Posts Tagged ‘Astoria’
proferred food
Boredom, self hatred, and megalomaniacal fantasy – in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Possessed of a somewhat solitary and depressive personality type, a humble narrator is often forced to lurch forth onto the streets in search of diversion. These excursions are necessary, lest a psychological tumult be allowed to form behind the eyes and between the ears. Proprioception for one such as myself views the world thusly, with everything below the vault of the skull considered as somehow external – arms, legs, gut, and all the rest are merely there. “I” am found a few inches back from and equidistant to the ocular, nasal, mandibular, and auditory apparatus.
I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my regular walks involves heading over to the Hells Gate section of the East River in Astoria from Newtown Pentacle HQ, which is found on the south eastern side of the neighborhood nearby its borders with LIC, Sunnyside, and Woodside. It’s a short walk, by my standards, which – there and back again – usually consumes about two hours of my time and provides some much needed physical exercise.
Saying that, I don’t always process this particular perambulatory route as being a particularly productive one from a photographic point of view.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My colleague Kevin Walsh from Forgotten-NY often wanders through residential neighborhoods and has a fine time of it, but one such as myself shuns populated places. A humble narrator enjoys the howling winds and concrete devastations, and is drawn to lonely, damned, or deserted places. Give me the abandoned, the derelict, the despoiled, the barren, the broken, the horrible. Oh to dance merrily along the poison shoreline and shattered bulkheads of some flowing gelatinous horror, with the night gaunts…
Of course, one cannot spend all of his time at Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Truth be told, one of the things that draws me time and again to Hells Gate is that it’s the antechamber of the “House of Moses,” where mighty Triborough reigns. One of the true signs of a growing madness is working on a “theory of everything,” and I’m afraid to report that one is indeed going down that road. White laboratory coats, long black vinyl gloves, and a series of goggles are on order at a certain Internet retailer named for a South American river system, and genetic samples of the long deceased Mr. Moses are in the freezer.
My plan is to clone the master builder, and release an army of “Mosei” upon the world. They shall pave over everything and create a thousand lane highway circling the globe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My Moses army will pay no mind to complaints from the citizenry, instead they will crush all opposition. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” will be their mantra as they pour concrete for a highway whose path goes right through St. Peter’s in Rome on its way to and through Mecca on its way towards China. The Great Wall? Highway arches will be carved through it, but they will fall short of allowing buses to pass beneath them.
Part the Red Sea? The Mosei will turn the Red Sea into a parking lot dwarfing those of Riis Park or Jones Beach.. Enough of this hippie dippie environmentalist fad, let the automobile reign! The Mosei won’t lead a chosen people, instead they’ll choose which people to lead and where they’ll be led to.
Saying that, Amazon claims they’re out of stock on the mad scientist goggles, so my evil plans will just have to sit on the back burner. Someday, I tell you, someday… a real rain will come…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Megalomaniacal fantasy notwithstanding, one still had a rather formidable workload waiting for him back at HQ, so my sojourn to the forbidden northern coast of Queens was abbreviated and my scuttle turned back towards overly familiar vicinities. For some reason, every time I cross 31st street on my way home from Hells Gate, it feels like I’m passing through the gates of Mordor.
It’s probably the perennial shadows, or the smell of sulfur.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Astoria Blvd., just before Steinway Street, this amusing signage was encountered on the door of a laundromat. One of the fun parts of living in a neighborhood renowned for its enormous immigrant population and legendary “diversity” is signage written by people who have less than a passing familiarity with English language grammar. Most of the neighbors just spell things the way that they sound to them, as is evinced above.
I like to believe that only “cos players” can piss therein.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, August 14th, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, August 24, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. –
Port Newark Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
accomplished whatever
whatever, dude.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you might discern from the shot above, Our Lady of the Pentacle has a lovely set of tomatoes. She’s been busy growing stuff all summer, here at HQ in Astoria. Today’s post is a rather light one, and it’s being published late to boot, which long time readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – will tell you is indicative of an enormous amount of new photos and posts being in production at the moment.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Happily did I observe a flurry of published articles over the last week, proclaiming the Bronx as the new frontier for the Real Estate Industrial Complex. Hopefully, the ruination of Brooklyn and Queens will ebb a bit, as the REBNY shit flies find themselves attracted to those greener pastures and lower property evaluations that are found to the north.
