Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
Project Firebox 59
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At 34th Avenue’s junction with Northern Blvd. waits this long serving alarm box. Its seen fire and its seen rain…
sufficient accuracy
DUE TO AN ILLNESS, THE FRIDAY NIGHT MAGIC LANTERN SHOW WILL BE POSTPONED!!!
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A week of darkness was promised you, lords and ladies, and this Friday posting provides a neat bookend.
Long Island City is one of the most difficult spots in New York City to hail a cab, precisely because so many Cab companies are based here. Drivers don’t want to pick you up if they’re in the neighborhood, as Cab Drivers are generally heading here to drop off the car and end a shift before they get hit with a penalty for being late.
The reverse of “bringing coal to Newcastle”, it would seem, is in effect.
from nytimes.com
Many taxicabs are used by two drivers a day, each working a 12-hour shift. To ensure that each leg is equally attractive, taxi owners schedule the shift change in the middle of the afternoon, so each shift gets a rush hour.
But the switch cannot happen too early, either: a 2 p.m. changeover, for instance, would require a day driver to start his 12-hour shifts in the wee hours of the morning. And cabbies say the midafternoon offers brisk business not evident 12 hours later, when fares mainly consist of late-night revelers.
Hence the 5 p.m. compromise. When the changeover became standard, its timing did not pose a big problem for passengers. Many taxi garages were situated on the Far West Side of Manhattan, requiring cabs to make only a short trip to 11th Avenue before heading back to Midtown with a fresh driver.
But in the 1980s, as commercial rents rose, taxi fleets began migrating across the East River, particularly to Long Island City, Queens. The 5 p.m. shift change now included a journey over the often-packed Queensboro Bridge, not to mention the return slog to the city. Drivers started going off duty between 4 and 4:30 p.m., to ensure that they had enough time to make it to the garage; even today, tardy cabbies can be hit with a $30 fine.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is an interesting sight, seeing hundreds of Taxis arrayed about their dispatch and maintenance yards in the wee hours of the morning. Taxi’s are not unlike Police cars in this manner, inasmuch as they seem to be in perpetual motion and always in gear.
Drivers have described the system to me, shift work accomplished in long stretches behind the wheel during which they struggle to first pay the day’s lease on the car and then the fuel bill. Once this sum has been reached, whatever is left over is theirs to keep. They are functionally without a union, and vulnerable to the whims of politician and businessman alike. The overnight drivers also describe having to deal with cleaning up a lot of bodily fluids, the product of nightlife and its revelry.
from wikipedia
The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) was established in 1971 with jurisdiction over the city’s medallion (yellow) taxicabs, livery cabs, “black cars”, commuter vans, paratransit vehicles (ambulettes) and some luxury limousines. The TLC was founded to deal with the growing number of drivers and to address issues important to both the taxi and livery industries. Its predecessor was the New York City Hack Bureau, operated under the aegis of the New York City Police Department. TLC Inspectors are New York State peace officers who carry batons, pepper spray, and handcuffs.
In the 1970s and 1980s both the unofficial livery services and the medallion taxicab companies began finding more and more of their drivers in the growing populations of black, Latino, and middle eastern immigrants to the city as the previous generation of cabbies retired and moved out of the city. Crime in New York City had become severe at this point, and cabbies were often the victims of robberies and street crime.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On a different note, a distinct point of interest is the Court Square Diner, which is a completely different structure at night than during the day. On this particular morning, despite my screaming desire for a cup of joe, the place was passed by and merely photographed. The whole “shooting at night” thing was produced by a bout of insomnia, after all, and the last thing that the sleepless needs is the sort of hot brown jet fuel sold at Court Square.
from courtsquarediner.com
Court Square Diner was built in 1946. Since then it has only had three ownerships.
The current owners, Steve and Nick have been in operation since 1991. When they had first purchased the diner, it was mainly a small diner for breakfast and lunch. In 2009, the Court Square Diner was renovated with an all new retro look. Now it is a full service 24 hour seven day a week successful diner complete with breakfast, lunch, brunch and dinner. The delivery service is 24 hours a day seven days a week. All the baking for the diner is done on the premises.
stupefying beholder
DUE TO AN ILLNESS, THE FRIDAY NIGHT MAGIC LANTERN SHOW WILL BE POSTPONED!!!
