prostrated citizen
It’s National Lobster Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of late, one has been observing a growing trend wherein those who write about NYC pine for some mythological golden age they believe to have occurred hereabouts in the 1970’s and 80’s. They will wax on with great eloquence about Tompkins Square Park, the East Village “scene” which spawned bands they like, and an era in which rent was only $500 a month for a supposed palace in some pre war Manhattan building. Older generations do this as well, especially here in Astoria – “y’know, this apartment used to rent for $20,” back in the good old days.
The fact that income levels were lower back then and that $500 was as difficult a number to arrive at – proportionately speaking – as $2,000 is today… Back when Patti Smith and the Talking Heads and even the Ramones were enjoying the height of their fame and they were buying property – pizza was fifty cents a slice, folks, and the minimum wage was $3.35. Those minimum wage jobs were held by teenagers, not adults, it should be mentioned as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Quoting another band of an era (Fear) which younger generations seem to believe was the epitome of NYC’s culture – there were “piles of blood, scabs, and hair everywhere.” It was fairly routine to see bodies lying in the street – I can tell you about the guy with the smashed skull on the corner of 22nd and Third nearby the NYPD Police Academy, or the “bloodsicle” guy frozen into a phone booth on 99th and Broadway, or the dozens of people who found out just how organized crime was back then that were fished out of Sheepshead Bay by the cops. A big business in residential neighborhoods was the installation of wrought iron bars over first and second floor windows, and most of the autos you saw parked on the street had signs taped up in them proclaiming that there was “no radio” in the car. Beat downs and “getting jumped” were a facet of life in the 1980’s – in particular – and at the edges of my neighborhood in Brooklyn you’d see people with bandaged up “crack smiles.” For you youngins – a crack smile (aka “bustin ’em a fiddy,” slang for inflicting a fifty stitch facial wound) was gang retribution for informing to the cops about drug dealers taking over your block.
The pop culture references you can google or watch clips of on YouTube from back then would include the movies “Taxi Driver” and “Death Wish.” The NYPD was purely reactionary in those days, and Williamsburg was just as dangerous a place to visit as the South Bronx. I know, as I used to have a job in Williamsburg during college, working at a garment factory across the street from Domino sugar and just down the block from a facility called Radiac where nuclear, radiological, and chemical waste products were transferred and stored. In communities at the lower side of the economic spectrum it was common for parents to have their kids sleep on the floor for fear of stray bullets, and property was so worthless that it was cheaper for a landlord to hire an arsonist to torch buildings for the insurance money than it was for them to continue operations.
New Yorkers of my generation don’t carry money in our wallets. We keep our cash in discretely pocketed bundles, a large amount and a smaller one. The latter is called “mugger money,” which you’d be ready to toss at an assailant(s) before turning and running away at “maximum boogie.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This era which spawned hip hop, and saw punk rock become culturally relevant… what do you think we were all so angry about back then that we were driven to gather in Bowery Bum shit holes like CBGB? When you arrived here from Derrien, or whatever semi suburban City you’re from to pursue your dream of “life in NYC,” was it before or after 2001? Are you disappointed with what you found? Was it less “real,” or not as “vibrant” as Hollywood told you it would be? Did Spike Lee sell you a bill of goods about what Brooklyn would be like? Do you understand that the “Gentry” who have gentrified the City are yourselves?
Also, when you look in the bathroom mirror in the mornings, is it just you looking back or is it “humanity”?
Upcoming Tours and events
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
intense interest
It’s National Ice Cream Cone Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few odds and ends, in today’s post at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
There’s nothing that somebody who works for the City hates more than being photographed while pursuing their occupation, and none moreso than the NYPD. Saying that, if you’re doing a traffic stop right in front of me while I’m hanging out with my pals at the neighborhood saloon… what’s a humble narrator to do? Constitutionally speaking y’all have less of a right to privacy in the public sphere than the rest of us do because you’re wearing that blue suit and sporting the badge, and the inherent lack of privacy that all of us suffer when out in public is the constitutionally justified reason y’all can get away with hanging surveillance cameras and speed trap gizmos on lamp posts.
Big brother? Little Brother? All part of one big happy, and quite paranoid, family.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Same corner in Astoria, different day, and a DSNY garbage truck was experiencing mechanical problems. You don’t see tow trucks of the type pictured above too often… well… I do, but most don’t. I didn’t stick around too long to watch them towing the truck back to 58th street and the garage found at the angle between Woodside and Maspeth.
