Posts Tagged ‘Blissville’
minor detail
It’s National Cordon Bleu day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Totemic exemplars of existential horror are everywhere you look in the Newtown Pentacle. To wit, at the border of Sunnyside and Blissville, you’ll find the Long Island Expressway, which was sited along it back in the 1930’s. Pictured above is the overpass which carries Greenpoint Avenue across the expressway, where a “ghost bike” has been encountered for several years. Ghost Bikes, for those of you not in the know, signify the spot where a bicyclist died after being struck by a motor vehicle. Post facto the installation of this Ghost Bike, the NYC DOT has since installed a bicycle lane, which is a badly placed one given that heavy trucks and thousands of automobiles routinely execute turns on this traffic choked overpass.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ghost bike, as originally encountered a few years ago, and before the bike lane was striped in.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Walking over to Greenpoint from Astoria the other night, for a meeting between the DEP and the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee, the scenario above was witnessed. It appeared that a vehicle of some sort had taken out not just the ghost bike, but had also snapped the steel signpost it was affixed to. The thing I’d like to point out is that the driver of this vehicle had to have been “busting a move” through the bike lane, which proves a point I’ve been talking about for awhile.
You’re not even safe on the freaking sidewalk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bike lanes area a fairly decisive issue amongst some Queensicans. More often than not, the argument against these things involves people protecting their street parking or something. I see bicyclists completely ignoring the street markings for these bike lanes and doing whatever the hell they want to – sidewalks, wrong way, running lights, all kinds of stuff. Everybody has probably ridden a bike at one time or another, everyone has also done something stupid on their bikes – that’s not the point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I see some truly tragic implementations of this bike lane thing, which were clearly drawn out in an ideological fashion by people who are staring at maps of remote places they’ve never visited. The bike lanes on, and leading to, the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge are ludicrous and actually cause a constant traffic jam mid bridge – it was and is far safer for the bikes to ride on the sidewalk of the bridge than to try and navigate the gravel and debris which litters the GP Ave. Bridge lanes. The ones here at Greenpoint Avenue and the LIE are also a disaster. Again, it’s better for – and is the observed custom of – bicyclists to use the sidewalk to cross the overpass.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s what 5:41 p.m. looks like on a weekday at this intersection. That white SUV in the foreground is the head of a vehicular snake of east bound stop and go traffic which coils all the way back to Midtown Manhattan. It’s so busy that NYPD has permanently stationed traffic control officers here during the rush hours. If there has to be a bike lane on Greenpoint Avenue, lets widen the sidewalk and line it with those concrete jersey barriers to protect both scuttling narrator and the riders of those mechanical contraptions called bicycles. That would be smart.
If this spot can kill a ghost bike… the mind boggles over the implications for one such as myself.
Upcoming Tours and events
First Calvary Cemetery walking tour, May 6th.
With Atlas Obscura’s Obscura Day 2017, Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour – details and tix here.
MAS Janeswalk free walking tour, May 7th.
Visit the new Newtown Creek Alliance/Broadway Stages green roof, and the NCA North Henry Street Project – details and tix here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
utterly devoid
It’s National Potato Salad Day, National Peanut Cluster Day, and National Pancake Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Where to go, what to see, and why bother? Such are the thoughts which intrude and occlude whenever one such as myself leaves the house. Someone else has always gotten there first, and there are certain scenes which – while they never disappoint – I’ve visited literally thousands of times. I’d like to travel abroad, photographing exotic animals and esoteric people, but that would likely involve a good deal of finance, and planning, and I hate to fly. Also, it may be too hot, or cold, and I’ll likely get sunburned. Physical discomfort will likely result, my cherished preconceptions would likely be challenged, or I could end up being killed and eaten by a pack of monkeys.
Ultimately, everyone and everything will eventually make it to Queens anyway so why leave? As the band TLC advised – stick to the hills and waterfalls you’re used to. We’ve got the monkey situation sorted out around here already, there are no uncaged hippos or other large mammalian killers (other than mankind), and I know every possible private spot there is to urinate around these parts. As a note: There are two public bathrooms in Calvary Cemetery, but the one at the Review Avenue gates is often locked. You really, really shouldn’t let loose elsewhere in the cemetery. That’s just disrespectful.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On a recent wander through Calvary, wherein I was exploring the eastern side of the polyandrion, a humble narrator became the focus of attention for a group of Crows. Possibly Ravens, but I don’t know what the difference between the two are. My belief is that they saw my filthy black raincoat flapping about and figured that one of their own had taken to the ground, but I’m an idiot. As is usually the case, for some reason birds aren’t afraid of me. I can walk through a flock of pigeons or sparrows pecking at the ground and they neither scatter into the air nor otherwise acknowledge my presence.
For some reason this is equal parts disconcerting and deeply satisfying.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned above, Long Island City is famously home neither to packs of carnivorous monkeys, nor lurking hippopotamus, or even large feline predators. There are absolutely no giant fire breathing lizards or irradiated turtles lurking in Newtown Creek, which categorically never attacked Maspeth in June or September of 1958.
