Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
too shapeless
Flushing Bay Promenade.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s part of the World’s Fair Marina at Flushing Bay, looking westwards towards LaGuardia Airport, in the shot above. Having attended a NYC Parks Dept. meeting discussing their plans to reinvest and upgrade the Marina (Parks runs it) a couple weeks back, a mental note to return and explore a bit was overturned last week before the weather got ugly. Off to East Elmhurst’s border with Corona and Flushing went a humble narrator, using the Q19 Bus as my conveyance.
I mean, come on, doesn’t everybody hang around the Queens waterfront at night in January?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was medium cold, as a note, although as the night went on and the wind picked up it did become increasingly uncomfortable. During warmer months, I’m known to be out on one of my little night jaunts for six to seven hours, but this time of year, shorter intervals are required due to the climate. In all actuality, I was ok, but the camera gear was malfunctioning a bit. The camera itself was fine, but my remote release wire was “sticking.” I soon started sticking it into an interior pocket of my sweatshirt to warm it up, which made its malfunction predictable rather than sporadic.
I had longtime Newtown Pentacle curmudgeon and frequent comment offerer Don Cav with me for this one, who met me at the entrance to the park. Don is a World’s Fair(s) enthusiast and never misses an opportunity to visit the place, or to tell me in person that I’m wrong about absolutely everything.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unfortunately, as Don and I were chatting, I missed wiping my lens down for the shot above. I’m sure that a certain other frequent commenter named George will soon ask why I included it in this post due to the many photographic imperfections created by the dusty lens, to which I will offer – I just kind of like it.
I also get to say “Candela Structures” when describing it, but it might be more accurate to describe this thingamabob as a “Schladermundt Structure.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned above, it wasn’t life threatening cold like it was at the beginning of this week, as we were walking around the promenade, but there was ice floating about in the salty waters of Flushing Bay so… it was cold enough.
The shot above looks eastwards towards the mouth of Flushing Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Across the water “my kind of thing” was visible.
By that I mean large scale industrial properties with interesting utilitarian shapes. I’m not going to get all “granular” about what’s found in this area, as it would be entirely disingenuous for me to present freshly discovered details in a manner indicative of some long familiarity. I can tell you where colonial era farmhouses used to stand in Maspeth, but have no real knowledge of Flushing’s environs. That’s something I plan on addressing this year, another one of my little mental notes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
More tomorrow, and Flushing Creek at night, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
youth’s madness
East Elmhurst.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, I uncharacteristically rode a bus from Astoria to East Elmhurst in order to get into the right spot for some “waving the camera around” action, which deposited me a few blocks away from my destination. A scuttling I went, heading eastwards on Astoria Blvd. I was heading for the zone I describe as “where Boulevards collide” or “just so Robert Moses.” It’s where Ditmars, Astoria, and Northern Blvd. all smash together with the Grand Central Parkway and Citifield at the edge of Flushing. You’ll be walking down the sidewalk in certain spots, and all of a sudden find yourself walking onto an off ramp to the highway.
One of the least pedestrian friendly spots in Queens, I tell you, although I’ve only been through here a few times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way, I spotted this tiny domestic survivor from long ago on Astoria Blvd. Itty bitty and wood framed, it had advertisements in its windows advertising a “Cuarto en renta” (room for rent). Something about the propert caught my eye, and instinct told me that “something has happened here.” Can’t tell you what, didn’t do the research on the property, but usually if something catches my eye the way this place did…
I’ll look into it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s one of the entranceways to the Flushing Bay Promenade pictured above, which is actually a pedestrian bridge overflying the Grand Central Parkway with Flushing Bay beyond. LaGuardia Airport is to the west, Flushing Meadows Corona Park to the east. Directly north is Flushing Bay, and as you can discern from the shot above, I arrived right on time just as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself had ducked behind Manhattan. The night time, it’s the right time, I say.
More tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
correlate every
Artsy fartsy on Roosevelt Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Funnily enough, I was actually talking on a conference call about MTA with a couple of colleagues while shooting the shots in today’s post. Additionally, I was freezing my yum yums off, but what does a little existential discomfort matter when one is pursuing the muse? I had scuttled along this pathway on Roosevelt Avenue sometime in the last couple of weeks and decided there and then that I needed to come back with the intention of capturing the artificial light playing along the steel of the IRT Flushing or 7 Line elevated subway tracks above. These shots are from where and when I did so.