I had somewhere to be, people to see, politicians and officials to annoy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Down in Hunters Point one night, as I was passing by the LIRR yard, I noticed this cool bit of kit. My surmise, based on the sort of tools that the gizmo sported in its front end, was that this was a track maintenance mechanism. It had what looked like two claws that stuck out of the front which were positioned pretty close to where the steel tracks are found.
Upcoming Tours and events
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura – Saturday, September 23rd, 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Join us on the wrong side of the tracks for an exploration of the hidden industrial heartlands of Brooklyn and Queens, with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
shrewd questioning
It’s National Pecan Cookie Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For the last few days, a humble narrator has carried you around Calvary Cemetery in the Blissville section. As mentioned, I always have at least one ulterior motive or backup plan involving anything I do. My purpose in coming here was to walk out the route which I was going to guide a group around the place via during a walking tour, refamiliarizing myself with sight lines and “rehearsing” as it were. Along the way, however, there was so much to see that the camera was clicking and whirring away as I walked through the ancient polyandrion.
My ulterior motive today was to document the current phase of the demolition of the old Koscisuzcko Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long time readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – will tell you that this bridge replacement project has been explored before.
Documenting this project has been a long standing project of mine – this 2012 post tells you everything you could want to know about Robert Moses, Fiorella LaGuardia, and the origins of the 1939 model Kosciuszko Bridge. Just before construction started, I swept through both the Brooklyn and Queens sides of Newtown Creek in the area I call “DUKBO” – Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp. Here’s a 2014 post, and another, showing what things used to look like on the Brooklyn side, and one dating back to 2010, and from 2012 discussing the Queens side – this. Construction started, and this 2014 post offers a look at things. There’s shots from the water of Newtown Creek, in this June 2015 post, and in this September 2015 post, which shows the bridge support towers rising. Additionally, this post from March of 2016 detailed the action on the Queens side. Most recently, here’s one from May of 2016, and one from June of the same year. Here’s one from August of 2016, the December 2016 one, one from March of 2017 which discusses the demolition of the 1939 bridge.
Here’s a post showing what I saw during a pre opening walk through in early April of 2017, and the fanfare surrounding the opening of half of the new bridge in April of 2017, a walk through of the Brooklyn side job site in June of 2017. Here’s some night shots from early July of 2017. Finally – Here’s a series of posts focusing in on the removal of the central truss of the 1939 bridge from the summer of 2017 – a timelapse, some stills, and the barging out of the truss.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The “explosive” or “energetic demolition” of the remainders of the old bridge was originally meant to happen this Sunday the 24th of September, but for a variety of reasons – including the high winds and weather induced by Hurricane Jose out in the Atlantic Ocean – the NYS DOT engineers decided to reschedule the event for a later date.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the meantime, Breeze Demolition is wrenching and prying anything off of the structure that they can.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The idea, essentially, is to lessen the amount of material which will hit the ground during the so called energetic demolition. This reduces the chances of “flyaway” debris and seismic shock, and will quicken the reopening of area streets in Greenpoint and Maspeth afterwards. From what I’ve been told by the DOT, once the charges go off, the entire mass of the old bridge will drop in its own footprint. The point of removing what they can by conventional means involves reducing the seismic “hit” of having more than a mile of steel and concrete falling all at once.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All over the old roadway, giant mechanical “insects” are chewing and chipping away at the old bridge. As the bits are removed – and these bits can weigh multiple tons, as a note – they are sent off to be recycled.
As has always been the case with this bridge project, the NYS DOT is being strangely cryptic about the recycling operation, and unwilling to discuss it in any sort of detail. Why they act like this thing is a state secret…
Honestly… do you think ANYTHING happening along Newtown Creek can be kept a secret from ME?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
…Pfft…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So… the following Saturday after the Calvary Walking Tour, I was doing a private tour for group of students from NYU while wearing my Newtown Creek Alliance hat. As it happens, I was able to arrange for our party to visit the Sims Metal Management LIC Dock so that they could understand the recycling process in a tangible manner.
Sims Metal Management is big on education – it’s a baked in part of the mission at their Sunset Park facility for instance – but the LIC location is a fairly dangerous industrial site with giant machines whizzing about and hundreds of tons of various recyclable materials stacked up. These guys and gals who work here toss around crushed cars in as seemingly casual a fashion as you would throw a napkin into the trash – and the only reason that can do this routinely and without killing each other is care, practice, and long experience.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The site manager met us at the gates of Sims, which is at the end of a long and quite dusty road found alongside a railyard in Blissville, and after a brief lecture about safety and the signing away of liability was completed, the site manager got on his radio and told his crew to shut everything down and take a coffee break. My NYU group and I followed him out onto the deck, and he took over the narrator duties. The kids from NYU were “gob smacked” having never suspected that anything like this place existed, let alone existent .8 of a mile from the East River in LIC.