Our big problem are the vampires, of course, who lurk in the shadowed rafters of the Long Island Expressway during the day, as well as the elevated subway tracks around Queens Plaza and Roosevelt Avenue. There are reportedly “things” down in the sewers which the NYC DEP refuses to acknowledge, bizarre abominations and parodies of the primatological branch which IND platform based commuters sometimes spot moving about in the fuligin shadows of the subway tunnels. The MTA denies their existence too, calling them “urban legends.”
There are the rat kings, the cockroach collective consiousness, and the aboriginal horrors which lurk at Hallets Cove – but that’s another story. If you ask the U.S. Coast Guard, they’ll deny those reports offered by professional sailors of a sea monster dwelling in the turbidity of Hells Gate, one which only emerges during powerful thunder storms.
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future freedom
It’s Revolution and Youth Day, in the nation of Tunisia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another day in Calvary, another dead New York City Irishman who changed the world.
During the period between the Civil and First World Wars, the well fed Upper Classes began to comment on the physical degeneracy of the Working Class. Back then, it was expected for an employee to labor 16 hours a day for six days a week. Sunday morning was for Church, but Sunday afternoons saw huge numbers filing into saloons and bars and getting hammered on Liquor. Government wise, it’s the reason why the so called “blue laws” were passed – banning the sale of alcohol on Sundays, but there’s always a way to find a drink (or Heroin, in the modern sense). The working class exhibited horrible levels of physical fitness back then – I guess something about having been a starving peasant who survived a transatlantic journey in steerage and now working sixteen hour shifts in some hellish fertilizer mill or sugar plant, being exposed to every conceivable industrial poison and darting amongst dangerous machines with zero safeguard… it wears you down. The tenement life, with its disease, crowding, poor quality food and water probably didn’t help either.
Across the industrial world, team sports and “physical culture” were created and encouraged, and modern day sports like Baseball and “track and field” promulgated to the unwashed. All roads lead to Calvary, of course, but the general idea was that by getting a bit of exercise – the road to the grave could be lengthened. The creation of the modern Olympic Games were a part of this physical culture movement. You couldn’t work in a factory if you could barely stand up, after all, so the famously sober Captains of Industry supported this burgeoning movement. After all – a well muscled employee can probably do the work of two and spare you a payroll expense.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Amateur Athletic Associations were formed, with the goal of toughening up the working class and getting them to lower the shot glass in the name of hurling a javelin, or sprinting a hundred yards, or tossing a ball around. Knowing that the fathers of America’s working class were already ruined, the organizers of this new physical culture movement decided to focus in on the sons. The fathers mainly became interested in “athletics” when they realized a new excuse to bet and gamble had appeared that wasn’t as “fixable” or rigged by the Upper Classes (like betting on the horses), but there you go.
In New York City, the Public Schools Athletic Committee was formed, and was headed by a fellow named James E. Sullivan.
Native to New York City, James E. Sullivan lived his entire life in what would be considered southern Harlem today, and his last address was found on 114th street. He was the assistant director of the American team sent to the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, and Secretary for the American team at the 1904-1912 games in St. Louis, London, and Stockholm. Sullivan was everywhere in the 19th century United States that an athletics competition was underway, and served NYC’s “Metropolitan Association of the Amateur Athletic Union” in various functions on its board of directors for thirty four years. Sullivan’s professional life was in the publishing field, and he was the founder and publisher of “The Athletic News.”
James E. Sullivan wasn’t just successful in life, he was adored by all the right people. He was honored by and appointed to various National roles by Presidents McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Taft. The Kings of Greece and Sweden both decorated him, and honored him with feudal associations in Europe (specifically the Golden Cross of the Knights of the Saviour).
That’s his grave in LIC’s Calvary Cemetery above, and when his funeral cortège was moving from there (Roman Catholic Church of St. Aloyslus, at 132d Street and Seventh Avenue) to here at Calvary, the road was lined with 60,000 schoolboys mourning his passing – according to the NY Times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
James E. Sullivan died on a surgeons table in Manhattan’s Mt. Sinai Hospital at 11 a.m., on the 16th of September in 1914. He was being treated for an intestinal condition. Sullivan had been ill since surviving a train wreck in 1911, over in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Inscribed with a white bronze plaque, the monument is dedicated to “James Edward Sullivan, born Nov. 18, 1862 and passed on Sept. 16, 1914. A second carving lists Margaret Eugenia Sullivan, born July 26, 1856 and died July 16, 1923.”
The plaque’s inscription reads “A tribute from the Metropolitan Association of the Amateur Athletic Union.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
– photo via Wikipedia, click it for their page on James E. Sullivan.
