legal advertisements
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A holocaust of Zoom meetings notwithstanding, one still finds the time to wander about Queens aimlessly in the dead of night with a camera. These shots have arrived in front of you due to one of my bimonthly visits to the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, which can be found comfortably nested in with and amongst the concrete devastations of Long Island City. There’s a lot of science hereabouts, and not enough fiction.
The fiction is found a few blocks away, in the lobby offices of those shiny new luxury apartment towers, staffed by Real Estate Industrial Complex worker drones who never mention or instead misrepresent the heavy industrial/environmental history of LIC to their tenants prior to getting the rubes to sign on the proverbial dotted line.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It shakes my basic faith in people. They’ll spend hours watching documentaries about where and how McDonalds produces and manufactures its gruel, or the mean reality of the production line for Hallmark Greeting Cards, but won’t bother trying to find out if the luxury condominium they’re entering into thirty years of debt for sits on the former site of a chemical factory. They’ll expound upon on the political issues of the day and adjure you to “do your own research” but don’t bother googling up an old map of the area where they’re investing in property to see what used to be where. Also, as a note, googling something is not research. It’s exactly the same thing as asking a librarian where to find a book. Reading the book isn’t even “research,” but it can be a part of that process.
Just last week, I attended a community board meeting in which a project was being offered to Astoria as a panacea to solve an intractable issue of affordable senior housing, by a highly politically wired developer. As soon as I saw the address, I said “Hey, that’s the Nelson Galvanizing Superfund site.” Why am I the only person in Queens who knows about and talks about these things?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Brooklyn or Manhattan, if you were to crumple up a gum wrapper and throw it in the gutter, before it hit the pavement somebody would have already formed a nonprofit group to combat the phenomena. In Queens, you could dissolve truck tires, with gaseous chlorine, in a hole you dug out of your yard and that’s not just peachy keen – it’s also cool. When the vapors kill your neighbor’s dog, also cool. When a kid gets killed, the Politicians will show up and christen a bike lane, and they’ll “tsk tsk” about your chlorinated tire habits but won’t actually do anything to stop you. Hell, the Queens Chamber of Commerce will probably show up and give you a trophy for being industrious and taking care of the old tire problem.
Clean your room. Do you want to get sick? Don’t buy a new construction condo without first inquiring what used to be there.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 8th. 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 here, 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.
joint furlough
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back where I belong, like every other piece of wind blown trash in NYC, at Newtown Creek. Specifically, this is the Dutch Kills tributary of the larger waterway, which is found in Long Island City’s Degnon Terminal subsection. This is the turning basin pictured above, wherein one could expect the space required to rotate a tug and barge combination and reverse course back out to the main stem of Newtown Creek and the East River beyond.
What? You think I’m going to purchase a new lens and not bring it here? Pfah. The new lens in question for today’s post is a 35mm f1.8 prime lens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The critical factor in purchasing this lens is that it has onboard image stabilization technology, which couples with a different stabilization mechanism inside of the camera body. This combination has been allowing me to pull off handheld shots that I formerly would have needed to use a tripod to achieve. That’s a 1/60th of a second shot above, and the one below is an astounding 1/10th of a second. With my older camera system, I was lucky if 1/80th of a second was possible.
All told, I’m fairly pleased with myself at choosing to invest in the Canon R6 mirrorless system as my primary rig for the next few years.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As far as “it,” “It” has remained elusive and whereas I’ve hear splashing indications and seen vortexes in the water that indicate something large and heavy had submerged itself, even after several months of looking for “it” I haven’t been able to produce any documentation of “It.”
If “It” is down there, I will get eventually get a shot of it. Just a matter of time and patience, and time spent at the water’s edge here in the heart of the Newtown Pentacle.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 1st. 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 here, 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.
prismatic vistas
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned earlier this week, ye olde Project Firebox is once more receiving a bit of my attention. Nobody notices these bits of street furniture, so I make it a point of doing so. Fire alarm boxes, technically speaking, used to operate using the sort of technology you’d associate with telegraph lines, but my understanding is that the vast majority of them now use the telephonic copper wire network to report trouble to the FDNY.
What do I know, I’m some schmuck with a camera wandering around in the dark in Queens, not an alarm box technician.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Remember when movie theaters were a thing, in the before times? Check out the lobby of one, with its snack bar, pictured above. This is the largish multiplex operated by the AMC company as part of the so called Kaufman Astoria Arts District, which is a dark and somewhat dangerously disconcerting area to walk through at night. One hopes that the same people who created this abrogation of the principals of urban design never get the chance to expand their empire of empty glassine storefronts and forbidding streetscapes.
