Archive for the ‘Queens’ Category
Archives #009
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another broken ankle archive post today. Good news is that I’m sleeping through the night, or at least I have been for the last week or so. It’s still difficult finding a comfortable position for the affected leg, but there we are. I’m just glad not to be on painkillers, to be honest. Nasty stuff.
Back in 2012, which was the year that the Mayan Apocalypse took the form of Hurricane Sandy, this post was offered which offered a description of my visit to the historic Onderdonk House, in Ridgewood on the Brooklyn/Queens border.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wish I could say that I’ve made some good use of all of this time, but agony keeps getting in the way. The skin of my left foot received a great deal of damage during the surgery, which has been the causal agent of a lot of the pain I’m experiencing. Feels like a burn.
I normally like to experiment with the camera, when at home and under controlled conditions, and I suspect that when this post arrived in your inboxes back in 2016 there was likely a weather related reason that I was doing a series of ‘macro tabletop shots’ of oil and water.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Annoyingly, I had planned on being in NYC and at Newtown Creek as you’re reading this. I had plane tickets and everything. Disappointed, me. I was actually looking forward to standing on Brooklyn again, whereas right now I’m just looking forward to being able to stand on anything again.
Finally, here’s this archive post in from 2018, which laments that LIC is no longer the deserted post industrial wasteland that it used to be.
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Archives #005
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The broken ankle kept me up half the night yesterday, which I guess is good as that’s related to healing. Yeah? Hope so. Things get a little better every day around HQ, as I’m getting my strength back and Our Lady of the Pentacle continues the heroic level of care she’s providing for both me and Moe the Dog.
This 2016 post discussed NYC’S DEP in a positive manner, which is a rare event in the Newtown Pentacle archives. They solved an Astoria problem lickety split.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A couple of times a day I need to lie down just to stretch a bit. The ankle situation has me in a wheelchair, and I’m spending all day sitting. Hunched over in a chair gets super uncomfortable, with the abdominal organs compressed down under the ribs. Ugh. I really need to take a walk, but that’s not possible.
This 2020 post discusses a walk through industrial Maspeth, which I always called my happy place. I like post apocalyptic landscapes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned the other day, the only blessing in this situation is that I’m not living in NYC anymore. All of this would have been so much more difficult to deal with back home.
This 2023 post is from Pittsburgh, and describes a short walk back to the light rail which I took, after having a beer and photographing trains.
Back next week, I hope.
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thumping rattle
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
October 20th and a humble narrator had just received the most critical bit of equipment needed to enable his “escape from New York.” A car.
All of these years in Queens, I’ve been a dedicated pedestrian and married to mass transit. I’ve always opined that having a car in Astoria is more of a curse than a boon. It was actually cheaper for me to use ride shares or cabs when I needed a ride than it was to own one.
I’m moving to America, and quite literally to “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” where you cannot exist on the continent without a vehicle so I had to drop the hammer. Placed the order in July, and got a fresh from the factory new car in late October.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since becoming hyper mobile and independent of the geographic restrictions which are governed by how far my feet can scuttle, as well as the physical constraints of how long I can carry my photo kit, one has been ranging all over the city. Saying that, what is being missed out on now are the little things that you can’t see when driving along as you’re moving too fast.
After getting my driver’s license reinstated earlier this year, I rented a few different vehicles from Avis and Hertz, looking for a good fit for Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself. The Toyota RAV4 Hybrids rose to the top of my list, and we ordered one from one of the new car dealerships on Northern Boulevard. My accountant opined that even if I bought the thing in Alaska, NYS would still bill me for sales tax since my legal address would still here at the time of purchase, so I bit the bullet. Hopefully, this will be my last really large contribution to the black hole that Albany throws our earnings into to finance its dysfunction.
One of the bits of advice I offer is “if you’re thinking about buying a car, rent the model for a week first, and see if you like it.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
October 21st saw me taking advantage of this new mobility to get a few shots from an area that has always been a little too far off the grid for me to walk around, the coast lines of College Point and Whitestone.
That’s the Bronx Whitestone Bridge pictured above and below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Funnily enough, I’ve got more shots of this bridge from the Bronx side than I do the Queens one, due to there being a ferry stop on the Soundview NYC Ferry line in the former location.
I tooled around the area, exploiting several points of view which I had previously scouted out on Google maps. The Google Maps app is a great tool as far as finding potential points of view in areas which are either tangentially known or are complete mysteries. I never would have thought to visit the “Whitestone Bridge Observatory” otherwise, or even suspected such a roundabout street end existed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whitestone seems to be a super wealthy community, with expansive homes that border on “mansion” nestled right up against the water. It looks more like a suburb than it does NYC. You don’t see piles of cast off garbage or debased humans lying in the street, for instance.
I had several photo set ups planned for the day, and since I was in a car, didn’t mind carrying all of the heavy kit which would normally create a limit on how far and wide I could range.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There aren’t too many Sandy beaches on the East River. I think it’s about 6 or 7, that I know about at least. That’s one of them, above, at Francis Lewis Park. Nice spot.
One kept on heading eastwards, right up and sometimes over the City/Nassau County line.
