Archive for the ‘Staten Island’ Category
quiet denizens
How I’m voting today, and why.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Andrew Cuomo, the Dark Prince of Albany, is terrifying in many ways. His management of the MTA is the biggest mark against him in my book, but in terms of the issue central to my life – Newtown Creek – he’s been perhaps the greatest champion that the waterway has ever had in high state office. As Attorney General, he forced ExxonMobil into court and beat them around the head and neck over the Greenpoint Oil Spill, and was a major player in terms of the waterway being named a Federal Superfund site back in 2010. His Kosciuszcko Bridge replacement project has been absolutely on schedule and budget. For no other reason than Newtown Creek, the big guy gets my vote. I hope he legalizes recreational Marijuana in his third term, as he hinted at when Cynthia Nixon pulled him to the left during the primaries, which will be a first step towards ending the mass incarceration of victimless criminals. Additionally, NYS really needs the revenue to first shore up the MTA, and then to pay the Medicare and Medicaid costs of the baby boomer generation.
Did you see the video of our Governor visiting Cynthia Nixon’s campaign HQ and congratulating her campaign volunteers on the night of his primary win? Click here for it. (note: the Governor appears 42 seconds in).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Tish James gets my vote for NYS Attorney General. She’s got a proven record of standing up for the little people, and I’m a fan. One hundred and one years ago today, women finally had their legal right to vote in NYS acknowledged – after a long and often bloody struggle by the Suffragist movement – and I will take particular joy in voting for a lady to hold the second most powerful position in the state today. The NYS Attorney General’s office is considered to be the second most powerful prosecutor’s office in the country, after the Federal AG seat currently held by Jeff Sessions. That’s because the NYS AG has de facto regulatory authority over Wall Street. Given that Tish James is African American, that makes for a pretty interesting moment, historically. Normally, identity politics are something I abhor, but… Tish is sort of the person whom Dr. King was talking about back during the Civil Rights era.
Brian Barnwell is my NYS Assemblyman, and he’s done a great job in his first term for Woodside/Astoria, earning my vote for a second. I expect great things from Brian down the road, as he’s a young guy and just getting going in his career.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez will get my vote as well, since I think it’s time to let somebody new take the wheel in Congress, and start shifting power to a different generation of people who couldn’t care less about Viet Nam or Freedom Fries. She’s electorally electrified my younger friends, waking them up out of a haze, and I’m interested in seeing what happens next with her.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The three charter revisions all come out of a lame duck City Hall, and are a wish list offered by the Mayor intended to eliminate criticism of his sophist policies. Can you trust anything that the Dope from Park Slope wants to happen? Three “no’s” and here’s why;
- The Community Board term limits thing is meant to clear away “dead wood” from the CB’s. Community Board members are currently proposed by the local Council member and then nominated to the Borough President’s office. Should the BP decide to place a candidate on the board, they can serve as long as they wish to – officially. In the unofficial but true reality, the Council person or BP can bounce you out whenever they decide to. Every political action committee allied with the Mayor, from the “Bicycle Fanatics” to the “No Bail” and “Build Tall Buildings Everywhere” crowds, support this resolution. Ask yourself why? Can it have anything to do with the current CB’s regularly opposing the edicts of City Hall?
- The Community Engagement Committee thing is another patronage mill for the Manhattan elites, which would take the form of a blue ribbon panel for political insiders and the children of the well off (or well connected) appointed by the Mayor’s office which which choose “friendlies” to staff the community boards. In addition to being yet another one of the Mayor’s spending sprees, it would cut the actual community off from decisions regarding their neighborhoods and replace them with recent transplants. Additionally, it would continue the emasculation of the Borough President’s already largely ceremonial offices and weaken the City Council’s options when the Executive Branch in City Hall makes a bad decision.
