looming up
Continuing a night time stroll down Jackson Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For generations have the children of Queens cried out in anguish and despair that they were denied their birthright – a chance to live in a small to medium sized but quite expensive apartment in or near Queens Plaza. Luckily, the powers that be over in Manhattan heard the children’s pleas and have answered their prayers. The under construction structure pictured above will be capped off by an “infinity pool,” which should answer another group’s longings – specifically the statistically relevant number of people who have always wanted to swim in a pool high above Queens Plaza. It’s a magical place, after all.
I get nostalgic for the porn shops and hookers, personally. They really dressed the place up, back in the day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The stretch of Jackson Avenue lying betwixt Queens Plaza and 31st street is just horrible. You’ve got security fences and fortress walls on one side of the street, and long featureless construction fences on the other. A dizzying amount of automotive traffic occupies the center, and above there’s the tormenting sound of steel subway wheels grinding against the elevated rails. Jackson Avenue is too dark, and too bright, all at the same time. Everything is a confusion. It’s terrifying crossing the street, as every intersection is rumbling with traffic waiting to spring forth. Also, there’s vampires hiding up there in the steel.
God almighty, how I love places like this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dormitory style living awaits just a few blocks away, where all of that traffic – both automotive and locomotive – is coincidentally heading towards. Queens Plaza is where an automotive choke point turn off of Jackson Avenue carries you towards the onramps of the Queensboro Bridge. It’s also where the Flushing line subway conjoins with the Astoria service, so you’ve got that extra bit of steel rail sound to contemplate. I could not hear anything playing on the headphones jammed in my ears while shooting these photos, which indicates just how loud Queens Plaza actually is.
There’s lots and lots of new construction here, so the kids of Queens can finally live the dream. There’s that.
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physician whispered
Pedestrian unfriendly, I tell you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “angles’ between neighborhoods, which is the term I use for those “neither here nor there” spots you encounter around Queens, are seldom friendly to pedestrian pursuits. The corner of Northern Blvd. and 31st street, where Northern also transmogrifies into its ancestral name of Jackson Avenue, forms the angle between the Dutch Kills and Astoria zones. Y’know what? I’m not going to fall into the trap of describing the exact borders of Astoria, Woodside, Ravenswood, Dutch Kills, or Astoria.
If I did, somebody or group of bodies would excoriate and ridicule, scold or dismiss. One such as myself is too delicate of constitution to chance recrimination.
Fascination with the trails of light offered by automotive traffic continues. Additionally, given how dark and forbidding this section of Jackson Avenue normally is – due to a lack of street lighting at night and those overhead subway tracks during the day – the only time you get to visualize and marvel at the high flying structural steel is at night, due to those vehicle lights strobing about the utilitarian landscape.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured is the corner of Jackson Avenue and 29th street, where the head waters of Newtown Creek’s tributary Dutch Kills were once found, and the waterway lent its name to this section of Long Island City. That was before LIC separated itself from Newtown, and NYC consolidation, or the Queensboro Bridge, or Sunnyside Yards, or the Dual Contracts era of subway construction, or the highways – forever reshaped this fairly ancient part of Queens. There’s still a low point in the pavement where the waterway once collected into a pond, but in the deeps below all you’ll find are electrical cables, sewers, and the cut and cover tunnel which carries the tracks of the IND subways below. The tracks above, for those unfamiliar, carry rolling stock of the Astoria line subway emanating from the Queensboro Bridge towards a terminal stop at Ditmars Blvd.
In the distance is Queens Plaza, which is in the process of being converted over to high density residential usage from its former commercial and industrial zoning of the 20th century.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Realizing that I had missed a shot desired, one reversed course for a block to catch the illuminated passage of one of those Astoria line subways exiting the 31st street corridor and turning onto Jackson Avenue. Formerly, the Taxi Leasing company at the right of the shot enjoyed a gigantic parking lot for its fleet, but that lot has been developed into some new gargantua of a building. Might be rentals, or a hotel – I’m not sure. I met the fire safety director of a different hotel, while shooting this. He was out getting coffee, apparently. Nice guy.
