Archive for the ‘Photowalks’ Category
sprang suddenly
Tiamat be praised, it’s Thursday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A visit to the Penny Bridge site in Greenpoint, said site pictured above, qualified as my turn around point for a fairly long walk last weekend. “Turning points” are critical for me when out on one of my photo walks, since if you choose the wrong one you’re walking through a boring residential neighborhood. Nothing wrong with residential, of course, but I don’t like taking pictures of people’s houses. I do like taking pictures of “the People’s house” as in our commonly held properties like Government facilities or various privately held but often publicly traded industrial locations. I like a good waste transfer station or the odd oil terminal, I tell ya.
Luckily for me, the new Kosciuszcko Bridge hosts a pedestrian and bicycle lane, so instead of having to walk all the way to Grand Street to cross back into Queens I can reattach at Laurel Hill Blvd. and get home via Sunnyside’s 43rd street rather than having to loop through Maspeth and Woodside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The view from up on the Kosciuszcko Bridge is commanding, and worthy of your attention if you haven’t been up there yet. You can pick up the pedestrian/bike lane on Laurel Hill Blvd. in Queens, or Meeker Avenue in Brooklyn. A couple of new playground/parks will soon be opening under the bridge in both boroughs.
I’ve mentioned this a few times during the recent tribulations – the communities surrounding Newtown Creek have found their way to the waterway during the pandemic, and I’ve seen far more people than normal just walking around or riding their bikes in recent months. Does a humble narrator good seeing this, but… joggers in Industrial Maspeth? Yikes.
Be careful, I tell them all, Newtown Creek is an easy place to get dead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
High above it though, lots and lots of people are enjoying pleasant strolls across and over the Newtown Creek. Seriously, if you haven’t walked over the new bridge at sunset/dusk, you’re missing one of the best free shows in NYC. If you get lucky, there’s a chance that tugboats and or rail traffic might be moving around. I like me a good scenic overlook, I does.
May all your Thursdays be happy days, back tomorrow.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, June 15th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
undone once
Whoop-dee-doo, it’s Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It took a bit of hustle, but one got to Penny Bridge just in time for dusk. Found at the northern terminus of Meeker Avenue in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section, the Penny Bridge site is – as the name would imply – the former locale wherein one would, prior to 1939, encounter a movable bridge crossing Newtown Creek whose toll was famously a penny. The Penny Bridge’s purpose was negated by construction of the original Kosciuszcko Bridge, which was originally called the Meeker Avenue or New Penny Bridge. The Penny Bridge site has received a terrific amount of attention from my colleagues at Newtown Creek Alliance over the last few years. There are plantings, regular cleanups of illegal dumping, and there’s even a picnic table there. Check it out sometime, if you find yourself in the neighborhood. The deeded owner of the spot is actually the New York City Department of Transportation – the DOT – so it’s actually your property since they are merely our collective employees.
Get to Penny Bridge at the right time, and the shot above is one of the views you’ll receive.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking eastwards from Penny Bridge, you’ll see the new Kosciuszcko Bridge, with its unearthly chromatic radiation. The Brooklyn shore is on the right hand side of the shot, with Queens filling most of the frame. The Kosciuszcko Bridge marks the delineation between the Blissville section of Long Island City and the West Maspeth/Berlin section of Maspeth. The bridge carries the Brooklyn Queens Expressway over the Newtown Creek, and is found 2.1 miles from the East River.
The lighting package installed on the Kosciuszcko Bridge is currently rotating through a chromatic scale – yellow, green, blue, purple, red. One has been trying to discern if there’s a hidden message embedded in the frequencies of light and the order and speed of their repetitions. Often when staring at the weird colorations, a sudden irresistible desire to purchase NYS Savings Bonds rises in me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Careful attention is paid to the shadowed shorelines. Sooner or later, I will get a photo of something, something impossible. Again – rumor and innuendo, nothing solid enough to pass on. Yet.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, June 15th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
hadn’t reckoned
Thunderation, its Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One wore sunglasses. This is an increasingly rare statement for one such as myself, who has been scuttling about in the dark night for so long. Friday last, a humble narrator woke up in one of his dark moods, soon realizing that it was time to eschew the company of the humans and seek the succor of the Newtown Creek. Camera batteries were charged up, lenses polished, and my shoe laces were tied tightly. HQ was vacated, a course decided, and approximately 17,000 steps and six hours later one returned to Astoria with his desire to “do something” sated.
Before you might ask, the face mask is worn while in a center of habitation, such as Astoria or Sunnyside. Once I’ve passed through and into the deserted industrial zones of Newtown Creek, the obvious solitude encountered allows one to put the thing away and store it in a pocket. This is not offered as any sort of guidance or advice, incidentally, it’s what I’m doing. You do you, snowflake.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One still refuses to climb onboard a Subway, but I did hire a ride from a ride share taxi last week. The driver had created a plastic bubble for himself, and I insisted on opening all the windows in my compartment, while wearing a mask. The latest medical malady which I’m enjoying includes a bit of arthritic pain in my left ankle and foot – which is the same extremity that hosted that shattered big toe at the end of last year – and after several miles of loping about the ankle pain really began to speak up and demand attention. Discretion and valor calculations were made and I decided to slice off two miles of getting back home by dropping a $10 bill for the ride.
