Archive for the ‘Photowalks’ Category
vastness transcending
Can you smell that, I think it’s Thursday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator can now claim to be fully vaccinated against COVID, with the second shot of the Pfizer vaccine having been inserted on Tuesday. I did experience some after effects on this one, which can be described as the set of symptoms you’d normally be experiencing before telling a loved one “I’m getting sick.” No fever, but hot and cold intervals, lethargy, interrupted sleep and fever dreams. Yesterday I took a nap in the late afternoon. Normally, I don’t nap. This morning (Thursday) I feel like you do the day after you were sick – in need of a good stretch and fairly hungry. Not too much of a trial, really. Friends who have had actual COVID and subsequently got vaccinated have described a much deeper trough of symptoms after vaccination, but as of today, I’m back to wondering about wandering.
Fog and mist will just pull me out of HQ every time. I point the camera lens into it and follow. These shots came out of a “short walk” from back in February, which saw me marching about in the “industrial business zone” or “IBZ” found south of Queens Blvd. and Queens Plaza, and west of Sunnyside. Had my footsteps continued all the way down the hill, I would have ended up nearby the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, this was a short walk, a “constitutional.” One cannot sleep properly without some exercise, and the human body which houses my consciousness is built from internally lubricating parts which require motive action. At 33rd street, nearby one of the elevated stations hosting the IRT 7 line subway service, a Consolidated Edison steam pipe was putting on quite a show. A pounding sound was echoing from its subterranean chamber, with vast gouts of aerosol escaping into the atmosphere. I hung around a bit, hoping for disaster to strike as I could really use the money I’d make for selling photos of a steam pipe explosion in LIC, but no luck. It just bubbled and boiled, this cauldron.
I also debated calling it in to 311 but this was another one of those times when I just didn’t care enough. Let somebody else deal with it, I thought. I’m tired of being the only person in Queens to say “this isn’t good enough.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned above, fog and mist are my jam these days. One anxiously checks the weather reports in search of that magic combination of high dew point and temperature inversion.
I was carrying my “two lens kit” on this particular night, and was armed with only a 35mm and 85mm lens. Both are fairly “bright” lenses, so perfect for night time operations. It was also one of those nights which I wished I had the whole kit and kaboodle with me, due to the atmospheric condition.
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, March 22nd. 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 here, 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.
avoided commerce
Palpitant, I nevertheless declare this as Wednesday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the shot above, my love of Newtown Creek smashes wholeheartedly into my vast appreciation of the Northern Blvd. corridor, as the fuel truck filling the tanks at this filling station is delivering fuel from the Kinder Morgan (formerly BP Amoco) tank farm terminal in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section, which is found at the corner of Apollo Street and Norman Avenue. See? This is what it’s like inside my head.
As far as the second vaccine shot I received yesterday – yes, there are side effects with this one. Last night I got the hot/colds coupled with some body aches and most peculiarly the psychological state of “fever dreams” was plaguing me through the night, although I don’t have a fever. Fever dreams often take the form of widely spaced out awakenings, whereupon I’m convinced that I didn’t actually fall asleep and have been dreaming that I’m awake, but upon inspecting a bedside clock I discover that I’ve actually been out cold for several hours. Weird.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Street furniture – that’s what City Planners call utility poles and fire hydrants and benches. Street furniture as I define it are abandoned bits of furnishings which somebody has abandoned and left on the street for somebody else to deal with. You see feral couches and dining room chairs all the time, and this one was spotted on the corner of Northern Blvd. and Standard Lane while on my way home one night.
If I didn’t know the cause, I’d be telling Our Lady if the Pentacle that I was in the edge of getting sick right now, and expecting the rest of this week to be a wash. In addition to the immune system reaction I’m experiencing from the 2nd shot, for some reason this time the actual injection site in my shoulder is quite tender. The 1st shot felt like somebody had punched me in the upper arm, the 2nd proudly hurts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whatever. This process makes it highly unlikely that I’m going to either cease living, or end up becoming some sort of Typhoid Mary who cause’s others to similarly cease. I still know quite a few people who are resistant to the idea of the vaccine, which is bizarre to me. As I’m wont to remind them when this opinion is offered – you’re going to have a hard time traveling, or getting on a cruise, going to Disney – all that stuff, without proof that you’re not transmissible.
