deep fissure
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Donald J Trump warned you 5 years ago that without him there would a taco truck found on every corner, which is one of those things we’ve been all hoping would happen as tacos are delicious and food trucks are an affordable source of these treats. Here we are, just a few days into the Biden era, and the prophesied taco trucks have begun to appear. What do you know about that? Something Trump told the truth about, which is notable for somebody whose pants were so reliably on fire.
Recent walking excursions have been finding me scuttling along familiar streets which are a bit closer to HQ than the usual Newtown Creek zone, which is ultimately due to my fatal weakness to cold weather. Superman has his Kryptonite, I’ve got January. January while standing on a frozen shoreline in Queens is not fun. The shot above is from the corner of Broadway and Northern Blvd. which I will describe as the southern angle between “proper” Woodside, Astoria, and “kinda sort of” Sunnyside.
The East/West border of Woodside and Astoria, I would offer, is definitively 58th street/Woodside Avenue. There’s seldom a Taco Truck there, but one can hope.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fascination with automotive maintenance facilities continues, and while wandering by a largish Car Wash company on Northern Blvd. at the bleeding edge border of “proper” Woodside the other night, this scene was observed.
I’ve been using the new Canon R6 for a bit now, and can say that I’m thoroughly enjoying the device and feel like there’s a lot of stuff which I was formerly precluded from capturing that is now well in reach. The lens being employed on many of my early night walks with the R6, and in all three shots in today’s post, is a f1.8 “nifty fifty” 50mm. The R6 offers “in body image stabilization” which allows for some techno magic to happen when shooting at night. In the interval since this shot was captured, I’ve augmented the lens bag with a 35mm f1.8 lens that has its own onboard stabilization system. Combining the lens and body technologies, this allows for some 8 additional stops of light gathering range. Wait till you see those shots, which will start filtering into posts here sometime next month.
The lesson of prior winters instruct that this is the time of year that – when I’m able to be outside – shoot, shoot, and keep shooting. Never know when a blizzard or nor’easter is going to randomly gobble up a week of your time during the winter in New York City. I’ve been keeping myself busy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Canon R6 is a very capable device for handheld night shooting in the “urban milieu,” and I’ve found myself leaving the house for a walk sans camera bag, tripod, etc. I’m carrying an extra battery with me and that’s it. Radical simplicity is the mantra for me these days. I’ve been so impressed with that 35mm lens that I just placed an order with the good folks at Beards and Hats (BH Photo) for its “big brother” which is a stabilized 85mm f2. Looking forward to a day – which will can’t come soon enough – when I leave the house with just the two lenses and a couple of extra batteries and that’s it.
My desire for this sort of simplicity has nothing to do with eschewing zoom lenses or anything like that. You try walking ten miles at a clip with fifteen pounds of glass and a tripod in your knapsack. Sheesh.
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, January 25th. 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.
horrible grotto
Friday odds and ends.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is convinced that within the next decade, if your automobile runs out of gas or blows a tire, you will just be forced to abandon the thing here in the City that never used to sleep. One is making some effort to catalog the tire shops, and mechanics, and gas stations before they are eradicated by the Real Estate Industrial Complex’s patriotic push to build more luxury condos in a shorter interval than any other City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Arriving back in Astoria, one cracked out a few shots of the various things which caught my eye. This contractor’s van is owned by a guy I’ve met a few times, a “no bullshit” Greek guy who polices his corner with Russian efficiency. When you walk past his house, motion activated lights erupt, cameras swivel on posts, and the venetian blinds in his windows suddenly show a small aperture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a Con Ed project moving through the ancient village, one which is replacing 1950’s era cast iron gas lines leading to LaGuardia Airport with modern pvc pipes that can move greater volumes of fuel at higher pressure.
What could go wrong? Meantime, there’s lots of cool construction equipment parked all over the place.
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, January 18th. 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.
country legends
Thursday, and how I almost broke my neck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Maspeth is quite hilly. I’ve always opined that walking up 69th street, leading up from Queens Blvd. to Borden Avenue, is not unlike visiting one of the Mayan pyramids and that there should be similarly be a chain laid down on the sidewalk to grab onto and aid you in climbing the ascent. The reason behind this steep elevation is geological, as the terminal moraine of Long Island’s western extent begins in Maspeth (at Mt. Olivette cemetery) whereas the lower declination closer to the East River are a sort of glacial mud puddle. When you’re in a boat on Newtown Creek, you can easily visualize the ridge which gives Ridgewood its name, and see the geologic “soup bowl.” In the shot above, you can discern the radical change in elevation of Maspeth which is encountered in just one city block, an ascent of something like three building stories of height.
While walking down this hill, I slipped on a chunk of metal, while holding the camera tripod in front of me in a posture not unlike that of carrying a rifle. I found myself propelled forward head first, and rather than try to fight gravity, my instinctual response was instead to sprint into the fall. Running allowed me to regain my balance, which was lucky. If I hadn’t saved myself here, it would have been a tooth breaking face plant on the sidewalk, and my torso would have smashed the camera and tripod into the pavement. As it is, it took me running all the way to that utility pole in the shot above before I regained proper walking balance. It was actually quite comical.
