Archive for the ‘Queens’ Category
prime exporters
It’s National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Often, it seems to me that for most of the 20th century New York City waged an unyielding war against the natural environment. The process of city building, of course, has always been a tale of harnessing and controlling nature – but the 20th century in NYC saw something tantamount to a military campaign waged against clean water and air. The highways were driven through wetlands (called waste meadows at the time), and anything that could be plated over in concrete received a few inches of the stuff. Sewage and industrial runoff was channeled directly into waterways like my beloved Newtown Creek, garbage was burned in municipal incinerators or dumped into the ocean, and there doesn’t seem to have been any regard given to the natural world at all other than in the name of conquering it.
What can you do about it, though? This is the world as we received it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a lot of hair pulling and teeth gnashing these days, in government circles, about how to rectify this inheritance. Partially its because the government people have to worry about fiscal responsibility, as related to flooding and storm resilience. It’s also about the fact that scientific opinion now points at the efficacy and effect which a healthy biome has on the welfare and earning potential of the citizenry, and the effect that environmental factors have on the economic prosperity of urban areas. Here, at your Newtown Pentacle – and on my many walking tours of the creeklands – I’ve been known to rattle on about storm water, green roofs, the Maspeth heat island effect, bioswales, and all other the other types of so called “Green Infrastructure” which officialdom has been experimenting with in the attempt to get a handle on this inheritance from earlier generations.
“Gray Infrastructure” is defined as sewer plants, retention tanks, various sorts of concrete structural devices which are found deep below the street – that sort of thing. “Gray” is incredibly expensive, and disruptive to the day to day lives of the citizenry as it disturbs the flow of traffic during construction and also generates noise and dust. “Green” is far cheaper, and uses the mechanisms of nature itself to accomplish the same goal as gray. The corollary of using the “green” approach is that you also get the aesthetic and practical benefits of having vegetation in your neighborhood – trees which shade both buildings and pavement for instance, meaning that summer heatwaves are theoretically less severe in terms of energy costs. Green is a win, win – essentially.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s one of the literally hundreds of outfall pipes you will observe in Long Island City which descend from the elevated highways – in this case an onramp to the Long Island Expressway on Borden Avenue. To my knowledge – there is not a single bridge, elevated highway, or subway in the City of New York which doesn’t ultimately drain into the combined sewer system or – in fact – directly into area waterways. Even the brand spanking new Kosciuszko Bridge that the NYS DOT is building over my beloved Newtown Creek right now will drain into the creek via a system called a “vortex drain.”
This post is not meant as a chide, however, rather it’s meant to point out to anybody in the world of officialdom who might be reading this that there’s a huge opportunity to do something curative around these outfall pipes using the “Green Infrastructure” approach.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That overpass, spillway, and pipe – in this case – are the property of the State government. The drain, sewer, and sidewalk are likely owned by the City government. What if the spillway contained a small rain garden designed to drink up water and catch the trash coming down from the highway? The City wins in not paying fines to the State for clean water violations, and the State solves a problem it caused, and all for the price of a bit of gardening.
These hundreds of outfall pipes and their spillways would make for a brilliant spot to install some of that “Green Infrastructure” mentioned above. As far as maintenance of the installation, local community boards could “adopt” these outfalls and parcel out the care and maintenance duties (trash removal mainly) to their constituent businesses and community organizations (Boy Scouts, Kiwanis clubs, etc.) in the same manner as upstate communities do with the “adopt a highway” program. Win?
What if?
Upcoming Tours and events
First Calvary Cemetery walking tour, May 6th.
With Atlas Obscura’s Obscura Day 2017, Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour – details and tix here.
MAS Janeswalk free walking tour, May 7th.
Visit the new Newtown Creek Alliance/Broadway Stages green roof, and the NCA North Henry Street Project – details and tix here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
poor excuse
It’s National Cheese Fondue Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sorry, sorry, sorry – another placeholder post today. Fresh stuff is in the pipes, I promise.
Upcoming Tours and events
First Calvary Cemetery walking tour, May 6th.
With Atlas Obscura’s Obscura Day 2017, Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour – details and tix here.
MAS Janeswalk free walking tour, May 7th.
