Archive for the ‘Sunnyside Yards’ Category
fantastic figment
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in NYC, just as the Omicron variant Covid surge began, one put all thoughts about holiday merrymaking and socializing out of his head. You can’t argue with a logarithmic curve, so the logic of the entire Covid period – at this particular moment, it’s been 1,057 days, if my math is correct – was followed. Go out at night, by myself, and wander around the industrial zones where I’m going to encounter few if any other people. As the old Christmas cartoon would offer: put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking out the door.
Good golly, Miss Molly, are we ever going to escape from this looping form of existence? Everyday is like the last day, same old, same old. When this is all over, I’m going to start wearing different colored clothes or something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular evening in early December was quite a cold one. My simple desire was to get some exercise, but I was engaging in a “short walk.” For me, that meant heading out from Astoria, crossing the Sunnyside Yards to Skillman Avenue and following that to Queens Plaza and then back down Northern Blvd. towards HQ. Just under three miles, round trip, I guess?
Was wondering, while shooting these, if I had recently been riding on any of those trains down there. Sigh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunnyside Yards is a railroad coach yard. What that means is that you can’t catch a train here, despite it being an 180 and change square acres Federal and State railroad facility. The purpose of the Sunnyside Yards is to provide holding areas and turn around trackage for commuter rail that’ve already been to Manhattan. You see New Jersey Transit, Long Island Railroad, and Amtrak units down there regularly. Every now and then you’ll see some train set branded with Pennsylvania colors. I always figure they must’ve gotten lost when I see them. “Queens, what do you mean Queens? We must’ve taken a wrong turn at Lancaster… Crap.”
The yards are divvied up between the various entities housed here. The official owner is Amtrak, but MTA has sway over significant acreages of the place. They’ve recently finished building out an enormous new holding yard on the north side of the facility, which is a part of the East Side Access project.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator famously maintains a catalog of the holes in Amtrak’s fences which are large enough to fit a camera lens into. The best of the Federal holes were cut for surveyor usage. They’re generally the size of a deck of cards, these holes, but are far and few between. There’s also tears in the chain link fencing, which is also fairly easy to work with. Then, there’s the set of holes formed by weathering and material failure. Those are irregular and difficult to use, but I manage.
The shot above comes from one of the latter kind, where – I think – what must have been a vehicle accident caused a steel plate to bend away from the rest of the fence structure. Holes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back onto Skillman Avenue nearby Queens Plaza, where I spent a few minutes pondering whether or not I wanted to head down to Dutch Kills for a lookie loo. One decided not to. It was, after all, freezing out.
One pointed his toes north and east, and started shlepping back to the rolling hillocks of almond eyed Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, a discarded Book of Psalms and pile of Cheerios caught my attention. Fascinating, the way that these manufactured items end up where they do once somebody is done with them.
One thing you notice, upon returning to NYC from nearly anywhere else, is how dirty it is. Piles of crap are everywhere.
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died reverberantly
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another day, another scuttle. This time, I was out for a long walk. One headed out at a conspicuously earlier time than normal, hoping for a colorful sunset. High clouds are favorable, conditions wise, for colorful sunrises and sunsets to set up. That’s my official photographer advice.
Pictured is a section of Long Island City’s Sunnyside Yards, with Amtrak train sets lined up in the foreground. As always, a tip of the hat to whoever is in charge of poking holes in the fences at the Federal Rail operation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were gathered at the end of November, when I was preparing to go on another trip using Amtrak in early December, so I was wondering if any of these trains would be the one I got to ride on. Honestly, the day that I shot these feels like a hundred years ago right now. It’s funny the way that the mind works, ain’t it?
On this particular night, I was heading towards the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, where I would end discovering that a big chunk of the shoreline had collapsed over Thanksgiving weekend.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was a particularly weird night, as a note, with way too many encounters with the denizens of the streets. One in particular was just freaky, but I don’t want to get into the trading of war stories.
Sirens punctured my reveries, and I noticed an FDNY ambulance screaming it’s way along the Honeywell Avenue truss bridge over the railyard.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Due to all the street weirdness I’ve encountered and observed, I’ve fallen out of the habit of listening to audiobooks while walking around, preferring instead to have all of my sensory antennae fully deployed. I want to be able to hear the running footsteps slapping the pavement coming my way, before they’re too close for comfort.
Given my predilection for lonely places, the last thing I want to encounter or be surprised by are other people.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Every person you see coming at you is a possible threat these days. There’s a small army of lunatics and street level criminals that have recently been installed all around Long Island City, lawless and sly, who’ll look you up and down deciding whether or not it would be worth it to boil you down for elements to sell. It hasn’t been like this for a long time, here in the big city.
This is not exactly a politically correct thing to say, but the people who decide what’s correct or not have apparently never been punched in the nose or had a gun pulled on them by a mugger.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
People walk around like they’re safe or something. If they only knew.
Bah.
