Archive for the ‘Queens’ Category
nitrous wheezing
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent readings on the Satanic Cult panics of the 1980’s and 90’s, the most famous of which was the infamous McMartin case in California, revealed that a manual for the Pagan community on how to avoid circumspection was published. Its title included the phrase “How to Appear Harmless”, which struck one such as myself with a deep whimsy. Much effort is expended on my part, in order to dissuade the local gentry from lighting torches and picking up pitch forks as I near.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering about, exposed to prying eyes and on foot, one must be concerned about not just sentry men, guard dogs, and violent neighbors but with the more esoteric hazards presented by Queens. While consumed with such paranoid mutterings, this odd drawer of bubbling black slime was noticed on a deserted stretch of 37th avenue at the border of Sunnyside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The locale is defined by the presence of a large municipal property, an enormous and ethnically Korean church, and the tracks of the Long Island Railroad. Deserted on the weekends and evenings, the street largely serves as a thoroughfare for traffic moving between the Home Depot on Northern Blvd.’s 48th street exit and 43rd street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Initial supposition that this was merely a manifestation of the native art form of Queens- illegal dumping- was complicated by the complete lack of smell. It wasn’t paint, and it sure wasn’t oil. What the fuligin substance was is anyone’s guess, I suppose.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An impulse to poke at it with a stick was suppressed, as repeated viewings of the classic horror movie “The Blob” have taught me that such activity might allow a viscous entity of malign intelligence or intent egress to unprotected flesh.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
Project Firebox 55
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is fairly sure that this particular sentinel of the realm has been presented before, but I just like the shot. This scarlet centurion exists at the periphery of the Degnon Terminal and Sunnyside Yards A on Skillman Avenue, in the glorious industrial zone of the City of Long Island.
smaller detail
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The continuing saga of the single shoes shows no sign of surcease. All about the Pentacle, this singular displays of just one half of mated pairs continues, and my suspicions of some malign operation and intent are extant and growing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This sporty number was observed on Skillman Avenue, alongside the titan Sunnyside Yard. A concentration point of sorts for the phenomena, many of the castoff examples of footwear have been observed here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mention should be made, for new readers and old, that your humble narrator never poses a found object or alters the scene from the condition in which it is found. What you see is what I saw, in exact situ.
grisly alliance
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Omens abound, here in the Newtown Pentacle, if only one is sensitive enough to notice their presence. It is not enough to merely cast off the callous of vision which develops during repetitions of the daily round, instead one must listen carefully to the suffering land of Queens which bears the terrible burdens of historical indignity and modern aspiration. Somewhere beneath the concrete devastations of industry and the vainglory of the urban planners exists a variegated and buried wetland.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once- salt meadows blessed with endless acres of coastal grass swayed in the Newtown breeze beneath the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself here, nourishing and maintaining a vast ecosystem. Birds existed in numbers great enough to blot out the sky, and the shallow streams and ponds sustained a teeming population of fish and invertebrates. When the Dutch came, they saw naught but swamps, and their English successors applied the term “Waste Meadows” to the place. It wasn’t until the period between the American Civil war in the 1860’s and the early 20th century, via the practice of landfill, that the area was fully opened for exploitation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This unfortunate avian, observed alongside the Sunnyside yard, would be viewed by the dross masses as merely another casualty of the modern age. Your humble narrator, with his eyes dilated by the absence of sleep and the concurrent intoxication of caffeine, sees dire portent instead. Mesmerized Valdemar, whom Poe described, might be able to offer some compact meaning to such omens- but one as wholly inadequate as myself is unfortunately incapable of such interpretation.
otherwise unnavigable
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the top of a fifty three story sapphire dagger plunged into the neck of a Long Island dwells an impossible thing gazing down upon the human hive via a three lobed burning eye, except that such a thing cannot possibly exist and to suggest so is madness. How could an intelligence of malign intent exist in bodiless form, and be granted the rights and privileges of citizenship with few of the obligations concurrent with such status?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An ancient path, Jackson Avenue was once a trade route connecting the grist mills and farmlands further east with the docks and wharves to the west that allowed local merchants to trade with other cities along the East River. Over the years, it has seen mule paths give way to wagon, and street car, and eventually automotive traffic. Its purpose in modernity is unclear, a secondary truck route which allows passage from Queens Plaza to Hunters Point and the Pulaski Bridge, or a residential corridor destined for bistros and cultural institutions?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent surge of building activity in the area has forced your humble narrator to consider that a bit more time must be spent here in Long Island City this year, an area which had fallen off my radar a bit in the last year. Inattention had little to do with a lack of interest, instead my time was spent “working” the zones found along Newtown Creek in Maspeth and Bushwick, two other colonial era centers seldom mentioned by the “manhattancentric crowd.”
