Archive for the ‘Queens’ Category
duplicate and exceed
In the wind, and flying with the Night Gaunts in Industrial Maspeth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing my walk through the nighted streets of Maspeth, the path chosen carried me from Astoria to the streets surrounding the Newtown Creek. Caution regarding traffic guided my steps. As illustrated in yesterday’s post, the greatest danger you face around here is heavy vehicle traffic. Despite this assertion, when I mentioned my plans to come down here in the small hours to my neighbor, I was offered a firearm to carry, as he was concerned about me meeting up with malign elements of our society.
Untrained as I am in the brandishing of such weaponry, I retorted that I’d probably end up shooting myself if any attempt was made to discharge the thing and I declined. When I go out shooting, it’s about light hitting a camera lens, not little bits of metal hitting things. The atmosphere continued to thicken as one transversed the sloping street which inevitably led to the fabled Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you want to experience “spooky,” however, one cannot recommend the feeling of isolation and exposure which is offered by industrial Maspeth at night. You truly feel alone here, all of the steel gates are down, with the exception of an occasional warehouse operation’s loading dock being open and spilling light onto the street.
The smell of the place, on a foggy night, is exceptional. Misty atmospherics, fed by high humidity and air temperatures quite a bit higher than those in the gurgling waters of the sewage addled Newtown Creek, caused an omnipresent stink to inhabit the place. One does not like to think what he was breathing, but suffice to say that on a night like this you are fully in touch with Newtown Creek – in fact, you are respirating it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You know that you are out early when the DSNY workers haven’t made it to work yet. The Sanitation Department maintains an enormous facility nearby my destination, and the corner of 48th street and 58th road was where I had been heading for all night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Maspeth Avenue Plank Road, a street end which has been recently made salubrious by the efforts of my chums at Newtown Creek Alliance. This is the spot which I had in mind when I announced to Our Lady of the Pentacle that I would be foregoing sleep and heading out to “do some night shooting.”
This is also why I schlepped the tripod with me, as there were a few shots which I was desirous to capture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A quick change up of my gear and camera settings began. The tripod came out of its carrying case, and so did a remote shutter release. The dslr was affixed to the tripod, and the shutter release to the camera. One was intent on working in the “night into day” genre, and began a series of long exposure shots of the environs.
The shot above is part of the series, an “amuse bouche” as it were, for the set of images which will greet you in tomorrow’s post.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
grotesque night
Vampires be damned, I’m going out!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you might recall, last Thursday saw the Newtown Pentacle experiencing a temperature inversion whose unseasonable warmth generated a not insignificant amount of mist and fog. Atmospheric humidity was measured in the high end of the ninetieth percentiles, and the air temperature – even at night – never dipped below seventy degrees on that scale which was offered by and named for German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1724. Accordingly, one decided to stay up and go out into the fuligin.
After preparing and quaffing several decanters of caffeinated beverages, and having slavishly outfitted the camera bag for “night shooting,” I left Astoria at four in the morning, with a certain destination in mind, and my full kit on my back (including tripod). The tripod wasn’t deployed for a while, however, and all of the shots you’ll see over the next couple of days are handheld.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One decided on 48th street as offering my best southern path from “a” to “b,” with “b” in mind as being the lugubrious Newtown Creek. This is essentially one long incline, passing from the former marshlands of Northern Blvd., over the ridge into which Sunnyside Gardens was embedded, and continuing up the crest of Laurel Hill whereupon a gradual descent to the elluvial flood plains of the Newtown Creek and its tributaries once suffused a vast and mosquito breeding wetland environment.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The thickening of the atmosphere – due to the high humidity – and combined with ascending the gradual slope, caused a heavy wave of perspiration to start which was soon oozing out of my skinvelope. This occult liquid, thick with secretions, began to soak into my clothing and cause no small amount of discomfort. Of more concern was the effect which the atmospherics might be having on my camera, which – unlike the meaty carriage utilized to carry my brain around – was functionally the same temperature as the surrounding mass of air so accretions of airborne moisture sought to coat it. I had long ago stored away my eye glasses, as their continual fogging made them more trouble than they were worth.