Robert Moses did his level best to annihilate the Bronx decades ago, just as he did to Queens back in the 1930’s and 40’s. Perhaps the REBNY people can finish the job, and finish twisting City Hall’s knife into the “final frontier” by eliminating actual affordable housing in the name of building “affordable housing.” Carrion eaters follow the fecund scent of decaying meat after all, and despite their best efforts they haven’t managed to totally annihilate Brooklyn or Queens yet – they’ve just driven property prices so high that no one can afford to build anything here anymore. Bronx people, if you need to talk, ring us up.
The shit flies will be promising you new schools, community spaces, and waterfront parks – make sure you get them first, before they start to build the condos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
How green does your garden grow? Whatever, dude, whatever.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, August 14th, 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
following day
puzzling things, general weirdness, and an update on that transformer fire in Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Out on the water in NY Harbor recently, the scene above was observed.
Famously, one of those “harbor advocacy” statements which one is oft heard announcing on my walking and boat tours is that “maritime is the greenest way to transport cargo, with a single barge carrying the equivalent of thirty eight trucks worth of stuff,” but you seldom see it literally expressed by a barge carrying an actual truck. My rhetorical statement is actually built around a full sized flat top barge carrying cargo containers and guided by harbor sized tugboat type of scenario, rather than a smallish work barge that’s carrying a dump truck and being towed by a little push boat.
The push boat is the TJ Miller, btw, which operates of Staten Island’s Millers Landing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Passing by the Fuller Brush, or Flatiron building if you must, recently – I couldn’t get the whole 23 Skidoo stuff to exit my brain. I went to college a few blocks away at the School of Visual Arts, and Manhattan’s 23rd street was – and remains – one of the main thoroughfares of my life. Post college, most of the advertising agencies which I worked for were located somewhere within a few blocks of the Flatiron for some reason. I seldom photograph along its route, however, as the School of Visual Arts is – as mentioned – just down the block. They have a world class photography program there, and the 23rd street corridor is probably one of the most “captured” spots on the planet. While I was at SVA, I was in the illustration program, so unfortunately I haven’t got much in the way of documentation of the 1980’s version of it as I was drawing comics and painting and stuff back then.
It makes me wonder, however. Taking the Flatiron as an example, which is one of the most photographed buildings in NYC, and has been for a century… one ponders what information about our environment could be gleaned from assembling the decades long recordings of its appearance. Weather patterns, erosion, particulate levels in the air?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in Astoria, after that transformer explosion I described to you a couple of weeks ago, it took the Con Ed guys about three days – working 24 hours, mind you – to put things back in order. There’s still crews working around two to three blocks north and to south, as presumptively wherever the wires connected to that failed equipment led to must have been also been damaged or affected by the event. That’s my guess anyway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It took the Con Ed crews just under a day to get the blacked out block of 44th street between 34 avenue and Broadway back on the grid, but that’s when their real job began. I don’t know too much about their operation, but I can describe how it played out. First there were emergency crews who arrived in red trucks who “put out the fire.” They were followed by a far larger contingent of blue truck crews who arrived with a variety of equipment and what seemed like a third party contractor. As the project went on, the cable trucks arrived, one of which is in the shots above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The (seemingly) third party contractor got busy digging up a pretty sizable trench leading from the transformer and following the curbline. The blue truck guys were moving in and out the manholes and had a substantial amount of equipment deployed. They were all working during the sweltering July heat, incidentally.
About three days after the transformer fire, they all suddenly left.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just another blackout in Astoria, Queens, I guess.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Tuesday, July 26, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. –
Glittering Realms Walking tour,
with NYC H2O. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, July 27, 1st trip – 4:50 p.m. 2nd trip – 6:50 p.m. –
2 Newtown Creek Boat Tours,
with Open House NY. Click here for more details.
Saturday, July 30, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
DUPBO Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
small item
Thunderstorm action, and the Boss of The Tacos, in Astoria, Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You might recall that on the afternoon of Thursday, the 14th of July, a crazy powerful thunderstorm washed through the City. It happened that one was out and about, running errands, and as always I had my camera with me when the skies grew dark. What was weird about this storm was that it presented a nearly vertical line, and that to the east – skies were blue and the sun shining.
This created some VERY interesting lighting effects.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The whole neighborhood here in Astoria knew that there was a deluge coming, and everybody was scurrying around trying to accomplish one last thing before sheltering from the coming storm. Personally, knowing that I’d never get back to HQ before the rain hit, a quick visit to my local bar allowed me a bit of cover and had the corollary benefit of allowing a pint of beer to be poured in.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rain blew in along a wall shaped vector, and the air was suddenly filled with what had to be hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in a few seconds. As is typical of thunderstorms, however, the event only lasted for around twenty minutes or so. That’s about how long it took me to quaff my pint of beer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As there is no better moment, air quality wise, in NYC than the half hour or so following a storm like this, I decided to order a second pint and settle alongside a familiar table outside. That’s when this enigmatic food truck rolled by, which was emblazoned with a screed reading “The Boss of The Tacos.”
