Posts Tagged ‘Astoria’
addressed as
Banal pedantry, and Western Queens, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst hanging around at my local bar, recently, one has been forced to eat a bunch of crow by the working guys who voted for “he who must not be named.” I don’t say the name of the President Elect, as it lends him power in the manner of a certain Harry Potter villain – as a note. The working guys are generally union members who became convinced that “the Mexicans are taking my job,” and voted accordingly. I have declared a moratorium amongst friend and foe alike, as I cannot spend another minute of my time discussing the 2016 Presidential election, which went on for what seemed like four or five years.
At the moment, I’ve got other fish to fry.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Admiration is what I feel towards the “canners” of Queens, for instance. Observationally, I see mostly Latino or Asian folks pursuing this line of profiteering – picking through this bin or that one in pursuance of the deposit money for aluminum can and glass bottle. We native born Citizens generally leave our pocket change in the curbside recycling bags, but our newly arrived neighbors believe – rightly – that the streets of New York City are paved with gold, if you just expend a bit of effort to harvest it.
I wonder if the Catholics have assigned a patron saint for the canners?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While watching the humans in their daily rounds, one of the things which I’m currently observing and finding fascinating are their set of behaviors, social mores, and so on. One comment I can offer is that people spend a lot of extra energy on walking that they don’t need to in pursuance of looking “cool.” Bad shoes, pants falling down, lots of gestural movements that have little or nothing to do with locomotion. Focus, people, focus.
Ultimately, it’s all pretty depressing, but interesting nevertheless.
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looke backe
Banal pedantry, Astoria, and the day the music died.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is absolutely unfathomable to me how hidebound government is. The DEP has a problem with “floatable” solid materials entering the sewage flow. The DSNY is under orders to provide public waste receptacles for street trash. The DOB is on a crusade to discover illegally converted apartments in residential buildings.
DOB enforcement, which uses DSNY inspector data to discover the presence of illegal conversions, causes the residents of illegal apartments to not put their trash out on the curb for collection by DSNY, so they use the street corner trash bins to dispose of household garbage instead. This causes the bins to overflow, which causes the trash to fall on the sidewalk and street, where it enters the sewer system and bedevils the DEP – which does nothing to control their sewage from flowing into waterways via open overflow pipes. The DSNY positions their overflowing trash bins – overflowing due to DOB – right next to DEP’s sewer grates so… sigh…
We are all doomed, and hurtling towards destruction, aren’t we? When I mention this sort of thing to officialdom, their response isn’t “wow, we should rethink this,” it’s “that can’t happen because it’s illegal.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The City is all agog, under the leadership of the Dope from Park Slope, about affordable housing. Rather than process the fact that there is actually housing which ordinary and current residents CAN afford, but which is found in extant transit deserts outside of the City center – the DOB and City Planning assists the Real Estate Developer shit flies in demolishing existing housing stock within the center in pursuance of creating mega structures. They do not seem to consult with the sewer and water people at DEP about built capacity first, or the electrical and gas supply companies like ConEd or National Grid, or the transit folks at MTA as to the existential result of this population loading. The whole notion of expanding mass transit options to College Point or other outer circle spots – now that’s madness.
To put it plain – Bill De Blasio and his inane shit fly inspired “vision” is going to destroy New York City, or at least leave behind a series of bills to pay that will make the Presidency of George W. Bush look fiscally responsible.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Burrachos of Astoria’s Broadway, whose population has been seriously cut down by the 114th Pct. and the Dept. Of Homeless Services in the last year – largely due to the urging and cajoling of this, your Newtown Pentacle – have been exploring their creative side lately.
A series of deployed guitars have been observed, many of which have been strummed while chanties have been sung. I’m actually a casual fan of modern day Latin American folk music, much of which centers around the adventures and warfare of “Los Narcos” in their struggles with competitors and describes their resistance against “Los Federales.” Seriously – Google for some of the “El Chapo” songs and think about the early years of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
It’s been a pleasure to discover that the Burrachos are something other than just drunks and bums, but unfortunately – they still have a dark side that extends beyond defecating on the sidewalk. Pictured above is the consequence of using a guitar as a bludgeon, and it signifies the day that the music died on Broadway in Astoria, Queens.
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preliminary session
Sometimes, you have to let the crazy out and let it play.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One’s life experience displays a certain dichotomy which is often hard to reconcile. For the first two thirds of my time on this planet, if someone spotted me lurking around their periphery they’d begin to batten down the hatches. Ladies would grasp at their purse, gentlemen would assume a proactively aggressive posture, and Policemen would eye me suspiciously. One has never understood this, as I’ve always been what law enforcement personnel would describe as “harmless.” By and large, however, I’ve always been reviled and rejected.