And so does the winter of discontent end, with neither bang nor whisper.
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, March 22nd. 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 here, 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.
undreamed of
It’s called Thursday, if you’re bold enough to speak its name.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s Gas Station day at Newtown Pentacle. The one above is the first thing you see when entering Long Island City after crossing Newtown Creek on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge and it’s in the Blissville neighborhood. Remember the long gas lines after Hurricane Sandy back in 2012? They sure do at this gas station, as a 2012 customer lost their patience when the pumps got shut off, produced a firearm and proceeded to murder somebody who worked here. I think there’s different owners for the franchise location, and if memory serves – I don’t think it used to be a Gulf filling station. Might have been a Sunoco. Have to look in my archives.
Motherflowers. People walk around like they’re safe or something… what this City really needs is a good plague… oh… whoopsies…
Wonder how many of the other things we used to say while milling about in front of CBGB’s will come true someday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One hasn’t got a murder story to tell about this gas station, found at the corner of 49th and Greenpoint Avenues at the risible border of Blissville and Sunnyside, nearby the Long Island Expressway. A Mobil franchised filling station, this is a deucedly difficult setup to photograph. Something about the contrasty lighting and “red, white, and blue” neon brand colors necessitates a complicated and somewhat contradictory exposure triangle for the capture.
49th Avenue proceeds in a generally westerly direction, transversing from the altitudinal prominence of Laurel Hill, which Greenpoint Avenue rides along and Calvary Cemetery sits atop. 49th Avenue crosses Van Dam Street, and in doing so transmogrifies into Hunters Point Avenue shortly before crossing the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, and then regains it’s numerical dub at 21st street nearby the 7 train station.
It’s all very complicated.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you start with homicide, that’s all people want to hear about. This Sunnyside/LIC gas station on Queens Boulevard also sports a car wash, but I don’t have any tales of death or dismemberment associated with it in my quiver.
Another one of the weighty questions I’ve got about Queens is “where does LIC stop and Sunnyside begin”? I kind of place “proper” Sunnyside at no farther west than 36th or 37th street along Queens Blvd. If you’re south of Queens Blvd., however, Sunnyside continues all the way to the LIE. The eastern border is definitely Woodside Avenue/58th street, and Northern Blvd. provides another hard border for the area. Saying that, I consider Northern Blvd. to be an “LIC corridor” just like Skillman Avenue west of 39th street is, all the way from 31st street to Broadway.
Of course, any neighborhood in Queens whose zip code starts with a “111” is part of the historic municipality of Long Island City, which actually includes all of Astoria and most of Sunnyside – or at least the 11104 part of it.
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, March 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 here, 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.
rigid objections
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One divides his outside time into “long walks” and “short walks.” A long one usually involves the words “Maspeth” or “Greenpoint,” whereas the short ones involve “Ravenswood” or “Triborough.” Sometimes a short walk will find me walking a mile one way, making a right turn and walking another mile, and then angling my toes back towards HQ here on Astoria’s Broadway. I’m always looking for something interesting to photograph along the way, and I have my “dance card” of subject matter in mind when setting out.
Automotive maintenance facilities have recently been added to my dance card, or “shot list” if you must – gas stations, car washes, tire shops. Luckily, Astoria’s 31st street offers opportunity on two of those three items.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These sorts of businesses are disappearing rapidly, given the current fashion amongst the Real Estate Industrial Complex and their conspirators in elected office to espouse bicycles as a “green alternative” to automotive transportation. Negating the need for these auto based businesses, you might as well build luxury condo towers where they used to be and act all sanctimonious about it. Whatever.