Last Monday and Woodside, which sounds sort of anticlimactic, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, during the day, the steel structure casts harsh shadows that are framed by extremely bright shafts of sunlight which reduces photo exposure options significantly. At night, however, traffic and street lights – even light spilling out of apartment windows – creates a random and often quite colorful luminance. Throw in passing auto traffic and illuminated shop signs? Yup, interesting place to do some long exposures.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Roosevelt Avenue, however, isn’t exactly a backwater. It’s densely travelled by vehicles of all kinds and there’s lots of pedestrians as well. Luckily, the steel girders supporting the overhead trackage provide lots of places for you to set up and compose a tripod shot. Unfortunately, these girders seem to be favorite spots for illegal dumping or vomiting and are very popular with the canine population of Woodside. C’est La Vie, ay?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The path I decided on walking was, by necessity of climatological conditions, short by my standard. A quick subway ride on the M train from Astoria to the Roosevelt Avenue stop carried me to Jackson Heights, whereupon a southeasterly posture was assumed by turning onto Roosevelt and walking up the hill towards Queens Blvd. After finishing up my self appointed task, one walked down the hill at 48th street and back to HQ in Astoria.
Yes, I was tempted to cut things short and hail that cab in pursuance of warming up my yum yums.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The conference call I was on, as mentioned, revolved around the MTA and various issues surrounding it in Queens. Given the dearth of subway lines serving 75% of the Borough, and the fact that most Queensican commuters have to rely on Buses, I volunteered to begin using the bus system more and more to “get smart” about it. Back when I was full time advertising guy Mitch, one of the agencies I worked for was Ogilvy & Mather, founded in part by a fellow named David Ogilvy. Ogilvy was one of the first scientific marketers back in the “mad men” era, and wrote several books about his experiences and realizations. One of his bits of advice involved signing up for or using your customer’s products, to learn what the experience is of the said customer you’re trying to sell something to.
I’m not trying to sell you bus rides, of course, but within a year I’ll be able to speak a lot more intelligently than I can now (I literally live over a Subway line, so I’m going to have to go far afield of “my way” on this one) about what’s good or bad about Bus service in – at least – Western and Northern Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Baby, it was cold outside. Luckily, I arrived at my turnaround point at Queens Blvd., packed up the tripod and wide angle lens, refitted the camera to handheld settings and affixed a “bright” night lens. As it turns out, my yum yums survived the cold and are in fine fettle.
Next week – something completely different at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
astute pupils
into the cold waste…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Multiple layers of insulating clothing were draped off of the slowly rotting corpse which houses a humble narrator, just the other night, and out into the freezing temperatures did I go. As mentioned countless times in the past, one has a particular vulnerability to cold weather, which is at odds with and forms a comorbidity revolving about my aversion to boredom. Accordingly, my plan was to avoid the waterfront this particular evening and spend my time inhabiting the steel shadowed corridor of Roosevelt Avenue and limit my evening constitutional to just over two hours spent in the cold.
Strategically speaking, one needed to acquire imagery for this and other posts, and my tactics involved the usage of the NYCTA system to put myself in a fairly interesting place and then walk back to HQ the “long way round.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ever a stickler for grammatically annoying others, the different meanings of a strategy versus a tactic is something which drives me mad. While browsing a military surplus website, one came upon an offering for two items – a tactical briefcase and a tactical pen. The briefcase was merely a fairly ugly bag constructed from the sort of fabrics commonly found in military items like rucksacks, and the pen was designed and constructed in a manner where it could double as a stabbing weapon. What sort of tactic either of these items represented is beyond me.
A strategy is an overarching plan formulated to achieve a goal – “I shall conquer France, using my portfolio of mad scientist inventions, along multiple fronts in pursuance of causing their Government to collapse while stretching the capabilities of their military out.” A tactic is – “The race of Atomic Supermen I’ve been breeding in the jungles of the Amazon will invade from the Atlantic seaboard,” or “while my volcano cannons bombard their Mediterranean coast, freezes rays will shine on Paris and bury it in ice.” Actions committed are tactical, the overall plan is the strategy, and neither briefcases nor pens could be considered as being strategic nor tactical. Your goal in a game of Chess is to capture the opponent’s King, the strategy involves how you plan to do it, and each piece you move is tactic.
