Posts Tagged ‘Amtrak’
simpering inanities
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A brief stop over in Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg saw Amtrak change out the crew on my Pittsburgh to NYC journey. Pennsylvania’s Capitol, Harrisburg, offered a 15 minute or so “leg stretch” and “smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em” interval, and half the train staggered out into the daylight to do one thing or the other and sometimes both. We had collectively boarded the train at 7:15 in the morning, after all.
After the bells rang and we all filed back onboard, an announcement that the cafe car was reopened occurred, and a humble narrator purchased a range of comestibles for luncheon and settled back into the seat I had been assigned. After quaffing some coffee and eating an Amtrak Hot Dog, I got back to pondering my fate and staring out the window while watching America roll past. The camera was gathered out of its sack, and I got back to looking for interesting sights.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The landscape in Pennsylvania fascinates me. The Appalachian Mountain range and plateau is incredibly ancient, is a geologic feature which Pennsylvania is situated on the northern reaches of, and it dates back some 480 million years to the Ordovician Period – which is when ocean critters first started exploring dry land. Formed by the action of tectonic plate compression when the super continent Pangaea begin to split up, the Appalachia once rose as high as the Alps or Rockies do today. They’re referred to as “folded mountains” and the reason that all that coal is buried in them is due to their presence during the highly forested Carboniferous era (that’s when the giant dragonflies were around, and you had centipedes the size of school buses sliding around in the swamps). An absolutely staggering amount of effort and expenditure in the 19th and 20th century saw Americans burrowing and mining into, blasting rights of way through, and building upon and around the Appalachia Range.
Fascinating. Really. Mountains older than the dinosaurs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At 30th street Station in Philadelphia the now familiar dance of changing out the locomotive engine from the diesel powered model to the electrified “coGen” unit used for the Northeast Corridor was enacted by the Amtrak people. They did their thing, and waved lanterns at each other, and then it was time to get back onboard again and head back to “home sweet hell.” This was another “stretch your legs” break and a good number of people onboard took advantage of it.
A humble narrator settled back into the assigned seat, and picked up the camera. I affixed the foam collar to my lens and began passing the time by shooting through the windows again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Philadelphia, America’s consolation prize, pictured above.
After spending an entire day on the train, and eating two Amtrak meals along the way, I was quite ready to return to the grinding existential nightmare of a dystopian shithole which I call “home.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Upon my return to Penn Station, I ducked outside onto 8th avenue to breathe a bit of what passes for fresh air in Midtown before heading back to Astoria on the subway. It was rush hour, and despite Covid, the subways were quite busy. Unlike the last time I exited from that door pictured above, this time I didn’t see anyone masturbating into a street grate. There was a guy who offered to sell me something, but I’m not sure what he was offering. Could have been a gold chain, or crack, or sex. Wasn’t interested, me.
A quick ride on the E line got me out of Dodge, and soon I was at Queens Plaza. As is usually the case with me, as soon as the train entered Queens, I felt a rush of energy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The final leg of my long journey arrived at Queens Plaza just as I did, a local R line which would carry me to Astoria.
Our Lady of the Pentacle had arrived home the night before, and had graciously obtained food stuffs which were waiting for me back at HQ. I tore into a bagel like it had done something to my mom, and began downloading all of the photos you’ve been looking at for the last two weeks onto the computer for processing.
I felt a need, and a desire, to listen to this song while setting myself up for the labor of developing them.
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debased idiom
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Riding Amtrak gives you not just a series of interesting if brief windows into other people’s lives and communities, it also gives you a bit of time to let your mind wander. Pondering minutiae and considering the unconsidered, as it were. I spent part of my time planning for future arguments.