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, also called the Smaragdine Table, offers the paraphrased occult wisdom of “As Above, So Below.”
The notion this hermetic treatise asks the reader to accept is that Heaven and Hell are mirrors of each other, virtually reversed images. An alchemical manual, the Emerald Tablet details a system of something not unlike chemistry which is hobbled by a world view which only accounted for 4 elements. It is a product of a post Roman/newly Muslim scholarly culture and at least a thousand years old, so cut it a break for the dualist world view. Seriously, anything that preoccupied Sir Isaac Newtown is worth a second look.
from wikipedia
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility. Lupercalia subsumed Februa, an earlier-origin spring cleansing ritual held on the same date, which gives the month of February (Februarius) its name.
The name Lupercalia was believed in antiquity to evince some connection with the Ancient Greek festival of the Arcadian Lykaia (from Ancient Greek: λύκος — lukos, “wolf”, Latin lupus) and the worship of Lycaean Pan, assumed to be a Greek equivalent to Faunus, as instituted by Evander.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 16th century grimoire Pseudomonarchia Daemonum offers the name and description of Furfur, an Earl of Hell and commander of 29 legions of demons. Furfur is meant to”cause love between a man and a woman, create storms, tempests, thunder, lightning, and blasts, and teach on secret and divine things.”
Could the heavenly opposite of Furfur be, in fact, St. Valentine?
Would this mean that the Cherubs we normally see associated with Valentine’s day, decorating hearts and shooting love darts, are part of some 29 angelic legions?
Here’s St. Valentine and Furfur. As above, so below?
from wikipedia
Februalia, also Februatio, was the Roman festival of ritual purification, later incorporated into Lupercalia. The festival, which is basically one of Spring washing or cleaning (associated also with the raininess of this time of year) is old, and possibly of Sabine origin. According to Ovid, Februare as a Latin word which refers to means of purification (particularly with washing or water) derives from an earlier Etruscan word referring to purging.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Using the late Republic numbers (presuming that the term “legion” is based on Rome), a legion would include 5,120 individuals backed up by an equal number of auxiliaries. 29 legions would equate to 148,480 regular soldiers, and with auxiliaries- both Furfur and Valentine would find themselves just shy of 300,000 supernatural shock troops with whom to wage the Battle of Ragnarok and the War of Tribulation.
Demons are supposed to scare you, but Angels have always scared the hell out of me. The thought of close to 150,000 cherubs on the war path just makes my head hurt. Just imagine the noise of all those wings.
Happy Valentine’s day, don’t forget to duck and cover.
from wikipedia
St. Valentine’s Day began as a liturgical celebration of one or more early Christian saints named Valentinus. The most popular martyrology associated with Saint Valentine was that he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire; during his imprisonment, he is said to have healed the daughter of his jailer Asterius. Legend states that before his execution he wrote “from your Valentine” as a farewell to her.
dream swamp
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Progeny of an aforementioned early morning trek recently enacted across Long Island City from Astoria, these shots depict a February sunrise at certain points of land which adjoin the notorious Newtown Creek.
Driven by a period of certain insomniac ideations, a seasonal affliction whose annual appointment and arrival is scheduled between the months of December and March, the effects of this inability to sleep are are felt on both financial and interpersonal fronts. The good news is that I get a LOT of work done.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Possessing me for much of this year has been the job of updating and retooling of my “Magic Lantern” show, a slideshow presentation which describes and details the various noteworthy features and remarkable history of this loquacious cataract forming the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens, a 3.8 mile long industrial canal known as the Newtown Creek.
The modern version is designed with HD television and computer screens in mind (prior versions were designed for projection), and has been complied at a ridiculous resolution (suitable for Blu-Ray, actually). The master file is a tad under two hours long, and includes literally every tributary, inlet, cove, rivet, and screw found along the banks of Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “production model” comes in at just over 45 minutes, and will be the version presented this Friday at Observatory. It is still a ludicrously detailed accounting of the place, which is limited to a short geospatial distance from the Creek’s bulkheads. The long version examines a much larger area, but that’s something I’m not able to speak freely about yet.
