Archive for the ‘Photowalks’ Category
terrifying delight
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunset is fairly spectacular this time of year, if you get your timing correct. A recent scuttle found one heading towards the familiar destination of Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary in Long Island City’s Degnon Terminal section. This is a familiar path for me, and is one of the regular night time walks which I’ve been engaging in throughout the endless pandemic months.
That water tower pictured above is on the roof of the Standard Motor Products Building, which also hosts the Brooklyn Grange Urban farm.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I was crossing the Honeywell Truss over the Sunnyside Yards, which is one of the street bridges spanning the rail complex which connects Skillman Avenue with Northern Blvd., I got the fiery skies I was hoping for.
One was, of course, about a half hour late relative as to where I wanted to be when the sky went orange. I really wanted to be near the water, but had a bit of trouble dragging my butt out of HQ on time. This is one of the effects that the pandemic months has created for me, an inability to rush about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s been a while since I’ve left HQ with the entire photo kit on my back – y’know, the tripod and everything. A point was made of intentionally using my zoom lenses while walking, since most of what I’ve been shooting over the last few months has been accomplished with two prime lenses. Given that I’ve brought a long lens out of retirement, I’m trying to mix things up a bit and “reach out and touch something” with it.
As mentioned, a bit of travel is in the cards for me in September. Definitely going to be visiting the pretty city of Pittsburgh with its amazing collection of bridges and funiculars, Burlington up in Vermont is on my list, as is Washington D.C. If I can make it work, I might come back from Pittsburgh via Chicago. I also have a wedding to attend in a rural section of New York State next month. Exciting, no?
“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.
doubtfully shaped
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What with the crazy heat wave and other obligations last week, which included having to quarantine myself for 3 days until I could get tested for Covid – because an Anti-Vaccine idiot friend of mine decided that his freedom to avoid vaccination trumped mine to not be needlessly exposed to a plague – a humble narrator is a bit behind on his schedule. Accordingly, for today and tomorrow’s posts I’m reaching into the archives. Shot 1, above, is a modern shot from 2021.
Before you ask – yes, I’m vaccinated. The protocol offered by medical professionals indicates that despite the vaccination, you can still “Typhoid Mary” the virus to those who aren’t. Given that I don’t want to be the reason you get sick…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shot 2 is from 2009, when on a trip to southwestern Vermont and some of its fine cemeteries, I encountered the graves of the Three Thralls. It’s my firmly held theory that a Mad Scientist, or perhaps a Supervillain, used to be a resident in this small New England town. His henchmen, or thralls, met an untimely end due to some heroic intervention, and ended up occupying the loam. Perhaps the Thralls died from a virus somebody selfishly exposed them to.
Thrall, it seems, was one of the three social classes one could expect to be born into during the Age of the Vikings. There were are also Kralls, and Earls, I’m told.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Closer to home, here in Astoria, one encountered a deceased Chicken lying on the side of the road one day. This is also from 2009. Given that I’m talking about a chicken who died 12 years ago, it’s time to end this archive post. I do wonder if the Chicken regretted crossing this particular road?
Back tomorrow.
“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.
understand dimly
Shabbos… a haaa… shabbos
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last Saturday, one had a lunch date with a few friends on Manhattan’s Lower East Side… well, actually the extremely Lower East Side. The only part of residential Manhattan that’s still remotely interesting is found between the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges, East of Bowery. That’s where you find architectural variation in the building stock, weird counterpoints, and an actual working class neighborhood. Don’t worry, the City and the EDC will likely declare the entire area a slum soon and knock it down in favor of glassine towers. They’re in the early stages of doing to Manhattan what they did to Brooklyn and Queens over the last few decades. Ugh.
What’s so interesting, you ask?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Going back to the Civil War, when this section of Lower Manhattan was the center of NYC and Manhattan was still quite industrial, groups of do-gooders and reformers have shown up in every generation who had the answer to “how you help the poor.” You had Jakob Riis and his reformers – and there’s still “Old Law” and “New Law” tenement buildings extant from their solution. A generation later, the Settlement House people showed up, then came the (actual) Progressives like FDR with an enhanced education system, then Robert Moses with his urban renewal money brought highways and Section 8 housing, and then Moses and the NYCHA people built the Rutgers and Al Smith Houses and the rest. These days the do-gooder’s hustle involves “affordable housing” for the well off and screw the poor. The fossil skeletons of these behemoth movements and trends litter the streets here. A history book in brick and mortar and steel.
