Archive for the ‘Project Firebox’ Category
Project Firebox 23
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scarred by sun and salt, an eternal vigil is nevertheless enacted on the corner of Northern Blvd. and 55th street in Queens where this centuried veteran holds fast. The tracks above are part of the fabled Hell Gate extension, which ultimately allows egress from the titan Sunnyside yard to the continent beyond for freight and passenger rail.
There’s a couple of announcements coming, describing some pretty cool “things to do”. Leave June 6th open, and be in Astoria… is all I can say right now.
Project Firebox 22
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queen’s very own Broadway, as it slouches roughly uphill from the East River at Hallets Cove, transverses Woodside on its way to the exotic and hill defined locale of Jackson Heights and beyond. Home to a variegated sampling of the human infestation, the neighborhood’s residents largely hail from the tropical courts of Asia who are comfortably vouchsafed against immolation by this solitary sentinel located at the confluent junction of 35th avenue and 63rd street.
Broadway, of course, eventually transitions into and becomes Grand Avenue at Queens Blvd. in Elmhurst, whose right of way carries the unsuspecting pedestrian toward an eventual meeting with the loathsome Newtown Creek and infinite Brooklyn.
Project Firebox 21
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The stout forearms and colorful urban patois which once identified and distinguished those who emanate from storied Greenpoint no longer betray the origins of all its residents, due to the caste of bohemians and esthetes who have lately made the ancient village their home. Observe the ironic wit, sardonic smile, and postmodern vacuity of this long suffering alarm box at the terminus of Greenpoint Avenue where it collides with the East River.
Project Firebox 20
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are many places in and around Astoria where time and space fold in upon each other and you find yourself at the corner of an avenue and street which bear the same number. This scarlet paladin withstands and discharges its duty despite the frozen indignity heaped on and around it at the junction of 37th avenue and 37th street- just off Northern Blvd. Who can guess what odd sights it has witnessed at this tripartite angle between Dutch Kills and Astoria and Queens Plaza, and what strange attractors frequent such concurrent corners?
Project Firebox 19
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Decapitated, this firebox on Skillman Avenue and Honeywell Street has long been severed from its designed functionality. I’m told by certain knowledgeable sources that you simply cannot remove the stump of an alarm box from its appointed spot, as the circuitry which governs the entire system will be affected by its absence rendering the surrounding neighborhood’s chain of Fireboxes blind to urgent cries of imminent immolation.
This firebox, however, finds a new utility for the needs of the few – or in this case the one- as opposed to the many it once protected, for your humble narrator routinely uses the dinner plate sized platter which crowns it as a makeshift camera platform when photographing the titan Sunnyside Yard with its backdrop of the shield wall of that Shining City which squats squamously across the River of Sound.
The Newtown Pentacle 