Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
shining mists
Signs and portents, in today’s post
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As promised, while you were gazing at the photo of that cute kitten I posted yesterday, a minor scuttle of the immediate environs was enacted. Where I’m going on my walks around Queens is seldom guided by a conscious decision, other than avoiding all possible contact or interaction with the human infestation, instead it’s more of a wandering sort of thing. Yesterday, I was looking specifically for the little things. For instance the Mexican Deli’s sidewalk signage offering a matrix of name translations between Spanish and English for various comestibles.
I always wondered how to say “Green Beas” in Spanish, now I know it’s “ejotes.” I think that “ejotes” must be a fun word to pronounce.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lost Kittens, that’s what the headline on this lamp post flyer says.
Can there be a headline which is sadder in tone than “Lost Kittens?”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There seems to be a lot of this sort of thing around the neighborhoods. Everywhere I go, even down at Newtown Creek, these sort of lost pet flyers are found. “Lost Kittens,” jeez.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the same lamp post, another faded ad, this one searching for a little black dog.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few blocks south, on Broadway -somebody had posted queries about the status of a lost, child sized, winter boot.
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crawl proudly
Coney Island?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yesterday found me on the Subway, traipsing all over Brooklyn and Queens. For the full story of the extensive trip undertaken, check out my Brownstoner Queens accounting of it here. One of the destinations was actually Coney Island, where the fellow in the Bobcat pictured above was plowing snow off of the Boardwalk. Dichotomous, I tell you, dichotomous.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the end of the day, one had begun to feel fatigue. Not the good sort, mind you. The good kind of fatigue comes from an abundance of exercise, what I refer to as “muscle tired.” Instead, one found himself dizzied by the sensory overload which occurs after a long winter hermitage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The group which I was traveling with came to an agreement that a stop at Nathan’s Famous was required. Surprisingly, Nathan’s charges $4.34 for a hot dog in the year 2015. I paid it, but felt like a real schmuck afterwards. $4.34 for a hot dog? What am I, Bloomberg?
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not permitted
A line in the sand, at the Sunnyside Yards, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Examinations of the plans elicited by the Mayor of New York City, a self professed “progressive” who has puzzlingly embraced the dream of Michael Bloomberg’s right hand man Dan Doctoroff to deck over the Sunnyside Yards, are disturbing. The scale of the project is frankly Federal in size, and the amount of debt which would be absorbed by the municipality in pursuit of it… conservative estimates would place the cost of the deck – just the deck – at around 200 billion dollars. That’s based on the $20 billion it’s costing to deck the relatively tiny 26.17 Hudson Yards. According to documents obtained from official sources, the Sunnyside Yards project would encompass some 200 acres. Do the math.
Remember, that number you just calculated is only for the deck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Sunnyside Yards are not connected to the City’s sewer grid. The Sunnyside Yards are not connected to the electrical, gas, or water delivery systems. The 11.2 thousand “affordable” apartments which the Mayor is using to sell this project are part of an 80/20 project. As City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer recently stated, and as reported at sunnysidepost.com,
Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer told members of the Hunters Point Civic Association on Tuesday that 70,000 to 80,000 units might need to be built in order to attract developers to construct the affordable units.
“To get to the 11,200-odd…the number of units could be as high as 70,000 to 80,000 on Sunnyside Yards,” Van Bramer said, since developers typically require market rate apartments to offset the cost of constructing affordable units.
This would result in “a massive, massive development on the scale we have never seen before in western Queens that will affect Long Island City, Astoria, Sunnyside and Woodside,” he said.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The thing that no one seems to be discussing, however, is infrastructure. $200 billion would build you around 175 Kosciuszko Bridges. It could also build you around 20 sewer plants. What we’re not talking about are hospital beds, nor Police, Fire, Sanitation, School desks, and all the other municipal services that would accompany a build out of this scale. City Planning works off of a formula which speculates that the lifetime of any new residential building is 35 years. Does NYC have the budget to support the municipal services for this new population over the next 35 years, and shouldn’t we be calculating that as part of the cost of this project?
80,000 apartments would bring 150-200,000 new people into our community. The population of Albany, for instance is 98,424 (as of 2013).
Governor Andrew Cuomo has stated that he’s against the Mayor’s plan. That’s because Andrew Cuomo is from Queens. Talk to anyone in Queens, and they’ll agree with him. This plan is entirely about Manhattan, and the singular question which I’m continually asking is:
How, in any way, would this be good for Queens?
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bleak plateau
In the Cold Wastes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The sporadic intervals during which one has been “out and about” in February have been infrequent, but somewhat entertaining. Just last weekend, when a short period of warmth occurred, the ice pack retreated and released several examples of Queens’s native art form – illegal dumping – for inspection. Above, a series of flash frozen berries and a small bottle of perhaps wine was observed in Sunnyside reemerging into the open air.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The streets have been noticeably quiet around Astoria’s Steinway Street, which is normally a tumult of the old vibrant diversity and the caterwaul of honking automotive horns. It’s an “Astoria thing” incidentally, honking your car’s horn. Should another driver dare to slow down to let a passenger exit the vehicle, the custom hereabouts is to activate the horn and keep it operating until the offending vehicle clears a path for you. “How dare you slow me down, incrementally” seems to be the thought process at work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another unusually inactive point of view at Queens Blvd., nearby Aviation High School. The Boulevard of Death normally teems with traffic heading east and west, and it is somewhat disconcerting to see it abandoned by all but a few autos and the Q32 bus. Did everyone else get invited to a party that I wasn’t invited to? Such is the lot of a humble narrator, always a bride’s main, never the bride.
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very confines
Over in DUGABO…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last Saturday, whilst wandering about in between snow storms, this outfall was spotted pouring into Newtown Creek. This is the terminus of Greenpoint Avenue alongside the Bridge, a lane which was coincidentally the path of an earlier Greenpoint Avenue Bridge – one that allowed rail to cross over from the LIRR tracks in Queens – which is today a fairly abandoned spot. The water is snow melt, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s street drains all over the place which bear the screed “drains directly into waterways” and this is what it looks like when they do. The drain in question is actually visible, as is the melting snow pack which is feeding it. Along with the melt water, it’s carrying road salt and as well as all the litter and junk which line the curbs. The frustrating part of this scene is that the brand spanking new Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment plant is just a block away and that this drain isn’t connected to it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Amongst the many interesting people I’ve met along the Newtown Creek, some of them work for the so called “potentially responsible parties” named as being responsible for the cleanup in the Superfund agreement. Over and over, these folks have pointed out that the ongoing “point source” situation that these outfalls maintained by the City DEP present makes their court mandated mission a fools errand. You can remove the Black Mayonnaise, which is the colloquial term for the historic pollution that forms the sediment bed of the Creek, but without addressing the antiquated sewer system it won’t be twenty years before the Newtown Creek is again lined with toxic junk.
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The Newtown Pentacle 