More on Monday, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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chiseled formula
This isn’t a costume, it’s a lifestyle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A too tight hat caused one’s circulatory system to malfunction in the head region during a recent walk down Northern Blvd. By the time Steinway Street was crossed, it felt as if one had drank a bottle of strong whiskey. Traffic was whizzing about, going wherever it is that people go. Having nowhere to go myself, I generally don’t whiz, and one rather prefers a gentle pace. I’ve timed it, my pace, and it’s about two miles an hour – presuming I don’t get distracted by something shiny or some flashing light.
Once, I got stuck in front of a lascivious “we’re open” sign for two hours, drooling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent encounters with the humans have left one numb and depressed.
As a note, this section of Northern Blvd. is at the beginning of a period of profound alteration, in case you’re wondering why I’m paying so much attention to it lately. The “safe streets” crowd in City Hall has decided that pedestrian islands need to be installed, which is already a “done deal” and a project which will be starting up shortly. Additionally, the failure of NYC City Planning to launch a cohesive redevelopment plan for the section of Northern between Queens Plaza and Woodside Avenue they had been working on called “LIC Core,” has brought on a flood of speculative real estate investment along Northern Blvd., or as I call it – The Carridor – which will see the street transformed by new construction in the coming years. A humble narrator is making it a point of creating some sort of record of what “was” here at the start of the 21st century.
Despite the fact that my mind was numbed by the too tight hat, restricted blood flow did not alter me from my intended action. Focus, boy, focus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Even the former LIC FDNY Hook and Ladder 66 firehouse which has been occupied in recent years by the NYPD Emergency Services Unit is up for sale at the moment.
Since the broken toe drama which brought 2019 to a crashing halt is seemingly resolved, one has been on a positive arc in the new year. A return to daily perambulatory and photographic pursuits has been undertaken, and such activity has assumed a level of primacy in my priorities. Muscle tone and endurance has begun to return, and two months of flabby fat accumulation has begun to melt away. I’ve been out and about with the camera constantly, wandering the streets while the rest of you sleep and dream.
If only I can remember not to affix my hat too tightly.
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nightmare pits
Down the Carridor once more.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found one desirous of some exercise with about two hours worth of time to get it. I left HQ and soon found myself scuttling down Northern Blvd. – or, as I call it: The Carridor. An abundance of used car lots, as well as a pernicious amount of automotive traffic, distinguishes the particular stretch of Northern Blvd., a section which one often inhabits. Until the 20th century, this part of the street was also called Jackson Avenue, just like the narrower continuation of it that snakes past the Queensboro Bridge and into LIC to its start at the corner of Vernon Blvd. The Carridor is part of NYS Route 25A, and continues eastwards from Vernon some 73 miles to Suffolk County’s Calverton. John C. Jackson is who the road was named for. The dates I’ve been able to track down for the creation of Northern Blvd., as a widened high speed road, start in 1927 and indicate that construction crews in Queens were busy throughout 1928 and possibly as late as 1929. This is hazy, though, and obscured by time.
Quite obviously, The Carridor is part of the House of Moses, as in Robert Moses.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While scuttling along, this jaunty and quite cool car was encountered over on 42nd street, nearby a mechanic shop and a motorcycle dealership. This block is “one of my spots” where I often check to see if interesting automobiles might be parked along the curb. With all the car dealerships in this section, you’ll often see historic cars or even specialty kit units like the one above.
One had screwed up when leaving the house, due to having made an attempt at maintaining his personal hygiene. I was wearing my lucky “NCA” baseball hat, which had recently been washed. When donning the thing before leaving HQ, I absentmindedly adjusted the fitting on it two notches too tight. Mistake.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
With my too tight hat cutting off blood flow, it soon induced a swooning vertigo in me, and the sort of mental state which normally occurs after a chance encounter with teenagers. Clear memory of the rest of my scuttle eludes, and I was forced to piece it all together after returning to HQ, from the contents of my camera’s memory card.
The horror…
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sealed up
Better late than never?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sorry for the single shot today, but my schedule got the better of me. Back tomorrow with something that won’t leave you hungry an hour later.
Pictured is thirty seconds of recorded light and time on Astoria’s Broadway.
“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.