I polished the current logical fallacy which is offered to several of the unvaccinated people that I’m friends with. Said argument revolves around their usage of illegal street drugs, and how they’d never ask the guy they’re buying weed or coke from what the circumstances of the stuff’s origin were. I can tell you with some authority that Marijuana in particular is absolutely doused with pesticide by most growers, in order to maximize yield and to make the risk of discovery by law enforcement one worth taking. Cocaine is manufactured, literally, using gasoline. It’s “stepped on” and diluted with other powdery substances several times before that dude with the braids shows up at the bar to deliver the end product gram to you. Beyond illegal or illicit substances, do you actually know what’s in that shot of whiskey that nice fellow behind the bar just poured for you? How about the contents of a bottle of soda, or a fast food burger? You do know it was Dr. Fauci who recommended that condoms be used to avoid getting AIDS, right?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Man, oh man, do I ever want to do a multi day car trip around central Pennsylvania just for the pursuit of some pure landscape photography. These woods seem endless, but they’re punctuated regularly by bridges and other 19th and 20th century infrastructure. So many rivers… waterfalls… mountains…
Who was the first cave guy that found a puddle of melt water, with hops and grain rotting and fermenting within, and decided to drink it, and then soon got drunk? More importantly, who’s the friend he had that decided to try it too, after the first guy described his experience with that proto beer? I know it was a group of guys. Had to be. Wine is something I’ll hand discovery of over to the cave ladies, but beer? Definitely cave guys.
Also, there were cave bears, cave lions, and cave men. All were bigger and stronger than their modern descendants. Recently, I learned that there were cave ducks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in prior posts, one was shooting out of the window of a sometimes speeding Amtrak train while enjoying an eight hour long trip from Pittsburgh back to NYC.
I always say that the most valuable thing about a railroad’s right of way isn’t the train or the tracks. It’s the real estate directly surrounding it. I’ve asked several rail people and a Congressman or two about the land surrounding these rights of way. Federally administered but mostly privately owned, there’s a mandated amount of clear space surrounding the actual tracks. This clear space’s purpose is obvious – you don’t want trees or other vegetation to grow too close to the travel path. My big idea, however, is to attach a mechanism to the back of the train which spews seed balls of native pollinator plants, as the train travels, and at predesignated spots. It wouldn’t be anything other than an engineering problem to make sure the seed balls land outside of the designated clear area, and even if only 10% of the seed balls “take,” you’d be creating thousands of miles of pollinator plant strips all over the country. All in all, another brick in the environmental wall.
Gordian Knot, lords and ladies, Gordian Knot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of the humans on the train were sleeping, which is something that one such as myself cannot do in public unless I’m absolutely exhausted. I fell asleep on my last trip to Pittsburgh back in the fall, but I’d more or less been awake and very active for nearly 28 hours by then.
I’m legendarily paranoid and cautious. Drives people around me crazy, actually. Before I go to bed at night, every door lock is tested to ensure it’s locked tight. That AirBNB I was staying in back in Pittsburgh had a chair sitting in front of the door when I went to sleep. When I’m out walking around, my habit – at least once every block – is to stop and turn to see if some malign jackhole might be following me. I look three times when crossing a street, not twice. Having grown up in NYC in the 1970’s and 80’s – this sort of behavior is something that became a part of my DNA early on. People walk around like they’re safe or something. You’re not. Sleeping in public? When you don’t absolutely have to? Are you nuts? I was tempted to steal some guys shoes just to teach him a lesson.
I’m similarly tempted towards grand larceny when I see some idiot pull their car over into a bus stop, so as to pick something up at a bodega, while going inside and leaving their car running. It’s really all I can do not to jump in the thing and drive away. Brooklyn!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Amtrak trip from Pittsburgh to NYC is governed by two “layover” stops wherein the cafe car closes and you’ll see different crew members take over the various duty assignments. Saying that, you’ve got about 4 hours to wait after leaving Pittsburgh before you arrive at the first of those stops in Pennsylvania’s Capitol – Harrisburg. The second long stop is in Philadelphia, about two hours later.
I began building a mental list of Anglo Saxon versus Norman French food names. Mutton and Lamb are the exemplars on this list. Same meat, coming from the same critter. One is what the conquered called the stuff, and the other is what the conquerors called it. To this day, mutton is cheaper than lamb. There’s a lot of hidden history buried in the English Language, which is usually a leave behind from some long ago war. Is it Fowl or Poultry for lunch, or is it boar or pork for dinner? When you go to sleep will you be wearing pajamas? Going on vacation to the country, will you stay in a bungalow or a cabin, an inn or a hotel?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In accordance with my newly adopted ideology of sociopathy, I made it a point of not initiating conversation with any of my fellow travelers. They might have said something that caused me to care about something, so I avoided the possibility entirely. This “nothing matters, nobody cares” thing is great. You’re never disappointed by your fellow man this way, since you start the day by acknowledging that everything is shit. It’s quite European, this. I’m nearly a Frenchman at this stage.
