and dauntless
Things I’ve been lucky enough to see, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That Working Harbor Committee Students tour I mentioned the other day? One of the cool things I got to see while onboard was the FDNY’s Fireboat Three Forty Three doing some kind of exercise. There seemed to be a heck of a security presence, more so than usual, in Lower Manhattan and on the water last week.
They were probably performing security sweeps in preparation for Fleet Week, I imagine.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The thrilling moment when your train arrives, which signals that the moment when the ordeal of standing on the platform is over, and that the ordeal of riding the train is about to begin. For some reason, the Lexington Avenue tunnels seem to be lit theatrically, which always lends the appearance of the 4 or 5 into 59th Street a certain dramatic flair.
Hey, @MTA – maybe that’s the answer to all your problems – theatrical lighting!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not sure if the shot above has been presented before, but when you’re talking about lighting, Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights does not disappoint.
Sorry for the short post today, but I’ve got to go get my notes ready for tonight’s Working Harbor “Brooklyn Waterfront: Past and Present” boat tour.
Upcoming Events and Tours
TONIGHT – Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
Saturday, June 4, 11:00 a.m. -1:30 p.m. –
DUPBO: Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
be ready
Green Acres, that’s the place for me?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I grew up in a place called Brooklyn. I lived there nearly half my life, followed by a decade in Manhattan, and the most recent portion has been in Queens. Occasionally, I’ve visited… Staten Island… and the Bronx. The only time I’ve ever spent outside the City were a) day trips to various Aunts and Uncles who lived in New Jersey, Maryland, or Long Island when I was a kid, b) business trips around the Eastern Seaboard back when I was drawing comics, c) or on vacations with Our Lady of the Pentacle. When the news of the day reaches me, my first question always revolves around “how does this affect me?” This selfish interpretation of events makes me an archetypal New Yorker.
All told, I’ve probably spent all but an aggregate of maybe 3-4 months of my entire existence (nearly five decades now) outside of the Megalopolis. I always say that if I moved away, it would be ceding victory to the City that it had finally beaten the tar out of me.
I guess that makes me a “City Boy.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, I’ve considered it a privilege to live my life at the very navel – the omphalos, if you will – of the American Civilization, but when I mention the fact that my experience in life is fairly well limited to the Megalopolis – a lot of people I mention this to get a sad or pitiful look in their eyes. My environmentalist buddies, in particular, will offer to take me camping or something with them so I can experience the wonders of untamed nature.
Blecchhh.
I went camping once, just once. I ended up sleeping in the car as it had doors which locked, it was dry, and there were cushioned seats. A day trip to the woods sounds like fun, but with a sunburn and mosquito bites, and the “Brooklyn” wiseass in me offers that I have an apartment with a bed in it. Like I said – City Boy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve often reminded people that the ocean is a giant stomach desperate to digest you, that woodlands are full of ticks and bears and other critters which are specifically designed to overpower and consume you, that there’s a reason our ancestors paved over everything, and that the entire history of mankind – up until the 1970’s – was about not just taming nature but utterly subjugating it. Look at the shot above for confirmation of this fact, which is the epitome of what was once called “Progress.”
Now, I’m not saying that my antipathy towards clouds of biting insects and giant Pleistocene era predators is normal, nor necessarily desirable, nor something you should make a part of yourself. If you enjoy this sort of activity – Mazel Tov. I like hanging out in Astoria and nursing a pint at my local. What I’m trying to get to is this:
The littoral environment hereabouts is somehow recovering from the centuries long hammer blows of open sewage, ocean dumping of garbage, and industrial effluent which it was been hit with. The continued existence of our own species is directly tied to this recovery, IMHO, which is why this City Boy has found himself constantly talking about environmental issues. If we can’t control and promote environmental health in the built environment of NYC, where a switch or lever can be thrown to control nearly everything you can think of – where else can you figure out how to fix the future?
NYC has always led the Nation, it’s the bow of the American ship. We need to find out, together, how to be a mega city for plants and animals and humans and commerce and be the global example on the subject of clean water in an urban environment. The City boy has spoken.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
Saturday, June 4, 11:00 a.m. -1:30 p.m. –
DUPBO: Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
distance south
Some tugboat action, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Working Harbor Committee, which I’m both a Steering Committee member and the Official Photographer of, is all about education. Our motto and mission is to “educate the public about the Harbor of New York and New Jersey” after all. To this end, there’s a bunch of public tours – I’ll likely be conducting the Newtown Creek boat tour in the fall, and on Thursday of this week will be part of a trio of narrators on the “Brooklyn Waterfront: Past and Present” excursion. Last week, our education director, Meg Black, invited me along for one of the student tours which WHC produces.
