Archive for the ‘Queens’ Category
know thy zone
As everyone knows, August 23rd is the Night of the Living Dead. Prepare your “go bags,” Lords and Ladies, and know your zone.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Famously, there are indeed more dead people in Queens than there are living. The Rural Cemeteries Act of 1847 forbade interments in Manhattan, which begat what is called “the Cemetery Belt” spanning the borders of Brooklyn and Queens. There are three million corpses in Calvary Cemetery alone. Should the dead rise this or any other year, we are going to be in a real pickle.
As a public service, zone maps of the danger that various communities face are offered in the hope that individuals can prepare for the coming storm.
Courtesy of openstreetmap.org, here’s a shot of western Long Island and the southern tip of Manhattan.
Here’s a rough illustration of our study area, the so called Newtown Pentacle. As you might notice, a significant number of cemeteries are found therein, and the area transverses from Bushwick to Astoria and from Flushing to the Wallabout.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nearly all of the area cemeteries are surrounded by stout fencing, and there are but a few points of egress into and out of the polyandrions. How well these often century old fence lines would do against an army of flesh eating ghouls is questionable, but one cannot speculate on their structural integrity.
First Calvary, in particular, is isolated by high walls and expressways from its environs, with only two points at which the slavering horde of undead assassins might access the surrounding neighborhoods. One would not want to be in West Maspeth or Blissville on Saturday night, however.
In the graphic above, the actual cemetery boundaries are roughly sketched out in orange.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One would imagine that the NYPD would be forced to collapse the East River Tunnels and detonate the roadways of the great bridges to protect the Shining City of Manhattan from the onslaught of the Living Dead.
For those of us who reside in the Newtown Pentacle, this heat map is offered. The areas of darkest red are surely goners, and it is suggested that we refer to these areas as Zone A. Zones B & C likely have a fighting chance, should they be well prepared to shelter in place for an interval. Realistically, if you haven’t evacuated within the first twelve hours of the Night of the Living Dead, you’re already doomed.
Because Dawn is coming.
also, from youtube–
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solitary presence
Loathsomeness awaits, in the deep.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is never more alone than when waiting for a Subway to arrive. Swaddled in stifling clouds of fungal spore ejaculate and those desiccated airborne particulates of rodent excrement which lend the dripping concrete caverns their particular perfume, the “system” must be the loneliest place on earth, despite the abundant representation of the human infestation whom are found therein. Depersonalization is a specialty of the “system,” which redefines individual personages as “ridership” and let’s everybody who uses it know that there is nothing special about them, whatsoever, despite whatever status they hold in the radiant world above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In forgotten side tunnels and hidden chambers, all throughout the system, what might lurk? One does not forget the 1980’s, when rumors of a population of indigents who set up housekeeping in these antechambers abounded amongst the above ground population. Stories of grasping hands reaching up from sidewalk grates at small dogs and women’s ankles tantalized with latent horror, during that particularly dark age in the history of the megalopolis.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Jackson Heights, mothers assure their children that the Rakshasha do not hide in the tunnels, as do the folks in Flushing when they tell their kids that there is no È Guǐ waiting to carry them off into the darkness down here. So too do parents console, on the south side of Williamsburg and all along the G and F lines, instructing that there are no Comprachicos hiding in these vaulted tunnels of rotting cement, waiting to make a meal of some toddler or small child. It should be pointed out that MTA workers never go anyplace alone in the system, and instead prefer to move in large groups.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down here?
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relentless thing
Heh. You may think I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you don’t know that I know what you’ve been told to think and by whom. Heh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The south side of Williamsburg, where many bad things have occurred, was where a humble narrator recently found himself scuttling along when a series of very bad ideas began to infiltrate his thoughts. Perhaps it was brought on by the stares and pointing fingers offered by the crowds of Hasidic women and children, or their stifled gasps of horror and revulsion as one passed by. Perhaps it was merely remembrance of days gone by, and an iteration of North Brooklyn which only one such as myself seems to remember and acknowledge or admit.
from murderpedia.org
Known as the Williamsburg Strangler, Vincent Johnson, pleaded guilty to strangling five women and will serve life in prison without parole. Johnson’s 10-month killing spree began in August, 1999. The 31-year-old homeless crack addict admitted to the murders a week before prosecutors were to decide on whether or not to seek the death penalty.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An uncomfortable sense that if one were to merely look through the cracked glass of a warehouse’s ground floor window, or notice what is going on beyond the aperture of an open doorway at some centuried factory building, a tidal wave of bad intentions and evil inclination would carry the observer into a world of unending and quite metaphysical horror. Intuition hints that evil is slumbering just beneath the surface, existing as some kind of psychic or spectral latency, and given enough time… It is simply best to focus on the pavement in this section of Brooklyn, and stray not from it, for there are things buried hereabouts that should remain unknown. Who can say what malevolent forces are combated, nightly, by Satmar Kabbalists or Palo worshipping Padrinos, hereabouts?