I did spend a short interval poking at my phone, and I looked into a cottage industry which allows you to enact mean spirited but not illegal vengeance on those you dislike. You can anonymously send somebody a bag of gummy dicks, for instance. There’s also a service which sends a glitter bomb anonymously. A spring board mechanism within, holding a substantial amount of glitter upon it, is actuated by opening the shipping carton’s lid. This causes a cloud of glitter to explode into your interior space, and that’s awesome. There’s another one – a personal favorite – which uses a similar mechanism to distribute 5,000 live crickets about your crib when the box is opened. Good times.
More tomorrow.
“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.
absurdly slight
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One awoke at the appointed time, bathed, drank a coffee and headed over in the pre dawn hours to Pittsburgh’s Amtrak Station. The train was scheduled to depart at 7:30 a.m. and as is my habit – I was there an hour early. About 7:15, boarding began and the Amtrak conductor indicated which car they wanted me in.
It seems that the way they handle things on Amtrak is that they group passengers together according to where they’re going. Given that I was heading all the way to Moynihan/Penn Station in NYC, that meant I was in the last car on the train. One settled into a seat and got comfortable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I wasn’t terribly well prepared – creature comforts wise – for the 8 hour trip, which meant that I was going to be getting my sustenance from Amtrak’s cafe car. They have pretty decent coffee, and a variety of high fat and sugar content offerings. Cakes and candies, juice and soda, even booze. Truth be told, the offerings reminded me a lot of the crap that I’d jam into my face hole back when I used to work overnight shifts in midtown Manhattan. I stuck with the coffee, mostly, but this time around instead of the Amtrak hamburger, I had the Amtrak hot dog. My advice? Go for the burger. It’s gross, but less so than the hot dog.
I spent my journey staring out the window again. This time, however, I used a piece of my homemade camera gear – a foam collar for my lens – to shoot random images out the window as the train ran along the tracks.
All of the shots gathered using this method have been given a different crop ratio than I normally use. It’s to distinguish them from properly composed photos, as these are basically “run and guns.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I sat in a weird posture with my torso twisted towards the window, the camera supported by the left arm while the right one worked the shutter. My head was turned in opposition to the torso, looking ahead in the direction the train was traveling. The camera had the foam collar on the lens, and the collar was pressed directly against the glass while avoiding having the actual lens make contact. When it looked like something interesting was coming up, I’d just start shooting. The exposures were something like 1/5,000th of a second, so as to freeze the scene at a fairly high ISO. Amtrak’s windows are generally pretty dirty, and colored with a reddish brown tint. This makes for a challenging environment when you’re developing them, back in the photoshop application at home.
Saying all that, I really enjoy the randomness, and getting the sort of views that you normally can’t reach.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wish I could tell you about that power plant in the second shot, the canalized waterway in the third, or the bridge pictured above. Doing so would negate the point of the exercise, however, and add a meaningless layer of trivia into the effort.
These are shots, by the way, not photographs. The latter definition – at least by my way of thinking – indicates “photographs” as being something consciously composed and offered in a manner that makes a statement of some kind, whereas shots are entirely random and are more of a technical exercise than anything else.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Somewhere down the road, this particular technique will come in handy when I’m in a position where I have to get the shot or the photograph despite the situational challenges – which is why I engage in the exercise. All of my low light/night time shooting over the last few years has allowed me to develop a set of skills which allow me to leave the flash gun at home, even when I’m shooting indoors. Rail shots like these have taught me how to capture detail while shooting through a dirty rust brown colored window from a vehicle moving at 50 mph. That’ll come in handy, someday, somehow.
That’s the Altoona Horseshoe curve pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We rolled through several rail yards on our course eastwards. Pictured above are Norfolk and Southern locomotives. I saw lots of rail, lots of dams and bridges, and lots of people who have festooned their homes with Trump flags. I saw one building, which seemed to be the offices of a trailer park, which had affixed a two story tall banner with Trump’s face silk screened on it facing the railway with the screed “miss me yet?”.
Nothing matters, nobody cares.