As a note, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about conquering France using science fiction weapons.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m also obsessed with the word “Carpenter” at the moment. A carpenter doesn’t “carpent” at work, yet the job indicates that they do. The word entered the English language via Old French (which in turn got it from Roman Latin) around the time that the Normans took over in England. It replaced the Germanic sounding “wright” for the trade, although there are a bunch of distinctions in the carpentry world describing what you would do at work (joiner, cooper, finisher etc.) that also indicate skill levels. An interesting bit of linguistics that I recently got turned on to involves the Normans, actually, and how when they set themselves up as the Old French speaking Lords of the Manor in England the English language began to change. Common people ate mutton (Germanic English) whereas the Normans ate lamb (Old French) for example. In essence, if you’re saying a word in English and the tongue is lifting and hitting the frontal roof of the mouth (lightning, for example) it comes from Old French, and if the tongue is on the bottom of the mouth and bunched up at the back (woodworker) its from the Germanic influenced pre conquest language. I can’t speak too intelligently about this subject, as I’ve just encountered the topic, but it’s a pretty interesting one.
These are the sort of things one ponders (tactic) as I’m trying to stay warm (strategy) whilst wandering the streets of Queens in the January dark.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
common tongues
The angle between…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For a long time, I’ve been using the term “angle” to describe those spots which form the borders of neighborhoods in Western Queens, which are actually historic remnants of the pre consolidated City of Greater New York. One of them is found where the steel of the elevated IRT Flushing line sweeps off of Queens Blvd. and instead overflies Roosevelt Avenue. This is the former border of Long Island City’ Middleburgh (alternatively LIC Heights) and the town of Woodside, and is today the border of the neighborhoods of Sunnyside and Woodside. Recent endeavor found a humble narrator negotiating his way home well after midnight, and just as it was starting to rain.
What sucked was that I didn’t have an umbrella.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I posted the shot above to a couple of my social media accounts, so sorry if you’re seeing it twice, but I stand by the text that accompanied it declaring that NYC looks best when it’s wet. Given my lack of an umbrella, and the startling amount of electronic devices affixed to my person, some care was exercised in my path down Queens Blvd. in the pursuit of not becoming soaked by the sudden downpour. There’s two ways to do this – one is to walk so fast that you’re actually dodging raindrops (which is illogical and doesn’t actually work), and the other is to utilize the “rain shadow” offered by the built environment. It had been around eight hours since my last meal at this particular moment, and given that I wasn’t going to be hitting the sack until the wee hours of the morning, the only option available at the particular time involved a fast food chain. Lemmee tell ya, Lords and Ladies, the denizens of the City who inhabit fast food restaurants after midnight in Sunnyside are an interesting demographic.
My high fat and calorie hamburger consumed (have you noticed what the fast food people consider a “small” coke is these days?), and with the rain actually having intensified, I decided to hire a taxi for the short jaunt across the Sunnsyide Yards and back to HQ in Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having grown up in a solidly blue collar section of Brooklyn, my first instinct is always to support the working people rather than big corporations. That’s how I found myself standing in a bus shelter and trying to hail a cab. For the last couple of years, I’ve had a taxi app – Lyft – on my phone which I’ve been using for the occasional cab ride. I like it because the cab comes to me, and given the weird places and transit deserts like industrial Maspeth that I spend my time you’re not going to have many opportunities for street hails so Lyft is my go to for those sorts of spots. Queens Blvd. and 40th street, however? Use a yellow or green cab, one will be by in a minute or two. That’s what I thought, and when a yellow cab pulled up and rejected any other destination but Manhattan, I was reminded why I don’t care about the dying medallion cab industry nor its asshole drivers. Yellow cab drivers in particular would seem to prefer it if they just rolled down the window for you to throw money into the front seat before they spit at you and drive away.
I fired up the Lyft app and was home in about ten minutes.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 