shocking moan
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Amongst the shocking grotesques of Brooklyn’s DUKBO, or Down Under the Kosciuzscko Bridge Onramp, one such as myself finds confirmation of all those things I wish I didn’t know. Following my nose, as it were, an odiferous cloud drew me to this particular corner seeking to investigate whether some cauldron of ichor might have been overturned or to discover whatever it might be that could produce such a miasmic stink.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A pile of industrial site runoff ran lugubriously toward the sewers, obeying gravity. The effluent carried with it some odd and somewhat fibrous substance. The smell intensified as I neared the fence line, and the runoff was clearly organic, shimmering beneath the thermonuclear eye of god itself with a greasy iridescence.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Close inspection revealed the presence of avian feathers in the runoff, betraying the origin of the brownish gray liquid. This was clearly chicken feces, running in a rivulet toward the oil stained streets which adjoin and parallel the gargantuan thoroughfare known as the Brooklyn Queens Expressway that is carried by the pendulous Kosciuzscko Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The variegated texture exhibited by the pavement is coincidental, and due to the habits of local concrete contractors who cleanse their machinery on the street, dumping what washes from their trucks wherever it may fall. There are large sections of this neighborhood whose sidewalks and streets exhibit the appearance of volcanic flow, where tons of waste concrete cured while seeking those self same drains which a feather laden stream of poultry feces was attempting to enter on this day.
Choked with cement, the sewers become the center of a fetid lagoon, but such sights are common in DUKBO.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The operation which plies its trade at this corner is a poultry merchant, one which trucks the hapless birds to this warehouse. My understanding is that they are involved in the wholesale section of the business, supplying neighborhood Halal abattoirs, “Pollo Vivo” dealers, and certain Asiatic Restaurants which are scattered around Brooklyn and Queens with fresh stock. Unlike the native born’s habit of purchasing a familiar and largely inoffensive carcass- a plucked, butchered, and often steamed or bleached cadaver- on sale at chain supermarkets and “traditional” Yankee butcher shops- many newer immigrants in the area prefer to inspect their food animals while still alive.
Prosaic, the practice is regarded as barbaric by area wags who prefer to maintain some insulation from the bloody business of supplying industrial quantities of animal protein to an ever growing human infestation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Urban sophisticates tend to overlook these sort of details, forgetting that every “organic” or “factory farm” chicken may not have been a healthy bird before it was roughly extinguished. Recent immigration from the queer foreign courts of Asia and other more southernly latitudes has carried with it a certain skepticism about such matters. Inspection of eye, beak, and feet is paramount in certain circles- especially when it concerns the food laid out for children.
They have no trust in the USDA, it’s curious marks and unintelligible grading system for food quality- all of which were codified by bureaucrats.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, what stretch of the imagination could conjure for them the image of that prize bird stacked in crates ten deep just 3 blocks from the Newtown Creek, imprisoned in those exhaust clouds which bubble and froth invisibly down from the BQE? Could they understand that this is a neighborhood of scrap yards, garbage depots, oil tank farms, and former home to oil refineries, bone boilers, and chemical refineries? Can anyone imagine what these birds are breathing in?
A question often asked of your humble narrator these days concerns the status of those who might engage in subsistence fishing on the Newtown Creek, and the consequences of consuming such a catch.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The question which is offered as an answer in itself is “do you have any idea how much of the food you buy as “organic” moves through the shadowed warehouses and poison atmospherics of the Newtown Creek?” and “what makes you think you’re any different than those fishermen”?
Seldom do I receive an answer, for when faced with considering such realities about their own food supply, even the clear eyed and prosaic will reveal themselves to be chicken shit.
transparent walls
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Criticism received for the Newtown Pentacle posting “Dim Entity” included the terms “false and misleading” and offered that the post’s assertation that the Federal Express site at Dutch Kills was offered as compensation for the loss of their location in Manhattan to make room for the new construction of luxury housing was abjectly false. Instead, this particular depot has instead been relocated to the Bronx rather than Queens, I have been informed.
As is Newtown Pentacle policy on the subject, and has been since day one, when I’m wrong corrections are eagerly accepted and passed on to you, my Lords and Ladies of Newtown.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In defense, the term “I guess” was used several times in the post, and it doesn’t change my allegation that hundreds if not thousands of truck trips through western Queens will be engendered by the siting of this facility. For those of you who do not live in the immediate locale, a dire and growing problem experienced by the populations of North Brooklyn and Western Queens is the geometric growth of trucks passing through the area.
Natural consequence of geography, being the terminal point of Long Island closest to the shining city of Manhattan, heavy trucks move constantly around us. Exhaust fumes paint the faces of our children with soot, and during humid weather the air is heavy with smoky effluvium.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Regardless of personal feeling about the matter, the fact of the siting of this depot was implied as being a quid pro quo, which offended sources have flatly denied. As such, retraction of that implication is offered.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Doesn’t change the fact that whenever a dirty industrial business needs land, it is found in Queens or Brooklyn or the Bronx or Staten Island. Look at the recent series of announcements of forthcoming municipal projects planned for possible construction within a mile of Newtown Creek as proof of this- whether it be a power plant that runs on sewage emissions, or one that runs on garbage instead.
middle stature
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s Maritime Sunday once again at this, your Newtown Pentacle, and today the focus is on Thornton Towing’s 1600 HP and 1958 vintage “Thornton Bros.” tugboat. Call sign WDD6171, Thornton Bros. is some 25m x 8m in size and has been clocked going as fast as 8 knots.
