Posts Tagged ‘7 line’
Like every other bit of wind blown trash…
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After transmuting from upstate to midtown Manhattan via the MTA’s Metro North operation, your humble narrator then negotiated his way to the 42nd street 7 Line station.
Now, you may be wondering: Hey Mitch, what with that broken ankle PTSD that pops up when you’re descending steps, that you are constantly mentioning and complaining about, how was it negotiating the subway system with all of those flights of stairs?
The answer is ‘wasn’t all that simple.’ I was the slow moving old guy on the stairs, the one whose hand was floating a half inch over the bannister and carefully working his way down at his own speed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The PTSD mishegoss is retreating, due to all of the exposure I’ve been inflicting on myself back in Pittsburgh with its ‘City Steps.’ Saying all that, it’s still there, and it sucks. There’s a background ‘gotta be careful here’ thought pattern as I approach the top of a flight of stairs, but it’s almost always the initial ‘top’ of the steps where my brain starts firing bolts of panic. Badly broke my ankle on a set of steps at home, of all places, and ever since this has been a bit of a ‘thing’ for me whenever I’m confronted with stairs. Bah!
At any rate, the 7 carried me where I was going in air conditioned comfort. It was going to be a super hot and humid day, weather wise. In fact, the rest of my time in NYC was going to be defined by ‘swamp ass’ humidity and high temperatures.
My grandmother always used to tell me that we were put of this earth to suffer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hunters Point, in Queens’ Long Island City. I sort of expected some thunder or something when I stepped onto the sidewalk, but it was actually sort of anti climactic. This is one of the places I was thinking about while sitting in that wheelchair at the end of last year.
I had arranged with my pals at Newtown Creek Alliance to meet up with a couple of the ‘new guys,’ and take a walk with them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long Island Railroad’s Hunters Point yard has been getting upgraded with a flood wall while I was gone. With the alterations to this spot they’ve operated out of since 1868, this wall would count as version 10 of the station, in my eyes. Once upon a time, there was a giant steel and glass train station here which fed into a ferry terminal, a structure reminiscent of the sort of station sheds you see in Europe. There was a railroad turntable… they had all the toys. Nowadays, MTA is trying to figure out the finances for decking this rail yard over so that yet another condo tower can be built on top of it.
Regarding the title of today’s post, it’s a part of my ‘bluster’ from the Newtown Creek years. When interviewed by press people and asked about how I found myself studying the creek, I’d offer: Desolate, disabused, discarded… soon, like every other piece of wind blown trash in NYC, I ended up at the Newtown Creek. I’d often get a raised eyebrow from any politicians in the room when saying this phrase.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Inhuman. That’s what I always say to myself when I see these sorts of structures. Anti-democratic, as well. I don’t mean the political party.
The very nature of this sort of residential setup divides people into ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s.’ Twenty to thirty years in the future will prove me out on the consequences of this development philosophy. Same thing applies to Manhattan’s Abomination Hudson Yards. Bah!
It was already quite warm and humid out. Luckily, before leaving Cold Spring upstate, I ate a very solid breakfast and inhaled about a gallon of coffee and water. The ankle was a bit ornery from the efforts of the prior day, but holding up to the mission. No pain, at all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally. It had been nine months almost to the day since I tumbled down a set of steps in my house in Pittsburgh, busted my ankle and also dislocated my left foot.
Hospitalization, surgery, two months in a wheelchair, endless months of physical therapy and omnipresent pain, months and months of walking up and down hills in Pittsburgh to get my strength back… and there it was: Newtown Creek sitting right in front of me.
Tingles, I tell you, I felt tingles. The ankle story was actually ending. I had finally made it through this crucible.
Truth be told, a clap of thunder would really have been appreciated as I approached her, but that’s just me wishing for theatrics.
Back tomorrow.
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judging from
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weather forecast on August 1st wasn’t promising anything pleasant for the days immediately following it, and there was a lot of fog and mist in the air…
How can a humble narrator be expected to ignore atmospheric diffusion? Pfah. One shlepped over to the N train, and away I went.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At Queens Plaza, I transferred my allegiances from the N to the 7, and took that line two stops to Hunters Point Avenue.
I had a plan in mind for the foggy afternoon, one which would find me over in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUPBO – Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp – was part of my plan. In the late afternoons during weekdays, the Long Island Railroad people deploy a train set about every half hour from the Hunters Point Yard. The trains move under the Pulaski Bridge, cross Borden Avenue, and then go off to parts that are unknown but fairly guessable.
My plan involved crossing the Pulaski Bridge on foot, of course, but I wouldn’t be “me” if I didn’t crack out a few shots of a passing locomotive.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Y’know, I know – intellectually – that they’re going to blow the train horn when they approach a grade crossing. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m startled by the sound each and every time they do it.
