Posts Tagged ‘Dutch Kills’
palsied denials
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
July 16th was City of Water Day, which is a regional harbor festival curated by the Waterfront Alliance. I, and Newtown Creek Alliance, have been participating in City of Water Day for about a decade now. This year, NCA partnered up with North Brooklyn Boat Club and the Montauk Cutoff Coalition to do a shoreline cleanup, and offer boat rides to the public on the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek. It was a nice day.
Until the thunderstorm arrived, it was a nice day, that is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you don’t recall, this was the day that about an inch of rain fell in about a half hour and generated a lot of flooding and damage in Queens. We were out in the open, but luckily the public side of things had ended. Everybody found a bit of shelter, under the Long Island Expressway or in some of the shipping containers found along the shoreline.
It felt like a real Götterdämmerung, I tell you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Blasting waves of rain pounded down, and heavy wind caused the rain to go absolutely horizontal. Dutch Kills was boiling with sky juices.
When the front moved on, we found ourselves standing in its wake. All of the NCA people grabbed their cameras and phones, since we knew what would be coming next – sewer outflows!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
NYC has a combined sewer system, meaning that sanitary and storm water move through the same pipes. Dry weather, which typified roughly an entire month prior to the 16th, sees this flow go to sewer plants. A quarter inch of rain – citywide – translates to a billion gallons suddenly entering the system, and the City’s protocol is to release the excess flow into area waterways as a prophylactic against street flooding.
You can count it out – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… blast off.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Submerged sewer pipes began to excrete into the waters of Dutch Kills. The surface was boiling, and the tumult carried human waste as well as whatever happened to end up in the sewers – trash, motor oil, goo – into Dutch Kills.
Everywhere you looked, filthy water was shooting out of otherwise hidden pipes all over Dutch Kills. In a couple of spots, notably nearby the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge, there were actual geysers of sewerage shooting around.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is a storm sewer, one which drains the Long Island Expressway high above. Thousands of gallons erupted from it.
Exciting, no?
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scintillant semicircle
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What you’re looking at above took place on 29th street in Long Island City on the 15th of July, at the Dutch Kills tributary of the Newtown Creek. It’s not the end of the story, it’s just the latest chapter in a tale that I began telling you all about in September of 2018.
For two and change years, the shorelines of the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek have been actively crumbling, dissecting, and collapsing. The situation has caused 29th street itself to become undermined, and subsequent bulkhead collapse continues.
2020’s “Unaltered Bone,” 2022’s “wide scattering,” “expiring orb,” “harmless stupidity,” “plumbed descent,” “yellow rays,” “crawl proudly,” “nemesis mirror,” “ugly trifles,” “torture of,” “verdant valleys,” “budding branches,” “crystal coldness” all tracked and followed the collapse.
The theme offered in all of these posts was “nothing matters and nobody cares.” I also offered that in the end I would make “them” care. Luckily, my pal Will Elkins – Newtown Creek Alliance’s Executive Director and the guy with the megaphone – managed to marshal the political world around 29th street. The moment in time in this post is his doing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek Alliance cares, and as it turns out – so do City Council Member Julie Won, the presumptive next NYS Assemblyman for LIC Juan Ardila, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Democratic District Leaders Emilia Decaudin and Nick Berkowitz, the executive committee of Queens Community Board 2, the President of LaGuardia Community College, and about fifty to sixty of the local business stakeholders.
This matters, and now everybody cares. I felt like this. Told y’all we’d ultimately make them all care.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
29th street is my last dragon to slay on Newtown Creek. After this, it’s all about moving out of New York City, and rebooting into a different life elsewhere. For the first time, I’m feeling like everything I’ve been working on and for in the last fifteen years is in good hands, and that there’s another generation ready and willing to take the wheel.
My beloved Creek is going to be just fine without me, with stewards like Will Elkins and the amazing staff he’s surrounded himself with at Newtown Creek Alliance fighting the good fight.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My Pal Val attended the presser, and after the event was done, she wanted to check out the Gaseteria/NYS Marshalls impound lot which was described to you at the beginning of this week.
We jumped in her car and went over to Greenpoint, and the English Kills tributary of Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a scrap metal operation located on English Kills, but their entrance is on Grand Street. All that material is brought in by truck, but shipped out via maritime barge. Just one of those barges carries the equivalent cargo of 38 heavy trucks.
