Posts Tagged ‘Brooklyn’
malignity expressed
Nighted travels on the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In yesterday’s post, I described the… nana nana nana Bat Boat!…. excursion I joined in with that my pals at Newtown Creek Alliance and NYC Audubon had organized which saw some three dozen bat enthusiasts take to the water in search of the children of the night. Today, here’s a few shots I cracked out on the way back to the North Brooklyn Boat Club dock in Greenpoint found alongside the Puslaski Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the “operating the camera” POV, these were actually kind of difficult shots to gather. It was crazy dark, as there aren’t many light sources directed at the water, and when there are they’re explosively bright like the ones on the Kosciuszcko Bridge. Generally speaking, I was using two of my “night lenses” which offer apertures as wide as f1.8.
Shooting “wide open,” however, introduces an extremely shallow depth of field into the shots. It’s quite the endeavor to find a focal point which offers an acceptable level of sharpness to the entire shot at these settings. Things were further complicated by the fact that I was in a giant canoe with six other people who were all rowing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lot of the “shooting in the subways” stuff I do is in preparation for opportunities like this, which in the past have produced few or no usable shots. Practice, practice, practice – that’s how you get to Carnegie Hall.
Oddly enough, for the last few weeks, I’ve found myself shooting at f1.8 in bright sunlight, with insanely fast shutter speeds like 1/6000th of a second. What can I say, I like to “mix it up.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Frequent commenter George the Atheist asked yesterday, in a comment, about the safety aspect of paddling around in Newtown Creek. I offered a short reply, but here’s the official story:
The stuff you really have to worry about are the bottom sediments, the so called “black mayonnaise” which is about 20-30 feet down. If you’re coming into contact with that, you’ve got a whole other series of problems going on which involve a lack of buoyancy and oxygen deprivation. As far as the biological activity in the water, that’s determined ultimately by the last time that it rained, and whether or not that rain has triggered the “combined sewer outfalls” to release untreated wastewater into the creek.
My pals at North Brooklyn Boat Club who were running the expedition are seriously good at their jobs, and everybody out with us were wearing life vests. Additionally, T. Willis Elkins of North Brooklyn Boat Club (and NCA project manager) is in charge of the water testing program at NCA and if he says its “Kosher” to go out paddling you can take that to the bank.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying that, you’d definitely want to wash up after paddling around and certainly before picking up a chunk of food and sticking it into your mouth. In my mind, you’d want to do that anytime you eat, especially after engaging in hand shaking activities with people you meet.
I hate that plague passing custom, as a note, especially when I’m doing a tour and thirty strangers all want to shake hands. One insists on touching elbows instead, if need be.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As we were returning to the dock at North Brooklyn Boat Club, I whipped out a pocket flashlight and illuminated this juvenile Night Heron. The bird then proceeded to lunge at us, aiming its path at my head.
Everyone, and every thing, hates me.
Tours and Events
Canal to Coast: Reuniting the Waters Boat Tour. Only $5!
Thurs, August 30, 2018, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM with Waterfront Alliance
Learn about the origins of Brooklyn’s Erie Basin as the Erie Canal’s ultimate destination, and its current role as a vital resource for maritime industry on this guided tour of Red Hook’s Erie Basin and the Brooklyn working waterfront, departing from and returning to New York Water Taxi’s Red Hook Dock. Tickets here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
well marked
Nana nana nana, Batboat!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, Sunday last, my pals at Newtown Creek Alliance and NYC Audubon set up an event which would see a group of three dozen Brooklyn bat enthusiasts climb into canoes at dusk and ply the lugubrious waters of the Newtown Creek in search of urban bats. How, I ask, could a humble narrator not want to come along?
Bat Boat!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was in one the two gigantic canoes maintained by the North Brooklyn Boat Club for such endeavors, and since I make great ballast, was sitting up front in the bow of the thing. All told, we had seven canoes out on the water.
Bat Boat!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Audubon people were all geared up with electronic bat detectors (ultrasonic microphone doohickeys) and other frammistats. Bat experts were on hand to answer questions, and copies of “Bat International” magazines offered.
Bat Boat!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now, I know what you’re thinking here, but at the 520 Kingsland Avenue Green Roof nearby the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, they’ve got bat detecting equipment installed and have – in fact – detected bats.
Bat Boat!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was onboard mainly for the opportunity to shoot some shots from the water at night. Our original plan was to head into Dutch Kills and bat hunt there, but an unusually high tide precluded that option so we headed down the main channel for a couple of miles. No need to go to the gym on Monday for the bat crowd, as rowing is great cardio.
