had ventured
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A problem often encountered regards the motivations of other people. I understand it when someone is beating the drums and they are advocating for an urgent issue of the day in vociferous fashion. Also “got” is when somebody is at their wit’s end and frustration with the various processes offered by Governmental authorities boil over. Thing is, there are some you encounter who are just plain mean.
I don’t want to indicate that they’re “mean” to others as a political tactic, since there’s apparently a validity to the strategic move of being a colossal dick – it might even make you Governor or President someday. Why be ugly when you don’t have to be? Why make enemies when you don’t have to? If you can see trouble coming, why not take steps to avoid it? Pissing contests and dominance displays amongst the mice don’t even amuse the elephants, since they’re not paying attention to what’s going on down on the ground.
Seriously, every single day that a humble narrator has to deal with this sort of thing is just one day closer to the day that I say “I’m out” and drop the mike. I’m really, really, trying to allow my better nature to remain dominant at the moment. Spring loaded, however, is “full Brooklyn.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My fascinations with the tracking systems on the newish camera continue to fascinate. I’ve been trying to figure out where it fails, and giving it difficult things to lock onto, such as the shot above with trains and overhead wires and a million little contrasty features in frame. So far, it’s a champ. At least I have technology, huh?
I should explain, in a vague way, that I’ve become embroiled in a controversy or two not of my making. A particular fire starter here in Western Queens is actually the “maker” of these imbroglios, and they have caused me no end of angst and worry and forced me into “having to deal with this.” Said arsonist will discover in January, after the current Mayor has left office, that all of their bridges have long since burnt away and that the people who currently lend them legitimacy will have either left office or will be done using them as a stalking horse. Lessons will be learned, subsequently, about arson. Be toxic, live toxic, die toxic.
On that note, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this particular player’s “cancel crowd” came after me or mine in the near future. Maybe they’ll succeed. Others have tried. Where are they now? I’ll point out that over on Newtown Creek I often tangle with trans national energy companies and Federal level regulatory entities, employees of which tell me that they’ve got private detective produced file folders on me which include my high school transcripts. Somehow I’ve survived that sort of inspection.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, while testing the autofocus setup on the camera rig, an Amtrak trainset came rolling by while lit up all nice by the setting sun. Something to hang my hat on for a late spring afternoon’s effort. I like trains.
There’s a sticky NYC summer setting up, lords and ladies. Hope your hot weather clothes still fit. Back next week at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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earthly logic
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One found himself at a Sunnyside Yards fence hole often referred to as “the old reliable” waiting for a train to roll by, a desire soon satisfied. There’s a reason I call it the old reliable, after all. I’m learning how to best utilize the subject tracking feature baked into my camera. By design the software which controls this looks for human/animal faces and eyes when directing focus, but it also allows me to lock onto something moving through the frame – like a LIRR train – and the camera readjusts focus continuously as the thing rolls through. This is neat.
During the few instances in the last few months which have seen me actually photographing human beings again, this focus tracking business has produced very nice results. I’ll post them in some future NP post, but you get a very nice separation twixt background and subject when using this particular setting. Good stuff.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the particular evening that the old reliable was being exploited, I kept on encountering cast off food, like the half eaten McDonalds double cheeseburger pictured above. Personally, I only eat McDonalds 2 or 3 times a year, and that’s usually when I’m either desperate or drunkenly craving fast food. I forego the fries, and my order at the Golden Arches is either a small coke with two quarter pounders w cheese or two regular cheeseburgers with no drink or fries. If it’s not on the dollar menu, it ain’t me.
It’s not like I don’t eat burgers and fries, before you ask. It’s just that McDonalds’ offerings pale before what you can get from any old Queensican diner or bar. Why spend money on semi expensive crap when you can have a decent meal for more or less the same money?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The next bit of food dumping encountered this particular evening is pictured above. Some veg, some garbage, all left out in the rain for someone else to clean up. Grrr.
I carry any trash I’ve generated while moving around in my pockets, and empty them when I encounter a waste basket or other receptacle like a dumpster. This really isn’t hard to do. The mental process involved in leaving the house with a box of cabbage and then carrying it to a fairly remote spot along the fences of a rail yard and saying “here, here is where I will abandon these cabbages” is something I don’t understand.
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horrible familiarity
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The only times I’m actually happy are when I’m operating the camera. Accordingly, one found himself lingering about on the Koscisuzcko Bridge recently awaiting the occlusion of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself behind the Manhattan shield wall. I had the whole kit and kaboodle with me for a change, and figured to make good use of the tripod I had been laboriously carrying around.
Funny thing about the new camera is that I really don’t need the tripod that often anymore and only carry it with me when a specific shot that requires it is in mind, such as the first image in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having accomplished my goal of “getting a nice sunset shot of the creek” after hanging around on the Kosciuszcko Bridge for awhile, I broke down the tripod setup and got back to normal handheld shooting. There’s a couple of other shooters I see up there periodically, an older guy who carries a Nikon and a young woman who favors the Sony system. My guess is that they’re both Greenpoint people. I’ve tried to chat about camera stuff briefly with the old guy, but there’s a language barrier we keep running into. The woman always has headphones on, which is a “tell” saying “I don’t want to chat.” Read the room, huh?