There’s a gaggle of high school kids and their teachers onboard for these student tours, and the speakers WHC brought onboard were “Harbor Heavyweights” from the NYC EDC, Martime Association, Port Authority, and the like.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The goal behind these student excursions is to provide a concrete experience that backs up the kids’s classroom work, and to encourage them to consider a career in the maritime world. For a lot of inner city kids, they aren’t even aware that the Harbor is out there waiting to hire them. There’s hundreds of individual career paths that you can choose from in the maritime world – everything from Homeland Security to working on ships. The great news about these waterfront jobs is that wherever there’s a Port, which is just about everywhere that you’d want to go, you’ve got a skill set which is highly transportable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular tour left from Pier 11 in Manhattan about a NY Waterways Ferry. We headed over to the busy Kill Van Kull waterway separating Staten Island’s North Shore from Bayonne’s Chemical Coast and then visited Port Elizabeth Newark and the Global Marine Terminal in Newark Bay, after passing under the Bayonne Bridge. There was a parade of working vessels, some of which are pictured in today’s post.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
Saturday, June 4, 11:00 a.m. -1:30 p.m. –
DUPBO: Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
along with
I like a good door, me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One could bore you endlessly with the metaphorical and philosophical significance of doors. They keep you in, or keep you out, in their simplest function. A lot of the doors in today’s post are simply gone, such as the one pictured above which used to found in Queens Plaza along Jackson Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hunterspoint Steel literally left their building in Queens well more than a decade ago, but their portal and signage nevertheless remained. Found just east of the Dutch Kills Tributary of Newtown Creek and Hunters Point Avenue Bridge, the old factory building has become home to a plumbing supply company in recent years – but their sign typography is nowhere near as cool as Hunterspoint Steel’s was. They also replaced the old yellow door with some modern piece of “store bought.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Brooklyn, at the Greenpoint Terminal Market, this second story number once connected with another building. That building burned away in the largest fire since 911, which – luckily enough – made lots of room available for the development of luxury condos on its lot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In lower Manhattan’s Alphabet City, there’s a church which celebrates the Hispanic Mozarabic Rite of the Western Orthodox Catholic tradition. No, really. I did a whole post on this church back in August of 2012.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on… Staten Island… there’s a bar on Richmond Terrace where you’ll find the front door always open, and within there’s a phone booth. If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s where Madonna called Danny Aiello from in the “Papa don’t preach” music video back in the 1980’s.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Queens, over in Ridgewood, there’s a pretty ancient set of doors you can walk through at the Onderdonk House. If you’re tall, you might want to duck down a bit while walking through, as our colonial ancestors didn’t necessarily possess the same stature which we assign to them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Queens’s Woodside, along Broadway, there’s a church which is fairly well vouchsafed against Vampires. Of course, Woodside doesn’t have too much of an infestation – nosferatu wise. For a good chance of encountering Vampires, you’d want to go to Red Hook (under the Gowanus Expressway is a good bet). As a note, Vampires avoid this particular corner anyway, as there’s a Sikh temple on the opposite corner.
You don’t screw around with the Sikhs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There aren’t that many burial grounds in Lower Manhattan, but you can bet that when you do find one it will be vouchsafed by stout iron doors. Whether it’s to keep the Wall Street types from robbing the graves, or to keep the dead from exacting vengeance upon the living – who cares, it’s Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hidden doors are my favorites, of course. In Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery, there’s hundreds of hidden doors designed to both protect and control the tomb legions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My favorite doors are actually the elaborate bronze portal covers you’ll find adorning the Mausolea at one of the four Calvary Cemeteries here in Western Queens. Just look at that example above. Woof.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
accident or evil
Things I’ve seen, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One decided to take a walk through Hallets Point, or Astoria Point as the Real Estate Industrial Complex has christened it, recently. The fires of gentrification have been stoked on the forbidden northern coast of Queens, as you may have heard. My purpose behind this walk revolved around path finding the probable right of way for the proposed BQX street car system, which I find an interesting intellectual challenge – an Einsteinian “thought experiment” if you will.
As a note, I have nothing to do with the project – instead I’m just curious about how they’re going to “thread the needle” through parks and housing projects to make this particular dream of NYC’s oligarchs come true.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Upon arriving back in my neighborhood on the southern border of Astoria, one encountered another member of the growing population of “not homeless” types who enjoy an afternoon tipple and then a short nap on the public way. Nostradamus like, your humble narrator is, and my predictions that the toleration of a population of drunken bums by the 114th precinct along Broadway would begin to draw in others is playing out. At least one bank has had to hire a night time security guard to vouchsafe its ATM laden lobby against them, and the steps of the Broadway/Steinway library have become an open air camp site. I look forward to seeing these folks riding and urinating on the BQX.
This fellow is a regular, and commonly observed sleeping and or manipulating some body part found deep in his the pantaloons. This shot was captured on the corner of Steinway Street and Broadway, which can hardly be considered an out of the way location.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Me? I’ve been a bit too busy to care about the “bum” situation in Astoria for the last few weeks. Boat excursions, walking tours, a never ending series of meetings – all have been consuming my time.
Speaking of, I’ll be speaking early tomorrow at the Greater Astoria Historic Society for “Queens Waterfront” symposium they’re conducting with the Waterfront Alliance. This will be an all day affair, but I’ll only be there in the morning as I’ve got to conduct a tour of the Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek in the afternoon.
Come with? Ticketing link below.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, May 21st at 3:30 p.m. –
A Return to The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek,
with Atlas Obscura, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 