Athena) from the fertile imaginings of Mr. De Blasio, is something unmentioned by City Hall.
Also, if we’ve got the money to do this, let’s fix the Subways and NYCHA first?
Sum up – Darth Equity, the Mayor is a Dope from Park Slope, and he still wants to build a Death Star in Queens.
Upcoming Tours and Events
April 14 – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
April 15- Newtown Creekathon – with Newtown Creek Alliance.
That grueling 13 and change mile death march through the bowels of New York City known as the “Newtown Creekathon” will be held on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. This will be quite an undertaking, last year half the crowd tagged out before we hit the half way point. Have you got what it takes the walk the enitre Newtown Creek?
Click here to reserve a spot on the Creekathon.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
fearsome combination
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, I tell ya.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been preternaturally busy for the last couple of weeks, with lots to do and all sorts of people to see. Unfortunately, couple that with the unpredictable sort of weather NYC has been throwing at us all, and a humble narrator has been playing a lot of photographic catch up. Before you ask, it’s mainly been a schedule of evening and weekend meetings that I’ve had to be present at, pertaining to issues affecting Western Queens that I’m interested in or involved with.
I’ve been obliged to annoy politicians and policemen, priests and potentates, and various members of both the proletarian and plebeian classes recently.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One never wants to be one of those people who is involved with “everything,” rather there’s just three or four causes which I’m instead laser focused in on. You’ve got your Newtown Creek, your mass transit, your “No, Mr. Mayor, we don’t want you to deck over the Sunnyside Yards,” and of late – the horrible tale of what NYC is trying to do to Blissville.
The shot above was captured in Roosevelt not too long ago, while waiting to attend a meeting to discuss transit. The puppy was cute and a bouncing ball of husky energy, but the items it was reacting to were a roadside memorial for a teenager who was struck and killed by a hit and run driver.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Flurries of activity wherein I have to act like a “reg’lar hooman” such as these involve a lot of traveling about the great urban hive. Part of the reason that I have become so interested in transit issues in recent years involves the fact that whereas I don’t have a regular commute, I actually have to figure out the different connections and routings for getting to and from unfamiliar locales from Astoria on a routine basis. A realization about MTA’s core issue thusly emerged.
MTA was formed by New York State to consolidate multiple bankrupt light commuter railroads and bus services into a government run entity about fifty years ago. In that time, MTA has sought to maintain and preserve these inefficient and money losing operations more or less in the exact state and manner as private capital failed to do prior to the “nationalization.” The IND and IRT systems which make up the Subway system are still treated as two seperate entities, as if these were still the days of the dual contracts. There is no plan, moving forward, to find ways to combine the system or find savings from the concurrence. It gets worse when you look at Metro North and Long Island Railroad.
Upcoming Tours and Events
April 14 – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
April 15- Newtown Creekathon – with Newtown Creek Alliance.
That grueling 13 and change mile death march through the bowels of New York City known as the “Newtown Creekathon” will be held on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. This will be quite an undertaking, last year half the crowd tagged out before we hit the half way point. Have you got what it takes the walk the enitre Newtown Creek?
Click here to reserve a spot on the Creekathon.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
house below
Me? I’m the curious type.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To begin with, my understanding of such things is that the City’s water system offer sufficient pressure to carry water about six stories up from the water mains in the street. Anything higher than that requires one to get clever. In tall buildings, electric pumps bring the wet stuff up to the roof, where NYC’s iconic water tanks get filled up. The return pipe from the water tank goes down into the building and fills the plumbing that supplies both drinking water and fire suppression systems. The water towers themselves are apparently quite filthy inside, and seldom inspected. A NY Times investigation back in 2014 took samples from the sedimentation found inside these wooden tanks, which revealed the presence of Fecal Coliform and E. Coli bacteria in 5 of the 12 that they tested. Theoretically, the bacteria found in the water towers got there due to intrusion by critters (squirrels, birds, etc.).
Who can guess, all there is, that might be sloshing around up there?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are two firms who pretty much own the water tower business in NYC, Rosenwach Tank and the Isseks Brothers, or so I’m told. I’m also led to believe that the average load for these tanks are about ten thousand gallons, but it depends on the installation and the size of the building being served. You supposedly get about three to four decades of life out of a water tower, depending on conditions and regular maintenance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Here’s a bit of water tower trivia for you, lords and ladies.
Notice how many steel rings there are at the bottom of the water tower as opposed to the top?
The uneven spacing is due to the aggregate weight of the water held within the thing. The weight of the water in the top third of the tank presses down on that found in the middle, both of which compress the stuff at the very bottom. Some fairly astronomical pressure exists at the very bottom of these big barrels, requiring extra structural support.
Upcoming Tours and Events
Newtown Creekathon – hold the date for me on April 15th.
That grueling 13 and change mile death march through the bowels of New York City known as the “Newtown Creekathon” will be held on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. This will be quite an undertaking, last year half the crowd tagged out before we hit the half way point. Have you got what it takes the walk the enitre Newtown Creek?
Keep an eye on the NCA events page for more information.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
weird cadence
The night time is the Creek time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, one had a City based event to photograph last week and an event in Greenpoint the same evening. At the start of the Greenpoint leg of my day, I apologized to the filmmaker whose work Newtown Creek Alliance was screening that night (as well as my colleagues) as I’d be disappearing for a few minutes while the projector was running.
I’d already seen the film, at a screening held at the Greater Astoria Historic Society last year, and I had permission from the owner of the property where we were doing the event to get down to his bulkheads – which face out on the fabulous Newtown Creek – and crack out a few shots.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A former petrochemical based lubricant mill, found next door to a modern day biofuel depot, the site I was at is in the section of the Newtown Creek which one refers to as “DUGABO” or Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp. That crazy nor’easter had blown through the day before, leaving behind a layer of now rotting snow and slush.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next door at the biofuel company, specifically Metro Oil, an articulated tug and fuel barge were tied up and pumping material from the on shore storage tanks into the barge. On the horizon, in the shot above, is Calvary Cemetery in Blissville on the Queens side of Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking roughly northwards, that’s the Long Island Expressway behind Railroad Avenue, with the Sapphire megalith of Long Island City and all the new residential towers surrounding it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Northwest, and the Sims Metal Management facility.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
West towards the Shining City of Manhattan, past the Allocco Recycling company bulkheads.
Upcoming Tours and Events
Newtown Creekathon – hold the date for me on April 15th.
That grueling 13 and change mile death march through the bowels of New York City known as the “Newtown Creekathon” will be held on that day, and I’ll be leading the charge as we hit every little corner and section of the waterway. This will be quite an undertaking, last year half the crowd tagged out before we hit the half way point. Have you got what it takes the walk the enitre Newtown Creek?
Keep an eye on the NCA events page for more information.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 