Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
in argument
It’s not luck or preparation, just good timing with me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Returning to Astoria after a recent sojourn to the fabulous Newtown Creek, one elected to cross the waterway at a point some 1.3 miles from its intersection with the East River. Luckily, that’s where the City of Greater New York maintains that chunk of our collective property which they call the “John J. Byrne memorial bridge” or as it’s known more simply to everybody else – the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.
As I was nearing the apogee of the span, descending traffic barrier signal arms accompanied by bells and flashing lights provided indication that this double bascule draw bridge was about to open up and allow a maritime passage. What fun!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gazing through the security fencing, a humble narrator did spy a barge and tug plying the contaminant rich waters of the Newtown Creek. The barge was set up to act as a platform for a crane, by all appearances. Perhaps it was coming from the nearby Kosciuszcko Bridge project, but that’s just idle speculation.
It’s a big old creek, Newtown is, with lots and lots going on all the time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
With the bridge open and the always heavy flow of automotive and truck traffic halted, one took the opportunity to run around on the roadway without the fear of getting squished. You can just see the top of that crane moving alongside the Brooklyn side roadway bascule, above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYC DOT bridge tender was definitely keeping an eye on me, to which I say “fair enough.” Imagine the sight of one such as myself, darting to and fro across the concrete roadway, hooting and hollering in my revel, camera waving about and filthy black raincoat whipping in the breeze.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Then the joy came to an end, as all joy must. A return to the ultra mundane occurred as the bridge returned to its resting state. One set his feet solidly to work and strode defiantly into Blissville, eyes fixed on the north, where Astoria eternally awaits.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
March!
That’s the Long island Expressway there, incidentally, at Borden Avenue and Van Dam. I love this point of view on it.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
virtually beyond
My beloved Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has always indulged in the habit of taking periodic breaks from visiting that flooded valley of wonder called the Newtown Creek, in pursuance of occasionally allowing my immune system to scale back a bit to normal NYC levels. Now, New York is a pig sty, and often these days it feels like it’s dirtier than it’s been in decades. As a culture, we’ve done a great job of using “Public Service Announcements” to convince the citizenry of the the efficacy of condom usage, smoking cessation, and to get teenagers in the habit of not getting pregnant as often as in generations formerly. What we’ve stopped doing, however, is convincing people that littering is bad.
Street litter ends up in the sewer grates, and then into the water. It causes the NYC DEP, who operate that science fiction like sewer plant in Greenpoint – pictured above – no end of problems. They have to strain the solids from the otherwise liquidic flow which they refer to as “honey.” These solids become landfill, ultimately, which they would have anyway if just placed in those garbage baskets on nearly every street corner – they just wouldn’t be biohazardous waste as well, having been mingled with poop and sewage in the pipes.
That’s a lot of “funk.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That is what’s referred to as the “BP Amoco” tanks in Greenpoint, pictured above, although the facility has recently changed ownership. For the life of me, while I’m writing this I can’t remember the name of the new corporate entity who bought it. That’s a distribution yard. Petroleum products are barged in by a tugboat, off loaded into those tanks you see, and then pumped into delivery trucks for the proverbial “last mile.”
That’s also just about the dead bang center of the Greenpoint Oil Spill, in relation to the bulkheads of Newtown Creek that you’re looking at, at Greenpoint’s Apollo Street. Just east of here is the spot where the US Coast Guard spotted oil oozing from the bulkheads in the 1970’s, kicking off a decades long process which would eventually result in the entirety of Newtown Creek being named as a Federal Superfund site.
There’s a sediment bed down there under the water which contains a lot of gunk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one is looking across the Newtown Creek at Long Island City from the bulkheads at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Brooklyn, where Newtown Creek Alliance is now headquartered. That’s Sims Metal Recycling on the Queens side. From a maritime point of view, this is still an acutely active and well navigated section of the Newtown Creek. There’s multiple daily visits to the nearby Whale Creek tributary by NYC DEP sludge boats, tug and barge activity due to the presence of Sims in Queens, and Allocco Recycling in Greenpoint.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – a single barge carries the equivalent cargo of up to thirty eight semi trucks. That’s a lot of junk!
As you may have guessed by now, break time is over, and I’m once again communing with my beloved Newtown Creek.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
ancient morbidities
Scuttling, always scuttling…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s been so weird being out and about during the daylight hours, I tell ya. After several months of being absolutely nocturnal, my recent switchover to a diurnal existence has really been messing with my head. People? Freaking people? Gah.
What can I tell you, a humble narrator has always “done what you’ve got to do” and right now that involves early to bed and early to rise. I have no illusions about healthy, wealthy, and I’ve long ago stopped kidding myself about wise. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I’ve had to do in the last couple of weeks hasn’t been particularly interesting from a visual perspective, unless you’d find groups of people in a room talking about ultra mundane existential issues affecting Western Queens and Newtown Creek interesting. Luckily, a break from that sort of activity is upon me, and next week looks like it might end up being a good one for some adventure and what I would consider excitement.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a used car lot of couple of blocks from my house whose fencelines are suffused with street facing banners and flags. The fence is also topped off with rolls of razor wire, which is how the flag above, like all of its fellows, has ended up in the condition they’re in. There’s a visual metaphor at work here, something about how paranoia about security tends to literally shred the American flag, but I’m not smart enough to phrase it properly. Also, the fetishization of the flag by corporate America should be commented upon as well, but there you are.