Visit the new Newtown Creek Alliance/Broadway Stages green roof, and the NCA North Henry Street Project – details and tix here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
last straw
It’s National Cinnamon Crescent Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is a crispy critter today, after yesterday’s Newtown Creekathon. About halfway through, I was wishing that I had a car waiting to whisk me away at the end of it all. Then again, given what traffic is like…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m always spotting cool cars around the neighborhoods, though. Check out that Rolls Royce limo above. It had a bride in it and everything.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This neato Jeep was encountered along Northern Blvd. It looked like a giant matchbox car to me.
Back tomorrow with something a bit more profound, after I’ve rested up a bit.
Upcoming Tours and events
First Calvary Cemetery walking tour, May 6th.
With Atlas Obscura’s Obscura Day 2017, Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour – details and tix here.
MAS Janeswalk free walking tour, May 7th.
Visit the new Newtown Creek Alliance/Broadway Stages green roof, and the NCA North Henry Street Project – details and tix here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
inexplicable process
It’s National Beer Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst lying about and writhing in self recrimination, a humble narrator often finds himself aghast. As is often opined, existential horror is what colors my days and precludes peaceful rest at night. Certainty exists in my mind that the cogs of fate are spinning towards doom, but I’ve been saying that for decades. One thing which all can agree upon, I believe, is that there is something wrong. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the political craphole I’m talking about.
There’s a larger sense, zeitgeist wise, that something weird has happened. Google “Mandela Effect” for the pop culture version of this phenomena.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One often wonders about parallel universes and alternate timelines. Theoretically, every moment in time – every decision you make in fact – spawns a binary split in time. There’s a universe out there based on that the fact you turned left instead of right, in essence, and where Star Trek’s Mr. Spock has a beard. There’s a depopulated American landscape in a timeline where the Cuban Missile Crisis resulted in a nuclear war, and another one in which the Japanese Empire rules over the western coastline of North America and so on… but all of that is on a grand societal scale. Focus on your personal stuff – wherein you married someone else than your current spouse, or decided to move to Kansas City instead of staying in NYC, or decided that you loved the sweet taste of crack cocaine.
Binary, or branch logic, is how to process these possibilities. The crazy thing is imagining all of the alternate “you’s”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Binary logic boils down to a) you turned left or b) you turned right. That binary decision led to a branch of further possibilities that led from your A or B choice. Each choice leads to another set of binaries, which in turn branch out from each other. Negotiating these choices determines how a person can end up as either a Doctor or a Convict, or possibly both. It’s “big math” trying to calculate the positive and negative consequence of each binary, and the name for this sort of behaviorally predictive arithmetic is “game theory.”
Taking that first step on a new path, or not, is a consequential moment that requires a certain number of logical assumptions which are based on prior or learned experience.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thing is, the math of these binaries doesn’t account for fortuitous serendipity – or luck. Why do some people end up in positions and places which they have not earned through hardscrabble effort and choosing the correct binary choice at every step of the way? In some cases it’s because they are born into families where some forebear has made all the correct choices and the branch of the logic tree they enter the world on is already set. In others, it’s “luck.” Some people make their own luck, via a well chosen series of binary decisions.
There are two kinds of King or Queen out there – those born with the silver spoon in their mouth, or those who just roll in and take that spoon out of somebody else’s mouth and stick it in their own. I think it was Voltaire who said something like “all of history boils down to the sound of silk soled shoes falling down stairs while wooden soled ones are climbing them.” Durant was fairly emphatic in his warnings about the historical patterns of successful and well established civilizations losing touch with the ancestral vigor that “made them” in the first place being supplanted by younger and tougher ones – think Constantinople and the Turks, or the Persians and the Parthians, or Rome and the Franks. “Stay Hungry” seems to be the lesson of history, but how does that parse?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Theoretically, every binary choice spawns a new timeline – or universe – and that all of these timelines coexist in a series of ever multiplying and fracturing bubbles. Often, one has pondered how big a decision is required to spawn a new universe. Did ordering a burger instead of the fish at dinner last night create a new timeline? The answer is likely yes, if you buy into the theory. There’s also an army of “you” populating these alternate timelines – ones where you’re happy or sad, alive or dead, etc.
On the large scale, there’d be an alternate timeline NYC out there somewhere in which September 11th didn’t happen. Wonder what that world is like? There’d also be one where September 11th took the form of a nuclear attack, I suppose.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pondering these binary choices can drive one crazy, especially when considering your decisions in retrospect. I’ve actually known a few people over the years suffering from mental illnesses who get lost down a binary logic hole.