Bat Boat!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the end we didn’t see or ultrasonically detect any bats, for which the bat experts offered several reasons. It’s my belief that, just like everybody else in NYC during the last week of August, the bats were probably on vacation and taking advantage of the coming Labor Day weekend to extend their time off.
Bat Boat!
Tours and Events
Canal to Coast: Reuniting the Waters Boat Tour. Only $5!
Thurs, August 30, 2018, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM with Waterfront Alliance
Learn about the origins of Brooklyn’s Erie Basin as the Erie Canal’s ultimate destination, and its current role as a vital resource for maritime industry on this guided tour of Red Hook’s Erie Basin and the Brooklyn working waterfront, departing from and returning to New York Water Taxi’s Red Hook Dock. Tickets here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
sallies abroad
No matter where you go, there you are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One spends a great deal of his time gazing in wonder and astonishment at the City of Greater New York, and no place moreso than Astoria here in the Borough of Queens. When I mention Astoria to people who live in other boroughs, they immediately go to the “Greek” thing, but whereas we still have a substantial Hellenic population hereabouts it ain’t the 1970’s no more. In my observation, there really isn’t a single dominant group in Astoria anymore, unless you start lumping folks together into “racial” groupings like “Latino” or “Black” or “Asian” or “European.” It’s a fairly unsophisticated way to look at people, in my opinion, using this sort of categorizing. One such as myself prefers to see people as individuals rather than as part of a cultural or socioeconomic super group, but I am famously not enamored with identity politics.
I guess it’s human nature to try and stick strangers into a tribal box, and define them by where they’re from. For the identity politics crowd, this means that they’re constantly surprised when assumptions about some stranger’s politics or lifestyle don’t turn out to be true. Identity politics are ultimately “nationalism” when you get down to it, just on a different side of the aisle from what you’d normally associate with the term. I find it dehumanizing when somebody categorizes me as “Jewish” or “a Yank,” and try not to do it myself. As I tell people constantly, it’s “way down the list” when I’m describing someone whom they like to noodle with or where their family is from.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Breaking into ever smaller groups seems to be the fashion at the moment, however, and folks do it to themselves. This sort of fragmentation works beautifully for the political establishment, and allows them to target either the “one legged transgender Peruvians” or “three eyed second generation Lebanese home owners” vote during election season. Are you a white small business owner who fears clear blue skies since you have been selling umbrellas since 1987 on Steinway Street? A woman of color who receives too much mail? A non binary gender neutral hog butcher disturbed about the new LED street lamps? Like riding bikes? How about a shepherd in traditionally male dominated field who has become separated from one of your charges?
Don’t worry Little Bo Peep, I’ve proposed legislation in the Assembly to place a non GMO fed and cruelty free chicken specifically in your pot. Me, I’m a “big tent” kind of guy. What have we got in common, and why is it so hard to resist it when a politician insists on using our divisions to distract and work us?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bah. Old man shakes fist at cloud, right?
Kids these days.
Tours and Events
Canal to Coast: Reuniting the Waters Boat Tour. Only $5!
Thurs, August 30, 2018, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM with Waterfront Alliance
Learn about the origins of Brooklyn’s Erie Basin as the Erie Canal’s ultimate destination, and its current role as a vital resource for maritime industry on this guided tour of Red Hook’s Erie Basin and the Brooklyn working waterfront, departing from and returning to New York Water Taxi’s Red Hook Dock. Tickets here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
curling tighter
You won’t need a sweater today, as today is a sweater.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Uncharacteristically, one doesn’t have too much to say today. It was a fairly busy weekend, which included doing a well attended tour for Newtown Creek Alliance on Friday night (this one is called Infrastructure Creek), drinking about thirty gallons of water on Saturday and then hanging out with my friends and neighbors in Astoria on Saturday night, and then waiting for the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself to attain the right position in the sky about six o’clock for a photo expedition to industrial Maspeth and Newtown Creek on Sunday.
You’ll see those Sunday night shots later on this week, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a note, with all of the rain during the last couple of weeks, Newtown Creek is positively boiling with bacteria. Additionally, it’s boiling from the heat wave. This kind of heat reduces the amount of oxygen in the water, allowing anaerobic bacterial specie their season. The rainy weather means that the combined sewer system is carrying a lot of the fecund foodstuff that these anaerobic bacteria feed on into the tepid water. Their digestive exhalations are rich in hydrogen sulfide compounds, which means that “Eau de Creek” is staining the air column for blocks and blocks around the waterway.