I am possessed with a notoriously high level of tolerance for pain, incidentally, something which various Doctors have commented on over the years when they were presented with whatever bleeding stump I’ve brought them to fix. I’m fairly sure that what I’m experiencing in the ankle would cripple most, but a humble narrator is made of sterner stuff. About once a day I like to let my mental discipline slip and allow all of the various aches and pains a voice. That’s when I drop to the floor and whimper like a wounded seal. My dog thinks it’s a game, and she lies next to me and also howls.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was racing the descent of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself as it slid behind New Jersey, in the name of getting to a certain spot along the Brooklyn shoreline of Newtown Creek for a dusk picture. Actually, for a series of dusk pictures. Pictured above, that’s the Metro Oil campus in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section with the Empire State Building peeking out behind it.
Noteworthy for a relative lack of atmospheric humidity, last Friday the gamey ankle wasn’t offering me any trouble. One strode the earth with vast and rapid movements, carrying his putrescent carcass mile after mile across the concretized devastations.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, June 15th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
night watch
Borden Avenue Bridge, #LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is in the process of a quarterly exercise, visiting all of the corners of the Newtown Creek watershed. I’ve been doing this for awhile now, quarterly, and certain areas in the Borough of Queens which host the Newtown Creek’s tributaries have been positively haunted by my nocturnal inspections during the recent tribulations we have all been enjoying. Oft repeated, Dutch Kills is a tributary of the nefarious Newtown Creek which branches off of the main trunk of that waterway some .7 of a mile from the East River and proceeds roughly 3/4 of a mile into the Long Island City section of Queens. The Borden Avenue Bridge is one of several retractile spans across Dutch Kills, retractile meaning that the roadway retreats for maritime access, and was built in 1908. It is owned and operated by the NYC Department of Transportation.
It’s my second favorite Newtown Creek Bridge, after the Grand Street Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One often comes here and scans the shorelines with a powerful flashlight. The eye shine of feral cats reflects back, but that’s not what one searches the rocky shores for. One is hesitant to describe the rumor which led to the activation of that pocket flashlight. You would think me credulous, or superstitious at best.
Suffice to say that some stories need to develop, and that still water may indeed run deep. I did take advantage of the fact that the local strip club remains closed, as the shot above was captured on their entryway steps.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Post facto gathering these shots of Dutch Kills, one has since been entertaining himself with walks heading both eastwards and southwards into Blissville and Greenpoint, with the product of said effort is being prepared for your consumption later this week.
As a note, today is the 130th 116th anniversary of the General Slocum disaster in 1890, 1904 for the historically minded amongst you. Thanks to George the Atheist for the fact checking on the date, not sure where I came up with 1890.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, June 15th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
roved abroad
Days in, nights out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Although you’d think that yesterday and today’s posts were shot in the same session, the photo captures are actually separated from each other by about 45 days. Just goes to show you how a humble narrator has been inhabiting the same nocturnal spaces for the last several months, and how many new holes in the fence at the Sunnyside Yards have appeared. One is absolutely desperate for novelty, distraction, and stimuli which does not cause me to reel in horror or disgust at the moment.
Those are Amtrak Northeast Corridor trains, overnighting at Sunnyside Yards. The building they sit next to is a bit of mystery to me, one which I’ve never actually bothered finding out the function of. I know too much about everything, and when I know nothing about something an effort is maintained to protect my ignorance thereof. It’s easier to know everything about something than to know nothing about something. Have I ever mentioned the “Lady Gaga Challenge”?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One purposefully ignores media saturated events like the Superbowl, and annually I try not to know which millionaires will be playing sports ball in the game. If I can make it till two or three days after the game before finding out teams/winners/losers, I’ve won the Super Bowl Challenge. The same goes for the TV series “Scrubs” which was apparently quite popular, but which I’ve excluded all knowledge of the production from entering my brain. The same for Lady Gaga, whom I know is a pop music star, but that’s it. I wouldn’t recognize her music, or even look at a photo and say “that’s Lady Gaga,” but I do know that her dad runs a restaurant at Grand Central Terminal because it’s virtually impossible to escape news cycles which causally mention celebrities.
Pictured above is a maintenance barn operated by the Amtrak people, which has suddenly become visible because of one of those new holes that has appeared in the fencelines at Sunnyside Yards. Again, thanks are offered to whoever it is at Amtrak that’s in charge of holes. Your efforts have made the Coronavirus interval bearable for me, holemaster.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A parting shot from another of the new holes, one which several photographic iterations of have been offered in recent months. I’ve been working on getting this shot right. Ideally, there will be a foggy night sometime, at which point I will check it off my list and say “got it.”
Back next week with some fresh stuff, hopefully, don’t know where or what yet. My plan is to wander around Queens this weekend, or perhaps ride a ferry. I don’t have ambitions anymore, it seems.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, June 8th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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 