Archive for the ‘Photowalks’ Category
leaping shadows
Lets talk about the Kosciuszcko Bridge, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since the big bridge over Newtown Creek’s 77th birthday is coming up – August 23rd for the vulgarly curious – one decided to walk over and through Calvary Cemetery into West Maspeth the other day and check out the latest progress which the NYS DOT and their contractors are making on replacing it. The Kosciuszcko Bridge replacement project is humming along.
As a note, this post represents no special access or anything, just some specialized knowledge about Newtown Creek and the points of view thereupon which I am privy to. If there’s an angle of view on the Creek I don’t know about by this point, I will buy you a drink for showing it to me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit, one has been keeping a running tally of posts about the project.
To start – this 2012 post tells you everything you could want to know about Robert Moses, Fiorella LaGuardia, and the origins of the 1939 model Kosciuszko Bridge. Just before construction started, I swept through both the Brooklyn and Queens sides of Newtown Creek in the area I call “DUKBO” – Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp. Here’s a 2014 post, and another, showing what things used to look like on the Brooklyn side, and one dating back to 2010, and from 2012 discussing the Queens side – this. Construction started, and this 2014 post offers a look at things. There’s shots from the water of Newtown Creek, in this June 2015 post, and in this September 2015 post, which shows the bridge support towers rising. Additionally, this post from March of 2016 detailed the action on the Queens side. Most recently, here’s one from May of 2016, and one from June of the same year.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The roadway which will be the easterly BQE section leading out of Queens is now largely in place. There’s still a bunch of work going on up there, presumptively it involves the sort of rebar work observed in the May 2016 post linked to above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shape of the cable stay section of the new bridge is beginning to form up as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The steel sections are prefabricated and shipped to the job site via flat bed truck, where they’re then hoisted up and attached to the towers and cables.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking down 56th road from Blissville into Maspeth. The area in the left hand side of the shot used to be an NYPD tow yard, which was a great example of NYC’s macabre sense of humor. NYPD tow pounds are typically in places which you can’t reach without a car, and since they’ve just taken your car…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking north towards Sunnyside from 56th road. You can really discern the difference in height between the 1939 and modern bridges in the shot above. Apparently, part of the traffic engineering underlying the new bridge project is to eliminate the steep incline from the approaches.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking south towards Brooklyn, while still on 56th road. The property fence line I’m shooting over is the former home of the Phelps Dodge refinery, which is said to be a particularly toxic hot spot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bit closer to the water, on another part of the former Phelps Dodge properties which isn’t quite so “hot,” pollution wise. This is the parking lot of a wholesaler catering to the restaurant trade.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The cable stay span of the new bridge is growing steadily towards Brooklyn in the shot above. To me, it looks like it’s going to be connected to the Brooklyn side ramp fairly soon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A close up on the ramp, and you can see the itty bitty construction guys at work right on the edge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Same perspective, but wide angle. That’s the Newtown Creek flowing below, and we are looking west towards Manhattan. Again, notice the height differential between the two spans.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking south again, this time from Maspeth’s 43rd street. The contractors have a lot of their equipment and prefabricated materials staged out here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back on 43rd street, but this time from the very edge of the project site, looking south along the spine of the BQE.
There you are.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, August 14th, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, August 24, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. –
Port Newark Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
curious explanations
Neither here nor there, and feeling pretty burnt out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was out and about conducting a tour of Greenpoint’s East River and Newtown Creek coasts when a vast amount of smoke was noticed rising out of Sunnyside last week. Some of the members of my group engaged their portable data terminals to inquire about the plume, and it emerged that there was a warehouse fire underway on 37th street near the corner of Queens Blvd. Having missed the actual conflagration, one did happen to wander past the aftermath the next day and a few shots were gathered.
Oddly enough, FDNY was still on scene, no doubt in cautious anticipation of flare ups in the still hot rubble. Luckily for the fire fellas, the fire took place directly across the street from Gallagher’s gentlemens club, cause y’know, for when you need to use the toilet or something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It would be a show of serious remiss for me to not mention that one of the firefighters on scene was perhaps the largest human being I’ve ever seen. I’m talking pro wrestler big. I’m talking David vs Goliath big, Batman big. Like seven feet tall and pure muscle big, He was taller than De Blasio big.
I’m talking “he claps his hands to put out fires, like the Hulk” big.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By all reports, this was a fairly huge conflagration, and even the biggest fireman in the world wouldn’t be able to do anything but contain and control the blaze. The company based in the one story warehouse style building hereabouts was involved in the cabinetry business, I’m led to believe, and the raw materials stored in the structure were all wood based – which the FDNY would refer to simply as “fuel.” My buddies over at the Sunnyside Post were on scene during the event.