High humidity plus air temperatures in the chillier range, to the glassy parts of a lens, are a terrible combination. Condensation is ruinous. The prophylactic measure is to hold the camera close to my body, which warms it up a bit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Passing over Queens Blvd., and under the elevated concrete viaduct of the high flying IRT subway tracks, one began to feel a bit creeped out. It is an odd sensation moving through a City in the dark, knowing full well that any of the humans encountered will likely be inebriated or possessed of malign intent – or possibly some combination. Sex criminals and burglars are out at 4:30 in the morning – as well as photographers, it would seem.
As always, my headphones were in place, and the playlist of audio books employed for my night time jaunt were exclusively the writings of H.P. Lovecraft – as read in unabridged form by Wayne June.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Maybe it was the Lovecraft, or June’s basso performance of the material, but one found himself looking over his shoulder a lot. In the shadows and mist, unccommented upon men – if men they were – moved about in a manner which suggested that some series of neighborhood bacchanals had been well attended. All around me were cemeteries, ancient burying grounds locked away behind high iron gates. The desire to trespass was cut down by the sure knowledge that there are some things one does not wish to know.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the height of Laurel Hill, the darkened streets began to brighten as the phosphorescence and sodium lighting of industrial West Maspeth began to illuminate the fog and mist. A quickness of step began to sharply increase my pace, which unfortunately began to increase the levels of perspiration one was experiencing.
Realization that my hair and clothing were saturated, and that although I was perspiring heavily, there was no way that this amount of liquid could have emerged out of me caused me to wonder – and more than wonder – why I was so moist.
The fact that I was walking through a gaseous vapor, a grounded cloud as it were, occurred when a casual touch revealed that my camera bag had become somewhat moistened as well. The closer I got to Newtown Creek, the more that an obsequious combination of automotive exhaust combining with the fog began to roil the olfactory senses, and my eyes began to sting. Regardless of discomfort, one had come this far, and the creeklands awaited.
Tomorrow – more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
full joys
On it, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not too long ago, some of the neighbors here in Astoria were experiencing electrical problems. The redoubtable employees of the Consolidated Edison Corporation began to appear in great numbers, arrange orange safety cones, and get busy. Luckily, for the 48-72 hours that their repairs took to administer, their idling trucks were directly in front of Newtown Pentacle HQ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Famously, what roused me from mere proletarian to activist and “neighborhood crank” was the Great Astoria Blackout of 2006. For an entire week, this neighborhood was without power at the height of summer, and blue fire was erupting from manholes and transformer vaults. People died in the heat, and it seemed as if no one in City Hall cared. Ever since, one pays quite a bit of attention to power supply issues here in the neighborhood.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The initial swarm of Con Ed employees was soon replaced by one of their emergency units. Like DC Comic’s Flash – the emergency unit is clad in red. Also like the Flash, these workers are meta humans who move faster than the human eye can follow. Often, all you can see is a blur. Guess that’s why they get paid the big bucks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It took around 15 seconds for the junior member of this crew to assemble the safety cordon for the work site.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A more senior member moved even faster, opening the access cover to a hidden transformer vault and deploying a ladder and other equipment into it in the blink of an eye.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My upstairs neighbor Mario, who is a union guy and can get other adherents of organized labor to “spill the beans” with a few carefully placed “bro’s,” went out to get the story. It seems that some of the electrical supply cables, damaged by the surges and fires of 2006 I would add, had finally given up the ghost and that three homes on the next block were entirely devoid of juice. He deduced this from slowing down an audio recording he made of the Con Ed guys answering him, which sounded like the buzzing of a fly in the original recording.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The speedsters were assigned the duty of drawing a new set of cables from the transformer vault, in front of HQ, roughly half a block to the affected properties. It seems that in addition to the underground rooms that house the step up transformers which handle the conversion from high voltage “direct” to residential “alternating” current, there are pipes and concrete tunnels through which these wires travel honeycombing the neighborhood. This does beggar the question as to why the high voltage cables that Con Ed hung about Astoria back in 2006 to restore service are still there, but there you go.
