Archive for the ‘Woodside’ Category
Old friends
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was finishing out the second day of shooting on a recent trip back home to NYC, but I had to make a late afternoon stop at the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge – spanning the Dutch Kills tributary of the fabulous Newtown Creek – to see my little tree of heaven.
Long time readers may recall that charting the growth of this tree became something of an obsession for me during the Covid lockdowns.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s officially a Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), and it has been sprouting out from under that factory for a few years now. They make lady’s face paint and other cosmetic goo in there, I’m told.
My efforts were nearly over, having got started at about seven in the morning. I still had some socializing to experience later on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One last shot, and I summoned a rideshare to carry my carcass from Dutch Kills in LIC over to Woodside. I did think about just taking the train, but that was at least a twenty minute walk from this spot and frankly – I was fairly exhausted at this particular moment.
The car came, and the air conditioning within was quite a relief after an entire day of being out in the heat and carrying all of my possessions around. I was still shlepping a bag of clothing around with me, after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next stop was, as mentioned, in Woodside. The plan was to meet up with some of my knuckleheads at Donovan’s Pub for burgers and beers. I was early, and didn’t want to ‘get started’ by myself, so I headed over to the noisome little triangle park found at the corner of Roosevelt and 58th to wait out a half hour interval.
I affixed the wide angle 16mm lens to the camera, and tried to ignore the guy who was washing a slash wound to his hand in a water fountain. Dude had a lot of gravy inside him, and left a bunch of it painted onto that fountain.
This is why Queens can’t have anything nice.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Old number seven was rampaging through every ten minutes or so, high above on the green steel. Everything was madness, and noise, and chaos, and punctuated by automobile horns. As mentioned several times, my environmental adaptations to NYC seem to have worn off. It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything quite like this and it was overwhelming.
I don’t want you to think I’ve gone soft in Pennsylvania, instead my brain no longer spends quite as much time pruning and selecting sensory data as it used to back in NYC. In Astoria, for instance, I learned that I could sleep through an automatic weapons long barrel gunfight that was happening directly below my bedroom window.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After dinner, the group split up, and I left with Hank the Elevator guy. I’d be staying at Casa Del Hank in Middle Village for the remainder of my trip. We got back to his place, hung out for a bit, and I was soon passed out in his spare room. Day three of this trip was going to be a real lulu.
Back tomorrow.
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Archives #008
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve mentioned this show to a few friends, but I’ve been loving watching a Turkish TV series – about the Ottoman Sultans – which I happened across on YouTube called “Magnificent Century.” There’s a sequel series called “Magnificent Century: Khosem,” which presents the Sultan Murad as having been something of a medieval John Wick who often went undercover to fight crime. Good stuff, and it’s helped to pass a bunch of my empty time, as the broken ankle heals.
Back in 2009, this post described what I saw in NYC’s Chinatown when I was lucky enough to stumble across a group of Lion Dancers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s interesting for me to comb through the archives and see all of these early Newtown Pentacle posts again. The way I do things here hasn’t changed all that much since the start, from a technology point of view, but the way I slam posts together has. Experience, I guess. Do something often enough, eventually it’ll get a bit easier.
In 2018, this post was offered, and it’s focused in on DSNY’s toys.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m hoping that this week I can make it down the stairs and out the back door, to get to the car. For too long has the Mobile Oppression Platform sat idle. Also, I need to pick up a prescription at CVS. The plan includes Our Lady of the Pentacle coming along, and doing the actual ‘picking up.’ Long suffering, Our Lady.
From 2020, and a post that was part of the Pandemic series of night time walks.
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bodily dislodgement
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
October 21st, and I was continuing my exploration of a few spots in College Point and Whitestone which seemed promising. These were located during a session I spent with Google Maps’ street view feature. The 1961 Throgs Neck Bridge is what it depicts. The Google map said I was in a dog park, but it was actually just a parking lot alongside a parkway.
The hour was growing a bit late, and plans to meet Our Lady of the Pentacle back in Astoria were in the offing, so I packed up my troubles in the old kit bag. Yes, I did, indeed, “smile, smile, smile.”
For those of you under the age of 1,000, that’s a jokey reference to this song.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
October 22nd saw me in Flushing, at the Queens Botanical Garden.
