Posts Tagged ‘Brooklyn’
can tell
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
April 27th’s short walk continued, and I was heading back towards Astoria on Jackson Avenue, when fortuitous atmospherics conspired with a 7 train leaving Court Square Station on the elevated tracks to capture my attention.
You gotta show up. Ain’t gonna see boo staying at home.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m going to miss all this. Every step and every block is absolutely awash for me with details. Battle Axe Gleason’s folly, adorned with NY Terracotta Works finery, sits over the long ago of Jack’s Creek and the…
Every single brick tells a story. Once I’ve retreated into the west like one of Tolkien’s Elves, this is going to be someone else’s story to tell. I fear no one will do that. C’est la vie.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
April 28th found me in Brooklyn at Newtown Creek Alliance HQ. Can never resist cracking out a few exposures of the Sewer Plant in Greenpoint from this uncommon point of view.
NCA hosts public hours at HQ on Friday evenings, if you want to check the place out. Click here if you’d like to visit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 1st saw me wandering around Long Island City and the Sunnyside Yards again, exploiting the encyclopedia of fence holes at the 183 square acre rail coach yard that I know about to get a few shots of Amtrak’s rolling stock being serviced below.
A coach yard is a maintenance and holding facility, not a station. You have to go into Manhattan to catch an Amtrak. With Long Island Railroad, you’ve at least got Woodside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One scuttled through the dimly lit and somewhat terrifying streets feeding into Queens Plaza on my way home. This is not a fun pedestrian experience. There’s some nice graffiti, though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Plaza remains one of the absolute worst places in the entire country to be on foot. Your senses are overwhelmed by subway noise and vehicle traffic. Did you know that your field of vision actually narrows when the ambient level of noise passes through a certain threshold? I guess the brain can only process so much raw data at any given moment.
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.
ever been
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
April 24th saw a humble narrator more or less walk the entire Brooklyn side of Newtown Creek, and by the time I reached the Pulaski Bridge all of my aches and pains were absolutely singing an opera.
That’s when you really just have to lean into it, I always say, and keep on scuttling. You want to know something, though? What I’ve really been missing the last month or so, and especially during low energy moments like the one I was experiencing while getting ready to surmount the Pulaski, has been having my headphones plugged into my ears while they’re blaring early Black Sabbath.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personal security, however, demands that all of my senses remain unoccluded. I need to be able to hear “it” if and when it’s coming. It’s funny, actually, that this section of Newtown Creek is one of the areas which I’ve assiduously avoided throughout the pandemic months. The population has become particularly dense here, due to what a friend of mine refers to as “the real estate frenzy.” That isn’t why I’ve been avoiding it, though.
Anywhere that lots of people are, that ain’t where I been.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pulaski Bridge has a dedicated pedestrian and a seperated bike lane, in addition to its lanes of vehicular traffic. It’s a double bascule drawbridge, and electrically powered. It connects McGuinness Blvd. in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint with 11th street at Jackson Avenue in Queens’ Long Island City. Along the way, on the Queens side, it also overflies the Long Island Railroad’s Lower Montauk tracks and the Queens Midtown Tunnel.
It’s extremely well traveled, and each one of its several traffic lanes is quite busy. It’s also fairly easy to get into trouble up there, precisely because of its populous nature. I used to know a guy who got jumped midspan, and who laid there bleeding from a head wound while the Brooklyn and Queens cops were arguing about which precinct the mugging occurred in – 94th or 108th. Neither one “wanted it” as it would cause their “house’s” crime stats to go up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There used to be an amazing series of NYC views up on the Pulaski, with the Empire State Building at the center of your frame and reflected in Newtown Creek. The sky has been stolen by big real estate, however. It’s been privatized. If you’re looking for “inspirado” you better have some cash to pay for it.
The good news is that our elected officials continue to subsidize the real estate people, by bending the rules for them and handing out multiple decade long tax breaks in the name of “affordable housing.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The dodge accomplished by the Real Estate people is to establish a development corporation as an ‘’LLC” or “Limited Liability Corporation” for the duration of planning and construction. The day after they cut the ribbon on a new building, the original development LLC, which made all the deals with the city and state, is dissolved and the property is transferred to a management LLC that can pick and choose which tenets of the original LLC’s political contracts they want to oblige.
Either way, they’re not paying any taxes for a long time. Not paying into the cops, or the schools, or the hospitals which their tenants in their thousands consume the services of. Remember when the Governor set up the Javitz center as a mass casualty hospital at the start of COVID? That’s because NYC doesn’t have enough hospital beds anymore.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some enterprising soul poked a hole in the chain link fences of the Pulaski’s pedestrian walkway a few years back, one that allows a view down into the Queens Midtown Tunnel’s entrance.
August of 1940 is when the tunnel opened, along with the section of the Long Island Expressway which feeds about 32 million vehicle trips a year into the thing. At least you can still see the Empire State Building from here since the Real Estate people haven’t convinced the politicians that it would solve the homeless problem if we decked over the tunnel’s toll plaza over and built luxury condos on top.