Welcome to Queens, now go fuck yourself, after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Couldn’t get a shot of what they were doing down there, but when I woke up the next morning, the Con Ed guys were sleeping in the idling truck and I’m told that the three properties on the next block had been re-energized.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
very secret
Election Day is upon us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unfortunately, this Election Day does not offer New Yorkers our dearly held desire to send Bill De Blasio back to his house in Park Slope. One can only dream, I guess.
The only Queensican election of any consequence this year is in the 23rd Council district, a race discussed in this Observer article. It will likely end up with Grodenchik as the winner, he’s the “establishment” candidate after all, but I do hope that Friedrich gets in as he would be an incendiary and rebel voice in the Council. Other than the Barrons from Brooklyn, there aren’t enough dissenting voices in Government these days, even if – like the Barrons – they are nutters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Democrats in Queens, the so called “Queens Machine,” are a megalithic party firmly in electoral control of the western side of a highly gerrymandered Borough. There are good ones and bad ones. I’m lucky enough to live in the districts of a few of the good ones, but I do find it kind of disturbing that the other parties basically throw their hat into the ring when election time comes. One likes debate, but then again I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn where a discussion about which bakery has the best rye bread can often escalate into a situation demanding the presence of the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of my neighbors don’t vote. Many of them are new(ish) immigrants who tell me that it doesn’t matter. They also inform that the best way to insure that you get called for jury duty is to register for the plebiscite. My response is “if you don’t vote, you forfeit your right to complain.” Also, one looks forward to voting against Bill De Blasio in his next polling, and ANYONE who supports his feckless and atavist agenda.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things which a humble narrator has said in the past, and continues to strongly believe is this – Politicians will support whomever supports them, and without a strong showing of the electorate and a contested popular vote, it will be only monetary contributions by which they can gauge their efforts.
Don’t vote? You just gave a billionaire even more influence.
Didn’t have time to vote? You just gave REBNY and apostate “progressives” like Bill De Blasio even more “mandate” to rape our communities and serve the interests of foreign investors and big money.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
rose oddly
Halloween sights from the Times Square of Astoria, 2015.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As has become our holiday tradition – Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself, along with a small group of people who can tolerate my presence for short intervals, headed over to the local corner pub and sat down with a few buckets of candy on Halloween. Our Lady and the others distribute the sweet stuff to the mobs of costumed “yutes” and after I check with and get the permission of parent or guardian to do so, I take some photos.
The ones in today’s post were my favorites, but if you want to check out the whole set – here’s the link to them on flickr.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sugar skulls and “Dias de Los muertes” iconography is a growing theme for Astoria costumers, as you’d suspect, given our growing and welcome population of Mexican and Central Americans. I love the visual style of this particular folk tradition.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The superhero costumes available in shops these days are light years beyond what was available when I was a kid, back in the ’70’s, when the Don Post company offered plastic smocks with the characters name on them and weird PVC face masks that always seemed to have sharp edges on mouth and eye holes.
Check out that kid in the lion costume.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lot of Jokers were out and about, but this young lady was clearly the most “all in.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady had many, many customers for her candy. There were times when it felt like a relentless horde of zombies were attacking her.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bunch of the very young kids had literally no idea what was happening, but knew something involving candy was afoot. The toddler pictured above came very close to winning Halloween.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Astoria is all about family, and as you can see in the shot above, in some units – every member of the clan was done up in holiday dress for Halloween.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yep, adorable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As it grew dark, the crowds continued to throb about. A weird thing about Astoria, or my section of it at least, is that the kids don’t trick or treat on the side streets at private homes.
They mainly stick to the avenues (like Broadway), and trick or treat at the mom and pop shops. I’m told that it’s part of the modern day fear of “stranger danger” and the parent’s assumption that every adult male whom the child encounters is likely a pervert or child molester.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the night moved on, the grown ups began to exhibit. This group of happy footed Penguins seemed to be on the way to a party. The chill of the night air, and the fact that we had spent something like six hours at the Doyle’s Corner Bar, contributed to a general agreement amongst my group that it was time to cut things off and head back to HQ to order a pizza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last call, and it was time to head on home with camera and Our Lady in tow. That’s Hank the Elevator Guy in the shot above, incidentally, an oft mentioned but seldom pictured resident of this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 