The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Sunset at Fresh Kills on… Staten Island…

As described yesterday, an invitation from the NYC Parks Dept. saw me and my pal Val travel all the way out to the western edge of the known universe to record the scene. This was part of their “Capturing Change” program, which I last got to participate in back in 2014. Remember 2014? Back then, the notion that America might descend into a Civil War at any second was the stuff spoken about by lunatics.

That’s one of my fancy pants shots above, by the way. There’s about six individual captures combined in that one. The wind was whipping the grass about, all that. Different exposures for fore and background…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

So, you know how I’ve been telling you for the last thirteen years that the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself disappears into a pocket behind New Jersey?

PROOF! Photographic proof.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

On the trash caldera of Fresh Kills, with its extreme elevation, you get some pretty epic views. Go wide or go telephoto? What’s the subject? What do I want the image to say? What’s in frame?

That’s the actual thought process I filter through each and every time I hit the shutter button.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’m glad I got to do this, and have to throw a major kudo at my pal Val, who did a heroic amount of driving through pretty heavy traffic to get us out here. It’s astounding how close Queens’ Astoria is to Fresh Kills on… Staten Island… it’s only 38 miles. Saying that, it took us close to two hours to get out here due to traffic.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m planning on leaving the City at the end of the year. One of the things which I’m having trouble equating is what distance vs. time means in the rest of the country.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

By the time you’re reading this (it’s being written in mid June), I’ve been to Pittsburgh and back again. On that trip, which occurred during the third week of June, I drove from Pittsburgh to Youngstown in Ohio, and then to Wheeling in West Virginia, and back to Pittsburgh in about three hours. Literally a hundred and change miles, crossed in about one third more of the time it took us to go just 38 local miles here in NYC.

I could tell you how to fix the traffic here in NYC, within 20 years, with a moderate governmental investment – but nothing matters and nobody cares – and “bike lanes” and “affordable housing.”

– photo by Mitch Waxman

After the event, we piled into Val’s car and headed back into the thick of things at the center of the archipelago metropolis which is the center of the East Coast Megalopolis.

Back next week with something completely different, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

“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.

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

…Staten Island… sits at the risible edge of the known universe. An event horizon congeals just beyond its western shore. Here – you are existent upon the archipelago, found at the heart of the East Coast Megalopolis, which is known as New York City. On the other side of this existential barrier, which is mercifully demarcated by the waters of the Arthur Kill, is found the continent – and America.

Fresh Kills used to be the largest manmade object on the planet, but I think Three Gorges Dam in China wears that crown now. From 1948 to 2001, this was where the archipelago metropolis buried its waste. When you see pipes sticking up out of the ground here, it’s to vent off the methane gas produced by the decaying firmament below.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Much of the vegetation that grows here is self seeded, I’m told. The Parks Dept. people have – of course – been guiding the evolution of the place with specific plantings and earthworks. There’s roads, for instance, and wetlands. The roads we were driving on were gravel.

The last time I was at Fresh Kills – described in these 2014 posts: old garden, grassy bank, and shewing much – the procedure saw us leave the private cars outside of the park’s borders in a lot, and then we moved around the place in a Parks Dept. Van. This time around, because of Covid, the private cars were allowed inside the border and we followed the Parks employees from place to place.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That power plant on the horizon is in New Jersey, which is found across the Arthur Kill. In 2019, I got to ride along Arthur Kill with the United States Army Corps of Engineers on one of their harbor inspection operations, as detailed in this post – magnitude of. The fourth image in that post, depicting a tugboat in front of a grassy mound, imparts an idea of how high an elevation Fresh Kills offers. The shot above is more or less captured from that area.

The section of New Jersey that’s found along the Arthur Kill is the part of I-95 where you roll your car windows up when you’re driving through, due to all of the petroleum processing plants there and their stink. It’s colloquially known as “The Chemical Coast.”

– photo by Mitch Waxman

All told, we had about 90 minutes to get busy up here with the cameras. There were probably about 10-12 of us, all photographers. As is the case with people who obsess about cameras, there was very little in the way of conversation while the light was good. Everybody was a “clickin and a whirring” with their gizmos.

The Department of Sanitation still maintains some operations here, as a note. The reason that there are hills and valleys is due to how they historically tipped out municipal garbage. When Parks entered the mix back in 2001, layers of clay and composted soil were brought in which began the process of creating the modern day landscape at Fresh Kills.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

“Kill” is Old Dutch for “creek,” which is why you see it all over the maps of NYC’s waterways. They used to call Newtown Creek “Mispat Kill,” for instance, and the naming convention stuck into the English speaking period with English Kills and Dutch Kills. Staten Island has Arthur Kill and Kill Van Kull and Fresh Kills.

In the distance, that’s the newly constructed Goethals Bridge over Arthur Kill. Just beyond it is a railroad bridge, which connects the NY Container Terminal at Port Ivory to Port Elizabeth’s Liberty Line tracks in Bayonne nearby Newark Airport.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The Parks people designed the 90 minute excursion to give us roughly 20-30 minutes each at three locations. That gave me time to pull off some “fancy pants” shots with tripod and filters.

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.