You never know who, or what you’re going to find at Calvary Cemetery in LIC’s Blissville neighborhood. It’s a history book written in marble and bronze, found along the banks of the lamentable Newtown Creek in the borough of Queens.
Tomorrow, something completely different – at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
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ultimate blackness
It’s Al Capone, Betty White, and Andy Kaufman’s birthday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in LIC’s Blissville neighborhood, you’ll find the principal burying grounds of the Roman Catholic Church in 19th and early 20th century NYC, called First Calvary Cemetery. It’s called “First” Calvary, as there are three other properties found to the east in Woodside that the church refers to as “Second,” “Third,” and “Fourth.” First, or Old, Calvary has been in use since 1848. Calvary Cemetery is on a hill overlooking the Newtown Creek and is surrounded by the industrial zones of Long Island City and West Maspeth.
The majority of burials in First Calvary occurred between its founding and the Second World War, which means that the monuments found within its fence lines have endured the effects of the endemic atmospheric pollution typical of industrial America prior to the passing of the 1972 Federal Clean Air Act. Acid rain wasn’t a term used prior to that legislation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Granite seems to be the best choice for a monument able to weather the atmospherics hereabouts.
Marble rots away, obscuring the legend, iconography, and screed carven into the memorial stones. If you were to run your fingers across the surface of the stone pictured above, a sandy grit would transfer from it to your skin. To be fair, though, there used to be an acid factory right across the street from Calvary Cemetery.
That factory was opened in 1866, and was first known as “General Chemical,” then as “Nichols Chemical,” and then as “Phelps Dodge.” Phelps Dodge, of course, is one of the named “potentially responsible parties” or “PRP’s” in the ongoing Federal Superfund situation on Newtown Creek being investigated by the Environmental Protection Agency.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Phelps Dodge vacated its property long ago. Back in 1901, when the corporate entity was still called the Nichols Chemical Company, community complaints and a law suit by the cemetery forced them to build what was – at the time – the largest chimney in the United States to release their acidic waste gases high above the ground. It was supported by wooden piles driven into the landfilled Newtown Creek marshlands their factory was built on. These piles supported a 25 foot deep concrete foundation, which in turn provided a stable enough base for a 22,000 ton, 367 feet tall chimney.
Roughly translating that to modern day “building stories,” this was a 36-37 story tall chimney.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For comparison, the sapphire megalith of Long Island City is 53 stories in height, but three of those stories are below the ground. The Nichols/Phelps complex employed close to 1,500 people back in 1901. The acid factory was merely part of their production line, and the high grade sulfuric acid they were known for as a mere co-product for their true profit center.
The main focus of their business was the refining of copper. The company was producing some 517,000 tons of the stuff, annually, back in 1901 when that chimney went up. Most of the landfill that the company had used to build out the marshy shoreline of Newtown Creek, and upon which they built their factories, was material harvested from the refining processes – specifically slag from their redoubts and furnaces. The original shoreline of Newtown Creek was anywhere from 500-1,000 feet back from the modern shoreline, more or less where the Long Island Railroad’s Lower Montauk Branch tracks are found today.
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sterile abysses
It’s National Religious Freedom Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is a fan of the U.K.’s long running science fiction serial “Doctor Who.” A villain recently added to the rogues gallery of the time traveling television hero is a race of aliens called the Weeping Angels. These Weeping Angels appear to be statues, if you’re looking at them. Blink, or turn your head, and the Angel statue comes to life and “gets ya.”
I’m often reminded of these fictional extraterrestrials while wandering through Calvary Cemetery in LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I mention the Weeping Angels, as it can often be quite a creepy experience solitarily waltzing through Calvary Cemetery. I’ll find myself fixated on a certain bit of statuary, focusing in on its details, as with the Neville monument pictured above. In my mind’s eye, the proverbial “other shoe” is about to drop at any second when the statue will turn its head and stare back at me.
If they ever find me stone cold dead somewhere in Calvary, it will likely be the case that a statue reached out to me from its perch and a blood vessel in my head burst from the purest form of terror.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s probably the life sized statues that are the creepiest ones. Covered in nitre and lichens, there’s a lot of true art on display in this – the principal burial ground of the Roman Catholic Church during the heroic age of 19th century New York City. Mortuary sculpture doesn’t get its due, unless it’s literally older than Croesus, in which case it’ll be found at the Metropolitan Museum or the Louvre.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A truly striking bit of carving is found nearby the Greenpoint Avenue gates of the cemetery. The granite Quirke Naughton monument is stunning, and has survived the century it has stood here in fine fettle. The angel adorning it is more than seven feet tall, and the cruciform has to be at least ten to fifteen feet in height. Were this one of Doctor Who’s Weeping Angels – which might sweep a humble narrator up into its otherworldly embrace – only that inhuman thing which cannot possibly exist but nevertheless inhabits the sapphire megalith of Long Island City, and which contemptuously stares down upon the world of men with its three lobed burning eye, would know what became of me.
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The Newtown Pentacle 