There were pumpkins.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
October 25th and I was scheduled to spend a day with one of my closest friends driving around Southern Brooklyn, but it was very foggy when I left the house about 8:30 a.m. My ultimate meetup destination was in Park Slope, and there’s an obvious way to get there by car from Astoria, one which unfortunately involves sitting in a lot of Manhattan bound traffic on a certain expressway that connects Brooklyn and Queens.
I decided to go there via the less obvious but more interesting route, by driving to Ridgewood and then hanging a right and then a left or two in Bushwick and then proceeding through that central part of Brooklyn which nobody ever talks about these days. Along my way to the first right in Ridgewood, I crossed Newtown Creek and couldn’t resist a shot or two of the Grand Street Bridge all cloaked up in mist.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The new car has a moon roof. I don’t know what the actual difference between a sun roof and a moon roof is, but there you are. As I was driving along, whenever I got stuck at a light, I’d shove the camera up through the moon roof and turn the camera’s LED screen to a convenient angle so I could compose and record a quick shot.
That’s Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza, all fogged up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I did the same thing with the camera and moon roof on my way home. The fog had cleared by the afternoon, and the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself had burst into view. I was driving down Flatbush Avenue, this time headed in the direction of the aforementioned expressway betwixt Brooklyn and Queens.
I’ve been doing this sort of shot a bunch the last couple of weeks, as I’ve been driving a lot since receiving the car. It’s an interesting perspective for me, since the position of the lens to the car’s roof as it stands relative to the ground – if it were “eye level” – would indicate that I’m about six inches taller than I actually am.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An errand got me off the expressway and into the Woodside and Jackson Heights zone, where I had to weave an automotive path through the various “improvements” to traffic flow offered by the City in recent years. While driving down Roosevelt Avenue, a splotch of pigeon scat landed on the hood of my car, and I decided that it would be good idea to close the moon roof.
Hey, they say that’s lucky, having a pigeon poop on you.
“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.
seventy steps
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off – Newtown Creek Alliance will be honoring John Lipscomb of Riverkeeper, Christine Holowacz, and… your humble narrator… this coming Thursday night (the 20th) at the annual “Tidal Toast” fundraising event. Ticketing information can be found here, and the tax deductible donation of your ticket money will help to fund NCA’s ongoing mission to Reveal, Restore, and Revitalize Newtown Creek. NCA has been at the center of my public life over the last 15 years, and I hope you can make it. This is officially my finale, in terms of public facing events, and the end of this chapter of my life.
Heading back towards Astoria, from a far ranging walk on the 16th of September, which saw me visiting places familiar and loved, I decided that the course northwards and towards HQ would involve 48th street, where Woodside and Sunnyside collide. To get there, I scuttled along an access road that follows the Brooklyn Queens Expressway’s connection to the Long Island Expressway.
This is a lonely path through my “happy place” borderlands of Industrial Maspeth. You needn’t fret overly about marauders, muggers, or molesters here, instead you worry about monsters. Not metaphorical ones either. If you’re going to get got by a werewolf or zombie in NYC, this is the neighborhood where that’ll happen. Vampires? Nope, that’s Queens Plaza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cool cars abound in the borough of Queens, but they’re given to mechanical failure, so tow trucks also must exist. Universal rule.
At the moment, since this is another one of the things people keep asking me, I’m still maintaining my every other day schedule of “part of one day out shooting and then one day back at HQ.” The length of the walks I take on one of the “out days” is based purely around whatever else I’m obliged to do that day and how the physical plant is behaving. Of late, it hasn’t been too easy to detach myself prior to about 4-5 in the afternoon, and as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself is currently dropping down behind New Jersey sometime in the 6 o’clock hour here in NYC so I seem to be catching a lot of sunsets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My mood is fairly serious but I’m not as anxious or stressed out as you’d imagine, as I’m driven by the exigent circumstances of the day, and I’m actually feeling quite positive. As described in the past, one of the things I do when scuttling around is think in a meditative fashion. I like to believe that all of this alone time over the last fifteen or so years has allowed me to figure some things out, about myself at least. What I can say is that I’m a very different person than I used to be.
