Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
enervated experience
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apologies for the mid day update, lords and ladies. Today’s Maritime Sunday post focuses in on an event which occurred several years ago. Mundane and ordinary, it all started when I saw the Carnival Miracle cruise ship maneuvered up the Hudson by the tug Miriam Moran.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The cruise ship piers on the Hudson, which are analogous to the West 40’s street grid in Manhattan, offer berthing opportunity to the gargantuan vessels of the modern cruise industry. Like a game of horizontal Tetris, however, these ships have to be rotated into position before they can lock into place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Functionally, this is not unlike wrestling a floating Chrysler Building into place, while fighting not just wind but river current as well. Such is the life of a tug captain and harbor pilot, of course, and their long experience in such matters make it seem commonplace.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the Miriam Moran post facto on the Hudson, after having accomplished its task.
Project Firebox 62
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
This graffito clad sentinel is found on Conselyea Street.
A tough guy, this box has stood its ground like any native son of infinite Brooklyn. When trouble pops up, it’s the first one to let the bosses know what threatens the neighborhood. They keep him out here on the corner to remind everyone back home that someone is always looking out.
irresistibly borne
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few more shots from the low light photography exercise I’ve been forcing myself to perform all winter.
Couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this place. It’s a dinosaur, a relic of the “old” Queens Plaza, which has somehow withstood the arrayed powers and potentates who have completely remade most of the area. One would hope that for the sake of history, and in order to preserve the cultural heritage of the Borough of Queens, that this shop and its signage be granted landmark status and preserved “as is”for all time.
Obscured by the lamp post, one would add, is the signage that reads “Ladies Welcome.”
I’ll bet they are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Acela was in its bed and snug as a bug in a rug.
Acela maintains a difficult schedule all day and really needs her rest. She is very sweet however, and everyone has nothing but good things to say about her. This is where the modern train receives maintenance and attention from trained mechanics and engineers, at the Sunnyside Yard.
from wikipedia
Generally Amtrak train crews consist of an engineer, a conductor, and at least one assistant conductor. Acela trains also have an On-Board Service crew consisting of two First Class attendants and a Cafe Car attendant. In addition to the food service provided in the Cafe Car, on most trains an attendant will also provide at seat cart service, serving refreshments throughout the train. First Class passengers are served meals at their seats on all services.
At Amtrak, the On-Board Service crew is considered separate and subordinate to the Train and Engine crews. Acela maintenance is generally taken care of at the Ivy City facility in Washington, DC; Sunnyside Yard in Queens, New York; or Southampton Street Yard in Boston, Massachusetts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apologies are offered for any unintentional “artsy fartsy”ness to the shot above, I was just trying to push the exposure and catch the light. This one was on Northern Blvd. incidentally. All of these were handheld shots, at a variety of exposures and iso settings using environmental light, for you photographic types.
lost perspective
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back and forth, forth and back.
On yet another of my perambulations twixt ancient Greenpoint and Astoria, the path which presented itself carried me down Greenpoint Avenue and upon the loathsome expanse of the Long Island Expressway did I find myself staring aghast at. Shivering from chills which were not atmospheric in origin, a humble narrator feverishly crossed the pedestrian pathway between the on and off ramps, an island of safety in a sea of automotive sharks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the northern side of the street, yet another singular and abandoned example of the cobblers art was discovered.
Individual shoes are noticed nearly everywhere these days, by one such as myself, so much so that it seems as if some sort of sinister game might be afoot. Is there be some sort of registry for such matters? Some sort of federal list? Can an amputated consumer product such as a shoe be traced back to an owner? Detective fictions opine that this is the case, but who can guess?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wild speculation rules my reactions to these abandoned shoe sightings, lending fuel to flights of blasphemous fancy and outrageous possibility. Commonalities in the sightings of these orphaned singlets include their presence on out of the way, commonly traveled but seldom walked, streets. Most examples seem gently used (with the exception of the damage on the example today,) and that they are conspicuous.
There doesn’t seem to be a bias toward either the left nor right model.
ecstasies and horrors
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
Peculiar shapes framing the opalescent moon- no doubt due to a dynamic weather system, rather than some external force, intelligence, or madness inducing entity of supra normal scope which can exist only in the imaginings of a madman- caught my attention while returning to Astoria from the hoary lanes of Greenpoint. It seems sometimes that one spends most of his time occupied in perambulating between the two communities and those happy neighborhoods which adjoin the two.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Trying to ignore the shining parallelogram of clouds which lent our world’s largest satellite a menacing cast, your humble narrator elected to continue working on the whole “night photography” thing, and began fumbling about with camera settings and nervously whispering to myself. Skillman Avenue, normally a well traveled and busy thoroughfare in Western Queens which adjoins the Sunnyside Rail Yard, is a ghost town at night, although there is a feeling of being watched.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was not being paranoid either, as dozens of security cameras actually were watching me. Whether someone is ultimately watching the camera feed is another matter, of course, but the machines notice all things. They especially notice a weirdo in a black raincoat waving a camera around in near total darkness. Such thinking kept my mind off the menace of the lunar threat, and the curious way that the parallelogram in the sky unsettled me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One supposes that he is just too fragile for this world, a stunted flower straining out from the cracks which mar a post industrial field of pavement. Perhaps it is fated that I follow my ancestors into convalescence and begin the search for an institution of charitable design which might house and insulate me from the terrible possibilities which lurk at the edge of sanity- for if one finds himself a selenophobic, may he not be accused of being a lunatic?
The Newtown Pentacle 