Give it time. Swagger.
“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.
thither shouldst
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
April 24th, and a longish walk around the eastern side of Newtown Creek continued on as I crossed out of Industrial Maspeth and into an area called “East Williamsburgh” in Brooklyn. 30 years ago, you would have just said Bushwick.
Kitty.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I followed my toes, and headed over to Vandervoort where a right turn was undertaken. Along the way, a screaming ambulance rolled past.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nearby the toxic acreage known as the “National Grid site” one encountered another street cat chilling away the afternoon.
Kitty.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another right hand turn and I was walking through an area which looks like the Ukrainian and Russian militaries were duking it out there, and a large contingent of adolescents were spotted. A wide berth was instituted.
Teenagers… no impulse control…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A neat graffiti truck was spotted on Bridgewater/Norman Avenue nearby Apollo Street in Greenpoint.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is an explanation as to why your allergies were so bad at the end of April. Visual dichotomy always pulls me in.
More next week at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
smiling dromedary
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My long walk around a short creek continued, and the Newtown Creek Nature walk allowed me an easy path through Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section. Pictured above is one of the lesser known tributaries of Newtown Creek – Whale Creek – and that’s a NYC DEP “Sludge Boat” docked along it.
Sludge Boats transport the processed/treatment sewer solids from the 12 sewer plants to the 13th one on Randall’s/Wards Island where it’s dewatered in centrifuges.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Kingsland Avenue hugs the fences of the sewer plants, and it’s also where Newtown Creek Alliance HQ is found (520 Kingsland).
It’s a pretty crappy experience on foot, have to say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Those cylinders are exhaust pipes for the sewer plant, which burn off the methane produced by the treatment process, directly into the atmosphere. That makes the Department of Environmental Protection the single largest and most constant source of greenhouse gases in the entire Borough of Brooklyn.
Remember that when Eric Adams mandates that you need to spend $100,000 to convert your house over to electric from whatever you use to heat and cook in it right now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Kingsland Avenue carried my carcass to Greenpoint Avenue and it’s eponymous bridge. This shot is looking east along Newtown Creek. Brooklyn is on the right, Queens on the left.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Things were getting pretty surreal, sky wise. Everything was painted in saturated radiates as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself descended into whatever the hell might be on the other side of New Jersey.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My very productive day wasn’t over yet, I’d mention.
Cannot tell you how many times this exact same route has disappointed. Part of the reason I walk it so often are days like the 12th of April.
Back next week with more wonders, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
peradventure may
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The estimable bridge tenders of the NYC DOT were on station at the Pulaski Bridge when a humble narrator scuttled by. What makes them “estimable” is that if you see them hanging around a draw bridge, odds are that the bridge will be opening soon, hence you can estimate.
These are more photos from an extremely productive walk I took on the 12th of April. Six photo posts have been offered here for awhile now, as I’m trying to “catch up” with the real world calendar.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pulaski Bridge is the first crossing of Newtown Creek you encounter when navigating in from the East River. Constructed in 1954 at the behest of Robert Moses’s DOT, Pulaski Bridge carries five lanes of auto traffic as well as dedicated pedestrian and bike lanes. It’s a double bascule draw bridge, electrically powered, and is part of the NYC DOT’s portfolio of movable bridges. It connects Greenpoint’s McGuinness Blvd. with LIC’s 11th street.
One thereby scuttled across “the red one” to Paidge Avenue in Brooklyn, which allowed me to enter the Newtown Creek Nature Walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The sewer plant in Greenpoint was reconstructed beginning in the early 1990’s, and the NYC DEP was compelled to comply with the NYC Charter requirement of “1% for art,” which sets aside a percentile of every municipal construction project for art or public space. The Nature Walk, thereby, wraps around the sewer plant and is accessible via either Kingsland Avenue or Paidge Avenue between dawn and dusk. It’s proven to be quite a popular destination for Greenpointers.
As I arrived, I spotted two tugboats at work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sea Lion, pictured above, was towing a recycling barge from the SimsMetal dock found on the Queens side of Newtown Creek. Sims does a lot of maritime shipping from this dock. They handle recyclables collected by DSNY, crushed cars, and all sorts of scrap metal here. The materials are brought in by truck, but shipped out by barge. A maritime barge carries the equivalent cargo of 38 heavy trucks.
Sea Lion is a harbor tug, as in its fairly small in size at 64.7 feet in length, but the 1980 vintage vessel is mighty – she produces 1,400 HP, which is more than that railroad engine I showed you the other day. Ocean going tugs are fairly enormous.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A larger class tug, the Seeley, was waiting patiently for the bridge tenders to open up Pulaski Bridge. Sea Lion didn’t need the bridge to open, as the height of her conning tower and antennae were well below the bridge’s double bascule undersides.
The horns began to blow, and then the chiming of the signal arms sounded, and then traffic stopped flowing over the Pulaski Bridge for an interval so that a different type of traffic could pass.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Seeley navigated through, and although I’m incapable of the emotional state called “happy,” a humble narrator was slightly less miserable than normal for a few minutes.
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 