- As far as the Campaign Funding item, do we really want to reinforce the franchise to elected office exclusively enjoyed by members of either of the Democratic or Republican parties, which is the only thing that the two organizations can actually agree on? That’s what this would do, by lowering the financial threshold at which they can fundraise before receiving your TAX MONEY to buy political advertising. The wording of this thing does nothing to close the LLC loopholes, PAC funding, or advocacy ads paid for by “concerned citizens.” All it does is lower the contributions which individual citizens can offer to a campaign, which diminishes the importance of individual citizens to the Political Industrial Complex. It also will tend to keep people from the Green Party, Libertarians, and other groups from ever managing to get their foot in the door.
A vote against all three is a rebuke of our vainglorious Mayor, who is likely to announce he’s running for President of the United States at some point in the near future.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
business section
Everything backfires, all the time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After crossing over that primal mystery through which even thought cannot penetrate which are the waters of New York Harbor, and arriving on… Staten Island… one got busy with the tripod and camera. I was in pursuit of some iteration of the shot above, which I would mention I’m not 100% satisfied by, depicting the whole shebang visible from St. George. Jersey City in the left of the shot, Manhattan in the middle, and the East River on the right. This is just about twenty minutes after sunset, incidentally. I plan on heading back out there when the skies, and the stars, are right.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot I was most happy with, and which sort of made the entire journey to… Staten Island… worth it was the one above, which is a long exposure looking westwards towards the Kill Van Kull. That concrete thingamabob is the 2004 “Postcards” 911 memorial, if your curious, commemorating the memories of the 274 Staten Islanders who lost their lives in the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks. The Postcards monument is shaped like a combination of two wings and a pair of hands praying, and there are profile sculptures of the victims inside it with their names, birth dates, and where they worked.
I, for one, don’t want to be remembered for where I worked but rather for where I lived.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Arriving back in Manhattan, my pathway home involved the MTA, and wouldn’t you know it… It took close to forty minutes for this work train to clear itself out of the South Ferry station, which in turn allowed the “R” line to transit through from Brooklyn and get me back to Astoria. Life is a joy, in a city which never sleeps.
As I’ve said many times, the “A” in “MTA” is for “Adventure.”
Upcoming Tours and Events
June 9th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
frightened servants
So above, so below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst riding a big orange boat across the harbor, one recent and banal evening, litanies of wonder rolled past the lens. A United States Marine Corps V-22 Osprey was flying circuits around Governors Island, tugboats frolicked about in the warm light offered by the unoccluded burning thermonuclear eye of God itself, and the Shining City of Manhattan glowed. Onboard the Staten Island Ferry, riding towards its terminus at St. George on… Staten Island… one was surrounded by European tourists. Many of them bore an aspect which I did not like, as they seemed sly and sinister, and several showed the scars of old world pestilences. The chorus of languages they spoke all seemed guttural and base, not lilting or wholesome as in the manner of English spoken with a Brooklyn accent. Overall, their choices of clothing were mainly what offended me… the cargo shorts and polyester shirts… the bandannas… the knap sacks with too many zippers and cords to be functional…
A humble narrator was, of course, wearing garments nearly indistinguishable from rags. My garb was not unlike that of some exhumed corpse – threadbare, smelly, torn, battered. Just like me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Marines were flying circuits, as mentioned, no doubt as some sort of display during the annual Fleet Week event during which examples of the military might of the Nation is displayed in NY Harbor. The V-22, as I understand it, has vertical take off capabilities. When the propulsion units are in the orientation pictured above, the plane operates in a manner similar to a helicopter, but the pods can be rotated ninety degrees to provide thrust during conventional flying postures. Apparently this has been quite an engineering and operational challenge for the folks who work with this first of its class model of plane, but they seem to have worked out a lot of the kinks.
Whether there was any esoteric machinery in the V-22 scanning the bottom of the harbor for signs of those said to lurk down below, who can say?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You’d have to imagine that were there a group of amphibian fish/frog men living in the sediments of NY Harbor, they’d likely have neighborhoods down there somewhat analogous – class distinction wise – to the ones you find up on the islands. The upscale Deep Ones of the Upper East Side, the working class population of those who dwelleth in the below at Hells Gate, the tragically hip battrachians of North Brooklyn, the shimmering horrors at Coney Island Creek, and so on.