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dully exhibited
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Endeavor found me wandering around Long Island City again recently. For several reasons, mainly climatology related ones, I’ve been keeping the walks a bit shorter in recent weeks and staying a bit closer to HQ. Luckily, Queens never disappoints. HQ’s positioning on the southern border of Astoria allows strategic access to a number of visually interesting locations, like the Sunnyside Yards pictured above.
That’s one of Amtrak’s “high speed” Acela train sets heading towards its maintenance bay. Instinctually, I refer to the large blue building they service the trains at as a “barn,” but I’m sure that isn’t the correct etymology. Regardless, a Festivus greeting is offered to whomsoever it is at Amtrak that is responsible for all of the holes in the fences of the yards which allow me to get these shots.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Did you know that the cops have ambulances of their very own? The NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit operates their cop ambulances out of a former firehouse on Northern Blvd. nearby Steinway Street. Spotted this one just strobing its flashers into the night recently.
NYPD and FDNY have all the best municipal gear. They both have cool marine units, and every possible form of motor vehicle you can think of, but I don’t think that FDNY has helicopters or surveillance drones. They sure don’t have a tank whose main gun has been replaced with a battering ram, armored personnel carriers, or those cool ass K9 trucks that are full of excellent dogs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way back to HQ, this puzzling scene was encountered. Not the Queens Cobbler, this, since there’s two shoes. The cobbler only leaves behind one. These children sized rain boots were just sitting there next to a parking meter. I have theories, with my primary one listed below.
Obviously – a condor or other large bird of prey snatched a toddler away so efficiently that the kid was yanked right out of their shoes.
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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.
all petrifying
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After the rains of Ida blasted through Queens, a humble narrator packed up his camera bag and headed over to the industrial zone of Long Island City to see if my there was any interesting damage to take pictures of. My destination was the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, and to get there from HQ here in Astoria, I have to cross over to the south side of the Sunnyside Yards.
That’s the Standard Motor Products Building, one of several dinosaur sized industrial buildings which line the Northern Blvd. side of the Federal rail yard. Standard was a manufacturer of switches and electronics for automobiles, and still are. I have a friend who still works for them in an office in that building. On the roof is the Brooklyn Grange Urban Farm, which is definitely worth a visit if you’ve never been up there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given the sloping character of Skillman Avenue, one expected to find all sorts of storm damage here. Nada. It was as if nothing had changed since the last time I walked through here.
Well, maybe they managed to toss another luxury condo up in the last week, it’s hard to tell with Long Island City these days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing about that storm, however, is that everyone forgot to pat the NYC DEP on the back afterwards. I’m often in an adversarial posture towards this particular city agency, and a lot of my activist/advocacy time is spent decrying their bureaucratic obfuscations on Newtown Creek. Saying that, however, you do have to appreciate the fact that when the rain falls on us in buckets, they are the ones who drain the flooding away. Also, in NYC, you seldom get warnings about having to boil drinking water as it’s become contaminated after flooding. DEP delivers our clean water, maintains the resovoirs, and also handles sewage at their 13 treatment plants. They have a few more duties, but those are the big ones.
Thank you to Commissioner Vincent Sapienza and his DEP pals for getting us through yet another crazy weather event.
“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.
awesome pulsing
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After spending a stinky hour and change at Penny Bridge in Greenpoint, one decided to walk back to HQ in Astoria via the pedestrian path on the Kosciuszcko Bridge. I ran into a friend and her dog on the way, and got to enjoy a bit of company. Having not seen this particular person since the start of the pandemic, she was a bit startled at how much my personality has changed in the last year and a half. I explained my philosophical embrace of sociopathy in recent months, and how freeing it is to just not care about anything anymore.
Really, I just give zero shits about anything. Nothing actually matters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “happy place” is my pet name for industrial Maspeth. The corner which that stop sign pictured above is found on used to host a Yeshiva, which closed under mysterious circumstance back in the 1950’s. Rumors abound, including wild stories about “Dybbuk” infestations, but it’s most likely something mundane that closed the religious school. The “Frum’s” were probably just consolidating themselves into Williamsburg and or Crown Heights during this era.
Translation of Frum for Goyem – many Jews refer to the Orthodox sects (Hasids, Satmars etc.) as “Frum.” It’s a Yiddish word, which I don’t know the exact meaning of, but it seems to be related to being strict. Frum are the people you see wearing the hats and formal clothes everywhere they go, and who rigorously follow religious law and custom, and are often in the camera retail business. Conservative Jews usually dress like everyone else, but wear Yarmulkes and observe both dietary and sabbath law pretty closely, but also often ski or take cruises and that sort of stuff. Secular Jews, which are my particular tribe, are basically assimilated Americans with funny last names, except we have Chanukah substituted for Christmas.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Almost back at HQ, and suffering greatly as the humidity had risen nearly 30 points since my time at Penny Bridge, a chance meeting with a New Jersey Transit train running on the turnaround track at Sunnyside Yards necessitated a photo as it passed. Boy oh boy, was I shvitzing when I walked in the house. Oy, it’s so humid!
Back 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.
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