It’s insane how little used this sort of hauling is utilized in the archipelago City of Greater New York.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back next week with something different 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.
heretofore reclusive
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bit of Newtown Creek business found me at Newtown Creek Alliance HQ in Greenpoint recently, specifically on June 30th. After the meeting concluded, one decided to take advantage of a nice patch of light and air and scuttle back to Queens via the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.
Greenpoint Avenue Bridge is 1.3 miles from the East River, and connects the Long Island City neighborhood of Blissville to the Greenpoint section of the Eastern District of Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given that I’d been out of town for a week or so, and I didn’t have any particular plans for the evening, my plan evolved around visiting Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary in LIC, and then making my way over to Queens Plaza to catch a train back to Astoria.
It was a particularly comfortable night, weather wise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over at Dutch Kills in LIC, there’s the former Loose Wiles Bakery building, which serves the community in modernity as “building D” of the LaGuardia Community College campus.
This shot was gathered from the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge. A similar early morning shot back in February saw me walking back home with a case of frostbite in my fingers that bedeviled me and caused numbness for nearly a month. A man for all seasons, that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My eidolon of hope, a lone tree of paradise growing out from under the eave of a factory building along a Federal Superfund site, was in flower.
That tree is the same speciation as the titular focus of Betty Smith’s “A tree grows in Brooklyn,” by the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After confirming that the bulkheads on 29th street continue to collapse, unabated by any activity on the behalf of New York City or State, the Thomson Avenue viaduct offered egress over the Sunnyside Yards.
An Amtrak unit had just exited the East River tunnels and was making its way along a set of tracks, rolling past the same LaGuardia Community College building seen from Dutch Kills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queens Plaza’s IND station is where I caught a local train heading back towards HQ. Have I mentioned that I love the new OMNY fare control system that MTA installed during the last few years? Not having to sweat how much cash I’d installed on my Metrocard is not something I miss. You tap your phone to the thing and bang, you’re riding.
One less thing to worry about, huh?
“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.
formidable skull
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 29th, a humble narrator was out and about on a short walk, and Long Island City was on the menu for the evening. I should mention that I’m way ahead of schedule on these posts for a change, and this one is being written on June 7th. Why so far ahead? Well, in the interim of the month of June, I’ve been to Pittsburgh again, and this time around I rented a car. At the time of this writing, I have no idea what wonders I pointed the camera at or whether or not I got anything worth seeing. Saying that… tick, tick, tock said the clock.
As I’ve mentioned, it’s time for me to leave this place, and thereby I’ve been on a holy tear with the camera trying to record one last summer’s worth of photos. Hence – the 6 image posts are going to be continuing for a while.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary, where a bulkhead collapse is underway at the turning basin, alongside 29th street. This was a handheld shooting night for me, as I wanted to travel light and not be burdened down with a lot of gear. No tripods or zoom lenses.
All I had with me were 35mm f1.8 and an 85mm f2 prime lenses. I did have a bit of camera support, I would mention. My pal Hank the Elevator guy got me a chunk of hard rubber that used to be part of an elevator’s brake pad, and another buddy – Sean the Carpenter – cut it and shaped an ARCA Swiss tripod mount into one side of the thing using a miter saw when his boss wasn’t looking. This gives me a nice flush rubber foot for the camera, and allows for shutter speeds normally precluded during handheld sessions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Camera gear is famously marked up. I once needed a screw for one of my tripods and the folks at the camera store wanted $17. For a screw.
Same screw ordered off of an industrial equipment supply website cost me twenty five cents for two screws, and I still paid a 500% markup. A big part of “photography” is learning how to improvise and make your own task specific equipment. Those air conditioner foam insulation strip collars I’ve made for my lenses allow me to shoot through windows without reflection, and cost me so little to manufacture that they were almost free, for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are high;y engineered pieces of equipment that you’re better off just paying whatever they’re asking – tripod heads and that sort of thing really aren’t possible to manufacture at home. Also, given their critical role in holding the camera – you don’t want to experiment or be too budget conscious with that sort of thing lest you watch your camera tumbling down into Newtown Creek.