More next week, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
died reverberantly
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another day, another scuttle. This time, I was out for a long walk. One headed out at a conspicuously earlier time than normal, hoping for a colorful sunset. High clouds are favorable, conditions wise, for colorful sunrises and sunsets to set up. That’s my official photographer advice.
Pictured is a section of Long Island City’s Sunnyside Yards, with Amtrak train sets lined up in the foreground. As always, a tip of the hat to whoever is in charge of poking holes in the fences at the Federal Rail operation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were gathered at the end of November, when I was preparing to go on another trip using Amtrak in early December, so I was wondering if any of these trains would be the one I got to ride on. Honestly, the day that I shot these feels like a hundred years ago right now. It’s funny the way that the mind works, ain’t it?
On this particular night, I was heading towards the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, where I would end discovering that a big chunk of the shoreline had collapsed over Thanksgiving weekend.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was a particularly weird night, as a note, with way too many encounters with the denizens of the streets. One in particular was just freaky, but I don’t want to get into the trading of war stories.
Sirens punctured my reveries, and I noticed an FDNY ambulance screaming it’s way along the Honeywell Avenue truss bridge over the railyard.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Due to all the street weirdness I’ve encountered and observed, I’ve fallen out of the habit of listening to audiobooks while walking around, preferring instead to have all of my sensory antennae fully deployed. I want to be able to hear the running footsteps slapping the pavement coming my way, before they’re too close for comfort.
Given my predilection for lonely places, the last thing I want to encounter or be surprised by are other people.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Every person you see coming at you is a possible threat these days. There’s a small army of lunatics and street level criminals that have recently been installed all around Long Island City, lawless and sly, who’ll look you up and down deciding whether or not it would be worth it to boil you down for elements to sell. It hasn’t been like this for a long time, here in the big city.
This is not exactly a politically correct thing to say, but the people who decide what’s correct or not have apparently never been punched in the nose or had a gun pulled on them by a mugger.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
People walk around like they’re safe or something. If they only knew.
Bah.
“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.
passed close
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was pretty much exhausted by the time these shots were acquired. All of the Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh posts you’ve seen in the last month, and these Philadelphia ones, were captured in about a 4 day period. A morning session in DC, followed by an 8 hour train ride, 72 hours spent in Pittsburgh, followed by a 7 hour train ride to Philadelphia, and I spent about 5 hours there. Between the three, I walked a little over 100 miles and photographed about 6,000 individual shots which ended up boiling down to about 700 “keepers.”
In Pittsburgh, I had a room where I could stow my gear, but in D.C. and Philly, I had to shlep it all around on my back. The shots in today’s post were the last ones captured on this trip.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Full pack “EDC” or Every Day Carry on a week long trip sucks. I had three bags hanging off of me. The one on my left hip – a camera sling bag which I’ve retired from active photo duty but which matches the current one – was stuffed with clothing, toiletries, and various comfort items like a comb and a few snacks – gum, candy, etc. as well as the various charging cables and wall adapters needed for my electronics.
The one on my right hip was full of the sort of camera gear you need to keep handy and ready to go – a bright “go to” prime lens, an air blower, lens cloths – that sort of stuff. I’ve also got a construction worker’s yellow safety vest in there. The two were hung on opposite shoulders, forming an X over my sternum.
Then there was the big bag on my back, which kept the X in place, a Jansport knapsack with my Canon zoom lenses within and housed in removable foam partitions, and also within it was a Mac laptop. On the exterior of the backpack was an attached Sirui Carbon Fiber tripod with a ball head, with an umbrella affixed on the other side. There’s lots of small items I like to carry – a flashlight, a roll of gaff tape, ten feet of paracord, one of those silver emergency blankets, a “bit kit” of screw heads that my Leatherman can mount, the homemade foam lens collars I’ve mentioned a few times, a backup camera support device called a Platypod, extra camera batteries. At the bottom of the bag is one of those ultra absorbent “shamwow” orange cloths they sell at Costco for washing cars, and a couple of clear plastic garbage bags. As a note, the flashlight and everything else made of metal in my bag has a layer of gaff tape on it. Gaff tape doesn’t leave residue behind when you stick it to things, and whereas it’s no duct tape, if you have to make a quick repair while in the field it’s better to have the stuff and not need it than the other way around. It also helps with “grip.” The layers of gaff on my flashlight easily release and are deployable as needed.