There is a reason, after all, that I carry a camera with me everywhere I go. Astoria Queens rules.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, July 23, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking tour,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
Cancelled due to extreme weather, will be rescheduled.
Tuesday, July 26, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. –
Glittering Realms Walking tour,
with NYC H2O. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, July 27, 1st trip – 4:50 p.m. 2nd trip – 6:50 p.m. –
2 Newtown Creek Boat Tours,
with Open House NY. Click here for more details.
Saturday, July 30, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
DUPBO Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
attic seclusion
A travlin’ man, that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is Astoria, Queens’s 31st street and the elevated subway tracks which both distinguish and curse the spot once known to a newly consolidated City of Greater New York as Second Avenue, and to the Village of Astoria section of an independent municipality called Long Island City as Debevoise Street. These particular tracks, which are known to the MTA as the IRT Astoria Line, opened for business back in February of 1917, and today carry the N and Q lines between Ditmars Blvd. and the Queensboro Bridge.
Saying that, the predecessor of what we know as the Q Line (which is part of MTA’s “B” Division’s BMT service) began coming to Astoria at the end of April of back in 1950, after the purpose built IRT platforms were modified to accept the BMT trains.
It’s actually called the Brighton Line, the Q, and that should tell you everything about where I was going last Monday morning.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
According to the MTA website, it was only going to take me 45 minutes to cross the western tip of a Long Island, from North to South by South East. This calculation proved somewhat true, and the journey took me around 50-55 minutes. On the way, I listened to an audiobook of H.P. Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu” just to get into the mood.
One had finally found the time, you see.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the other side of my journey from Astoria, the first thing I noticed were the elevated tracks which lead to the Coney Island Stillwell Terminal. Normal people call that the F, but not me. What I see are the tracks of the IND Culver line, and a rapid transit connection that runs between southeast Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens.
So… lessee… that means that even without the proposed BQX streetcar system, you can connect from two wildly separate sections of Queens to the same locus point in Brooklyn. It also suggests that since you can go further and faster using this already extant path… bah, what does logic have to do with De Blasio’s New York?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in the 1980’s, when a humble narrator was still a youth, this was one of the best spots in the City to spot graffiti clad subway cars, as they exited out of the terminal. This was also an area infamous for the presence of crack dealers and prostitutes. It wasn’t quite “do or die” around here, but the area in which “The Donald’s Dad” Fred Trump made his fortune was pretty rough “back in the day.”
And that’s before the Russian mobsters arrived.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My little journey was spurred on by the NYCID card which was obtained back during the winter, and more than once at this – your Newtown Pentacle – you’ve read of my desire to visit all of NYC’s premiere animal prisons. In particular, the one that’s found here in Southeast Brooklyn which I haven’t visited since grade school.
This area, less than an hour from home in Astoria (where I’ve lived for around a third of my life), is close to the part of Brooklyn which I spent the first third of my life in and is the outer edge of my old stomping grounds. Specifically speaking, my family lived about 2-3 miles east of here at the Canarsie/Flatlands border, but in the broader sense – I felt like was returning to my home town.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Lenape tribe which lived here called this barrier island “Narrioch,” which means “land without shadows.” Given that I spend most of my time in North Brooklyn and Western Queens along a waterway which the Lenape referred to as “Hohosboco” or “the bad water place” and which modernity refers to as the Newtown Creek – seeing Jamaica Bay rising on the horizon beyond Coney Island… it got me all nostalgic.
That’s when I dropped the Lovecraft audiobook and started listening to Iron Maiden.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, July 23, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Calvary Cemetery Walking tour,
with Brooklyn Brainery. Click here for more details.
Tuesday, July 26, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. –
Glittering Realms Walking tour,
with NYC H2O. Click here for more details.
Wednesday, July 27, 1st trip – 4:50 p.m. 2nd trip – 6:50 p.m. –
2 Newtown Creek Boat Tours,
with Open House NY. Click here for more details.
Saturday, July 30, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
DUPBO Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
Sunday, August 21, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. –
Poison Cauldron Walking Tour,
with Atlas Obscura. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 