There’s also a lot of floatables (plastics, garbage etc.) and sheens of various oils and greases visible in the waters of Newtown Creek. I hate you all, accordingly, but it makes for good photos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been contracted to conduct a boat tour at the end of the month commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal, which will involve the Gowanus area in South Brooklyn. I’ll post ticketing links next week, but August 30th is the date for the thing, which will leave from Lower Manhattan. Most of what I’m going to be narrating about is already in my quiver, but I’m going to be heading over to South Brooklyn a few times this month to “get granular” about the grain terminals and former NYS Barge Canal properties around Erie Basin and Gowanus Bay which will be part of the “speechifying.”
Additionally, I’m looking forward to the opening of the new NYC Ferry route to Sound View in the Bronx. Of all five theme parks in NYC, the Bronx (or Frontierland) is the one I’m least acquainted with.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
last cleaning
Utopia, along the East River?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had an interesting but short chat last night, with the always interesting and sometimes chatty Robert Singleton of Greater Astoria Historic Society, about a piece he had recently written for a magazine about colonial era Maspeth and how he framed his tale around the desires of those long ago and far away colonists seeking “utopia” in the so called “new world.” I haven’t read Bob’s piece yet, but I’m sure it matches up with his normal high standards (Bob is who I publicly call “the acknowledged expert” on the subject of colonial era history in Western Queens). It did spark a few thoughts in my mind though, on the utopian eidolon which drew so many of our ancestors to what would become the United States. For native born 21st century citizens of the United States and Canada, “freedom” is a fairly abstract idea, but to our predecessors who undertook the dangerous journey from Europe to North America it was crystal clear what they were trying to leave behind.
It’s hard to imagine in modernity – the iron grip of the Hapsburgs, the Tsars, the Ottomans, the Popes, even the relatively “liberal” enlightened despots and parliaments of Western Europe – maintained a choke hold on thought, science, business, religion, and dissent in their lands. Especially after the French Revolution, and the appearance of Napoleon the antichrist, these governments maintained networks of domestic spies and employed forces of “Secret Police” to maintain their franchised version of “order and stability” at all costs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Utopia is what Americans, and New Yorkers in particular, have been chasing since the first Dutchman cut down a few trees in what was once a forest that stretched from coast to coast, to began clearing a spot to build a house. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and prosperity? That’s the American Dream, right? The pursuit and concept of “utopia” in the years leading up to the Civil War of the 1860’s eventually morphed into “progress” in the late 19th and entire 20th centuries, and is currently being conceptually framed as the quest for “equity” and “fairness.” Translating that for those of you who aren’t wise to these DEP currents: ‘Murica.
Chasing the utopian ideal in the United States has actually resulted in and spawned a modern day dystopia, with a government that maintains the status quo with a domestic spying network and literal armies of police – both public and secret – who are tasked with maintaining order and stability at all cost. Ironic, isn’t it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over the years, I’ve had friends who espouse all sorts of solutions and often radical visions of how to “fix” America. Socialist and Communist leaning folks want to institute a one size fits all approach with a super powerful central authority that dictates behavioral and social norms via the redistribution of private wealth through the “state,” not realizing that at no time in history has this not resulted in the appearance of an “elite” group of administrators and politicians that resemble nothing other than “born to the manor” nobility. Business and militaristic focused people want a system of lassez faire government whose only role is “ensuring the general welfare” and national defense, which historical precedent suggests as resulting in the subjugation of individual liberty and fostering military adventurism and leads to the formation of an elite group as well. Both are extremes, neither results in “utopia.”
What’s the way forward then? What can we do to answer the dreams of our forebears? Do we launch colony rockets into space, hoping some future version of the Pilgrims or Waloons can figure it out? What is Utopia?
As mentioned, a chat with Bob Singleton is often interesting and thought provoking.
Upcoming Tours and Events
Friday, August 3rd, 6:30 p.m. – Infrastructure Creek – with Newtown Creek Alliance.
If you want infrastructure, then meet NCA historian Mitch Waxman at the corner of Greenpoint Avenue and Kingsland Avenue in Brooklyn, and in just one a half miles he’ll show you the largest and newest of NYC’s 14 sewer plants, six bridges, a Superfund site, three rail yards with trains moving at street grade, a highway that carries 32 million vehicle trips a year 106 feet over water. The highway feeds into the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and we’ll end it all at the LIC ferry landing where folks are welcome to grab a drink and enjoy watching the sunset at the East River, as it lowers behind the midtown Manhattan skyline.
Tix and more deatils here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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