uncanny subjects
Ain’t nothing like taking a walk in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was merely strolling about one recent afternoon, when a sudden whimsy manifested and my perambulatory route was altered to include a southerly crossing of Crescent Street. Musing upon the loquacious, and having just dodged the dizzying passing of two tiny boys who were running down the pavement towards the next corner, the looming megalith and that thing which cannot exist in its cupola suddenly seized upon my every attention.
That devilish intelligence, with its singular but three lobed burning eye that has stared down upon Queens in unoccluded fashion for so long, has had its view suddenly blotted out by the irritating industry of man and a red hot real estate market.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of what’s rising in LIC these days are glass boxes of questionable architectural virtue, and quite bland to my tastes. I want something a bit more “Gotham City” in LIC, with robust stone walls and an impressive facade. What do I know about architecture, though? I know’s what’s I like’s.
That’s the (seemingly) nearly complete Hephaistos Building Supply building which is found on the corner of Crescent street and 37th avenue. Normally, buildings in LIC shoot upwards and are finished in pretty quick order, but this project has been going on for years. I’ve been paying attention to the construction project for some reason, and now I know why.
There seems to be a Greek temple at the cornice of it, and how cool is that?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I say that this project has been proceeding slowly, just as a “for instance,” the shot above is from May of 2014. Somewhere in the archives I’ve got shots of the raw steel girders standing here for what must have been a couple of years.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hephaistos Building Supply has a storefront down the block on 37th avenue’s intersection with 24th street. Can’t tell you much about the company other than it seems to be an Astoria based supplier of construction materials, specifically selling their wares to the professional contractor’s market.
That, and they built what looks like a Greek temple on their roof. If anyone from Hephaistos Building Supply is reading this, I’d love to get some shots from up there on that roof of yours.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Interestingly, Hephaistos Building Supply uses the original transliteration of the name of the Hellenic God of “blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes,” although it’s meant to get a little tilde over the “e” – Ἥφαιστος Hēphaistos.” There’s apparently evidence that Hēphaistos was worshipped in very early times, dating back to the Bronze Age (and possibly the oldest city in Europe) city of Knossos on the island of Crete. Classical Age worship of the God Hēphaistos was centered around Lemnos, but the Romans (who called the God “Vulcan”) were convinced he maintained a workshop under Mount Aetna.
Hēphaistos was an Olympian. This page at theoi.com has an interesting series of anecdotes from ancient literature describing the worship and veneration of the God of smiths in antiquity. As far as modern veneration here at the very southern edge of Astoria, Queens, where it bumps up against the northern borders of the Dutch Kills section?
Who can say? I haven’t been invited to that party as of yet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My path down Crescent Street proving fruitful, one continued in the general direction of Queens Plaza. The light was lovely, and the visible sections of the flood plain of the former wetlands of Sunwick Creek, where the Big Allis power plant squamously spreads, were beautifully illuminated.
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
never cease
Out on the water with the Working Harbor Committee, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent Working Harbor Committee excursion was billed as presenting “Brooklyn waterfront, past and present” and I was on the microphone for a good stretch of the trip. I was sharing the narration duty with my pal, Capt. Margaret Flanagan of the Waterfont Alliance organization, who I told point blank before the trip started that once the boat got past Red Hook “I got nothing.” Not a problem for Capt. Flanagan at all, as her able narration and vast knowledge of all things NY Harbor allowed me to slip away from the proverbial pulpit and shoot a few photos.
One bad thing about being one of the tour leaders for these excursions is that it has really cut into the amount of time I have to shoot, and since I’m Working Harbor’s official photographer – this has created a shortage of photos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A full harvest moon rose while we were out, and the shot above was captured while our vessel – a NY Waterways ferry – was plying the rippling surface of Gowanus Bay in South Brooklyn. As is often opined, the best times of year in NYC for photography are in the late spring and early fall, when the angle of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself in relation to the City is quite efficacious. Obviously, these shots were captured at sunset and dusk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has a tremendous desire to just get out on a boat and shoot for hours and hours during these intervals, and record the glorious parade of maritime industrial splendor out on the sixth borough. I took the East River Ferry to Manhattan’s Pier 11 from LIC to meet the Working Harbor chartered vessel in the City, but since the ER Ferry service concludes its schedule in the early evening, one was forced to enter the sweating concrete bunkers of the Subway system to get back to almond eyed Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At 59th street, one encountered this fellow, who seemed intent on blowing his own horn.