More on that tomorrow at your – now – hard driving Newtown Pentacle.
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bold entreaty
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On October 5, it was raining in the City. A diminishing meteorological system had stalled over the megalopolis for several days and all was moist. Regardless, one required a bit of exercise and time for thought, so off on a scuttle did a humble narrator go.
My plan was to hug the fence lines of the estimable Sunnyside Yards, and commit a few exposures to the “same old, same old.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned ad infinitum in the past, HQ is a few blocks away from the yards and my habit is to use it’s curvilinear border streets to transit back and forth to Newtown Creek, so I’ve passed through this corridor often over the nearly twenty years that I’ve been living in Astoria. As also mentioned, I’m suddenly trying to capture a lot of “portrait format” vertical shots.
That’s the Long Island Railroad passing through the Harold Interlocking, as seen from “hole reliable.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One really isn’t a “rail guy,” rather rail is something which I find very interesting as far as photography challenges go. Surprisingly difficult to get a decent rail shot, especially so in challenging lighting conditions. Shiny things festooned with bright lights which are moving at a high rate of speed is a problematic situation, camera wise. There’s also an abundance of busy detail in frame – wires and lamp posts with super bright lights, occluding infrastructure, all sorts of stuff to worry about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was just getting dark as I scuttled around and onto Skillman Avenue.
The former Citigroup building, or as I’ve previously styled it – the Sapphire Megalith of Long Island City – has always been one of the two far points that I focus on when I want everything in a certain part of a shot to be “tack sharp.” The engineering of a lens has a “hyper focal” distance built into it, which essentially means that when it’s focused on “infinity” at a particular aperture setting, everything between a certain point in front of the lens and infinity will contain the field of focus. In the shot above, and at the aperture I was using, that field was about twenty feet away from me. Notice the blur of the signal pole, which was about ten feet from me.
The other far point is the Empire State Building, which you used to be able to see from everywhere in Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One continued on. This was one of the walks which saw me carrying a light kit bag – one bright prime lens on the camera, another in the bag. I did have a little camera support gizmo with me, but didn’t end up using it at all on this walk, as I was in a handheld kind of mood.
Although I didn’t intend to walk all the way to Dutch Kills on this particular evening, it seems that’s where I was heading to.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the time I crossed Queens Boulevard, it was “proper dark” out.
Well, the night time is the right time, I always say…
More tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
cryptical hill
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my little aphorisms is “NYC never looks better than it does while it’s raining.” My walk in the rain on October 3rd carried a humble narrator fairly far afield of Astoria’s 31st street, where I started.
Having crossed under the vampire infested steel carrying the elevated subways above – while dodging bicycles, cars, and guys riding on those big wheel things at Queens Plaza – one had entered the brave new world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you’re planning on stealing the sky, the first thing you have to do is rename something to break association with the past. For those well over the age of consent – let’s say you were alive during the Reagan Administration, for instance – the phrase “Queens Plaza” doesn’t have a great brand association. Lots of sordid stuff and institutional memories are packed into those two words. The “South Bronx” has the same problem.
Call the adjoining area “Court Square” instead, for instance.
So, back to stealing the sky. You’re going to need some help.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You’ll need to carefully shape your spending during election periods, and not just in the immediate vicinity. You’re going to have to go to a few functions in Albany too. Sit downs with labor organizations will need to happen as well, and with the connected parasites in the local non profit industrial complex. Maybe set up a couple of your own pet non profits in the area – art organizations, religious groups, that sort of thing. Make them love you and your donations, even when you show up to community board hearings in a white stretch hummer outfitted with an LED light kit. Doesn’t matter what the neighborhood thinks, the bosses like your money.
By this point, the players are coming to you. What you really need, though, is an advocate in City Hall to ask for rezonings or an exception. You’ll have to give them some political meat, so you have your architect draw in a bunch of one room elevator shaft adjacent apartments which will satisfy their need to announce “affordable housing.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Land will be yours. Whatever small potatoes business that’s currently housed on that land is either cheaply bought out or your friend in City Hall will relocate them with costs paid to Hunts Point in the Bronx or maybe Sunset Park’s Bush Terminal.
Soon… soon your dreams will come true, when you’ve privatized the sky. People will pay big money to see the sky, especially after your politician buddies have muddied the environmental history of the site where your sky stealing edifice will rise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long Island City. This shot is from the “historic district,” where the row houses of the architects Root and Rust are protected landmarks. This block where the domestic mailing address of Long Island City’s last Mayor – Patrick “BattleAx” Gleason – was. Gleason famously warned that once the Manhattan people got a hold of Queens…
So, you’ve stolen the sky – what’s next. Well… you started that non profit, right? Why not feed it a little bit of money and turn it into a lobbyist organization? You made a lot of money stealing the sky, why not go for another section of it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The roadblocks you hit – like going to those damned fundraisers in Albany, that jerk loser on the Community Board who held you up over public space, the whole zoning thing… why doesn’t NYC just allow you to build, and build, and build – until the entire sky has been blotted out? The entire system needs to be streamlined. You’re the one Ayn Rand wrote about, after all.
Unleash your lobbyists, have them say “Yes, in My Back Yard.”
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 