from wikipedia
Merchant and naval vessels are assigned call signs by their national licensing authorities. In the case of states such as Liberia or Panama, which are flags of convenience for ship registration, call signs for larger vessels consist of the national prefix plus three letters (for example, 3LXY, and sometimes followed by a number, i.e. 3Lxy2). United States merchant vessels are given call signs beginning with the letters “W” or “K” while US naval ships are assigned callsigns beginning with “N”. Originally both ships and broadcast stations were given call signs in this series consisting of three or four letters, but as demand for both marine radio and broadcast call signs grew, gradually American-flagged vessels were given longer call signs with mixed letters and numbers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From what I’ve been able to determine, the actual Thornton Brothers are local boys, although I’ve never met them. The tug Thornton Bros., however, seems to spend a lot of time transporting bulk metals around the harbor. These are the same sort of barges which one often observes at SimsMetal at Newtown Creek, so one might presume that they are part of the “recycling industrial complex”.
from marinesteel.com
Thornton Towing & Transportation is owned by Gerard and Richard Thornton, and Ed Carr; all of whom have spent their entire professional careers working on and around the waters of New York Harbor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Originally launched as the John E. Matton, the tug has had a long career and undergone more than one change of ownership. As is maritime custom, each owner has leased the boat with a unique sobriquet, which is detailed by the always reliable folks at tugboatinformation.com in the link below.
Built in 1958, by Matton Shipyard of Cohoes, New York (hull #325) as the John E. Matton.
The Morania Oil Tanker corporation chartered the vessel and eventually purchased her, where she was renamed as the Morania No. 12 .
When Morania phased out their canal fleet and the Morania No. 12 was acquired by Reinauer Transportation of Staten Island, New York where she was renamed as the Cissi Reinauer .
– photo by Mitch Waxman
John Matton was a shipbuilder upstate, located in Cohoes NY. A largely forgotten industrial center, Cohoes was also a center of brick manufacturing and to this day- one can discern thousands of red bricks scattered along the Hudson River shoreline.
The tale begins in 1899. An enterprising boat builder by the name of John E. Matton opened a boat building and repair facility along the enlarged, mule-drawn Champlain Canal about three miles north of the Waterford side-cut. At the time, the ill-fated “$9 million improvement” of New York’s canals was on life support but still limping along against the backdrop of corruption and scandal in Albany. John E. Matton had no reason to expect that he would not be able to work out of his present location for years and years to come.
Just four years later, however, after Theodore Roosevelt had appointed a new commission to chart a future for New York’s canals, the Barge Canal Act was passed by the State Legislature and approved by New York voters. What would this mean for John E. Matton? That his facility would be utterly useless in a matter of years when the new Barge Canal was completed.
Project Firebox 36
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This sun kissed scarlet sentinel of the public trust is stationed at Queens Plaza South, alongside the fabulous Queensboro bridge. In the storied past, this crimson crier witnessed less than savory activities, but that was the old Queens Plaza. Modernity has brought a certain solemnity to its days, yet it stands at the ready should the presence of certain men and women, who travel in big red trucks, be required.
habitual secretiveness
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUKBO, on the Brooklyn side of that parable laden river of urban neglect called the Newtown Creek, is an industrial zone which most New Yorkers wouldn’t want to acknowledge ownership of. The particular stretch which is focused on today is not long for this world, as the replacement of the Kosciuszko Bridge will obliterate these streets from the map when construction begins in 2014.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Owing to the impermanence of this area, and the certain doom it will enjoy, your humble narrator has been making it a point to divert my path into its shadowed corridors and record what might exist here. As mentioned to many, one of the goals of this- your Newtown Pentacle- is to leave behind some sort of record of what the Creeklands were before the massive changes wrought by Superfund, the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement, and all the other mega projects planned for the area begin.
It is, in my opinion, important to have the realities of this place reported on by a source not affiliated with commercial or governmental interests, and to allow some future researcher to witness the inheritances of the past as they were at the start of this century. The paucity of documentation about Newtown Creek at the start of the 20th century are a major impediment to studying its history.
That’s my “elevator speech”, by the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, the specific focus of today’s posting has little to do with history, rather it’s the utter immolation suffered by this vehicle (refer to a Newtown Pentacle post of January 4, 2012 titled “Old School 2” for context). It seems that DUKBO continues to be a great place to ditch an unwanted vehicle, and the complete destruction of this automobile speaks to a considerable interval between ignition and the intervention of the NYFD.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s an assumption, by the way, based on the absolute destruction of the vehicle interior. The absence of doors, engine hood, and other usual amenities found on modern cars (not present lying in some heap on the sidewalk) suggests that the vehicle was probably stripped, abandoned, and torched- but that is another assumption. Both of these are wide interpretations born of having grown up in South Brooklyn during the 1980’s, a time when an epidemic of car thefts and vehicular arson ran rampant and vehicles in similar condition would regularly be encountered along the Belt Parkway and its service roads.
Kids in my neighborhood became very familiar with the difference between “an accident” and an “on purpose”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Can’t blame NYFD for not getting to it in time for anything else than extinguishing the husk, as this is the middle of nowhere and residential housing is quite distant in any direction. At night, this a ghost town, with shuttered businesses and truck lots, and little or no traffic. Who can guess what transpires here, in the dead of night amidst the darkness of DUKBO?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you’re missing what looks like a mid size SUV or perhaps a minivan, this corner in DUKBO seems to be a great place to start looking for what remains of it.