While the site manager, named Lachman Hanoman, spoke to the group about what Sims does and how they do it – I waved the camera around a bit (even I don’t get in here very often), and guess what I spied with my little eyes?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Kosciuszcko, Kosciuszcko, men have named you…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bridge found alongside a graveyard, which is no longer a bridge, being pulled apart in expectation of its final demolition. Pieces of that bridge, observed along the fabulous Newtown Creek, at a graveyard for steel. That’s the executive summary of today’s post. Also – I know all, I see all.
Tomorrow – something completely different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
Upcoming Tours and events
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura – Saturday, September 23rd, 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Join us on the wrong side of the tracks for an exploration of the hidden industrial heartlands of Brooklyn and Queens, with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
moulder through
It’s National Pepperoni Pizza Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Positively cinematic, First Calvary Cemetery in the Blissville of Queens is. The Roman Catholic Church acquired Laurel Hill, found along the troublesome Newtown Creek, from the Alsop family back in 1848. The Alsops had held the land since 1648, when a fellow named Thomas Wandell acquired it from the Dutch colonial authorities. Wandell, an associate of Oliver Cromwell’s who had fallen out of favor with the Lord Protector, died in 1691 and the land passed to his nephew Richard Alsop (who died in 1718). The last Alsop who actually worked the land died in 1837, and it was a distaff member of the family who was a member of Manhattan’s “Knickerbocracy” that sold it to the church.
The Church sent armies of laborers to Blissville, who altered Laurel Hill into its current shape, installed a drainage system, and by 1860 or so there were as many as fifty interments a day taking place here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are a few simply gorgeous structures in First Calvary Cemetery (ultimately, there are four Calvary Cemeteries in Queens, with the other three found over in Woodside) such as the Almirall Chapel.
Archbishop Farley had returned from a visit to Rome in 1908 with the intention of creating a new funerary chapel at Calvary which would also host an ossuary for the nuns, monks, and priests of his diocese. Architect Raymond Almirall designed the structure pictured above, which is one of the earliest poured concrete buildings in New York City. The dome of the chapel is forty feet across and eight eight feet high. Atop it is a statue of “Christ the redeemer” designed by a female sculptor (her sex is mentioned as it is quite significant that a female was chosen for this commission during the particular time period) named Merro Beatrice Wilson. The Almirall Chapel sits atop a shaft which leads down a hundred feet to a partially completed cruciform vault where the bones of Farley’s priests and nuns lie.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The real show stopper at Calvary Cemetery is the Johnston Memorial. Erected in 1873, at a cost of $200,000 (that would translate to about $4 million in modern terms) the Johnston Memorial, like the Almirall Chapel, forms a centerpiece of the section it’s found in. There were three Johnston brothers, who operated a very successful milliners business on Manhattan’s “Lady’s mile,” specifically on Fifth Avenue and 22nd street. Brother Charles died in 1864, and brother John left the world in 1887. The remaining Johnston brother, Robert, went mad with grief and fell into poverty. He died in a barn on the grounds of a an upstate nunnery, during a thunderstorm, in 1888.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Johnston memorial is well appointed with some exquisite carvings, and luckily the brothers sprang for granite rather than marble. The marble monuments all over Calvary Cemetery have the appearance of melting ice cream, due to the former presence of an acid factory in nearby Maspeth. A marble frieze over the entrance to the mausoleum, however, displays the characteristic damage from exposure to Newtown Creek’s corrosive atmospherics which one can see all over the cemetery’s acreage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Calvary sits upon, and in, Laurel Hill. A natural prominence left behind by the glaciation process, Laurel is one of the foothills which lead through Maspeth towards the beginning of the terminal morraine of Long Island, which truly begins at another Roman Catholic cemetery called Mount Olivette. This “Y” shaped ridge of actual bedrock is what the elluvial shoals of the landform of Long Island are supported by, and they continue all the way to eastern shore with the the two branches of the Y terminating at Montauk and the Hamptons.
The view from Calvary is astounding, and I always remark that “you can see the whole soup bowl” of NYC’s inner harbor from up here. You used to be able to see a lot more, but… y’know… luxury towers and the real estate guys.