It’s what’s known as an autonomic reaction to environmental stimuli.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After getting my LIRR shots, and then inspecting the waterside area under the bridge, I headed over to the steep and well traveled stairs of the Pulaski Bridge.
I guess that about 20 minutes had elapsed while I was wandering around down there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just as I got to the top of the stairs, a second train was released into the wild by the LIRR an I was lucky enough to get another shot.
Pedantic? Maybe? Fun? Yes.
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“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.
cacodaemonical ghastliness
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 21st and I was out for a short/long walk which ended up being fairly productive. I was heading towards Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary, and along the way I stopped off at “Hole Reliable,” which is found along the fencelines of the Sunnyside Yards.
The reason this hole is so reliable is that it overlooks the Harold Interlocking, a rail junction used by both Long Island Railroad and Amtrak which is the busiest such bit of infrastructure in the entire country. You don’t have to hang around Long before something rolls by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The powers that be have been busy spending your taxes on improving the Harold Interlocking, which is part of the larger “East Side Access” project that will be bringing LIRR service to Grand Central Station, and there’s a couple of new sidings which have recently been completed and brought into usage – like the one pictured above.
Y’know, I’ve spent something like 15 years watching them do all the construction on this, and it’s kind of cool to see it being used.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nothing new to report from Dutch Kills. Nobody cares, nothing matters, and 29th street continues to subside and sag into the collapsing bulkhead at the water’s edge. Turns out that the reason there’s always a puddle there is that the undermined street has broken a water line pipe. That’s great, as now it’s also a DEP problem – in addition to being an EPA, DEC, DOT, and MTA problem. Eventually, the entire alphabet will be involved.
Sigh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My tree of paradise seems to be embracing the warmer weather, and at the time this photo was taken, had just become clothed in foliage.
I didn’t plan on walking directly home on this particular evening, as I was desirous of getting a few low light shots of the 7 train. Accordingly, over to the Hunters Point Avenue stop did I scuttle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My 7 line plan was to take advantage of how frequently the service arrives – usually in about ten minute intervals – to hop on and hop off at the various stations that I don’t frequent.
As a note, I’m a fan of that new OMNY fare control scheme of theirs. Here’s a tip – the OMNY system lets you use your phone to pay for your fare. The credit card you thereby designate for transit use (I’m on an iPhone, can’t speak to how Google Pay works on Android) should therefore be one where you receive some sort of benefit for using it. Some cards have cash back rewards, others have airline miles that accrue with use, others send a few cents to a charity you support – you get the idea. I’ve tied all of my transit charges into a single card account – LYFT/Uber, Amtrak, Subway and Bus, Ferry. This also makes talking to my accountant about transit spending rather simple.
I have a friend who has all his monthly bills flow through benefits/rewards cards. This way he’s never late with a payment, and manages to get some benefit out of his outlandishly high electric bills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I traveled on the 7 for a bit, following my plan to hop on and hop off. The shot above is from the 33rd Rawson stop, and it’s a Manhattan bound train rounding the elevated curve nearby the former Swingline Stapler building on Queens Boulevard. One night soon I’m going to doing this sort of night time excursion on every stop of the 7 all the way out to Flushing and back.
Keeps me out of the bars. Back next week with more, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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“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.
were frowns
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
April 22nd’s walk first visited Dutch Kills, and I had decided before leaving HQ that I’d be taking a train back “to the zone” so one headed over to the Hunters Point Avenue stop on the IRT Flushing or 7 line subway. This station is found alongside the Sunnyside Yards’ southern border in Ling Island City, and there’s a couple of very convenient fence holes there I never fail to take advantage of.
Pictured is a Manhattan bound 7 line train entering the station from its last stop at 23/Ely Court Square.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While I was hanging around and shooting, an Amtrak train set emerged from the tunnel I was standing over, heading eastwards.
After fishing around in my camera bag for a Covid mask, I headed over to the stairs leading down to the fare control area of the 7 line station, paid my due, and continued down to the platforms.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The headway frequency on the 7 has been vastly improved since the completion of the CBTC signaling system installation, and the train really is a lot more frequent than it used to be as they can now run the individual train sets a lot closer together than they used to.
As you can see, this one was an express, and I needed a local but that’s not too big a deal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One stop brought me to Court Square Station, and after about a five minute wait, the local 7 line arrived.
