Archive for the ‘Sunnyside Yards’ Category
nocturnal prowler
Rippity dippity doo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve always been a fan of Skillman Avenue for one reason or another, and one of the “dad jokes” which I inflict on people walking with me along it, when we reach 39th street, is that “it’s all downhill from here.” Skillman follows a ridge which overlooks the southern border of the Sunnyside Yards. Between 39th street and it’s terminus at Hunters Point Avenue in Long Island City, Skillman Avenue runs through what’s largely an industrial zone but there’s a couple of exceptions along the way – notably LaGuardia Community College down at the bottom of the hill.
The views are pretty epic for a scuttling photographer, and especially so during this interminable quarantine. One tends to walk down and record it often.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sandwiched between Northern Blvd. and Skillman Avenue are the Sunnyside Yards. Pictured are a bunch of Amtrak trains just seething in the middle of the massive coach yard, whose main function is actually what you’re looking at. Providing storage for trains between periods of peak demand in Manhattan and beyond is what the Pennsylvania Railroad built the facility to do a century ago. On the Skillman or southern side of the Sunnyside Yard, you’ll find tracks used by the Long Island Railroad for commuter service, which travel through the busiest rail junction in North America – the Harold Interlocking. 39th street used to be called Harold Avenue, incidentally, which is where the name for the junction comes from. This shot isn’t from Harold, rather it’s from Honeywell Street – or at least the truss bridge over the tracks that’s so called.
Seriously, I know where almost every hole in the fencing of Sunnyside Yards is at this point. I’ve had Government people ask me how I managed to get inside the rail yard for some of the shots you’ve seen here over the years. They don’t believe me about the fence holes, and I won’t tell them where they are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the Northern Blvd. side of the yards, and again at Harold or 39th street, is pictured above. Northern Blvd., or as I call it during normal times, the “Carridor.”
To make things even more complicated as far as street names here in Queens, 39th street transmogrifies into Steinway Street once you cross Northern. Why is this?
Because modern day Northern Blvd. was once a municipal border between the Village of Astoria and Middleburg/Sunnyside once. Robert Moses always did his best work in the areas that were neither “here nor there” found along legal borders between municipal entities. When he widened Jackson Avenue and turned it into Northern Blvd. during the early 20th century, these were “the sticks.” Population centers, as they stood back then, were far away on both sides of the 183 square acre Sunnyside Yards – which itself was opened in 1910.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the end of the week of Monday, April 6th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
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“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.
maddening suggestions
Keepin on keepin on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So far so good here at HQ, and the only thing I can report to as involving coughing and wheezing so far involves the seasonal allergies which one has always contended with. Why we plant flowering trees in NYC is something I cannot fathom. Pollen is the age of pandemic is a “poop your pants” situation every time you sneeze or blow the shnoz.
As described in prior posts, one needs to maintain a fairly regular schedule of exercise for health reasons. Accordingly, I’ve been leaving Astoria at opportune times when the streets are entirely unoccupied and then heading towards similarly unoccupied areas in the industrial zones surrounding Newtown Creek. Personal security is something which I’m very, very aware of given the deserted sidewalks and thusly I haven’t been sticking my headphones into my ears as is the normal custom. Situational awareness, I call it. It’s part of what I promise Our Lady of the Pentacle when I’m leaving the house and she opines “Be careful.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Long Island Railroad traversing the Harold Interlocking at the Sunnyside Yards is pictured above, a set of tracks which are said to normally be the busiest right of way in the entire country. On this particular walk, one noticed breadstuffs scattered about on the sidewalks, often arranged in cruciform patterns. Could have been something random, and it wasn’t worth taking a picture of frankly, but does anyone know anything about such practices? Desperate and scared people typically embrace ancestral magic and peasant rituals during crises. Many cling to their magic books or scrolls, thinking the imagined power of the words contained therein will protect them from pestilence and misfortune. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood which was partially populated by people with numbers tattooed on their arms, who would have gladly offered to any that queried them that those scrolls didn’t do them one bit of good when the wolves arrived.
This is the hour of the Wolf for our civilization, isn’t it? We’re all locked up inside and some forest monster is scratching at the door in the dead of night. Stay frosty, I always say, and be smart. Your god won’t vouchsafe you, instead fate helps those who help themselves when the wolves are near.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s why I’m continuing to march about, all alone in the night. When it comes time to put everything back together, we are going to need strength – both emotional and physical – to bury the dead and comfort the living. I’m hoping to count myself as part of the latter, but it’s impossible to predict whether or not a plague will take you.
The only thing you can do is lock your doors, and keep that wolf at bay.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the start of the week of Monday, March 23rd. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
startled auditor
Terrific, it’s Tuesday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found one scuttling along the sidewalk on the Harold Avenue Truss Bridge, or 39th street if you must, over the Sunnyside Yards. For a glaring visual example of why I’m so opposed to decking over the railyard, the Standard Motor Products building at top right would be about a story or two shorter than the “ground level” of the platform, and large scale apartment houses would have their lobby entrances at that altitude. “Large scale” you ask? The EDC and their planners have said that “height isn’t their goal” you offer? Well…
If you’re interested in buying some real estate, there’s a bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan I’d like to show you, found just a few miles south of here. I know the owner, and can handle the whole transaction, as long as it’s in cash. Give me the money, you wait here, and I’ll bring you back the deed, OK? Sound good? Will you Queens people never learn? The City people lie, like rugs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is an absolutely impressive amount of traffic observable on the Harold Truss – or 39th street – and pictured above is about thirty or so seconds of its intersection with Northern Boulevard. On the north side of the intersection, 39th becomes Steinway Street, and continues all the way to 19th Avenue in Astoria. The terminus of 39th street, to the south, is found at the start of Hunters Point Avenue nearby the masonry shield wall which the Long Island Expressway rides on. It’s got nearly arterial road levels of traffic, which would all be running through a post deck tunnel, I suppose.
