Posts Tagged ‘Gas Stations’
induced gate
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fill ‘er up, buddy. You don’t get to say that very often, or at least not geographically often, in Western Queens these days. The rapacious hunger of the Real Estate Industrial Complex, which will be slaked only when each and every property lot in NYC has had a residential tower built upon it, often focuses in on the easy kill. Like lions stalking a wounded antelope, the REIC agents hungrily circle around gas stations and supermarkets. The large footprint and air rights enjoyed by these businesses cause gastric juices to drip from the quivering maw of the REIC agents, and the sight of open sky causes the deeply seated pancreases to begin secreting hormones that quicken the pulse and respiration. Kill, kill. More, more. AMI, MIH, jobs, more, more.
Most of the gas stations remaining in NYC are franchises, parts of some far flung petrochemical empire run out of air conditioned offices in other states that smell of expensive cologne. The one pictured in today’s post is that rarest of prey animals for the REIC predator – an independently owned filling station which offers no corporate logo or branding. They sell gas and fix cars, here at Bridge Stop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The REIC acquisitions people are trained killers, and are the agents of extinction for small business. It surprises me that neither the Silvercup crew, nor the Kaufman Astoria mechanics, or the HANACssassins have pried the deed for this property away from whomsoever holds it. This is the turf of those three members of the REBNY crime families. Want to know how they do business, the Real Estate Industrial Complex? One of them was just your President, the one who was impeached for inciting a mob to storm Congress. His son in law and principal advisor is another member of this club, but his holdings are largely found in the WIlliamsburg and Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn, as well as an aptly addressed Manhattan office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue.
Long have I advocated for the Federal Government to conduct a RICO investigation of not just the Real Estate Board of New York, but also of their enablers in municipal service at the NYC Economic Development Corporation. Perhaps, someday, all the poisons in the mud will leech out…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
1909 was a pretty big year for Queens. The Queensborough Bridge, Sunnyside Yards, Subway work was underway, the NY Connecting Railroad… all kinds of good stuff was being built. Back then, you still had people growing potatoes in fields around these parts as the steel for the transit system was being installed. The infrastructure was built, and that lit off a fifty year long period of breakneck economic growth and development. The growth was bolstered in the 1930’s and 40’s when Robert Moses began building highways, and Cord Meyer began building eastern Queens suburbs to surround the off ramps of those highways. Again – infrastructure creation was followed by economic growth. Pattern?
The way they’re trying to do it today is backwards, but the people doing the planning these days eat Pizza with a knife and fork. New York City does not have a housing problem, it has a transit problem. We solve transit for the 21st century, we save the City, and in turn we save the country. We begin by learning to ignore the zombie hordes of “YIMBY’s” and the “housing growth first” cult of density worshipping sycophants with their shadowy connections to Real Estate Industrial Complex.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 22nd. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
dark polarity
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Arch Street Yard is a locomotive maintenance facility in Long Island City, found at the westernmost edge of the rail complex called Sunnyside Yards. There always seems to be a couple of decrepit Long Island Railroad trains stored here. Maybe they use them for parts, who knows? Luckily there’s a hole in the fence big enough for my camera lenses. Of course, that’s presuming that I’m not imagining or dreaming this circumstance and scene, which is a presumption that my quarantine addled thought process might not still be reliable and that the fence hole is not some wild hallucination. I’ve got a photo, so it’s likely real, but who knows…
Fence holes – dey’s is me bread-n-buttah, presumptively.
The setup on this particular evening involved me using my Canon R6 with the 35mm f 1.8 lens. This one is now part of the permanent carry, in terms of what goes in my camera bag. This lens has image stabilization at f1.8! Between the IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) and the lens’s stabilizer – that’s 8 stops of light! That can’t be real, can it? I mean… physics…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my practices is to walk a new tool around to familiar places and spaces, and given that the walk I took it on – which included a few times when I sat down for few minutes here and there to rest a sore ankle – moved through an area extensively explored and photographed in the before time.
There used to be a diner on 49th Avenue in LIC, then it became a fancy pants restaurant, and it’s sat empty like this for years now. This isn’t because of COVID, instead it’s the old Queens trope about a landlord discovering that their tenant is doing well so they jack up the rent hoping to cash in and then put them out of business. That is a fresh layer of pandemic graffiti, however, and one finds those compositions pleasing to the eye.
Of course, at this stage of the pandemic, I find a dripping faucet endlessly fascinating. Is the faucet even real? Am I? Is any of this? How could things have fallen apart so completely and so fast, in not just the United States but in New York City? Why is toast better than bread?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On this particular scuttle around LIC, I abstained from my pandemic habit of not having headphones plugged into my ear holes. I was listening to an audiobook describing the last decades of the Roman Republic according to Plutarch, and let me tell you this friends – history does, indeed, repeat itself. My assertion that we haven’t arrived at the time of Caesar – yet – remains in place, but we have clearly skipped past the Gracchi Brothers and entered into a political era analogous to that occupied by Marius and Sulla.
Was Rome even real? Did Romans fight about reallocating the horse parking spaces on the public Via in favor of creating protected Chariot lanes? Did you know that the City of Rome had no Police Force, nor a Fire Dept.? Rich guys like Croesus maintained the fire fighting crews, and he’d sell you back all the stuff they rescued from the burning building. If you couldn’t afford to pay, he’d sell it to someone else. There’s a reason that the phrase “richer than Croesus” is still used 2,000 years after he died.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 22nd. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
mystical pretensions
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator is taking a break this week, as his anxiety and or stress levels have become absolutely maxed out. Thusly, you’ll be seeing single shots and regular postings will resume next week.
Pictured above is a gas station found in Long Island City’s Blissville section.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, February 15th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
copious seepage
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent wanderings, as mentioned earlier in the week, have seen me sticking fairly close to HQ due to the cold. Luckily, I happen to live within walking distance of some visually interesting sections of Long Island City such as the Sunnyside Yards, a portion of which is pictured above. Those are Amtrak train sets, overnighting in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m a big fan of whomsoever it is at Amtrak who is responsible for poking holes in their fences. I’m an even bigger fan of whomsoever it is at Canon who has been designing lens with a smaller than usual lens element which I can fit into those pokey holes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another thing I’ve become a fan of are the few remaining gas stations in Western Queens, islands of saturated color and cold light shining in the night.
More wandering, in tomorrow’s post, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, January 25th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
indecipherable parchments
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fascination with photographing gasoline filling stations at night just consumes one such as myself, and I’ve found myself wandering twixt the East River and (so far) Jackson Heights in recent weeks looking for these roadside businesses. This one is found in the angle between Sunnyside and Queens Plaza along Queens Boulevard. There’s also a Car Wash at this one. Ubiquitous in prior decades, car washes and gas stations both are fewer in number these days than they used to be.
Wish it was because of environmental reasons, but instead it’s largely because these large footprint properties are extremely desirous to the real estate industrial complex as development sites.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Have I mentioned that creepy skeletal trees keep on catching my eye these days when I’m wandering about? This particular one adjoined an industrial lot with a malfunctioning light that was strobing. Took me about ten shots to catch the flash, which was happening at random intervals.
Must be lovely living on the residential plots just a block away, with a bright white/blue light flashing all night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I really don’t know how the medallion taxi industry is going to survive COVID. This has been mentioned before, and it’s another one of those problems which is hard to solve without surrendering a ton of taxpayer money in pursuit of bailing out an entire industry. As is the case with a lot of these kinds of situations, you feel pretty bad for the actual working stiffs doing the job, but the people who own and run these companies are not exactly salubrious characters – if you catch my drift.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, January 11th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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 