It’s always been an issue for me to remain curiously upright, since any accusation about a humble narrator is easy to believe. “Hey, I just saw Mitch running up and down Houston street wearing a clown suit and screaming about invading aliens. He also had a goat with him.” Most people would just say “yeah, I could see that.”
For the last third of my life, there’s been people who seem to actually want me to hang around them, occasionally. It’s weird, because I’m the same sort of objectionable fellow that I’ve always been. Maybe I’ve just figured out how to sugar coat it, or put some lipstick on this pig, or maybe I’m just getting old and they’re humoring me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weird part of the particular stage of life I’m in – I’ll be turning fifty (hopefully) in 2017 – is the physical transition which I can’t see but which is quite visible to everybody else. My beard used to be dark brown, for instance, and my eyes are looking out of a face which doesn’t chime in with what I think I look like. Also, I make a noise when settling into a chair now, a pained exhortation which sounds like “uhhhhhnnnnnnk” that is coupled with a staccato popping of the ligaments as they stretch along decaying joints with their cartilage deficits.
If I was a late model car, the mechanic would probably tell me that with a regular maintenance schedule, there’d probably be 15-20 thousand miles left before the junk yard beckoned. Saying that, my shocks and struts are shot, and I regularly fail on my emissions tests. I routinely describe my aches and pains as due to the presence of a “pain squirrel” which spends its time running from branch to branch over the course of the day. Today, the squirrel is on the left foot, tomorrow the right arm.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over the years, I’ve been accused of being a lot of things, including being “an environmentalist,” a “shill for the real estate guys,” and a “historical preservationist.” The latter bit is an assumption on the part of certain of my friends and colleagues. What I’m actually about – and everything I’ve been doing here at your Newtown Pentacle over the last seven years – is documenting the transformation of the ancient neighborhoods of Western Queens and North Brooklyn which surround the Newtown Creek as they transition from post industrial to residential. My researches into the subjects have revealed a paucity of the last age of transformation around the Creek, which occurred roughly a century ago. My plan is to leave behind some sort of record of what was here, before it’s all replaced by luxury condos. Hopefully, some future history kid will be able to make something out of it all.
I wish I got started sooner than I did, but kay sera sera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the midst of all of this man-o-pausal angst, my wanderings have begun to carry me to places whose pavement I haven’t darkened in several dozen months. My experiential desires at the moment are for the desolate, the wind blown, the discarded. Especially, I want to be alone while I’m walking the earth, for an interval.
Other people suck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, there is no shortage of lonely locations in the concrete devastation, and it is filthy black raincoat weather again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens is talking to me, can’t you hear her too?
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disturbing to
Macro fun, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When it’s dark, cold, and rainy outside (a trifecta!) – a humble narrator finds himself stuck indoors. Rather than do something useful, my inclination is to set up a little “stage” on a counter in the kitchen and deploy a tripod. This time around, the stage was a piece of glass that I’d harvested a while back from a dead scanner. A quick trip to the school supplies section of my local drug store resulted in the purchase of a set of kid’s tempera paints, which were applied to the impermeable glass in distinctly separated spots. Water was introduced into the lapses of the various pigments, which caused them to bleed into each other. While the “decay” was under way, a camera was mounted onto the tripod, and placed less than a quarter of an inch from the surface of the swirling colors.
The hard part was lighting it, as there was a quite narrow window into which the light could be aimed and diffused. Additionally, handling the reflections inherent in a “wet media” subject was a bit of a challenge. Can’t begin to tell you how many times I was able to see an exact mirror image of my camera in them before I figured out the right angle to set the tripod head and lights at.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The stage remained on the counter for a couple of days, and I did multiple “set ups” with different piles of and colors of the kid paint. It was paramount to me not to use any sort of “professional” grade paint in these experiments – gouache or proper watercolors, for instance – so the 12 pack of school supply paint was exploited and utilized. I had to break it all down on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving so that Our Lady and I could cook the holiday meal, of course.
The “stage” itself is a jury rigged affair. The aforementioned scanner glass was sitting on top of a sheet of black paper, and was backed up by several other sheets of the black paper held together with gaff tape, soda straws, and pieces of a wire hanger. As mentioned, controlling the reflections in the wet pigment was a real pain the neck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Today’s post carries three of my more successful shots from this series, and I plan on doing more of them as the winter months play out.
Tomorrow, we get back to business.
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remain indoors
Astoria cat, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m taking a short break this week, and offering single images of the Internet’s favorite critter. These are all ferals, encountered in the nooks and crannies of NYC which I wander through. Have a great Thanksgiving.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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