Regret is ultimately the realization that you made the wrong binary choice and entered a branch of logical consequence that is less than ideal. “Never should have got behind the wheel that night,” or “what possessed me to say that to her,” or “well, he needed killing” are things none of us ever want to say. Should have become a convict is something no one ever says. On the other hand, this binary world view really sucks the joy out of life. If the choice between ordering a burger or the fish can really spawn an alternate timeline and a whole new universe, you should spend some more time reading the entire menu while also considering fate, and destiny.
Conversely, once – when I pondered about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin to my Dad – he offered “hey that’s pretty interesting, why don’t you think about that while you’re washing the car?”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given my studies of NYC’s history, friends often ask me where and when I’d like to visit – were it possible to travel in time. My first instinct would be to visit the NYC described by Jakob Riis, but then the realization that the people of that era were “super predators,” by modern standard, creeps in. Most present day New Yorkers would be shortly consumed by the people of that era. The interesting thing to me, of course, is that the set of binary choices and results which the “super predators” of the 19th century made and achieved – turning a cesspool city of wood framed tenements that lined unpaved streets which were crowded with pack animals and foraging pigs – into the greatest “polis” that the world has ever seen. The history of the world is always bookmarked by City States which defined the financial and cultural center of individual civilizations. Ur, Athens, Babylon, Rome, etc.
I’m currently torn to shreds over the idea that a set of binary decisions made millennia ago is Mesoptamia have ultimately branched into the City of Greater New York. I’m also wondering about an alternate universe in which Ur was never founded, and a world without cities. To answer the time travel question – I don’t want to visit the past, instead, I’d like to be able to view the other branches of the binary logic tree.
Upcoming Tours and events
First Calvary Cemetery walking tour, May 6th.
With Atlas Obscura’s Obscura Day 2017, Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour – details and tix here.
MAS Janeswalk free walking tour, May 7th.
Visit the new Newtown Creek Alliance/Broadway Stages green roof, and the NCA North Henry Street Project – details and tix here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
urbane rector
It’s National Caramel Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a well known physical coward, and after having observing that a quartet of fourth graders (whose aspect I did not like) were heading my way along Northern Boulevard the other day, it seemed logical to duck under a parked car and hide. You really just cannot be too careful these days. While passing the time it would take for these rough looking nine to ten year olds to exit the scene, one pondered about life in Western Queens and the meaning of it all. Also, I wondered how I was going to wiggle my fat ass out from under this car, which was pretty easy to dive under, but which ended up being a tighter fit than one would have guessed.
Banal reality is all I’ve got, what can I tell you?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“The Queens Cobbler” is the name I’ve assigned to a likely serial killer operating hereabouts whose macabre trophies adorn the streets of Queens in the form of singular orphan shoes. The Cobbler left behind one of his or her little messages on Broadway in Astoria recently, pictured above. It’s my belief that, just like Jack the Ripper, the Queens Cobbler is connected to one of our noble political families and that both the press and police are laboring to keep the thing quiet just for the sake of maintaining everyone’s patronage. You won’t get to be judge, or a DA, or a Captain, or an editor, if you piss them off. There’s rumors, of course…
Maybe that’s just a cast off shoe, or maybe not… the question you have to ask is – where’s the other one? You and your “Occam’s razor.” pffft.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Usually, whenever a humble narrator leaves the house, people point and stare. Women clutch at their handbags, mothers gather their children close, and dogs begin to whine pitiously. If one steps out of line in any minor way – say jay walking, or depositing metal foil in a bin marked for paper – a crowd gathers and law enforcement displays an enviable level of efficiency and deployment. These sorts of experiences are why one is constantly confused by the freedom enjoyed by serial graffitists, the bastards who post those cash for cars stickers, and those who can urinate anywhere they choose to.
My reverie beneath the car was broken when the owner of my hiding place began heading towards the vehicle, as signaled by the “beep boop” signal sent by the electronic key chain fob to the conveyance. One rolled out from my shadowed safe space and discovered that that the threatening quartet of sinister seeming children had moved on, so once again I stood and faced the concretized reality of Western Queens – here in the Newtown Pentacle.
Upcoming Tours and events
First Calvary Cemetery walking tour, May 6th.
With Atlas Obscura’s Obscura Day 2017, Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour – details and tix here.
MAS Janeswalk free walking tour, May 7th.
Visit the new Newtown Creek Alliance/Broadway Stages green roof, and the NCA North Henry Street Project – details and tix here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 