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
tangible miasma
The native art form of Queens, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long has one postulated that the native art form of Queens is illegal dumping. It is accomplished with a compositional flair and attention to detail that Brooklyn and the Bronx can only dream of. When you spend as much time as I do around the Newtown Creek and the concrete devastations surrounding it, this becomes obvious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was heading over to Greenpoint recently, to accomplish some sort of folderol, when the tableau above was observed in LIC’s Blissville section. This was on Greenpoint Avenue, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The dumped mattresses exhibited the tell tale signs of a bedbug infestation, so I was using my telephoto zoom lens to capture shots of it – not wanting to get closer to the things than I needed to.
Bedbugs… brrr…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m not sure if bedbugs can leap, or jump, or propel themselves through the atmospheric void in some unknown manner which would indicate that they can fly like Superman, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
Bedbugs, or “vantzen” as my grandmother would have called them, are grotesque human predators. Vampire insects. The stains on the mattress covers are actually produced by their fecal matter and are literally digested human blood.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Grossed out, I propelled myself across the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge which spans the lugubrious Newtown Creek. Whatever ails you, parasite wise, will likely be cured by the therapeutic poisons of the Newtown Creek. If Newtown Creek doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger… that’s what I tell myself all the time.
Newtown Creek, is there anything you can’t do?
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
secrets never
Wandering, always wandering.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One fine and recent day, my steps carried me all over Western Queens. Well, not ALL over. I wasn’t in Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, or the forbidden Northern Shore in Astoria. I was in LIC and Sunnyside, however. There was quite a hullabaloo over on 43rd Avenue, and a massive FDNY deployment which was responding to an apartment fire in one of the multi unit building you’ll observe in the section in the 40’s.
I can’t help it, when I see FDNY going to work, I run down the street like a 5 year old yelling “Firemen, Firemen” at the top of my lungs.Imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of these Firefighters was actually a Firelady.
I have to get with the times and stop using gender specific pronouns lest I be sent for corrective therapy at a reeducation campus by the (self described) militias of progressive social justice warriors who lurk online and monitor the Internet for language violations and who police microagressive offenses.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Borden Avenue corridor of LIC in the shot above, which is currently the focal point of the speculative Real Estate shit flies. Everywhere I go, people tell me that the interested shit flies want to convert this M1 heavy manufacturing zone over to commercial zoning, which would allow for the creation of office buildings in the corridor between the Pulaski Bridge and Greenpoint Avenue.
I have to say, this actually isn’t a terrible idea. What LIC needs right now is not more apartment and residential stock, rather it needs places for people to work and a commercial corridor which would certainly have a lower environmental impact on Newtown Creek and its tributary Dutch Kills which is local to this area. The former is to the left (or south) side of the shot, just past Fresh Direct and the other warehouse businesses, and the latter is behind the POV of the shot above.
My only request for this conversion would be that the shit flies encourage the MTA to reactivate the Long Island Railroad station found on the other side of the Pualski Bridge for passenger service, which would not make the commercial tenants of the corridor dependent on the Vernon Jackson stop of the 7 train – which is around a half mile away and already quite crowded due to the residential buildout of the East River waterfront and the area surrounding Court Square and Queens Plaza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing I have repeatedly noticed in recent months is the startling number of people you find in industrial LIC these days. When this, your Newtown Pentacle, was started up back in 2009 LIC was a ghost town on the weekends. The sense of devastating loneliness and isolation from the surrounding city is what drew me here in the first place, and it’s bizarre to see people wandering around in my happy hunting grounds.
Who are all these people in my safe space?
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
obvious that
More on the proposed Maspeth Homeless Shelter.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In yesterday’s post, the northern side of the area surrounding the proposed Homeless Shelter in Maspeth was descirbed in somewhat excruciating detail. The proposal put forward from the Mayor’s office calls for converting a Holiday Inn hotel on 55th Road to provide housing for one of NYC’s most vulnerable groups of people, and the location of it seems to be an entirely random choice of venue which City Hall arrived at by throwing a dart at a map of districts which didn’t support the Mayor in the last election cycle. The decision has already caused one long serving local politician to lose her job in an elective primary to an upstart and relative unknown who strongly objects to the placement of this facility, something which I’m sure the political establishment hereabouts will hold against the “Dope from Park Slope” when he attempts to get reelected.