I’d love it if you can join us at Observatory this Friday.
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show- presented by the Obscura Society NYC- at Observatory, on February the 15th- ThisFriday.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
dream existence
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Isolated from anything that truly matters, and vastly unprepared for that inevitable day when the lights go out and civilization collapses, your humble narrator nevertheless finds himself ruinously ill informed about things both ubiquitous and consequential.
Wandering about in a snow storm, wonderings about something as simple as road salt began to fill my mind as I watched it being flung around as a prophylactic against ice.
from wikipedia
Halite occurs in vast beds of sedimentary evaporite minerals that result from the drying up of enclosed lakes, playas, and seas. Salt beds may be hundreds of meters thick and underlie broad areas. In the United States and Canada extensive underground beds extend from the Appalachian basin of western New York through parts of Ontario and under much of the Michigan Basin. Other deposits are in Ohio, Kansas, New Mexico, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. The Khewra salt mine is a massive deposit of halite near Islamabad, Pakistan. In the United Kingdom there are three mines; the largest of these is at Winsford in Cheshire producing half a million tonnes on average in six months.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The side of me which hangs around Newtown Creek and the environmental crowd focuses on the effect that the saline rich waste water will have as it discharges from Combined Sewer Outfalls along the harbor into the already brackish waters of NY Harbor. Melt water, on a citywide basis, provides billions of gallons of wastewater which carry the tonnage of salt into the water- producing what is known as “salt shock.”
How many tons of dissolved salt does this water carry, and how does that affect both the physical geology of the harbor and the estuarine life contained within?
from saltinstitute.org
Will we run out of salt?
Never. Salt is the most common and readily available nonmetallic mineral in the world; it is so abundant, accurate estimates of salt reserves are unavailable. In the United States there are an estimated 55 trillion metric tons. Since the world uses 240 million tons of salt a year, U.S. reserves alone could sustain our needs for 100,000 years. And some of that usage is naturally recycled after use. The enormity of the Earth’s underground salt deposits, combined with the saline vastness of the Earth’s oceans makes the supply of salt inexhaustible.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is the titan Atlantic Salt facility in Staten Island, one of many such bulk storage depots which stockpile the stuff for weather emergencies. Realization that I have no real idea what salt is (other than its purely chemical makeup), how it might be quarried, and what the difference is between table and road salt forced me to begin reading up on the subject.
A similar intellectual journey involving honey grasped me several years ago, it should be mentioned.
from wikipedia
Refined salt, which is most widely used presently, is mainly sodium chloride. Food grade salt accounts for only a small part of salt production in industrialized countries (3 percent in Europe) although worldwide, food uses account for 17.5 percent of salt production. The majority is sold for industrial use. Salt has great commercial value because it is a necessary ingredient in many manufacturing processes. A few common examples include: the production of pulp and paper, setting dyes in textiles and fabrics, and the making of soaps and detergents.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The question, for me, isn’t “how do you acquire salt?”.
It’s how do you acquire salt in industrial quantities? The honey question led me down a rabbit hole which exposed a complicated story of international trade, prehistoric industrial development, and the realities of how fragile the agricultural system actually is. Salt is another ancient industry, and was a substance worth more than its weight in gold during Roman times.
According to Roman Historian Pliny the Elder, the soldiers of the Republic were originally paid in salt, which is where the term “Salary” was coined (or Coine’d).
from wikipedia
Prior to the advent of the internal combustion engine and earth moving equipment, mining salt was one of the most expensive and dangerous of operations. While salt is now plentiful, before the Industrial Revolution salt was difficult to come by, and salt mining was often done by slave or prison labor. In ancient Rome, salt on the table was a mark of a rich patron (and those who sat nearer the host were above the salt, and those less favored were “below the salt”). Roman prisoners were given the task of salt mining, and life expectancy among those so sentenced was low.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show- presented by the Obscura Society NYC- is back on at Observatory, on February the 15th- ThisFriday.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
The Newtown Pentacle 