This particular short walk found me scuttling along Northern Blvd. to 31st street, making a right at 31st, and then shlepping northwards to Astoria Blvd., then looping back south to Broadway in a zig zag along the residential streets in the 40’s. I didn’t want to go too far from home as rain was forecast for the particular late January night I was out and about and shooting these photos. Freezing rain sucks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One adjures the NYC DOT, whenever the opportunity arrives, to do something about the street lighting situation along 31st street. My opinion that the Governor’s rebuild of the various stations of the elevated trackage has vastly improved the lighting situation at the various corners that you encounter them conflicts with the general ennui most political people feel about Albany’s Dark Lord of the Sith. Even a master of the dark side can brighten things up if he so chooses, and these precise bastions of illumination offered by the Empire State provide stark contrast to the dark and often disconcerting streetscapes maintained by the minions of the Dope from Park Slope – despite his Zero Vision mission. Or… Vision Zero, right? Got to stop confusing the terms, even though both Governor and Mayor are contaminant minions of the Dark Side of the Force.
Saying that, by the time I got to Astoria Blvd. my spectacles began to get stippled by the first drops of that freezing rain and a humble narrator decided to double time it back to HQ. Hooray, and may the Force be with you.
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, March 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 here, 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.
outside absolute
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Staggering in fear amongst the darkened streets of Long Island City, with its peculiarly utilitarian angularities of cyclopean masonry thrusting rudely at the sky, a humble narrator was experiencing quite a bit of pain at this stage in his evening. The left ankle is currently malfunctioning, which is a bodily component just uphill from that big toe which one discovered to be broken – due to the action of gravity and a planting trough – at the end of 2019. Instinct would suggest one first punches the painful ankle a few times, then use an ace bandage on the hinge, and eventually make a decision between lopping it off with a cleaver or making a Doctor’s appointment. One normally waits until it is absolutely necessary to engage Medical Professionals, Legal Professionals, or really any of the Professions, unless you have to. Gets expensive. Painful ankle after walking five miles? Find a spot to sit down for a few minutes. Good god, I’ve gotten to the age where you have to sit down for a few minutes every now and then…
“Bah! One such as myself can bear all, pain is neurological like the brain is and the brain is you so if you have control over your self you control the brain and the nervous system and you don’t feel pain… there is no spoon, nothing is real!”
That’s what I was thinking when I stood up after sitting down for a few minutes. My ankle felt better after a quick rest period, and I stopped mentally picturing the bruised and swollen toe, and resumed pointing the camera at stuff.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can’t know “everything” about something, quite obviously, unless you were there before it and will be there after it. Saying that, I can do an improv lecture about this corner that would easily fill an hour’s worth of your time – Montauk Cutoff, Long Island Railroad, Long Island City, NYC Consolidation, Bob Moses, Long Island Expressway, New Real Estate Development – those are the bullet points just off the top of my head. There’s a whole story just with those empty sign boards that involves Organized Crime, the Feds, Court Cases.
I’d offer a second hour on the Graffiti culture of LIC, but I have to get a third or fourth party to do the actual lecture. I’m a casual fan, but not part of the street art scene and am not that knowledgable.
I’ll tell you what, though. There’s a LOT more graffiti flying all over the place than I’ve seen in 30 years. A lot of it is also, coincidentally, pretty good. There’s kind of a postmodernist vibe going on, even with just tags.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Obviously, I’ve seen panel trucks graffiti’d on all over NYC my entire life. Saying that, this sort of vehicular graffiti pictured above seems to be on an uptick. Of course, my geographic “range” has been limited and the sample area largely heavy industrial, but the scene is similar to dozens of others I’ve photographed in the last year. Maybe I wasn’t “seeing it” in the past, but the frequency of panel truck graffiti definitely seems tuned up. Truth be told, I like the “custom wrap” look of this particular vandal’s artwork.
It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. Neither hot nor cold. Nothing is real.
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, February 22nd. 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 here, 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 