This truss bridge is also – oddly enough – a spot where water bubbles up and out of the sewer grates continually. This is despite being the grates about four stories up over the actual ground at the rail yard, and it’s puzzling. Queens is like that, though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’d love to tell you that the electrical transmission utility pole in the shot above was purpose built as a cruciform to help control the vampire problem here in Western Queens, but that would likely be over the top. This shot is from just about the middle of the Harold Avenue Truss, or 39th street, so it’s mainly there to give you some idea of how high over the actual rail yard this point of view actually is. In this area, the planners at EDC have indicated that the deck would only have to be a story or two higher than that pole and sickly little tree.
That wibbly series of horizontal silhouettes you might notice on the fence are water hoses, recently installed as part of the East Side Access project. The hoses are part of the last phase of that particular MTA boondoggle. The hard hats have been building a separate trackway for Amtrak to use, here at the Harold Interlocking – which is the busiest rail junction in the United States.
“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.
horror somewhere
Sick of it all, everyone and everything.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of those wintry moods has struck, and a humble narrator is very much in “lone wolf” mode at the moment. I don’t want any part of anything which involves exchanges of words longer than a singular sentence. Accordingly, attempts at avoiding pedantry and excess explanatory conversation are liberally ignored by all. I’ve got too much to do and not enough time to do it. Not getting any younger, tick and tock.
Luckily, photography – especially night time photography – is a singular pursuit. I can be alone with the HP Lovecraft audiobooks, although I would mention that while shooting these photos it was an unabridged reading of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” playing through my headphones. If you alter all the pronoun names of the characters in The Jungle from Lithuanian to Spanish – Jurgis to Jorge, for instance – it makes the thing even more depressing as nothing ever changes in this country – ever.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I would like to embrace the sophistry that we are living in some sort of simulation, a computer program which receives regular updates and patches to keep the players interested in us. Unfortunately, this sort of idea is the fever dream of paranoids, and like the worship of a divine sky father…
One left the house relatively early according to recent habit. It had just stopped raining, and heavy banks of clouds were positively hurtling across the dome. Perfect conditions, as far as I’m concerned. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times – NYC never looks as good as it does when it’s wet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My goal for the evening was ultimately going to be a visit to Dutch Kills, the Long Island City tributary of the fabulous Newtown Creek. Due to the shattered toe drama, there’s entire sections of my “beat” which haven’t been visited in months. Given that it’s relatively warm out for January, and my overwhelming desire to be completely and utterly alone, one geared up and scuttled forth.
What I really wanted to find was some eidolon of dissolution and chaos, a true monster. I did glimpse one periodically, when walking past reflective surfaces.
“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.
betook himself
Till you’re blue in the face.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What’s wrong with the EPA Superfund people allowing NYC’s DEP to continue releasing 468 million gallons of raw sewage a year into Newtown Creek, as opposed to the 1.2 billion gallons they currently do, for the rest of time? That’s the 61/39 issue for you, and it’s the absolute focus of the Newtown Creek Community right now.
EPA is currently floating a proposal which would cap off the liabilities of the responsible party behind the “combined sewer outfalls,” the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (funnily enough), to a goal in which they would only need to attenuate 61% rather than 100% of the municipal wastewater flowing into Newtown Creek. Not exactly reaching for the stars here, are they?
The Federal EPA doesn’t think 468 million gallons of sewage released into a narrow industrial waterway – which runs through a highly populated area – is all that bad, since the flow isn’t carrying a legally actionable load of what they call “contaminants of concern,” with the short list of these chemicals including PCB’S, PAH’S, and organocoppers. Sewage doesn’t count, they tell us.
Over on the Gowanus Superfund, the goal state for CSO (Combined Sewer Outfalls) reduction was raised to 74%, but here on my beloved Creek, 61% is the goal. It should be mentioned that the 61% number is based on “right now” precipitation amounts, numbers which were actually compiled back in 2008, and that the remedy date they’ve set for this reduction in outfall is 2042. More to come on this subject in the coming weeks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is slogging through the customary December “show my face at” circuit of holiday parties this week and last, which is something I actually do enjoy. There’s been a lot of “going to’s” and “how do I get home from’s” in that equation, but at least MTA is always working to keep you on your toes with frequent night time service changes. Stay nimble, lords and ladies. If you don’t make at least two transfers, you’re not doing it right.
Funnily enough, I’ve gotten so used to transit gymnastics and taking the long way around during the evenings that when planning on how to get from Point G (Greenpoint) to Point MHK (Manhattan’s Hells Kitchen) recently, my convoluted plan didn’t even consider simply taking the E to the City from Court Square in LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking forward to gradually longer walks in the near future, a humble narrator is. The big toe situation is moving along, although it’s at that point where it aches and throbs while healing. If you’ve ever had a broken bone, you’re familiar with that particular phenomena. I’m just tired of sitting on my butt, which I fear my lack of exercise has made larger.
Back Monday with something new, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! December 14th, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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 