On top of all this, I was wearing my special “Scott E Vest” sweatshirt with its 22 secure pockets, pretty much all of which had at least one item secreted away in them. Additionally, I was wearing a pair of military surplus shorts, with a bunch of secure pockets where I was carrying a Leatherman utility tool, wallet, cash, keys, hankies, hand sanitizer, and all sorts of other bits and bobs. The shoes, as always, were Merell Moab style hiking boots.
There was also, obviously, the L bracket encased Canon R6 camera dangling off of me on a Black Rapid R strap, which itself has a zippered pocket for memory cards. I also had my iPhone with me, of course, which was used to organize my train tickets, rideshare needs, and allowed me to use google maps rather than a printed book. I did have a small Moleskine reporters notebook with me as a backup, and a single uniball retractile pen.
All told, it was about 20-30 pounds of stuff in aggregate. Nearly a third of my carry was due to the laptop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everything I carry with me day to day – My “EDC” or “every day carry” has stood the test of time and weather and is the best accommodation between weight and performance that I can afford. The plastic recycling bags have saved me and the camera from getting soaked during sudden rain bursts, the shamwow insulates the lens against vibration a bit and ensures I can dry wipe the equipment down in a hurry. The Mylar safety blanket, plastic bags, and construction worker vest weigh virtually nothing, and the former is occasionally deployed as a sun reflector whereas the latter is often donned while wandering around Newtown Creek in the dead of night. If you’re looking for a pocket tool rather than a weapon, the Leatherman Skeletool is a good solution. Pliers, screwdriver with interchangeable bits, and a blade. It’s also a bottle opener.
Also, forgot to mention the zip lock bag full of Covid masks. I use ziploc bags to organize things when traveling, writing down what was in the individual bag on the bag itself when I packed it, with a sharpie permanent marker. Inventory list on the container means you don’t forget or misplace something when in a hurry, and the clear plastic allows you to visually inventory.
Minus the third bag with the clothes, and the laptop, this is more or less the “EDC” that I take with me when leaving HQ for a regular photo adventure in NYC. During the winter, the shorts become black army pants from the same manufacturer, and the filthy black raincoat is added into the mix.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A standout at 30th Street Station here in Philadelphia is the “Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial” statue. 28 feet tall, and designed by sculptor Walter Hancock, it’s a memorial to the 1,307 workers of the Pennsylvania Railroad who died during the Second World War providing for the common defense. Check out this Wikipedia link for more on the thing.
To be honest, at this stage of the journey, I was giving zero shits about anything and just wanted to get home to see Our Lady of the Pentacle again and tell her about my adventures in Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The train was delayed from its scheduled departure, but only by a few minutes. My feet hurt, and so did my back. I was impatient, and paced around the station to burn off my expectant energy. I was in a “shvitz,” as my grandmother would have said.
Finally, the boarding call was made, and the track announced. I proceeded down to the platforms.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Amtrak’s chariot arrived, and I boarded a rather full train bound for NYC’s Penn Station at 7:58 p.m.
About 9:30 p.m., I returned to NYC and soon found myself on 8th Avenue, which was covered in a wind swept whirlwind of litter and garbage and there was graffiti on the sidewalk. One man was on his hands and knees screaming into a subway grate, another was standing on the corner of 32nd street openly masturbating. Another fellow, one legged and in a wheelchair labeled with a local hospital’s branding, had pulled his coat over his head to ease lighting up a crack pipe. By 34th street, I had passed through a bum fight between two women and got to see one of their boobies flapping about after her opponent tore off her t shirt. The air smelled of urine and car exhaust, and the dirty water of hot dog carts. Sirens, car horns, fart cars.
On 36th street, I turned a corner and narrowly avoided a group of charlatans working the “check out my hip hop cd grift” and managed to overstep a pile of vomit while passing them by. After negotiating through massive piles of restaurant garbage being colonized by rats that narrowed the sidewalk down to about 18 inches of space, I managed to find a spot to wait, and summoned a Lyft to whisk me home to Astoria.
Back in the 80’s, the saying was “what this city needs is a good plague.” Well – We’ve had one and it didn’t do any good, I’m afraid. When the greatest City in the history of mankind fails to compare favorably with… Philadelphia…
“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 