That chunk of elevator brake pad rubber attached to my camera when I’m just walking around is something that the camera shop would have likely banged me out of $50 for, however. Once, I dropped it shortly after leaving the house and then backtracked about two miles until I found it laying on the sidewalk about a block from HQ. It’s not something that somebody would assign value to, since it’s a chunk of hard black rubber. I assign a lot of value to it, on the other hand, since it absorbs vibration and offers me a friction inducing “camera foot” that doesn’t scratch the surfaces which I bring it into contact with.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I often refer to the two lenses I was carrying on this walk as my “night kit.” For those fo you who aren’t photography enthusiasts – a “bright lens” has a large aperture engineered into it – f1.8 for example. Zoom lenses become fiendishly expensive when the manufacturer incorporates a wide aperture into them – north of $5,000. The engineering is what you’re paying for on that sort of thing, as the optical formula is extremely complicated.
Thereby, the best I can do on my “day kit” involves what I can afford to own. That’s f4 for the 24-105, and my telephoto 70-300 is fairly untrustworthy in the sharpness department at anything under f8.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What trade off’s you have with the bright lenses, though, is a narrower field of focus. Notice how the Empire State Building is blurred out and the construction equipment in the shot above is sharp? That’s the narrower field depth at work. The smaller the aperture, the more is “sharp” whereas the larger the aperture is, less is “sharp.”
I won’t bore you with pixel density or color science. It’s terribly complicated.
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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.
cacodaemonical ghastliness
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
May 21st and I was out for a short/long walk which ended up being fairly productive. I was heading towards Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary, and along the way I stopped off at “Hole Reliable,” which is found along the fencelines of the Sunnyside Yards.
The reason this hole is so reliable is that it overlooks the Harold Interlocking, a rail junction used by both Long Island Railroad and Amtrak which is the busiest such bit of infrastructure in the entire country. You don’t have to hang around Long before something rolls by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The powers that be have been busy spending your taxes on improving the Harold Interlocking, which is part of the larger “East Side Access” project that will be bringing LIRR service to Grand Central Station, and there’s a couple of new sidings which have recently been completed and brought into usage – like the one pictured above.
Y’know, I’ve spent something like 15 years watching them do all the construction on this, and it’s kind of cool to see it being used.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nothing new to report from Dutch Kills. Nobody cares, nothing matters, and 29th street continues to subside and sag into the collapsing bulkhead at the water’s edge. Turns out that the reason there’s always a puddle there is that the undermined street has broken a water line pipe. That’s great, as now it’s also a DEP problem – in addition to being an EPA, DEC, DOT, and MTA problem. Eventually, the entire alphabet will be involved.
Sigh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My tree of paradise seems to be embracing the warmer weather, and at the time this photo was taken, had just become clothed in foliage.
I didn’t plan on walking directly home on this particular evening, as I was desirous of getting a few low light shots of the 7 train. Accordingly, over to the Hunters Point Avenue stop did I scuttle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My 7 line plan was to take advantage of how frequently the service arrives – usually in about ten minute intervals – to hop on and hop off at the various stations that I don’t frequent.
As a note, I’m a fan of that new OMNY fare control scheme of theirs. Here’s a tip – the OMNY system lets you use your phone to pay for your fare. The credit card you thereby designate for transit use (I’m on an iPhone, can’t speak to how Google Pay works on Android) should therefore be one where you receive some sort of benefit for using it. Some cards have cash back rewards, others have airline miles that accrue with use, others send a few cents to a charity you support – you get the idea. I’ve tied all of my transit charges into a single card account – LYFT/Uber, Amtrak, Subway and Bus, Ferry. This also makes talking to my accountant about transit spending rather simple.
I have a friend who has all his monthly bills flow through benefits/rewards cards. This way he’s never late with a payment, and manages to get some benefit out of his outlandishly high electric bills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I traveled on the 7 for a bit, following my plan to hop on and hop off. The shot above is from the 33rd Rawson stop, and it’s a Manhattan bound train rounding the elevated curve nearby the former Swingline Stapler building on Queens Boulevard. One night soon I’m going to doing this sort of night time excursion on every stop of the 7 all the way out to Flushing and back.
Keeps me out of the bars. Back next week with more, 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 