Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
inexpressibly more
This actually and absolutely astounds one such as myself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering from Red Hook back to Astoria around a week ago, your humble narrator found himself on the south side of Williamsburg at the triangle formed by Wythe, Heyward, and Wallabout. This splinter of a building is rising up from a paved triangle which is created by the ancient paths surrounding it. A tiny three story house, it just seems… wow, in Williamsburg, every patch of soil will have apartments on it pretty soon. Wow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Based on the number of entrances, this has to be a three unit building presumptively? A basement, a first floor, and then a duplex upstairs? Then again, the stairs on the Heyward (left) side might be a common entrance with internal stairs? Talk about an efficiency apartment. Sheesh. Check it out in google street view (this is a very new building, doesn’t even seem to have an address yet) to get an idea of the actual size of this lot – which is just bigger than five parking spots for cars.
Note: I did try to find a street address on this structure at NYC DOB, where I was easily defeated and gave up without trying too hard.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the way, there’s two cool Working Harbor Committee events going on this weekend you might want to attend.
Saturday, the 30th is a Port Newark excursion onboard the Circle Line with Captain John Doswell, Ed Kelly of the Maritime Association of Port of NY/NJ and Maggie Flanagan – Marine Educator South Street Seaport Museum. The boat boards at 10:30, sails at 11, and returns at 1:30. Click here for more info and tix.
Sunday, the 31st is the annual Great North River Tugboat Race and Competition. 10:00 AM – Parade of tugs from Pier 84 to the start line. 10:30 AM – Race starts – From South of 79th Street Boat Basin (near Pier I) to Pier 84. 11 AM – Nose to nose pushing contests and line toss competition. Noon – Tugs tie up to Pier 84 for lunch and awards ceremony. Exhibits, amateur line toss, spinach eating contest 1 PM – Awards ceremony. Tugs depart at about 2 PM.
For tix on the spectator boat, click here.
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exotic without
A few shots from around the neighborhood, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over the weekend, Our Lady of the Pentacle announced that she would be bringing our dog over to Astoria Park for an early morning “off leash” dog gathering, as is her habit. A rare weekend day off for me, last Saturday was, so I accompanied her to the park. When we arrived, low hanging clouds were rolling over mighty Triborough, and your humble narrator found a favorable vantage point from which to capture the scene.
It happens to overlook the heavily chlorinated waters of Astoria Pool, which provided an interesting contrast given the environmental condition of morning ambience coupled with a dark sky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Roaming around Dutch Kills recently, at the borders of Ravenswood and Queensbridge alike, an abundance of Boro Cabs lined a still industrial section of the neighborhood. That giant tangle of technology to the left of the frame is an electrical substation, which might belong to Consolidated Edison, and the big pile of red and white smokestacks is the Big Allis Power Plant on the East River.
Of course, no one can tell who owns what these days, what with their stock market whatsis and corporate whatchamacallits, but I think the substation is owned by Con Ed. I can report – authoritatively- that on hot days, when walking past this fence line, my headphones have often issued a sudden humming drone – and occasionally electrical shocks have transmitted through and them into my shell like ears. The entire block sounds like this – “mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…mmmmmmm.” This may be one of those spots where a handheld fluorescent bulb might just start to glow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The empty corridor wasn’t so empty the other day when one wandered through on a stroll through Long Island City. Trucks were whizzing about, disgorging palettes of cargo to those who lurked within the warehouses lining the street. Several worrisome characters were closely observing my movements and the particulars of equipment employed in the capture of these images as they quaffed cheap vodka from plastic bottles and shared a marijuana cigarette, one seemingly mixed with cigar tobacco and wrapped in a coarse brown paper or leaf (which one understands as being in fashion at this time).
A mild panic came upon me, and one felt himself descending into one of his states.
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know thy zone
As everyone knows, August 23rd is the Night of the Living Dead. Prepare your “go bags,” Lords and Ladies, and know your zone.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Famously, there are indeed more dead people in Queens than there are living. The Rural Cemeteries Act of 1847 forbade interments in Manhattan, which begat what is called “the Cemetery Belt” spanning the borders of Brooklyn and Queens. There are three million corpses in Calvary Cemetery alone. Should the dead rise this or any other year, we are going to be in a real pickle.
As a public service, zone maps of the danger that various communities face are offered in the hope that individuals can prepare for the coming storm.
Courtesy of openstreetmap.org, here’s a shot of western Long Island and the southern tip of Manhattan.
Here’s a rough illustration of our study area, the so called Newtown Pentacle. As you might notice, a significant number of cemeteries are found therein, and the area transverses from Bushwick to Astoria and from Flushing to the Wallabout.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nearly all of the area cemeteries are surrounded by stout fencing, and there are but a few points of egress into and out of the polyandrions. How well these often century old fence lines would do against an army of flesh eating ghouls is questionable, but one cannot speculate on their structural integrity.
First Calvary, in particular, is isolated by high walls and expressways from its environs, with only two points at which the slavering horde of undead assassins might access the surrounding neighborhoods. One would not want to be in West Maspeth or Blissville on Saturday night, however.
In the graphic above, the actual cemetery boundaries are roughly sketched out in orange.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One would imagine that the NYPD would be forced to collapse the East River Tunnels and detonate the roadways of the great bridges to protect the Shining City of Manhattan from the onslaught of the Living Dead.