In my opinion, the 7 is the most photogenic of all of NYC’s subways.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The local carried me to 40th Lowery, high over Queens Boulevard. If I had been feeling truly lazy, I would have ridden the thing out to Jackson Heights and transferred to a local IND R or M line back to Astoria’s Broadway and the station that’s two blocks from my house, but…
Hey, it’s all downhill from here…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A quick scuttle down 39th street, and an encounter with yet another Amtrak train set. This one had just executed a turn around on the horseshoe tracks found along 43rd street and was heading into the Amtrak service yard nearby the Honeywell Street Bridge/36th street.
Wonders, I tell you, wonders.
“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.
lasting merely
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That machine pictured above blows. Literally. It’s a jet engine on rail wheels which the LIRR uses for clearing snow and evacuating litter and leaf debris from the tracks.
Hunters Point Yard, Long Island City. It blows, but doesn’t suck, this gizmo. Want to know what else blows? Our perception of danger, and of the return of “Fear City.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A quick walk found me riding on a 7 train, which took me to the Court Square Station in LIC. According to what I see on the news these days, I should have experienced something like Act 3 of the post apocalyptic “Road Warrior” movie, but unmolested was a humble narrator.
Seriously, other than the curious instruction from MTA, observed several times on printed and electronic poster boards within “The System” which adjures against barbecuing on subway platforms or within moving subway cars, I haven’t seen much of “out of the ordinary” down below.
It ain’t the 80’s, or even the 90’s down there… not yet, at least.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
People have been walking around with their heads up their arse for decades on the topics of “crime and safety,” which is due to “Copaganda” in my opinion.
Your chances of getting jumped… personally, I walk around everywhere with my radar on at full power at all times and have been eschewing the use of headphones while commuting… are certainly less than they were in the 1980’s, but have never been absent. Many just chose to believe that they were safe or something, and the looney tales propagated out to the news media by “certain” municipal unions which reinforce public perceptions of their centrality to all things good and great has created an impression that a) the cops could “fix it” if only they had more money and more cops and less reforms and more blah blah, and b) that the people committing these outlandish criminal acts in these stories could be cured if only there was more funding for mental health and affordable housing and blah blah blah.
Ask a hammer how to fix a broken window, it’ll say “hit it with a hammer.”
Here’s a different way to experience things – with your own eyes. Some people are good, others are bad, and a small percentage of them are straight up scumbags. We should create a penal colony on Mars and populate it with these scumbags, I’ve always thought.
Australia has worked out fairly ok, why not have a Marstrailia?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
With my own eyes – I have not seen people BBQing in the subway, but I’ve seen fare evasion and all sorts of “normal” NYC bullshit occurring more often post Covid than before.
About a month ago, an obviously ill scumbag was yelling ugly racial rhetoric at random passerby, right here at the Court Square Station. More than once have I observed the same guy doing the same thing. Cops? Nope. Would they clip him, or just force him to move on?
The one that really cooks the noodle for me is that although the ugly sentiments that this guy offered would be considered a hate crime, and despite the fact that he’s clearly “not healthy” mentally, do we really want the NYPD to get into the business of policing what people can and can’t say in the Subway – or anywhere else?
I’ve mentioned in this space that I’ve had weird encounters on the street during the pandemic, which could have gone “ass over tits” quickly if I didn’t possess the experiences of having grown up and lived in NYC all my life. I know how to talk and act in these situations, and when it’s time to run away or scream at the top of my lungs for help.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Plaza was the next point of subway line transfer, where I would connect with an R line subway that would carry me to the subway stop which is nearest to HQ in Astoria. Queens Plaza is where some poor woman got attacked with a hammer, with said hammer wielded by some scumbag from Manhattan. The subway stop in Astoria I was aiming myself at is found at an intersection where, in 2020, a young mother found herself caught in a crossfire of bullets being fired indiscriminately by two random bunches of local scumbags. She died.
If the cops happened to be in the Queens Plaza station, and also happened to be nearby that staircase where the scumbag with the hammer attacked that woman, you can bet your bottom dollar that NYPD’s legendary lack of subtlety would have been on full display. The gunfight in Astoria, which was one of about 8 or 9 such exchanges which have occurred within a couple of blocks of that Astoria subway stop… how do you stop that? Drug trade gonna drug trade, gangstas gonna gang, bangers gonna bang.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, my radar is being maintained at full power these days.
Nobody gets to within eight steps of me without an assessment, and receiving a series of non-verbal cues that they’ve been noticed and are dancing too close. Saying all that, be careful, scumbags are and always have been everywhere.
Real life isn’t what you hope it is, instead it’s entirely unpredictable and two out of every ten people are scumbags. Further, four of the remaining eight can flip either good or bad depending on the crowd they’re in. Good news? There’s generally two out of the ten who will be ok people no matter what happens.
Thankfully, the R train arrived. Some scumbag took a dump in the car I was riding in, but hey – it’s only three stops to where I gotta get off so…
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 