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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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
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ceaseless poring
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another day, another walk. As mentioned, one is increasing the frequency of his exercises in the name of reducing his body weight. Thereby, a lot of “not too far from home” scuttles are underway.
That’s a section of the Sunnyside Yards in Long Island City pictured above, as seen from a fence hole along Thomson Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Before the recent spike in Covid numbers, one had been enjoying the option of using mass transit again, but c’est la vie.
That’s an M line subway entering the Court Square station, heading into Queens from Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I laugh a bit whenever I encounter this particular food truck, which proclaims itself as being “The Boss of The Tacos.” I wonder if there’s any consensus between the food trucks as to who’s boss. Are there Taco factions, rivals, or breakaway Birria enthusiasts? Tacos are artisanal by their nature, since you’ve got to touch all of the components with your hand to assemble them.
Los Tacos, soy el Jefe!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve mentioned my recent fascination with photographing gas stations. It’s a damned difficult shot to get the exposure right, and also a real task to handle the photoshop/RAW processing on them. Bright lights, contrasting, saturated colors that want to go all comic book on you.
This one’s on Northern Blvd. and Newtown Road, nearby the Woodside Houses NYCHA campus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A similar set of issues occur with car washes. This operation is a couple of blocks east of the gas station pictured above. The difficulty encountered with this shot is that I was standing across Northern Blvd. on the opposite sidewalk, and finding a fractional shutter interval without a vehicle moving into frame takes a while.
As you may have guessed, this particular evening’s walk was headed east rather than west. I like to mix things up occasionally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a small industrial zone found at the border of Astoria/Woodside/Sunnyside which I like to wander through. It’s a little too “populated” for my taste, surrounded as it is by a residentially zoned area. Check out that graffiti van though. That’ll teach this guy not to park here anymore, huh?
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
haggard watcher
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator has really been hitting the bricks recently. Physical fitness has been a casualty of the pandemic for me, and I’ve passed through “overweight” and into “fat.” No doubt is held in my mind that the problems I’ve been experiencing, regarding my trick left foot, can be ameliorated by shedding body weight. Of course, the recursive side of this is that I’ve got to walk those pounds off, further aggravating the orthopedic situation in the affected foot, but as my grandmother used to say: suffering is why you were put here.
As mentioned last week, my exercise regime involves frequent short walks most days, with long walks occurring about every three to four days. A short walk for me starts at HQ in Astoria, nearby the 46th street stop on the R/M lines. I’ll scuttle in one direction or another, and in the case of today’s shots, that direction was towards the Hunters Point section of Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On a short walk I try not have a specific destination or “shot list” in mind. Rather, I follow my toes, and go wherever they happen to be pointing. This is 29th street nearby the corner of 39th Avenue, looking southwards towards Queens Plaza and the looming glassine dormitories recently installed in the area.
There’s a narrative at work in this zone, wherein local residents who once stridently identified themselves as proponents of large scale hotel construction in the Dutch Kills neighborhood just north of Queens Plaza have suddenly realized the error of doing the Manhattan people’s bidding. The former Mayor decided that these hotels would make excellent homeless shelters during the pandemic.
There are so many homeless shelters here now that the people who supported the hotel build out are somewhat outnumbered in their own neighborhood by the transient population. Said transients are accused of misdeeds, offenses, and outright criminal behavior. The former Mayor didn’t want the Police involved in disciplinary applications for the transients, preferring that the shelter operators use private security. Of course, the City didn’t check to see if these operators actually hired anybody to perform that security function, but that’s kind of the De Blasio story – ain’t it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Avoiding concentrations of the human infestation is always at the top of my list, but this becomes increasingly difficult due to the aforementioned installation of those glass walled dormitories in Long Island City. I really have to scuttle far afield for this pursuit, but no matter where you go, there they are.
Why dormitories, you ask? When a developer is erecting a building that participates in the “affordable housing” scam, ask them how many of those apartments aren’t studios or one bedrooms. The statistics on this are critical, since the “affordable” aspect is over and done with once the original tenant moves out and the apartment begins to move towards “market” price with every new lease signed. Two and three bedroom apartments attract families, who will predictably occupy the space continually while their kids journey through 13-14 school years. One bedroom, and studios, flip on average once every couple/three years.
Get it? See the way that works?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The last iteration of the City Council, in those mad last sixty days which those three termed rapscallions treated us to – after they were insulated from electoral consequence after Election Day – saw a plan for a skyscraper on the upper east side which will house facilities for the NY Blood Center approved by the body. Mention of the Blood Center’s presence here in LIC, in a two story warehouse building with a half block sized footprint, never came up. One wonders what will happen to the property in LIC. A hospital, school, or perhaps a modern precinct house for the 108? Bwahhh. You kidding?