For those of us who reside in the Newtown Pentacle, this heat map is offered. The areas of darkest red are surely goners, and it is suggested that we refer to these areas as Zone A. Zones B & C likely have a fighting chance, should they be well prepared to shelter in place for an interval. Realistically, if you haven’t evacuated within the first twelve hours of the Night of the Living Dead, you’re already doomed.
Because Dawn is coming.
also, from youtube–
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inspired dreamer
124 years ago today, an outsider was thrust roughly into the world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If the squamous gods of our own world do not care about you, what causes you to believe that those whose realm is cosmic would even take notice of an unimportant mortal speck living on a muddy world which – from their unknowable and unguessable point of view – has only recently coalesced from star stuff and debris? Were you to find yourself lying prone, naked, and cowering before some galactic, universal, or pan dimensional deity whose regency includes whole galaxies – realizing the true horror of the universe in that moment, and the inconsequential role which terrestrial life plays in it – would you go mad with the realization of the futility of life itself or would a blood vessel burst in your brain? Would you rise to your knees, begging to join some hidden cult which worships the titan, or stare unblinkingly at its manifest radiance until your eyes boiled away? One is incapable of anticipating what ones reaction to a pulsing nucleonic horror found at the center of our universe that is called Azathoth would be, nor what beholding the so called “goat with a thousand young” which is both the gate and the key called Yog Sothoth might do to you, but one would certainly be forever altered and held under their sway afterwards. We are but men, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These star born – or Elder Gods – whose machinations stretch back billions of years and into other dimensions and realities where our paltry notion of the constancy of physics and the true nature of the universe are revealed as childish fantasy – enjoy the devotion of uncountable servitors. Their servants, who are the true rulers of the earth, are in the air and the water and burrow into the ground unmatched and unheralded. None inquire as to their purpose, for none have realized that theirs is a plan which has survived more than one extinction event. The cities of the Old Ones, at the so called Mountains of Madness in fabled Antarctica, and those of the ruggose cone shaped Elder Race (which drifted into their current position as the continents formed) in the deserts of Arabia and Australia demonstrate that at the end of all things – only the Conqueror Worm claims victory. The so called insects have a plan, and they created this biosphere of ours only to increase their food supply, as a stock yard. Deep below the Pacific Ocean, their paymaster lies not dead but dreaming instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One hundred and twenty four years ago, a set of ideas was born at 194 Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. The product of Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft and Winfield Scott Lovecraft, the child grew into a strange and lonely but quite erudite man who always considered himself an outsider in the world to which he was born. His name was Howard. His pen name was H.P. Lovecraft, and today (all this week, actually) we celebrate the day of his birth at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
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relentless thing
Heh. You may think I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you don’t know that I know what you’ve been told to think and by whom. Heh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The south side of Williamsburg, where many bad things have occurred, was where a humble narrator recently found himself scuttling along when a series of very bad ideas began to infiltrate his thoughts. Perhaps it was brought on by the stares and pointing fingers offered by the crowds of Hasidic women and children, or their stifled gasps of horror and revulsion as one passed by. Perhaps it was merely remembrance of days gone by, and an iteration of North Brooklyn which only one such as myself seems to remember and acknowledge or admit.
from murderpedia.org
Known as the Williamsburg Strangler, Vincent Johnson, pleaded guilty to strangling five women and will serve life in prison without parole. Johnson’s 10-month killing spree began in August, 1999. The 31-year-old homeless crack addict admitted to the murders a week before prosecutors were to decide on whether or not to seek the death penalty.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An uncomfortable sense that if one were to merely look through the cracked glass of a warehouse’s ground floor window, or notice what is going on beyond the aperture of an open doorway at some centuried factory building, a tidal wave of bad intentions and evil inclination would carry the observer into a world of unending and quite metaphysical horror. Intuition hints that evil is slumbering just beneath the surface, existing as some kind of psychic or spectral latency, and given enough time… It is simply best to focus on the pavement in this section of Brooklyn, and stray not from it, for there are things buried hereabouts that should remain unknown. Who can say what malevolent forces are combated, nightly, by Satmar Kabbalists or Palo worshipping Padrinos, hereabouts?
from wikipedia
Self-consciousness was characterized as an aversive psychological state. According to this model, people experiencing self-consciousness will be highly motivated to reduce it, trying to make sense of what they are experiencing. These attempts promote hyper vigilance and rumination in a circular relationship: more hyper vigilance generates more rumination, whereupon more rumination generates more hyper vigilance. Hyper vigilance can be thought of as a way to appraise threatening social information, but in contrast to adaptive vigilance, hyper vigilance will produce elevated levels of arousal, fear, anxiety, and threat perception.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Haven’t you ever wondered why, when they are constructing domiciles for their sect, the Hasidim in Williamsburg construct fortresses? They don’t do this in Monroe, or Borough Park or Midwood, which are other population centers in Brooklyn for the ultra orthodox. The senile and simple amongst them will tell you that Dibbuks rise from the Wallabout and East River when darkness falls, seeking to consume whosoever might be on the very streets which I was walking. Who can guess, all there is, that might be stalking the streets of the Boswijck Strand at night?
from wikipedia
Somatoparaphrenia is a type of monothematic delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one’s body. Even if provided with undeniable proof that the limb belongs to and is attached to their own body, the patient produces elaborate confabulations about whose limb it really is, or how the limb ended up on their body. In some cases, delusions become so elaborate that a limb may be treated and cared for as if it were a separate being.[
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The Newtown Pentacle 