Posts Tagged ‘Brooklyn’
Archives #034
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself lived in Astoria for about nineteen years and I think that I walked over the Pulaski Bridge between LIC and Greenpoint at least once a week for about fifteen of those years. I christened the surrounding area as DUPBO – Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp. It seems many of the mouth breathers from Maspeth take umbrage at this, but I really don’t care.
Over the years, the Maspeth crowd always disappointed me, regarding Newtown Creek. The general sentiment there is to pave it over.
2018’s ‘professional duty’ wandered around ‘DUPBO’ in Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The part of Brooklyn I grew up in is practically not in the same Borough as Williamsburg/Greenpoint. My Dad went to Automotive for high school, I’d mention, and back when I was a teenager – if the subject of either neighborhood came up – he’d say ‘Stay outah Nort Brooklyn.’
Long story short, I was a Good Humor Man for most of a summer at the end of high school, and my ice cream selling partner and I ended up getting into a high speed (30mph, as these trucks are not quick) ice cream truck chase with Mister Softee on the Belt Parkway (starting all the way out by Kings Plaza), which ended in Williamsburg when our truck’s engine conked out. Softee escaped the wrath for poaching our territory.
Needing a ride back home from Williamsburg, I called the old man, waking him up. I told him the tale and when I mentioned where we were, he slammed the phone receiver down. Back then, you could hear the phone’s bell chime ring just before the signal went out. A half hour later, the old man shows up in the 1963 Buick Skylark, and me and my partner get in the car. I turn to thank the old man, and then get popped on the side of my head as he said ‘I toldja to stay outah Nort Brooklyn.’
Other than an Italian bakery on Grand street, which made particularly lovely cookies, he avoided the area like the plague. He would have really been pissed off if he was alive when I was doing the whole Newtown Creek thing.
2019’s ‘thing depicted’ focused in on the Verrazano Bridge. This was about the halfway point in the ice cream truck chase.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m not sure what my ‘long walk’ possibilities are going to be, for a while. I might have to buy a bike or something. All of these trails I’ve been walking here in Pittsburgh are bikes too, so… I guess it would be nice to have some range as well – distance here in Pittsburgh is very, very different than it is in New York with its feature rich environment.
These archive posts are reaching into Newtown Pentacle’s backups, and are pulling posts that went public on this date, in their respective years, going back to 2009. This practice will continue until I’m back on both feet full time, and new photos and stories can be gathered. For anyone who hasn’t heard the news, I broke my left ankle at the end of September.
In 2023, ‘low to high’ was published, which discusses a section of a somewhat long walk in Pittsburgh. I got to see a train!
Back tomorrow.
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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.
Archives #018
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the hills that I stand on is that the NYC Subway system makes for an excellent photography workshop. Incredibly difficult conditions below – quite dark and very bright at the same time, with a large and reflective surfaced subject matter that’s moving at a pretty good speed through the frame… kind of difficult. I always had my camera out in NYC, instead of it riding around in a bag.
This 2014 post described the many precautions against ghostly and metaphysical invaders which HQ was being prepared with that year, in advance of Halloween’s ghostly assaults.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s ‘Saw Lady’ Natalia Paruz in the shot above, performing in a tomb at a cemetery in Brooklyn, in the shot above. I ‘dragged the shutter’ to get that ghostly quality while Natalia suffered the ecstasies of her melody.
In 2015, October 30th saw this post published, describing a nighttime visit to Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn with Atlas Obscura.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is nothing as surreal as being on a subway all by yourself. It ain’t right to occupy this sort of liminal space all alone.
This post from 2017 is a bit of an odd duck, and I seem to recall wanting to write a post in ‘full Lovecraft’ – for old times’ sake – about the experience.
“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.
things whispered
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So… this post is the one which I have been dreading, since it means that it’s all really done now. The last Newtown Creek Alliance meeting I would be attending at 520 Kingsland Avenue, situated amongst the concrete devastations of Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section, is when I shot these photos. This is an area one such as myself refers to as “DUGABO.”
There’s the Sewer Plant in Greenpoint, pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was the evening of Tuesday the 22nd of November, the same day as the last NYC Ferry ride and photo session on the East River which has been discussed in prior posts this week. My Pal Val had dropped me off in Astoria after the boat, whereupon I then jumped into my own automobile, and zipped off to Greenpoint.
I’m really enjoying this whole mobility thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
NCA had a board meeting, and we talked about several items and points of NCA business and policy, and at the end I submitted my resignation.
And that’s how the whole Newtown Creek thing ends. For now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After the meeting ended, I dropped one friend off at the G train, and then took two others back with me to Queens and dropped them off. Upon returning to Astoria, I found a parking spot directly across the street from my house – which alternate side parking rules wouldn’t affect for two whole days – and the third day was Thanksgiving! I thereby exclaimed “ZaZa!”
Everything was coming up Mitchhouse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back at HQ, we packed and packed. We edited down our possessions and then discarded more. We were within a few days of our escape plan finally playing out.
But there was still so much to do…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We made it, in the end, but this was a mountain that was moved.
Things wouldn’t be approaching “settled down” for a couple of weeks, though, and a humble narrator in particular still had a lot of “have-to’s” and “necessary’s” to handle. I’d be back and forth to Pittsburgh twice, for a start…
More next week.
“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.
humming music
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The John J Harvey Fireboat stopped at the dock in Blissville, along Newtown Creek, where we picked up the majority of the people who accompanied me on my last navigation of the waterway. The crowd debarked, although some of us stayed onboard for the ride back to Manhattan’s West Side. The Greenpoint Avenue Bridge had opened again, and allowed us to pass.
The Captain of the Fireboat, Huntley Gill, decided to offer me a salute and fired the water monitors onboard the Harvey for a display.
My pal Scott Wolpow managed to grab some video of that, here it is:
– video by Scott Wolpow
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I managed to get one or two last shots from the water on our way back to the East River, and eventual docking on the Hudson at Manhattan’s Pier 66. That’s the recycling company which I got rid of all my electronic and metallic junk at, dubbed Allocco Recycling, by the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek was a masters class in environmentalism, government, and the non profit business world for me. I learned so much, from so many smart people. I stayed honest here, even when I had to compromise, which is something I’m proud to say. Unfortunately, a definitive answer to the only question that truly matters was never arrived at. The question?
Who can guess, all that there is, which might be buried down there – in the sedimentary black mayonnaise – underlying the lugubrious waters of the fabulous Newtown Creek?
“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.
sunlight lies
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Captain Huntley Gill and the crew of the John J Harvey Fireboat navigated their vessel some three miles back from the East River into English Kills, a tributary of Newtown Creek, and executed a turnaround nearby the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge. We started heading westwards then, and back towards the East River.
To say that a humble narrator’s emotional state was complicated would be a bit of an understatement. It’s not always apparent when the cover closes on a chapter of your life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s really all over, now. Especially right now.
As you’re reading this post, which published at 11 am on November 30th, Our Lady of the Pentacle and I are currently driving to Pittsburgh. Literally – right now – and as of 11 am, I’ve been on the road for about 5 hours. We’ve got a car full of the sort of things that you don’t entrust to a mover – cameras, computers, valuables – with us. Tomorrow morning, we’re taking possession of our new digs and starting the “moving in” process.
This wasn’t – as it turned out – the last time I’d be on the Fireboat, but it was the last time that I’d be taking a group out on Newtown Creek. More on my last trip on the Harvey in a future post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To everything there is a season, huh?
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 