They now call it “deeply affordable housing.” My favorite 9/11 era messaging involved the usage of the term “Now, more than ever” to sell laundry soap and Ford automobiles. Be alarmed, all the time, and your patriotic duty is to buy things. How can you be against “deeply” affordable housing… are you a systemically racist remnant of transphobic capitalism or what?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Things haven’t been the same in LIC since the thing in the cupola of the sapphire megalith departed. An inhuman intelligence which could not possibly exist, it stared down on low lying LIC and Astoria with its three lobed burning eye, coveting. A couple of years ago, it left the building in the manner of Elvis, leaving behind a mostly empty sapphire shell. The cupola used to be the highest point on Long Island, the tallest perch outside of Manhattan, but today it’s become a medium sized anachronism of earlier times.
Sarcasm, it drips, like venom.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Chickens come home to roost, most consequence is unintended, and housing is only “affordable” if someone can afford to pay the rent. Right now that’s the case, and landlords are somehow finding tenants that can drop 30-50 grand a year into their pockets. A lot of dirty laundry is going to start appearing soon, I think, as the twelve year long incumbents are out of office and the new seat fillers are going to have to start distracting the electorate away from their own machinations. The process of “throwing the last guy under the bus” is already underway. Thankfully we have a new Mayor.
Adams is going to be the best Mayor in New York City’s – or in fact the world’s – history – just ask him – he’ll tell you so.
“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.
he wishes
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bit of personal news, firstly. On December 30th, a humble narrator began to notice his throat feeling a bit sore. On New Year’s Eve, a wicked ibuprofen proof headache set in, and on New Year’s Day I developed a low grade fever with hot and cold flashes accompanied by body aches and fatigue. Given that this more or less describes the way I felt after getting the Covid vaccine a few months prior, guess what? The good news is since I am full vaxxed, the entire experience only lasted about 36 hours, and I’m back to the fine fettle I normally enjoy. Our Lady of the Pentacle is feeling similar symptoms as you’re reading this, minus the fever.
It was pretty miserable, but I’m glad that say that the vaccine protected me from ending up in a hospital. Overall, I’d give Covid 3 of 4 stars for physical misery, were I leaving it a Yelp review. Compared with what people I know experienced in middle 2020, this was a cakewalk, and wasn’t even close to the sickest I’ve ever felt from a virus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, won’t be heading out for a walk again for a few days, despite desperately needing some outside time and exercise. Pictured above is one of the very few “independent” gas stations left in Western Queens. I’ve been making it a point of recording gas stations for a couple of years now. Gas Stations are targets for Big Real Estate because of the size of the lots they inhabit, and because the titans of affordable housing tax abatements know that they can get New York State to pay for the environmental cleanup of said lots under the “NYS Brownfield Opportunity Areas” program. Believe me when I tell you that the local political people aren’t going to be approving any new permits for such establishments anytime soon, because climate change and “Four wheels bad, two wheels good.”
This is Maspeth, in a legendary locale known only as Haberman.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oh, industrial Maspeth, the happy place, how I long for thee.
After shooting this photo, I boarded a rideshare taxi and headed home to Astoria. The shots above were captured after I had departed the company of that Grad Student whom I mentioned earlier in the week. Given that I had already scuttled around for about seven miles, I figured that a bit of comfort would be welcome. My driver told me about his theory that the last person legally elected President was Herbert Hoover. Under my mask, there was a big grin. My favorite conspiracy theories are the ones so grand in scope that they approach opera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was out the next night and shlepping down Steinway Street when I spotted a pair of atavist automobiles in front of a mechanic’s storefront. This was the first of several recent perambulations which I’ve described to Our Lady of the Pentacle as “local” and “not leaving the neighborhood.”
I’m trying to take more frequent walks these days, ones which are a bit shorter than walking home from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in the name of burning off some of the pandemic blubber suit which I’m wearing. I’m not just overweight right now, I’ve gotten fat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The plan I’ve hatched is to jack up my metabolism a bit with a two pronged regime. First is to cycle in daily walks of no less than 90 minutes, with longer walks scheduled every three to four days. What that means, as an example, would be to walk from Astoria to Dutch Kills in LIC and back – roughly 4 subway stops each way – followed by a longer walk on the third day – industrial Maspeth or East Williamsburg or Flushing. The dailies build up my stamina and endurance, while the longer ones build muscle and eat up the adipose. The wild card is that trick left foot of mine.
Hopefully, by late spring or early summer I can begin to see “fighting weight” coming up in my rear view mirror.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That green splotch on the left side of the shot is what happens when it starts to rain and a blob of water lands on the lens. There’s actually something I really like about the way that a distant traffic signal’s green light flowed into the droplet.
Back next week with some images from a newly instituted schedule of constant movement 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.