Physically, I’m what I’d describe as “ok” but I’m still really fat and haven’t been able to drop the weight I put on during COVID, despite all the walking. Saying that, the trick left foot seems to be a little less tricky these days and despite being in my middle 50’s – four out of seven days a week I’ll walk between five and fifteen miles around this hellish industrial zone while lugging around ten pounds of camera crap with me. Rain, snow, hot, cold. That’s me. I’m still made of leather.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One looks forward to living in the Pittsburgh area. I’m thinking about augmenting my nascent car ownership with an electric pedal assist bike of some kind, which would allow me the option of parking the larger vehicle somewhere and then exploring the various neighborhoods of Pittsburgh on 2 wheels until I get a feel for the place. As mentioned in the past, I don’t think you can see or understand a place from behind the wheel of a car, as you’re moving too fast to notice things. Even a bike moves a bit too fast. Walking, that’s the trick, but until you’ve found pathways through a city it’s best to be mobile in case trouble lurks.
Perhaps I can find a pair of robot pants which would walk up and down those hills in Pittsburgh for me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, there’s all sorts of stuff there that you can just walk right up to and photograph without having to shoot through a chain link fence like you do with literally everything in NYC. Pictured above is the interchange between the BQE and LIE, at the Maspeth/Sunnyside/Woodside border mentioned at the top of this post, the one whose access road I was walking along – and it’s a photo shot through a chain link fence.
This point of view is found along 48th street, at the Woodside and Sunnyside Border with the happy place of Industrial Maspeth. From here out, as I headed north, 48th street is entirely residential for several blocks. Nothing too interesting to shoot there, I’m afraid. I also don’t really like taking pictures of people’s homes, as it looks really, really suspicious and weird. Given how suspicious and weird I look as a default…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily for a humble narrator, just as I got to Queens Boulevard at 48th street, the Q104 bus was pulling up and after a quick “maximum boogie” sprint across the so called “Boulevard of Death,” I was utilizing the MTA’s newish OMNY fare payment system to buy myself a ride the rest of the way back home to the rolling hills of almond eyed Astoria.
The next few days were meant to be rather “involved,” and they certainly were. More on that 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.
drown something
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That is a fine tow truck, thought I, and compelled was a humble narrator to get a quick shot. Generally speaking, owners of illegally double parked vehicles are less than keen about seeing a weird old guy in a filthy black raincoat taking pictures of their rides in the dead of night, so I did a “gun and run” shot.
I regret not going wide angle with a tripod and capturing the strobing effects of its warning lights on the surrounding environment. Ahh, the milieu…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now, that’s a truck. If I was to set myself up as a super villain or mad scientist, that would be my ride. I’d have it painted with evil branding elements, of course. Also, anti personnel weapons of a fiendish kind – hoses that shoot live fire ants, pepper spray grenades – that sort of thing.
Someday… an army composed of my own race of Atomic Supermen… someday…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I got to Jackson Heights, I turned back around and headed up Roosevelt Avenue. It’s such an interesting and horrible corridor, Roosevelt. Existentially, it’s horrific – the train noise, the constant traffic, noise, tumult. Just like industrial Maspeth, you constantly remark that people actually do live here – despite everything going on around them. They’re obviously made of sterner stuff than I.
Visually speaking, it’s endlessly fascinating, Roosevelt Avenue is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My path was now heading south westwards, back towards HQ. Short walk, this one, starting at Astoria’s Broadway in the 40’s, then down to Northern Blvd. and 39th Avenue to the intersection with Roosevelt Avenue and then back to HQ. Lots to see, got my legs moving, and the elevated tracks provided cover against threatened precipitant.
Apparently, the used furniture store pictured above is offering a sale. I like signage that’s overwhelmingly literal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Endless fascination surrounds the complex of stairs, elevators, and overhead rail tracks encountered at 61st street and Roosevelt Avenue. This is where Long Island Railroad and the IRT Flushing Line Subway intersect. What a potpourri of calamitous design this is.
I found myself desirous of getting away from the humans after this, after avoiding several skirmish lines. A skirmish line is when (usually) a family or a group of friends arrange themselves shoulder to shoulder as they walk down the street. This is an unbreakable formation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crossing over the border to Sunnyside, you encounter an old shop with new signage. As mentioned, I like literal signage. What do any of us really want, ultimately, other than a bit of simple convenience?
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 