Shame, that, but it makes for a nice photo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been experiencing something not unlike jet lag during this transition from nocturnal to diurnal living, which renders my experiences in a dream like manner. It’s also been difficult to form “granular” memories for the last week or so. I can tell you where I was and who I talked to, but what was said and done is more of a general impression than the highly specific dramaturge I can usually offer.
Long story short – dedicated bus lanes shared by bikes, vocational scholarships, green and solar roof tax incentives for industrial businesses, gray water harvesting in parks, commercial storefront composting programs, etc.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
morbid shade
A long overdue visit to Calvary Cemetery, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Consecrated by Archbishop “Dagger” John Hughes in 1848, who personally conducted the first interment (of literally millions) here in LIC’s Calvary Cemetery, this was and is the primary burying ground of the Roman Catholic Church in NYC. That first funeral was for an Irish immigrant named Esther Ennis, who is said to have died of a broken heart at her flat on Manhattan’s Clinton Street. Pictured above and below are views of the original part of the RC Church’s sprawling funereal complex, the “Saint Calixtus” or “First Calvary” division, found in the Blissville section of Long Island City. There are three other sections of Calvary, which are found nearby in the neighboring community of Woodside to the east. That large dome poking up through the bare tree limbs in the shot above is the Almirall Chapel, built in 1908.
The dome is forty feet across, eighty eight feet tall, and is capped by a statue of Christ the Redeemer created by a sculptress named Merro Beatrice Wilson. Ms. Wilson’s gender is mentioned for a reason, as it’s a pretty extraordinary thing for the Roman Catholic Church of that era to have handed out such a prominent assignment to a female artist. Conversely, the New York Archdiocese of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a very different organization than it is now, politically speaking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
During the second half of the 19th century, it was not uncommon for Calvary Cemetery to handle anywhere between fifty and one hundred funerals a day. The chaplain of the cemetery, named Reverend Hennessy, lived in a house found on the northeastern side of the grounds along with his staff – who were apparently monks and young priests.
Hennessy is also buried at the cemetery he devoted himself to, incidentally. His monument is white marble, adorned with delicate carvings depicting his priestly vestments. The monument hasn’t weathered well, what with the acidic rain and industrial pollutants produced by nearby factories found along the notorious Newtown Creek. Generally, marble in Calvary looks like melting ice cream, whereas granite seems to be fairly invulnerable to the atmospherics.
Fashions come and go. Hemlines, sideburns, hairstyles etc. Same thing occurs with mortuary architecture. A fad or fashion which seems, evidentiary speaking, to have occurred between the 1870’s and about 1900 was to erect enormous obelisk markers for subterrene family tombs. There’s a plane of these obelisks, right in the center of the place. Hawks like to hang out on them, waiting for rabbits to pop up from underground hidey-holes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking roughly westward, towards Manhattan. You can just see Newtown Creek and the Pulaski Bridge peeking out from above the memorial stones. This particular section of the cemetery has been used as the set for dozens and dozens of television and movie funerals. Vito Corleone’s funeral happened to the east of this spot, nearby the Johnston Memorial, but this is where Spider Man’s Uncle Ben, Batman’s parents… i can’t even begin to list them all.
By the way – Is it just me, or has the Manhattan skyline been utterly screwed up forever by Hudson Yards and that monstrosity going up behind the Chrysler Building?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
careful be
Randomly wandering around Sunnyside, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week was one of those where my calendar was absolutely packed with “have to’s” and one found himself constantly scuttling from place to place. Given that a significant chunk of my “have to’s” involved Newtown Creek and that I live in Astoria, that meant that the way home inevitably meant transiting through the Sunnyside and Sunnyside Gardens sections of Queens.
I’m led to believe that the cabling rig pictured above is the property of either Verizon or Spectrum, and one or the other is installing upgraded data cabling for high speed internet service. As a note, the Community Board people in Sunnyside insisted – many years ago – that these wired connections be installed in the neighborhood in a subterranean manner, which is why you don’t see the ugly and “willie nillie” tangle of airborne data and phone wires witnessed in other parts of Queens in Sunnyside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYC EDC team who are working on the ill conceived Sunnyside Yards Deck have adjured repeatedly that the revised planning for their Death Star will require the deck to be no more than three stories above current street grade, contradicting the feasibility report they created a few years ago. In fact, they’ve said they’re “throwing the feasibility study out” and we should just ignore it.
Ok, but that’s two million smackers of tax payer money you’re throwing out, and let’s do a bit of imagining based on what you’re seeing in the shot above. This section would be relatively unchanged on the east side of 43rd street, where the LIRR is transiting above those one story garages. Figure that the train represents a second story, and that the signal boards above the tracks are roughly the third story. That’s the height of the deck? Only three stories? What about the fifteen to thirty story tall luxury apartment houses on top of the thing of the sort you see in the distance?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Patrick “Battle Axe” Gleason, the last mayor of Long Island City, left us warnings back in 1898 to not trust the Manhattan people’s intentions for Queens. He predicted that they would empty their island of the stinking factories and workhouses, and turn Queens into a charnel house of rendering plants, industrial chimneys, and gas refineries. That’s what started happening in the early 20th century. Ever since, whenever they get a bright idea over at City Hall, where they want to try it out is in Queens.
Stand up, speak out. Just say no.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
The Newtown Pentacle 