Check out their shots and videos of the raging fire here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I can tell you that the day after the fire, the smoot smell of burnt wood still stained the air, but that the businesses next door were open for business. For those of you reading this who live in North Brooklyn, I’m sure you’ve already done the math on what probably happened here, based on experience.
Long story short, the real estate guys have been eying this still industrial stretch of Queens Boulevard for a while now, and their interest in an area usually renders it quite combustible.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My prediction for the next decade – based around what I’ve seen in LIC, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint over the last decade and a half – is that the industrial neighborhoods surrounding the Sunnyside Yards are going to be seeing a lot of largish fires occurring. The great thing about immolation is that it’s so costly to repair a burned up structure that the only sensible thing to do is to declare it a total loss and sell the land to a developer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Truly, we are doomed by the ambitions of our lessers and their base short term desires. It’s all so depressing, and it leaves me (and us) totally burned out.
Like a leaf, you.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, August 14th, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, August 24, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. –
Port Newark Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
proferred food
Boredom, self hatred, and megalomaniacal fantasy – in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Possessed of a somewhat solitary and depressive personality type, a humble narrator is often forced to lurch forth onto the streets in search of diversion. These excursions are necessary, lest a psychological tumult be allowed to form behind the eyes and between the ears. Proprioception for one such as myself views the world thusly, with everything below the vault of the skull considered as somehow external – arms, legs, gut, and all the rest are merely there. “I” am found a few inches back from and equidistant to the ocular, nasal, mandibular, and auditory apparatus.
I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my regular walks involves heading over to the Hells Gate section of the East River in Astoria from Newtown Pentacle HQ, which is found on the south eastern side of the neighborhood nearby its borders with LIC, Sunnyside, and Woodside. It’s a short walk, by my standards, which – there and back again – usually consumes about two hours of my time and provides some much needed physical exercise.
Saying that, I don’t always process this particular perambulatory route as being a particularly productive one from a photographic point of view.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My colleague Kevin Walsh from Forgotten-NY often wanders through residential neighborhoods and has a fine time of it, but one such as myself shuns populated places. A humble narrator enjoys the howling winds and concrete devastations, and is drawn to lonely, damned, or deserted places. Give me the abandoned, the derelict, the despoiled, the barren, the broken, the horrible. Oh to dance merrily along the poison shoreline and shattered bulkheads of some flowing gelatinous horror, with the night gaunts…
Of course, one cannot spend all of his time at Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Truth be told, one of the things that draws me time and again to Hells Gate is that it’s the antechamber of the “House of Moses,” where mighty Triborough reigns. One of the true signs of a growing madness is working on a “theory of everything,” and I’m afraid to report that one is indeed going down that road. White laboratory coats, long black vinyl gloves, and a series of goggles are on order at a certain Internet retailer named for a South American river system, and genetic samples of the long deceased Mr. Moses are in the freezer.
My plan is to clone the master builder, and release an army of “Mosei” upon the world. They shall pave over everything and create a thousand lane highway circling the globe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My Moses army will pay no mind to complaints from the citizenry, instead they will crush all opposition. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” will be their mantra as they pour concrete for a highway whose path goes right through St. Peter’s in Rome on its way to and through Mecca on its way towards China. The Great Wall? Highway arches will be carved through it, but they will fall short of allowing buses to pass beneath them.
Part the Red Sea? The Mosei will turn the Red Sea into a parking lot dwarfing those of Riis Park or Jones Beach.. Enough of this hippie dippie environmentalist fad, let the automobile reign! The Mosei won’t lead a chosen people, instead they’ll choose which people to lead and where they’ll be led to.
Saying that, Amazon claims they’re out of stock on the mad scientist goggles, so my evil plans will just have to sit on the back burner. Someday, I tell you, someday… a real rain will come…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Megalomaniacal fantasy notwithstanding, one still had a rather formidable workload waiting for him back at HQ, so my sojourn to the forbidden northern coast of Queens was abbreviated and my scuttle turned back towards overly familiar vicinities. For some reason, every time I cross 31st street on my way home from Hells Gate, it feels like I’m passing through the gates of Mordor.
It’s probably the perennial shadows, or the smell of sulfur.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Astoria Blvd., just before Steinway Street, this amusing signage was encountered on the door of a laundromat. One of the fun parts of living in a neighborhood renowned for its enormous immigrant population and legendary “diversity” is signage written by people who have less than a passing familiarity with English language grammar. Most of the neighbors just spell things the way that they sound to them, as is evinced above.