At any rate, gear safely stored for carrying, I pointed my toes towards Queens and began scuttling back towards home.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Naturally – thereby – after I had packed everything up and affixed a non zoom lens to the camera, the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge opened up about 3/4 of a mile to the west. Sigh.
More tomorrow at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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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.
equally himself
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering disdainfully through the universe’s garden spot, Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section, one struggles to maintain any sort of hope for the future. Jack ass Real Estate enthusiasts masquerading as altruists are the latest addition to the milieu that I have to deal with. Their entire point of view is built around a single disingenuous issue – “affordable housing” for people earning over $100,000 a year. When you point out that every bit of societal infrastructure (power, water, transit, education, healthcare) required to maintain a growing populace is currently failing and the installation of much of it dates back to an era before women were able to vote, they grow indignant. Everything is connected. NYC is complicated. The five boroughs are virtually a nation state unto themselves, and the NYPD’s headcount is larger than most country’s actual militaries. As an example, there are fewer active duty Royal Marines employed by the United Kingdom than there are NYPD officers. There’s 36,000 cops in NYC’s 5 boroughs versus 7,760 Royal Marines for all of Great Britain. I should mention that a Royal Marine is generally considered to be worth 20 regular soldiers, and that NYPD is trained for an entirely different mission so the numerical difference isn’t offered to suggest that the NYPD would win a fight with the British Royal Marines.
The entire British military establishment numbers about 200,000 active duty personnel. Their job is to protect the roughly 67 million people who live on the actual island, and the various bases and territories left over from the time of Empire. The Royal Marines are “tip of the spear” troops, meaning they are the equivalent of America’s Green Berets, Navy Seals, or Army Rangers in terms of training and lethality.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Where does “it” go when you flush your affordable toilet in your new condo? Who pays for the pipe and the sewer plant and what happens to “it” after it gets there? See those four pipes in the photo above? Largest single source of greenhouse gas in Brooklyn, bigger than all the highways and tunnels put together. What powers this sewer plant in Greenpoint and who does it serve? The answer to the former is a bit complex, but the latter is Manhattan below 96th street.
Much will be made of the “need” for affordable housing built close to the urban core along the East River. Few will discuss the need to build new and to fortify existing mass transit. If you understand NYC history, you can say with zero qualification that the Government is shit at building housing. Conversely, Government is great at building roads and train lines and sewer plants. Let’s talk about getting the Government out of the real estate business, and back into the building schools and hospitals and transit space.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everything in NYC is interrelated. Nothing exists in a solitary silo. A new luxury apartment building, using modern construction technique, isn’t built here – it’s assembled here. Prefabricated sections are brought to the job site from a distant factory and lifted by crane into the correct spot. Those “wide load” sections have to get “here” from somewhere else. How do you do that, when the Real Estate people have eliminated port and rail infrastructure across the five boroughs in a systematic manner over the last fifty years? By heavy truck, of course. In a vastly interconnected system like NYC, a small change in one place causes ripples through others.
Those trucks, coming from distant factories, have to move through other people’s neighborhoods. They encounter obstacles like the elevated tracks of the 7 line on Queens Blvd. or the overpasses of highways. Since everyone is a fucking environmentalist these days, how about we calculate the amount of carbon these truck trips spend while idling in traffic in upper Manhattan on their way to the Triborough?
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cosmic continua
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This week’s posts start and end with trains. There’s your “Chekhov’s Gun” for you, laid out all nice and obvious. Pictured above is an out of service Long Island Rail Road train which has been stored at the Blissville Yard in Long Island City’s Blissville section for about a year. It recently received a new coat of graffiti, and I’ve shown it to you in the past when its last iterative coating of street art was applied.
A humble narrator is in a bit of a mood at the moment. Controversy and politics amongst those of us who scurry about trying to pick up the crumbs that drop from the master’s table has broken out. If you’re reading this and know what I’m referring to, I’d opine that you should leave me out of your arguing. Don’t make me come over there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Stupid, selfish, and self obsessed – that’s how I’d describe the mythological “noble” character of this country of ours in modernity. We’ve always been absolute monsters to each other, despite what the National narrative teaches. An iconoclastic fad is underway at the moment, dedicated to tearing down the firmament of our national sense of self. Extreme ideologies with no grounding in historical custom or law has been loosed upon a poorly educated and incurious population. Take a breath, y’all, huh?
Luckily, summer is coming, which indicates that I’ve got a roughly 60 day long break from having to attend any meetings regarding governmental bullshit nearing. This whole cycle of bullshit we’ve all been dealing with for the last decade or so should be coming to an end within the next couple of weeks, which will kick off a new cycle of bullshit. By the end of June, after the electoral primaries, we’ll know who the new god kings of Queens are going to be and exactly where and when they want their asses to be publicly kissed or when they privately want smoke blown up their alimentary.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Railroad Avenue, in the Blissville section of Long Island City, a tree can be observed. It’s the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil on Newtown Creek. Same species as the one in Eden, just not as knowledgable a fruit. Go figure. One recently encountered a cast off fruiting of this tree, just lying there on the side of the road. Like the great shit sandwich that is our culture, I had to take a bite. As a note, there were no serpents slithering about.
No more Mister Nice Guy, that’s what I said once the scales fell from my eyes. I wasn’t that nice to start with, so…
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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.
The Newtown Pentacle 