All of these brilliant and connected people who have tried to solve the intractable problem of urban poverty over the centuries, here in Lower Manhattan, and never did it occur any of them to just give some of the cash they were spending to the actual poor people. The core issue of poverty is that you don’t have any money, which means your babies are hungry. When you have hungry babies, you do desperate and often violent things as that makes sense in the circumstance. America’s overlords have always felt threatened by poor people, and worry that actual cash in their pockets will be drank, smoked, or gambled away. There’s a puritanical side to charitable impulses in our country. God forbid somebody on Welfare might use the money to buy their kids an ice cream cone.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I wish that you could see through time like I can. A fire escape bolted to the front of a New Law Tenement on East Broadway? Well, that’s symptomatic of Jakob Riis and Teddy Roosevelt, as well as the formation of the FDNY after NYC consolidation in 1898 and the creation of a uniform fire code. The East Side of Manhattan’s “Chinatown” occupies a space that has long housed ethnic populations who regularly spoke languages other than English at home. German, Gaelic, Yiddish, Italian, Spanish. I wonder who made that fire escape, where was the foundry, and who got handed the license by the Tammany appointed Fire Inspectors to design and install it. Love it down here, I do, as it’s thought provoking in a way that a glass walled condo tower ain’t.
Speaking of seeing through time… what are you doing on August 7th? I’ll be conducting a WALKING TOUR OF LONG ISLAND CITY with my pal Geoff Cobb. Details and ticketing available here. Come with?
“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.
unrent before
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found one photographing the proceedings of a Newtown Creek Alliance workday nearby Dutch Kills. It was a decent enough effort, one which involved the planting of environmentally beneficial plants and a general cleanup of the omnipresent illegal dumping one encounters around the troubled Long Island City waterway, and one which resulted in a humble narrator sitting painfully alongside the road while waiting for a cab to pick him up. As mentioned, my back and the left foot have been giving me trouble in recent weeks. This too shall pass, but why not avoid further exacerbation of injury when you can?
It was a fiendishly humid and warm evening, and low flying clouds were touching the rooftops of tower town. You couldn’t help but shvitz.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Often do I wonder whether or not a garment with pockets of pressurized helium contained within would lighten the load. Maybe I can order a camera bag from the Zeppelin people over in Deutschland, and just float my gear along. In many ways, I miss the old days when I carried a Canon G10 and could fit everything I needed to have with me in a pocket.
Saying that, all the gear I carry these days makes me a dangerous man. I’m ready for just about any circumstance. Any circumstance except one which requires a flash. I never carry a flash anymore. Writing this, it just occurred to me that I still haven’t tested out my flashes on the new camera, seven months after acquiring it. Guess I know what I’m doing tonight, now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek Alliance is a non profit organization dedicated to “reveal, restore, revitalize” Newtown Creek. We have offices and employees, and I’ve been working with the group for about 15 years now. I’m the historian guy, lead a bunch of walking and boat tours centered around the “reveal” part of the mission, and more recently have joined the Board of Directors. NCA works on both sides of the Creek, in Brooklyn and Queens, and we are heavily involved in the whole Superfund thing.
If you want to get a closer look at the NCA operation, and meet us in person, on July 31st the “Kingsland Wildflower Festival” will be on offer at 520 Kingsland Avenue between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. I’m just meant to hang out, wisecrack at hipsters, and take photos for the event, but there’s going to be tours of the green roof which offer spectacular views of the Newtown Creek and surrounding Metropolis. Also, there’s supposed to be music and food.
“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.
numberless domes
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s been a while since the cool cars spotted here in LIC have been offered, even though an eye has been kept peeled for vehicles of the “off the beaten track” variety. I’ve always wanted one of these military style trucks, mainly since it’s a diesel engine deal with a pipe snorkel that would allow the motor to keep running even when submerged. Imagine cruising a flooded Frannie Lou in that ride, Queens kids.
This was parked on the sidewalk nearby the Big Allis power plant in the Ravenswood section of Long Island City. Were I ever to become a Batman villain, Ravenswood is where I’d set up my lair, and my lackeys would drive what’s pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not too far from HQ in Astoria, there’s a business which handles all of the mechanical and construction needs for food trucks and carts. I won’t decry the fact that they illegally park on and block the sidewalks. A recent addition to their “honey do” list is a classic Airstream trailer. Stainless steel skin and a galvanized chassis, the Airstream is a 1960’s dream.
This business, and several like it, are under threat of displacement by the Innovations Queens project, which proposes bringing thirty story luxury condo buildings to Astoria in the 35/36 Ave. zone between Steinway and Northern Blvd.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in Ravenswood, where there’s a thriving industrial sector devoted to vehicle maintenance, this collection of spare parts was observed. It was poised in front of the old silk thread factory, and seemed to be the property of a garage engaged in the repair of taxi cabs. It reminded me of the biblical Abraham, with his tent open to the four cardinal directions.
More tomorrow – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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 