Posts Tagged ‘Grand Central’
Omphalos
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The first day of my recent visit ‘back to the old neighborhood,’ as detailed in posts last week, ended with a Metro North trip up to NYS’s community of Cold Spring, right across the Hudson River from Storm King Mountain and West Point. I stayed the night with one of my oldest friends, and after quaffing a heavy breakfast in the town, your humble narrator was once again on the move.
The evening before, I grew so tired that I was becoming incoherent, it was a bit like being drunk. When I was shown the bedding upon which I’d be sleeping, an immediate loss of consciousness occurred. I’d been on the go for something like twenty straight hours at that point.
Pictured above is a Metro North unit moving away from the city.
What? I’ve always passed the time when commuting by shooting trains.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After a few minutes, the Manhattan bound train arrived, right on schedule. It would take a little over an hour to get into town. In accordance with my advance plans, the underclothing worn the day before was thrown in the garbage (I packed a series of ‘end of life’ garments to wear which would have shortly ended up being used as cleaning rags back home). Home base would be established this evening, for the next couple of days at least, in Queens’ Middle Village. There I’d be able to dismantle my pack a bit and leave some stuff behind, but at this moment I still needed to carry everything everywhere. Bah!
I settled into a seat on the water side of the train. A camera gizmo was affixed to one of the lenses, a silicone ‘baffle’ shroud which promised to block window reflections. It actually worked as described, but was a fairly clumsy thing to handle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
MTA has a repair and maintenance facility along the tracks up here, which our train hurtled through. I was using my usual camera formula for this sort of circumstance – setting the thing to aperture and ISO sensitivities which are normally used in low light situations, while setting the shutter speed to an insanely quick exposure speed in the realm of 1/6400th or 1/8000th of a second in order to ‘freeze’ the image.
In between shooting, I roamed around inside my camera bag, ensuring that everything has survived the trip and yesterday’s efforts. Double checking things is almost an ADD issue for me, but it insures that I don’t lose track of or damage important – or expensive – things.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After passing by the Tappan Zee Bridge on the Hudson, the whole ‘shoot out the windows’ setup was disassembled, and a wide angle 16mm lens was affixed for the arrival at Grand Central Terminal.
The next stop after getting to Manhattan would be the 7 train, and then I was heading out to Hunters Point in LIC, to meet up with a couple of the new employees at Newtown Creek Alliance who were hired after I debarked NYC for Pittsburgh. They had a couple of new things to show me, and they also had never experienced the ‘Mitch Waxman at Newtown Creek thing.’
My beloved creek…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I always experience a rush when entering the main chamber at Grand Central. Back in art school, during the 1980’s, I had a drawing class proctored by a guy named John Ruggiero which met here. Back then, Grand Central was a de facto homeless shelter, and the mission for the class was more or less visual journalism. Approach somebody, find out a little bit, ask if you can draw them. About half of the time, they’d say yes in exchange for a bagel and coffee. Almost 40 years later, and where am I and what am I doing most of the time – but with a camera instead of a drawing pad? Hmm.
Man, I just kept on getting reminded of my past on this trip. Everywhere I went… stories.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I decided to get to the 7 via the long way, by walking outside the building and circling towards the station via 42nd street. When people in Pittsburgh ask me what NYC is like, I usually say ‘it smells like college.’
What I mean is that the ubiquitous skunk of Marijuana is absolutely omnipresent in midtown Manhattan since legalization. Wow. Used to be that you had to walk a few blocks east to avoid the cops while partaking.
I’m all for the local and national end of prohibition, incidentally. Prohibition didn’t work out for alcohol, won’t ever work for drugs and we have the entire 20th century to look for proof of that. If there’s demand for anything, sellers will emerge to profit from it. A market arises, and you can’t beat a market. Best bet thereby is legalization, and high tax, just like alcohol and tobacco. I have spoken.
Back tomorrow with more.
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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.
Next stop, Willoughby
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, I had made it to Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan.
Planes, automobiles, ferries, subways, and now trains. It had been a busy day for me since waking up at one in the morning back in Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One entered Grand Central, which is always a rush, and proceeded to the tickets counter to purchase a fare card for a Cold Spring bound Metro North train. The wide angle 16mm lens was still affixed to the camera.
Luckily, I didn’t have long to wait as far as boarding the train, and clicked out a few photos while crossing the great lobby.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My energy was really starting to lag. The lifestyle I’m living in Pittsburgh these days is built around ‘early to rise and early to bed’ logic. Most nights I’m snoring by 11 p.m., and am awake again by 6 a.m. My night owl ways, as lived back in NYC, don’t fit in with the rhythm of life in Pittsburgh.
Luckily, the train was beginning boarding, so I just needed to find a seat and then relax for a little over an hour until reaching my destination.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I made it, and settled into a seat. I was trying out a $15 camera gizmo on the way up north, a large silicone lens baffle which promised to cancel out window reflections when used properly.
The thing worked, sort of, but it wasn’t any sort of major improvement over my home made baffles made from the kind of foam you stuff in around a window based air conditioner. It was only $15, though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ride north was uneventful, except for when that wagyu burger from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal produced a massively sulfurous fart, which emerged unbidden into the train car. Sorry, everyone.