That’s the hotel in the shot above, the tan and coral structure just to the south of the Long Island Expressway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Other than being a bland architectural travesty, the hotel itself is inoffensive. As a note, there is another nearby hotel found to the north on Maurice Avenue across the street from Mt. Zion cemetery – a Comfort Inn branded establishment which, like the Holiday Inn pictured above, exploits the European tourist market and offers lodging at a rate significantly lower than the ones offered at hotels closer to the City center. The shot above is from 55th Road, by the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While I was gathering these shots, the fellow above emerged from the hotel. He first informed me that I couldn’t take photos of the structure without a permit, then kind of invaded my personal space while telling me he didn’t want his photo published in a newspaper. This is a web site, incidentally, so I would offer to the gentleman pictured above that he needs to be more specific when stating his prohibitions. I reminded him that I was on the sidewalk of an adjoining property, of course, and that he had no right to attempt to circumnavigate the constitution of these United States on the subject of photography of those things which are visible from the sidewalk. He also sundered his right to privacy by confronting me thusly. Were I assigning any sort of editorial “slant” to this photo, he would have a legitimate beef with me, but since I’m not – he doesn’t.
As I always say, if you don’t me to point a camera at you, don’t hassle me when I’m shooting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As stated in yesterday’s post, my objections to the placement of this facility revolve around the actual location of it, which I honestly believe to be a violation of the human rights of a vulnerable population.
The Holiday Inn sits across the street from the Long Island Expressway, which produces a standing wall of high decibel sound. While I was shooting the shot above, I actually called a friend, whom I could not hear even though my headphones were in – and she could barely make out what I was saying despite the fact that I was shouting into the microphone.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This gas station with a convenience store is directly across the street from the hotel, and would presumptively fill the role of a supermarket for purchasing food and other existential necessaries. As is the case with such locations, everything you can purchase within is priced as high as the market will bear, and food items available are typically highly processed food stuffs designed for a long shelf life.
I guess the Mayor thinks that microwave burritos are good enough for these so called “Homeless” he’s planning on exiling to industrial Maspeth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The character of the streets surrounding the hotel can be best described as truck routes. The sidewalks found under the overpasses of the highway have no pedestrian protections like bollards or jersey barriers, and are littered with debris and dead pigeons. There is no lighting, and perpetual shadow exists down in these spaces.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To the west – more highways, cemeteries, and industrial sprawl.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To the south – the roads lead to the industrial zone surrounding the Newtown Creek superfund site.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To the east – McDonalds and a Chinese take out restaurant offers an alternative food source to the microwaved burritos and packaged snack cakes found at the gas station convenience store. Luckily, there’s a financial institution in this little strip mall – a check cashing location, which like all examples of such institutions offers high interest payday loans and charges a usurious amount for cashing a check.
The people proposed for exile to this hotel are going to need somewhere to cash their benefit checks, after all, why not ensure that they get to keep as little of it as possible?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking south – up Maurice Avenue. At the top of the hill, around a half mile away, is the Goodfellas/Clinton Diner on Rust Street, if you need a landmark. The businesses located in the area are mainly warehouse operations, and there’s still a bit of manufacturing going on in the area, but it’s highly unlikely that any of the businesses in this area would hire a down on their luck person for an entry level job.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is 55th drive, looking east, this street is found behind the hotel property lot. Bleak, this is an industrial street which hosts a few Korean family owned kitchen cabinet manufacturers and a couple of warehouse operations. During the week – the fleets of trucks which carry their wares, and palettes of their products, populate roadway and sidewalk alike.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking west along 55th drive, the Koscisuzcko Bridge project is visible, but I don’t think that an opportunity for work will manifest itself for the proposed occupants of the Holiday Inn hotel there either.
What are the people that the City wants to move in here supposed to do to fill their days?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The condition of the sidewalks and streets along 55th drive are fairly crappy. As with all the industrial neighborhood sidewalks you’ll find in Western Queens – illegally dumped junk, debris, and gravel are randomly deposited.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This playground and pocket park is one of the very few public green spaces in Maspeth’s northern section, and will likely become the place where the residents of the Hotel spend their time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, does it make sense?
Is it smart to exile a vulnerable population in an industrial zone found along an elevated highway that carries close to a half million vehicle trips a day and which produces an ear shattering din? Is it ok for these people to be exploited by a check cashing location, and to have to make a choice between eating convenience store food, Chinese take out, or at McDonalds? Or, is it just expedient?
Spotty bus service is a regular complaint for the residents of the surrounding neighborhood, and Maspeth is notoriously a “transit desert.” How will the people housed in this Holiday Inn access medical or social services without a car?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What do you think?
Upcoming tours and events:
“The Untold History of the Newtown Creek (aka Insalubrious Valley)” walking tour
with New York Adventure Club, Saturday, October 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“First Calvary Cemetery” walking tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, Saturday, October 8th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Click here for tickets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 