Posts Tagged ‘Dutch Kills’
vapour soaked
– photo from “The Newtown Creek industrial district of New York City By Merchants’ Association of New York. Industrial Bureau, 1921”, courtesy Google Books
My weird obsession with recreating very old photographs once again turns toward Dutch Kills, this time it’s looking to the end of the Degnon Terminal barge turning basin toward LaGuardia Community College’s building C- which was the former Sunshine Biscuits or Loose Wiles Bakery.
The shot above was captured in 1921 or thereabouts, and the ones below from 2011.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An interesting parallell to this shot is the one presented at the end of the “Hunters Point Avenue Bridge Centennial, Dec. 11” posting from December 3rd in 2009, which presents the inverse viewpoint of today’s.
That shot was obtained from a 7th floor window of the building, on the wall with the red detailing, 3rd window from the left some four score and ten years or approximately 24,855 days later than the original and focused on the spot where these were shot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the uncropped version, showing Dutch Kills just around sunset, on February 17th, 2011 from the deck of the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge.
a ghastly plot
“Newtown Creek for the Vulgarly Curious” is a fully annotated 68 page, full-color journey from the mouth of Newtown Creek at the East River all the way back to the heart of darkness at English Kills, with photos and text by Mitch Waxman.
Check out the preview of the book at lulu.com, which is handling printing and order fulfillment, by clicking here.
Every book sold contributes directly to the material support and continuance of this, your Newtown Pentacle.
Project Firebox 20
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are many places in and around Astoria where time and space fold in upon each other and you find yourself at the corner of an avenue and street which bear the same number. This scarlet paladin withstands and discharges its duty despite the frozen indignity heaped on and around it at the junction of 37th avenue and 37th street- just off Northern Blvd. Who can guess what odd sights it has witnessed at this tripartite angle between Dutch Kills and Astoria and Queens Plaza, and what strange attractors frequent such concurrent corners?
profound discouragement
– photo by Mitch Waxman
With my favored vantage on Dutch Kills, the estimable Borden Avenue Bridge, once more accessible– I’ve been making it a point to aim my wanderings toward its general direction whenever I can summon the fortitude to brave the ice. As crazy as it sounds, and regular readers of this- your Newtown Pentacle- have become fairly accustomed to crazy, I really missed this little bridge for the nearly 2 years it had been undergoing emergency repair.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Perhaps its because this is the first section of the Newtown Creek that I actively explored, researched, and made it a point of documenting. Maybe its simply because this is the most easily attained of the Creek’s tributaries for one who walks, or that it seems to be the most “down on it’s luck” section of the vast watershed and I’m drawn by nature to the runt of the litter.
English Kills in far off Brooklyn makes for far better cautionary tales, but there’s just something tragic about Dutch Kills that always draws me in.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An actual “out loud gasp” escaped my food hole when I discovered that the resident Crow of the Borden Avenue Bridge had not been forced out of his shanty by the long construction project, and if anything- the fellow had been building additions to the ramshackle hut constructed from found materials.
Last time that I had pointed my lens at this character was in the February 3rd posting of 2010 titled “affordable housing development on Borden Avenue“.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The smell of a wood fire was wafting from the Crow’s slapdash of plywood, tyvek, and sheet metal- a vague scent which crowded its way into the otherwise extant perfumes normally associated with Dutch Kills.
For those of you who haven’t been reading the Newtown Pentacle since inception- “Crow” is a term I picked up from the neighborhood in Astoria that describes the armies of itinerant scrap metal collectors who find profit in other people’s waste- “put something shiny out on the sidewalk, and the crows will show up and take it” is a common aphorism around my part of Astoria.
I’ve assigned this crow a name “Blue Crow”, but both the “red crow” and the “burgundy crow” have been mentioned previously.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a bunch of these folks I’ve been spying on, and I’ve even heard rumors of a criminal group who pilfer the white bronze monuments and copper fittings of area cemeteries to sell the valuable metals on the scrap market, but I have yet to regale you with tales of the other- and quite polychromatic- crows who hold the “Green Recycling Jobs of Tomorrow, Today”.
One has also wondered, and more than wondered, at what foul congress the Blue Crow might have had with that which cannot possibly exist in the velvet deep of the malign Dutch Kills.
for silver
“Newtown Creek for the Vulgarly Curious” is a fully annotated 68 page, full-color journey from the mouth of Newtown Creek at the East River all the way back to the heart of darkness at English Kills, with photos and text by Mitch Waxman.
Check out the preview of the book at lulu.com, which is handling printing and order fulfillment, by clicking here.
Every book sold contributes directly to the material support and continuance of this, your Newtown Pentacle.
The Newtown Pentacle 