I texted my buddy, letting him know I was heading towards him.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The LIC/North Brooklyn real estate frenzy is happening in the South Bronx too. I know… as a child you said to your parents ‘mommy, I want to live in the South Bronx, please.’ Sigh…
Back next week from a visit to the greatest city in the history of mankind.
“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.
Archives #039
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator is getting close to recovery from the broken ankle at this point. I’ve taken multiple heel to toe strides wearing just a normal shoe by this stage of the ‘PT’ process. I should be able to resume a somewhat normal, albeit hobbled, existence soon.
On November 28th in 2017, ‘reconised from’ was published, and the post discusses a few obscure historical tidbits about LIC and the East River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Overall, the fall off from unrelenting 24/7 agony has been nice. It’s important to keep on reminding myself to ‘don’t do that, not yet.’ Take it slow, move with purpose, don’t get ahead of yourself and ignore distractions. No multi tasking. One thing at a time.
2018’s ‘choking gas’ gets high over LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying that, I’m absolutely dying to get out and do some creative work again. So many things to see and learn about, and I’m stuck sitting on my butt waiting for the ankle to heal. You can’t win, I say.
These archive posts are reaching into Newtown Pentacle’s backups, and are pulling posts that went public on this date, in their respective years, going back to 2009. This practice will continue until I’m back on both feet full time, and new photos and stories can be gathered. For anyone who hasn’t heard the news, I broke my left ankle at the end of September.
2019’s ‘diminished perceptibly’ found me at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.
Back 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.
messages from
Somehow, everyone gets to where they deserve to be, it’s all very Faustian.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When one was still considered to have some sort of potential future, in those days of a long ago and wastrel youth, I had a girlfriend who lived in College Point. Problem is that I lived at the border, or angle, between Canarsie, Midwood, Georgetown, and Mill Basin – think exit 11n on the Belt Pkwy. Getting from my place to hers was a drag, but engendered a series of urban driving adventures which one fears to recount – lest the statute of limitations has not expired.
from wikipedia
The Grand Central Parkway (GCP) is a parkway that stretches from the Triborough Bridge in New York City to Nassau County on Long Island. At the Queens–Nassau border, it becomes the Northern State Parkway, which runs across the northern part of Long Island through Nassau County and into Suffolk County, where it ends in Hauppauge. The westernmost stretch (from the Triborough Bridge to exit 4) also carries a short stretch of Interstate 278 (I-278). The parkway runs through Queens and passes the Cross Island Parkway, Long Island Expressway, LaGuardia Airport and Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. The North Shore Towers is situated on the parkway on the Queens-side along the Nassau County border. The parkway is designated New York State Route 907M (NY 907M), an unsigned reference route. Despite its name, the Grand Central Parkway was not named after Grand Central Terminal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Foolhardy, a few years later I was dating a girl from Short Hills in New Jersey, and the epic drive between two wildly displaced spots (including the first time I drove over Bayonne Bridge on my way home) are fondly held. Both relationships ended badly, and not because of the commute. Rather it was manifestations of my inner corruption, the very worm that gnaws as it were, and I hope they have both expunged me from their official record. I’m all ‘effed up, and Our Lady of the Pentacle is more of a saint than any of you can ever know. Luckily, I’m married to her, so – no commute.
from wikipedia
Interstate 495 (I-495, also known as the LIE or simply the Expressway by locals) is an auxiliary Interstate Highway on Long Island in New York in the United States. The route extends for 71 miles (114 km) from the western portal of the Queens–Midtown Tunnel in the New York City borough of Manhattan to County Route 58 (CR 58) in Riverhead, Suffolk County. I-495 does not intersect its parent route, I-95. However, it does connect to I-95 through I-295, which it meets in Queens. The portion of I-495 in Nassau and Suffolk counties is known as the Long Island Expressway (LIE), a name commonly applied to the entirety of I-495. The section of the route west of the Nassau–Queens county line is also named the Queens–Midtown Expressway west of Queens Boulevard and the Horace Harding Expressway east of Queens Boulevard, though both names are not often used in common parlance and most signage refers only to the Long Island Expressway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What I never realized, in those halcyon days of misspent youth when driving through the megalopolis with the windows down and a mix tape from Dave the Skinhead playing loudly, was that the automobile itself will be the death of us all. Just like the central failing of “Obamacare” is the retention of the metaphor of “insurance” in national policy, the central failing of our time is rethinking the idea of engineering environmental and transportation policy around the auto itself. It’s like trying to make a safer gun, and I’m wondering if there really isn’t a better option for personal transportation?
Ahh, what do I know, anyway? I do wonder whether that deli in Short Hills is still there, the one with the “Jersey version” sloppy joes…
from wikipedia
Of all people who commute to work in New York City, 41% use the subway, 24% drive alone, 12% take the bus, 10% walk to work, 2% travel by commuter rail, 5% carpool, 1% use a taxi, 0.6% ride their bicycle to work, and 0.2% travel by ferry. 54% of households in New York City do not own a car, and rely on public transportation.
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