Seriously, there are sections of industrial Maspeth which are friendlier to visit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As has been mentioned repeatedly – whomsoever it is that is in charge of poking new holes in the fences at Sunnyside Yards – I love you. I’ve never seen a Pennsylvania RR branded locomotive here before – normally, it’s New Jersey Transit, Amtrak, and Long Island Railroad you see at Sunnyside Yards.
Thanks, Federal Hole Director, or Chairman of Holes, or perhaps Minister of Holes.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 1st. 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 here, 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.
further liberation
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can have Manhattan, Long Island City is the most visually interesting part of New York City’s center core. Center core, you ask? If you’re in Bay Ridge, you ain’t in it. St. George on Staten Island is core, but a half mile back from the water ain’t. Everything west of Jackson Heights, west of Bushwick. Everything south of the Bronx Zoo, except for Manhattan above about 150th Street. A big chunk of western New Jersey is also core. I have spoken. Are you core? I’m hard core, here in Astoria.
Like Police cars, yellow taxi cabs are vehicles which seldom stop moving, with the exception being the last 11 months of this interminable pandemic for the taxis. I’ve been seeing entirely inert cabs all over the place, and a lot of them have had their medallions and other TLC flair removed. I have no idea how this industry in particular is going to find a road to recovery after this is all over. By my estimate, we’ve got at least another year of this ahead of us, by which point I’ll have watched everything Netflix has to offer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One mentioned both Project Firebox and the native art form of the Borough of Queens – illegal dumping – in yesterday’s post. Here on Skillman Avenue, you’ve got both. That’s value for money right there, lords and ladies, just like dinner theater.
This particular stretch of Skillman Avenue, found between 39th street and Queens Plaza, is a favorite for the race car boys to meet up along. I’ve seen them drifting and fading multiple times over the last year, sending up plumes of tire smoke. The asphalt is scribed with black spirals and figure eight donut patterns. It’s a madhouse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another fence hole I’ve recently been able to exploit allowed one a view of this Amtrak train set moving itself around at Sunnyside Yards. One good thing – for me – about the pandemic period is that since I’m not rushing around to get to work or something important anymore is that I get to photograph the efforts of people who still have jobs.
Fun for me, who is little more than a whirling mass of filthy black clothing concealing a wandering mendicant.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 1st. 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 here, 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.
close correspondence
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As has often been asserted, illegal dumping is the unofficial art form of the Borough of Queens. Nowhere else, even in that runner-up section of Brooklyn which the children call Greenpoint, do you see the careful attention to arranging your junk so carefully. Composition is the difference between the amateur and professional leagues in most of the visual arts, and if one considers the sculptural qualities of these ad hoc installations… the mind boggles at the implication. One should spend a moment contemplating their navel – the omphalos of their very soul – right here.
Really, this is a growing problem, and 11 months into the Corona Pandemic a humble narrator can report that there’s observably a LOT more illegal dumping going on. Good news is that the art galleries of Manhattan haven’t figured out a way to charge you admission for this sort of thing yet, so get out there and look for a stack of tires.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m quite fond of this Sunnyside Yards/Amtrak shot. I’m also fond of the official at Amtrak responsible for poking holes in the Yard’s fences just big enough for me to maneuver a camera lens next to. It’s also the first shot I made a 35mm lens I picked up that made me say “huh.” The new camera I’ve mentioned a few times in the last month has been quite busy as I’ve been teaching myself how to use it. There’s a few things – like the fold out touch screen, for instance – that I’ve had to keep on reminding myself to use and that “I can do now.” That touch screen is how I was able to shoot through a fence hole that was maybe 3/4 of an inch square, and in a spot I’ve never been able to get a composed shot through before. The 35mm also easily sees through the diamond shaped apertures of standard chain link fencing.
I’ve also solved an annoying photoshop problem which was plaguing me a month or two back – a distracting cross hatch pattern manifesting in low pixel density parts of photos, specifically skies and water. Turns out that modern adobe camera raw has a weird default which turns off a certain form of “luminance noise” suppression. Suppression of noise used to be a default, but somebody at adobe decided to give you granular control over it with three sliders and set the default state on all three to zero. Sigh.
Y’know, I literally installed photoshop off of 16 floppy disks onto a Mac at my first advertising gig as “Stat Boy.” It wasn’t Photoshop with any numbers or letters after that, just Photoshop. I’m old. Kids these days… changing things for no reason so they can tell their bosses that they fixed something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Project Firebox. Remember when I used to do that, and there was a sixth post every week at Newtown Pentacle? Wow, those were the days, huh? Seriously, this project spun wildly out of control for me, and I found myself weeping while wandering through the City for miles and miles looking for fireboxes I hadn’t shot yet. Also, there’s only so many portrait shots you can do of fireboxes. Saying that…
Project Firebox is low key underway again, and we’ll be checking in on a few old friends to see how they’ve been weathering the storms of time.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 1st. 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 here, 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 