from wikipedia
Self-consciousness was characterized as an aversive psychological state. According to this model, people experiencing self-consciousness will be highly motivated to reduce it, trying to make sense of what they are experiencing. These attempts promote hyper vigilance and rumination in a circular relationship: more hyper vigilance generates more rumination, whereupon more rumination generates more hyper vigilance. Hyper vigilance can be thought of as a way to appraise threatening social information, but in contrast to adaptive vigilance, hyper vigilance will produce elevated levels of arousal, fear, anxiety, and threat perception.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Haven’t you ever wondered why, when they are constructing domiciles for their sect, the Hasidim in Williamsburg construct fortresses? They don’t do this in Monroe, or Borough Park or Midwood, which are other population centers in Brooklyn for the ultra orthodox. The senile and simple amongst them will tell you that Dibbuks rise from the Wallabout and East River when darkness falls, seeking to consume whosoever might be on the very streets which I was walking. Who can guess, all there is, that might be stalking the streets of the Boswijck Strand at night?
from wikipedia
Somatoparaphrenia is a type of monothematic delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one’s body. Even if provided with undeniable proof that the limb belongs to and is attached to their own body, the patient produces elaborate confabulations about whose limb it really is, or how the limb ended up on their body. In some cases, delusions become so elaborate that a limb may be treated and cared for as if it were a separate being.[
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dropped despairingly
Wandering, always wandering, with no place to go. Stay paranoid, I say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The steady staccato of foot falls is all that one can really count on, a shuffling rhythm accompanied by the tinkling of that busted glass which garnishes the sidewalks. It’s all terribly depressing, of course, utterly pedantic, and definitively pedestrian – but hey – that’s me. Recent travels carried me off to the halcyon center of “Astoria Astoria” nearby the Triborough Bridge, which I haven’t wandered around in several weeks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, things are still the same around these parts, with the disturbingly heterogenous stock of buildings that typifies the area still present. These days, if you blink in Western Queens, entire neighborhoods might disappear overnight. It is rumored that dark cloaked figures swarm into the area from Manhattan after dusk to select targets. The Hellenes who inhabit this neighborhood hang charms, which use a blue eye motif, in their windows hoping to ward off these creatures. These predators are referred to as the “nýchta mágissa” or the “strigoi idiokti̱sías” by certain drunken octogenarians which one might encounter at disreputable or shunned tavernas which are found at less travelled neighborhood cross roads. It is claimed that these so called Strigoi want to buy your house for “development” and that they will produce foreign currencies and specie with which to do it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is a good idea to carry amulets and charms when perambulating along. One can easily be drawn away from the esoteric realities of this section which adjoins the forbidden northern coast of Queens and the fabled Hells Gate by the grandeur of mundanity. Case in point, an industrial wrecker clad in the scarlet color of human blood, towing a disabled bus off of mighty Triborough. Anything to keep you from noticing the truth… Who can say, all there is, that might be lurking about in the fuligin of night, beneath the buzzing of the sodium lamps?
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humid seas
By jove, I nearly got wet yesterday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yesterday, despite the somewhat solitary inclination of mood which a humble narrator awoke to find himself in, nevertheless did he need to go to Sunnyside to talk to some people about some thing. Post facto, a leisurely stroll back to Astoria was planned upon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my custom, certain breaches and apertures in the fencing which secures the Sunnyside Yards from casual observation by most, and the attentions of malodorous sappers and mad bombers in particular, were exploited for photographic use. The sky was dramatic, and active. A weak wind blew chilled air, from west north west.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking towards 36th avenue, from Northern Blvd., a certain sense of doom was laconically accepted. Surely, this will be how all is ended, in a storm. The Vikings, alas, seem to have been correct in their prophecies of the world’s end. If Ragnarok comes to Queens, it’s going to look something like the shot above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some wicked fancy seemed to be animating this cloud, but contemplation of such matters was not a luxury at hand. Not having any sort of umbrella or rain gear with me, haste was made to cross the few short blocks back to Newtown Pentacle HQ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Evacuating birds were shooting through the winds, which had picked up in intensity. Oddly, there was no thunder, but a present and palpable expectation hung pregnantly about. The storm was about to break.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just as I hit 44th street, the clouds attack began, and even your humble narrator found himself struck by airborne missiles of water which had been fired from thousands of feet above. These missiles, luckily, splattered.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cover was sought behind a simple row house, one which had a small awning. Notice the “rain shadows” forming on the sidewalk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Experience informs that summer squalls like this are short lived, quickly passing through the neighborhood, and not worth going to extreme measures over. In the twenty minutes or so spent sitting upon some anonymous stoop, observations of the passing humans included a fellow strolling along in a business suit acting as if it were not raining and a handsome young woman who walked by with a plastic bag over her head.
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This weekend-
Saturday, August 16th, LIC’s Modern Corridor
With Atlas Obscura, click here for tickets and more info.
Sunday, August 17th, 13 Steps Around Dutch Kills
With Brooklyn Brainery, click here for tickets and more info.
The Newtown Pentacle 