Gravity and momentum, they affect us all, bro.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, I managed to pull a muscle in my back and the act of locking up my abdomen and chest to maintain an erect running posture caused my neck and shoulders to cramp up, but that’s what it’s like being in your early 50’s. These are also the sort of banal adventures which an intrepid urban explorer encounters while walking around on anything but flood planes. In my defense, neighborhoods in my county of origin had names like “Flatlands” and “Flatbush.”
I expect that there’s some security guy who had a good laugh watching the cctv footage of this particular moment the next morning. The word you’re looking for is “klutz.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back to those “corridors” mentioned yesterday, one set out for hq along the 43rd street/Laurel Hill Blvd. corridor. This entails a fairly terrifying walk along a sidewalk which barely has a curb and which adjoins the onramp of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway leading onto the Kosciuszcko Bridge. Tire tracks left behind by automobiles and trucks on this sidewalk provide efficacy of the commitment to street safety which is offered by the NYC DOT.
I plan on calling Thrive NYC to discuss my worries about all of this. Chirlane will know what I should think.
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, January 18th. 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.
sinisterly wooded
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One finds himself wandering over the same ground over and over due to the efficiency of certain routes. There are de facto passes – gateway points – between the residential neighborhoods of Queens and the industrial business zones. That means that I end up moving through and towards these choke points all the time. Some of these “passes” are created by highways, cemeteries, or rail yards. In the case of the “happy place” Maspeth area of Newtown Creek, there’s the 39th/43rd/48th street corridors.
Interesting Queens historical trivia is that back in Dutch and English times, 39th street used to be called Harold Avenue, 43rd street used to be called Laurel Hill Blvd. and ran from Berrian Bay to Newtown Creek, and that 48th street was “the Shell Road” which was paved with crushed oyster shells.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Normal scuttling finds me looking for the most direct route from “A” to “B” but given that there’s nothing normal about the world right now, one finds himself wandering about a bit more than usual. Why not walk down that street or avenue you’ve never consciously explored before? It’s not like you have somewhere else to go.
My fascination with photographing the skeletal silhouettes of wintry street trees is becoming an issue for me, so I’m planning on calling Thrive NYC to ask Chirlane DeBlasio for some advice on kicking the habit. She’s apparently the wisest of all people, according to the Mayor, but he’s only watched a few of the videos.
Seriously though, seeing a tree this large and this old which has survived in the darkest of the environmental thickets of Newtown Creek’s industrialized hinterlands long enough to get up to forty or fifty feet is just inspirational. You’ve got to take hope when you find it, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This lobster truck, which has clearly seen better days, sits at the top of a hill in the section of West Maspeth which was sometimes referred to as “Berlin” or “Berlinville” in the late 19th century and for the first decade of the 20th. There are residential buildings hereabouts, scattered here and there amongst the factories and warehouses, and queries I’ve offered to the folks who live here over the years have revealed no living memory of the Berlin thing. Saying that, there was the Berlinville Railway disaster, and I’ve seen the term scribed onto fire insurance maps, so…
It’s parked on what should be the eastern slope of Berlin Hill. Laurel Hill is where First Calvary cemetery resides. The shallow valley between them, which the BQE runs through, used to host a lost tributary of Newtown Creek called “Wolf Creek,” or so the legend states…
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, January 18th. 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.
ominous things
Tuesday’s are the most malign days of the week.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That puddle there is permanent. I’ve walked through this section of Maspeth during summertime drought conditions when it was hot enough to bake bread on the sidewalk and that puddle permanently persists. I’m told this is one of the lowest spots in NYC, as far as it’s relationship to sea level, which I’ve been known to describe this spot as being “the bottom of a soup bowl” that’s formed by the high grounds surrounding the alluvial flood plane of the legendary Newtown Creek.
There’s a sewer grate under the puddle somewhere, one which is choked by concrete and street garbage, which is meant to drain directly into the Maspeth Creek tributary of the larger Newtown Creek waterway without ever visiting a sewer plant. This is puddle is more or less on the spot where the town docks of Maspeth would have once been found, where DeWitt Clinton dreamt up the Erie Canal. I can see through time, but time is only a construct, as everything is actually happening all at once. We live in an explosion, and there are puddles.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Puzzling statement, no? Well – ponder it, bro. I don’t want to get into chemical decay and quantum states in today’s post. Puddles, that’s my bag, bro.
The big plumbing warehouse whose property sits behind both the eternal puddle, and a fence, used to be the United Enameling and Stamping Company. They made bathtubs and sinks and toilets and the sort of stuff that connected such items to water supply systems as well as enameled cooking equipment. Their huge parking lot used to be filled with dipping tanks, which were filled with esoteric compounds and cancer juices used in their manufacturing processes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next door to the plumbing warehouse is a concrete company – Ferrara Bros. You see their characteristic orange trucks making deliveries all over the City. This isn’t Ferrara’s only corporate footprint, here in industrial Maspeth. I think they’ve got a couple more giant factories in other boroughs, possibly another one in eastern Queens but I’m guessing there and can’t be bothered to find out more.
By my count, there are three big concrete processors around Newtown Creek. Ferrara Bros. here in Maspeth, NYCON at Dutch Kills in LIC, and Tec-Crete Transit mix over in Ridgewood. There’s others, of course, but that’s the three who more or less touch the shoreline of the lugubrious Newtown Creek.
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, January 18th. 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 