As a note, burial in First Calvary is quite desirable for Roman Catholics. Accordingly, the price of a grave hereabouts is astronomical, making this – from a square footage vs pricing ratio POV – the most valuable real estate in all of Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Adorning the dome of the Johnston Mausoleum, in addition to the statue of Jesus at its top, are granite renderings of four angels who gaze out at the sky from the cardinal points of a compass.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To the east, the industrial zone of West Maspeth is hard to miss. The Brooklyn Queens Expressway and the Koscisuzcko Bridge are just out of frame in the shot above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned above, Calvary Cemetery is positively cinematic. It’s where Bruce Wayne’s parents, and Spider Man’s Uncle Ben, were buried in the movies. It’s also where Vito Corleone was interred in the Godfather movie. The place is seen regularly in television and movies as a set piece when you need a New York City backdrop for a funeral.
You never know what you’re going to find at Calvary Cemetery in the Blissville section of Queens, along the fabulous Newtown Creek, I always say. Bring a camera, and wander around the place without a plan, see what Calvary wants you to see. It’ll still be there the next time you come back, this history book etched in stone.
Upcoming Tours and events
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura – Saturday, September 23rd, 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Join us on the wrong side of the tracks for an exploration of the hidden industrial heartlands of Brooklyn and Queens, with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
accursed sorceror
It’s National Butterscotch Pudding Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My route on the Calvary Cemetery walk I conducted a couple of weeks ago enters the Cemetery on the Review Avenue side, by the old Penny Bridge. As mentioned in yesterday’s post, my habit is to walk out the route of a walking tour a couple of days prior to committing it, so one headed over to First Calvary in the name of doing just that.
I had badly misjudged my clothing choices, in terms of dressing for the weather when leaving the house, as it had gotten quite warm and humid as I was walking from Astoria to Blissville and one was clothed for fall rather than summer. Not wanting to walk down the sun choked sidewalk on Review Avenue in such uncomfortable clime, I instead entered the polyandrion via the Greenpoint Avenue gates and cut across the property in the direction of the Penny Bridge entrance – hoping that the cover of the tree canopies would provide some surcease from the radiations of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself. This sojourn provided me with few trees unfortunately. An interval in a distaff section of the place that I seldom visit occurred instead. As always, the needs of the camera outweigh the needs of the man, so I toughed it out and suffered through the heat. As an aside, my headphones were in my ears, and I was participating in a group call with the environmental community of Newtown Creek and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency regarding the ongoing superfund process. For those of you reading this who were on the call, this is what I was doing while we were talking.
The shot above looks out at the intersection of Greenpoint Avenue/Review Avenue/Vandam Street at the off ramp of the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, shot from the heights of Calvary’s walls, for the vulgarly curious.
I always have an ulterior motive, it seems, or at the very least – I’m a champion level multitasker.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My ulterior motive this particular day involved gathering a few last shots of the 1939 Koscisuzcko Bridge, whose final destruction is imminent. Any day now, it’s going to be “energetically demolished” with explosive charges. I’m not spilling any beans when I say it was meant to be this Sunday – the 24th (the commander of the 94th precinct in Greenpoint took care of that one), but that date has now been moved back once again. It’s not for me to say when the date is, but it won’t be long now, I may or may not have been told.
The path carried me along the high masonry wall of First Calvary, and along the southern border of the place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along said path, I encountered this tree. Like all the trees which throw their roots down into the loam at Calvary, I can assure you that it’s fed by a morbid nutrition. The rather thorough cocooning of its branches and leaves though, filled me with an existential dread of the sort only condemned men would know.
I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There seemed to be some of sort of insect civilization at work within the webbing. If the old adage that “you are what you eat” holds true, the reality of this hidden hive lurking in a tree rooted in the nitre choked soil of Calvary Cemetery – found in a place called Blissville along the fabulous Newtown Creek – one would not like to inquire too deeply into the life cycles of these organisms.
Conversely, I want to know EVERYTHING about the little buggers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One took a wide berth around this tree, lest its inhabitants center their interest upon a humble narrator.
You can’t be too careful, I always say, around the tomb legions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My path continued along the high masonry wall of First Calvary, towards the Penny Bridge gates and the Alsop Cemetery, which was ancient when the Dutch lost regency of this land to the British. By this point, my error in judgement regarding garment choices and weather were dragging my energy down, it should mention. As my grandmother would have said – I was all f’shvitzed. Fatigue related to heat began to set in, and only one expression of resigned horror was able to escape my lips.
Upcoming Tours and events
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura – Saturday, September 23rd, 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Join us on the wrong side of the tracks for an exploration of the hidden industrial heartlands of Brooklyn and Queens, with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
Exploring Long Island City, from Luxury Waterfront to Abandoned Factories Walking Tour,
with NY Adventure Club – Saturday, October 7th, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Long Island City is a tale of two cities; one filled with glittering water-front skyscrapers and manicured parks, and the other, a highly active ground transportation & distribution zone vital to the New York economy — which will prevail? With Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 