I like to believe that only “cos players” can piss therein.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, August 14th, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, August 24, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. –
Port Newark Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
accomplished whatever
whatever, dude.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you might discern from the shot above, Our Lady of the Pentacle has a lovely set of tomatoes. She’s been busy growing stuff all summer, here at HQ in Astoria. Today’s post is a rather light one, and it’s being published late to boot, which long time readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – will tell you is indicative of an enormous amount of new photos and posts being in production at the moment.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Happily did I observe a flurry of published articles over the last week, proclaiming the Bronx as the new frontier for the Real Estate Industrial Complex. Hopefully, the ruination of Brooklyn and Queens will ebb a bit, as the REBNY shit flies find themselves attracted to those greener pastures and lower property evaluations that are found to the north.
Robert Moses did his level best to annihilate the Bronx decades ago, just as he did to Queens back in the 1930’s and 40’s. Perhaps the REBNY people can finish the job, and finish twisting City Hall’s knife into the “final frontier” by eliminating actual affordable housing in the name of building “affordable housing.” Carrion eaters follow the fecund scent of decaying meat after all, and despite their best efforts they haven’t managed to totally annihilate Brooklyn or Queens yet – they’ve just driven property prices so high that no one can afford to build anything here anymore. Bronx people, if you need to talk, ring us up.
The shit flies will be promising you new schools, community spaces, and waterfront parks – make sure you get them first, before they start to build the condos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
How green does your garden grow? Whatever, dude, whatever.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, August 14th, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
unequal heating
Creek Week concludes, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Kosciuszcko Bridge replacement project pictured above, with the 1939 Robert Moses model bridge providing a backdrop to the under construction cable stay model. That’s the Brooklyn side, for the curious. This is a $1.2 billion replacement effort, “fast tracked” by Governor Cuomo, which is intended to replace what’s considered to be the most dangerous bridge in New York State – which happens to carry hundreds of thousands of vehicle trips a day as the Brooklyn Queens Expressway runs across its 2.1 mile long structure (along with its approaches).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were captured while onboard a NY Water Taxi hired for the evening by the Open House NY organization, and my colleague T. Willis Elkins and I were onboard to represent Newtown Creek Alliance and narrate to two sold out crowds. The second trip was heading back out from the Newtown Creek towards the East River just as sunset was occurring, and as always – Newtown Creek was and is a visual spectacular.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been trying to capture as many angles and shots as possible of the old Kosciuszcko Bridge for a couple of years now, simply because within the next 24-36 months it will have been eradicated from common memory.
This whole “Newtown Creek Historian” business isn’t just about revealing the past, it’s about leaving behind a visual record for those who haven’t been born yet about what the place looked like during its superfund and early 21st century transformational period.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve mentioned it before, but the plan which the State DOT has put forward is that once the eastern side of the new bridge is complete, they are going to reroute the BQE onto it. Then, they’re going to demolish the 1939 model, and in its footprint, build the western section of the new cable stay bridge. The great news about that is that there is going to be a pedestrian and bicycle path on the western side of the bridge.
One looks forward to walking the camera across, and getting aerial shots from up there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The burning thermonuclear eye of God itself was setting in the west as our NY Water Taxi navigated back towards the East River. That’s Blissville in Queens on the right hand side of the shot above, and the former location of not just Charles Pratt’s “Queens County Oil Works” but just about the very spot where the first large scale oil refinery in the United States – Abraham Gesner’s “North American Kerosene Gas Light Company” was founded.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the Brooklyn or Greenpoint side of Newtown Creek, the former home of the Standard Oil Company of New York and birthplace of what would be one day known as Mobil Oil is closest to the camera, which are now the ExxonMobil Greenpoint Remediation Project properties at 400 Kingsland Avenue.
Sitting on part of the former oil company properties in Greenpoint is the NYC DEP’s Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, largest and newest of NYC’s 14 sewer plants.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUGABO – or Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp – is the heart of petroleum country on Newtown Creek. Greenpoint Avenue heads west into Brooklyn, terminating at the East River at Transmitter Park, whereas it continues into Queens and once having crossed Queens Blvd. – it transmogrifies into Roosevelt Avenue and continues all the way out into Flushing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From a maritime industrial point of view, the DUGABO area surrounding the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge is probably one of the busiest sections of Newtown Creek in the 21st century. SimsMetal and Allocco Recycling host regular tug and barge traffic, as does Metro fuel.
In the distance is the Pualski Bridge and the towers of the Shining City of Manhattan.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, August 6th, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. –
Insalubrious Valley Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 14th, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 