Upcoming Tours and Events
June 9th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
merciful deletions
War Planes in Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has recently learned that the mature human body’s largest organ – the skinvelope or integumentary system – weighs approximately twelve to fifteen percent of your body weight – and it also really depends whose skinvelope we’re talking about when weighing the dermis. Personally, I’m naturally pallid and spotty, and a humble narrator’s skinvelope is delicate. I’m highly vulnerable to sudden tears and punctures, blistering, abrasions of all sorts, and at any given time there’s at least a few microbiotal blooms going on somewhere in the roughly twenty two feet of skinvelope which I keep onboard. One is also given to receiving painful radiation burns, if paused too long in the emanations of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself, so I like to keep moving and walk in the shade whenever possible.
The Marines were in town for Fleet Week, as I discovered while in pursuit of shadowed cover. They had v-22 Ospreys with them, which were pretty cool. The Marines are famously thick skinned and leather necked, skinvelope wise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My path had an intended destination on this particular evening, an anomaly for one such as myself, which was on… Staten Island…
The big orange boat at the Lower Manhattan Whitehall Terminal was, as in most encounters with it, well – the big orange boat was absurdly on time as always (which is actually true, The Staten Island Ferry has a 96% on time rate). In an ever changing world of disturbing social trends and the constant braying of news reports describing horrible urgencies and dire portent, the very last thing which a humble narrator clings to as efficacy of some possible future in which everything isn’t horrible all the time anymore is that the Staten Island Ferry still runs on time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It would seem that the current occupant of the White House was in town as well, a theoretical dictum advanced by the presence of a phalanx of cops, soldiers, and tough looking guys wearing ear pieces, sunglasses, and black suits guarding one of the Presidential helicopters in Lower Manhattan. Two of the V-22’s were present as well.
The big orange boat offered a nice view of the scene as we slid greasily out of dock in Lower Manhattan and began the journey to… Staten Island…
Upcoming Tours and Events
June 9th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
splitting crescendo
I get around.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ye olde Newtown Pentacle is back in session, I tell ‘ye. The weather has been bizarre and unpredictable, with the storm tossed wrath of jehovie breaking out randomly, but a humble narrator has nevertheless been scratching his way around and through the mortal coils of the great Metropolis. Pictured above is the Shining City itself, the eidolon of the system, according to those who rule over it. It’s where all the gears and works resolve back to, and where they get all gummed up in political patronage and intrigue. Imagine it as an outer borough, rather than as the center. That’s how an ‘effed up humble narrator thinks.
Manhattan is the problem, not the solution. Remember that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A big orange boat is pictured above, which one hadn’t been on in several months when this particular shot was captured. That situation has since been rectified, but such matters will be discussed in a future post. The big orange boat was originally privately owned, by Commodore Vanderbilt himself. Recent conversation with one of the bicycle fanatics forced one to describe the ludicrous state of affairs back in the days when the big orange boat charged a fee for riding it, and that the costs of employing the ticket sellers and takers and money counters was nearly that of operating the boat itself. It turned out that running it without a fare was cheaper than it was with one, given the size of the per passenger subsidy paid out by taxpayers. You listening NYC Ferry?
That’s why it’s free to ride the Staten Island Ferry, and one continually wonders why no thought is given to creating a third terminal for the service in Red Hook or Bay Ridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has also found himself on the subway several times in the last weeks, and I will reiterate my slogan that “The “A” in “MTA” is for adventure.” Several times over the last few weeks has one simply taken the first Queens bound train that comes, rather than the one that goes anywhere near my actual destination, under governance of the notion that getting out of the Shining City and back to Queens as expeditiously as possible is what matters. Once I’m back in Queens, I have options – walk, crawl, etc.
Unfortunately, there really isn’t a publicly section of the Queens shoreline left (which isn’t a park) that’s deep enough or expansive enough to dream of there being a terminal built for the big orange boat.
Upcoming Tours and Events
June 9th – Exploring Long Island City – with NY Adventure Club.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail?
Tickets and more details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 