Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
Project Firebox 101
An ongoing catalog of New York’s endangered Fireboxes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I told my Grandmother that I wished to grow up to be an artist around age 10, she clutched at her bosom and cried out “you’ll be a bum on da Bowery mid a needle in dein arm.” The Jewish version of crossing herself, which is doing the dishes, followed. This firebox has seen the bums come and go on the Bowery, and is always ready to summon help whether you are the dispossessed or merely one of the gentry.
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extended indefinitely
Manny hatty keeps on forcing me to visit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For someone who actually loathes visiting Manhattan, preferring the ruinations of western Queens and devastations of northern Brooklyn to the Shining City, I do seem to be spending an awful lot of time there of late. Another recent series of events demanded that I visit the Bloody Sixth Ward and Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, so down the hole and into an electrically driven aluminum box of monkey meat did I go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The visit to Old St. Patrick’s was all business, introducing a certain engenue to the Church’s resident historical hierophant. While on site, I snapped a few quick shots, all the while wishing that I had brought my tripod along with me. Unfortunately, the bulky tool is a bit of a carry, and unless I expressly know that I’m going to be utilizing the thing it gets left home. When I’m not on that rattling contraption that hurtles beneath the streets, I’m walking, after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While doing some of that walking, on my way back to the underground monkey mover, this absolutely cliche “little italy” shot appeared before me. It looked so incredibly staged, couldn’t help but record it.
Note: A holiday schedule of single images will be presented here next week, although I’m going to be solidly ensconced in Queens as no one will have me. Time for a little break, and to mix things up a bit. You may have noticed that Maritime Sunday hasn’t splashed into port the last couple of weeks- which is mainly due to my inability to get out on the water during the cold months, precluding the gathering of fresh and or interesting content for the feature. It’ll return in the future, when I’m able to get out there again.
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convulsively against
They really like the sterile and antiseptic these days, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering about Queens, the shot above was captured at the Court Square station at the foot of the Citigroup Megalith incidentally, one always wonders what it is that the architects of modernity are trying to tell us to think. It’s actually where the “art part” of the building trade comes in to play, wherein an arrangement of blocking shapes and the massing of form accomplishes the delivery of an idea or impression upon the viewer. Get it wrong, you can literally drive a population crazy- just ask anyone who lives in a city project what budget driven homogeneity (and strict adherence to the crypto fascist theories of LeCorbusier) does to your head when it’s expressed in mortar and brick.
This spot at Court Square tells one such as myself that I’m trapped in a sinister exultation of all that might go wrong in America, and that an escape from this cylindrical construct of sapphire glass and shrouded steel should be immediately and expeditiously sought. Maybe that’s what they wanted, to help move people out of the subway as quickly as possible?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some places in Queens, its obvious what the builders and designers intended, despite the post modernity and broad strokes of obtuse symbolism. Of course the Unisphere at Flushing Meadow Corona Park’s (the former Worlds Fair) is a unique sort of thing in a unique sort of place, but were it some Darth Vaderesque conglomeration of steel and bluish green glass with a 53 story tall building looming, would it encourage that same feeling of dread and entrapped menace?
Your humble narrator is largely ignorant about the fashions and caprices enjoyed by the modern architect, all I can tell you is I know what attracts my eye and gravitate toward those forms which do not impart unto me a sense of being imprisoned or surveilled.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Every era has its genius, its witty play, its fancy. Somebody is always trying to throw a curve ball at prevailing style. The 1960’s JFK structure above is a great example of form, function, and whimsy (and admittedly, asbestos contamination) in which you actually are being surveilled- but you don’t really mind it that much. Weird how it contrasts with the modern world, and even weirder that it suggests a long gone and hope ridden era – which was the 1960’s?
Can’t tell you what the ideal is, but it sure ain’t the walls of mirror glass which fly up toward the sky, for me at least.
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refractive power
Adrift on seasonal ennui, that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
T’is not a kind month, December.
Memories of childhood disappointment and debasements, diminished expectations, and dire existential crises are those anniversaries celebrated concurrently with December by one such as myself. Nevertheless, despite the short intervals of daylight, and lowered frequencies of natural ambience, your humble narrator stumbles forth to record the audient void of Queens.
Mainly, I’m looking for rusty stuff like the sign above, which is increasingly hard to find in Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Occasion carried me to Hunters Point recently, and specifically that section of the ancient Dutch village which I refer to as Tower Town. Observed, extant, was an installation of some of that “green infrastructure” that area wags and the municipal princeps have been discussing and presenting to the general public as a prophylactic measure against the return of Hurricane Sandy to the Metropolitan area.
It was a tree pit, stoutly fortified against canine degradations, which hosted a plethora of ornamental cabbages.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I noticed cabbage in a Manhattan tree pit recently, and when I saw this installation of leafy plants one began to wonder if ornamental cabbage was “a thing.” My pal Gil over at the Smiling Hogshead Ranch, and the folks at Brooklyn Grange, tell me that we should be growing food everywhere we possibly can, literally every nook and cranny that light and water can reach. But ornamental cabbages? Why not try growing some kale or carrots, here in Tower Town?
I jest, of course, as in city wide aggregate the thousands of tree pits will add up to a significant acreage and offer a not insignificant amount of storm water someplace to go other than into the combined sewer system.
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Project Firebox 100
An ongoing catalog of New York’s endangered Fireboxes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The scarlet still stands in Hunters Point, although the neighborhood is unrecognizable.
Pepsi is long gone, as are National Sugar, the LIRR Power House, and the Daily News- but a noble firebox still stands at the ready. Here, in the capital of “wiping away the old New York” and “changing the skyline forever,” there is at least a single pole star of continuity. Rock on firebox, rock on.
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The Newtown Pentacle 