Posts Tagged ‘Greenpoint’
arduous detail
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Friday the 13th of January, your humble narrator was drawn inextricably to the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant’s Nature Walk. A friend, who is a faculty member of a CUNY institution familiar to all residents of Queens, had reported that she (and her students) had witnessed an extant slick of petroleum product while at the location.
So, despite inclement weather and biting cold, your humble narrator crossed the Pulaski from Queens to infinite Brooklyn to investigate.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just to be clear, the NCWWTP (oft referred to as the Temple of Cloacina) has nothing to do with petroleum. The mission of this futurist facility deals with a sticky black substance of entirely manmade origin, its collection and eventual disposition, but definitively not petroleum.
The Nature Walk, which is the subject of ironic humor and contextual mirth for many, is a lovely amenity required by the City’s “1% for art” rules. Designed by architect George Trakas, the NCWWTP Nature Walk offers panoramic views and public access to the nation’s most polluted waterway, and provides an island of calm for a section of Greenpoint sorely lacking in open space.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My friend, as mentioned, serves as a faculty member at the CUNY institution in Queens. For several years, she has been conducted a census and study of the micro organisms which find themselves swept into Newtown Creek on the shallow tide offered by the estuarine East River. Her findings are surprising, as observation and scientific method has revealed that a startling diversity of life somehow finds a way to organize and sustain their existence in the troubled waterway.
Pictured above are the “steps” at the Nature Walk during happier times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Witnessed on this day in January were the tell tale leave behinds of the event, painted upon the self same steps illustrated in the shot above. Eyewitness description and anecdotal memories described the slick as both viscous and opaque, and occupying no small acreage of water.
Reports of floating “tar balls” accompany the tale of the slick, which was described as moving eastward- up the creek- with the rising tide from the East River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a note, the tidal action of the surrounding waters doesn’t really flow into the Newtown Creek so much as it forces the waterway to rise and fall in a vertical rather than lateral manner. This why the sedimentary process along the Creek is so onerous, as there is no “flushing action”.
Once something enters the Newtown Creek, it never leaves.
oily river
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recently witnessed, the Reinauer Towing tugboat Matthew Tibbets maneuvering a fuel barge through the languid expanse of the legend choked Newtown Creek.
Just a short one today, still playing catch up from a recent bout with some unknown and untrammeled organism, which is best thought of as some mere virus.
omnivorous browsing
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is quite a colony of indigents to be found beneath the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
Recently observed, the encampment featured not just bedding but the rudiments of furniture as well. Stuffed into the highway girders were comestibles and other consumables. This population, hidden away in the nooks and crannies of the Newtown Pentacle, has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent months- according to personal observation. Used to be there were folks living in their cars all over the place, but these days, I’ve been seeing shanty towns springing up. I know a couple of spots where multi room shacks have remained established for years.
Welcome to 21st century New York City, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular spot is found in Greenpoint, not far from the Williamsburg border. Academics and politicians might see this as a problem to be solved, but to the calloused eyes of a humble narrator, it’s another case of “not bad, nor good, just is”.
Experience has taught me that these folks are where their actions and choices have led them to, and that what they ultimately desire is to just be left to their own devices. “Do what thou wilt” is the whole of the law, and all that.
Also remember that given the opportunity- these folks would boil you down and sell your parts by the pound as butcher’s scrap.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The duo sleeping beneath the rag piles in the shot above most likely consider each other trusted cohorts, and maintain a loose fraternity with others who share their experience. Imagine what you look like to them, with your clean clothes, credit cards, and bleeding heart. When spare change or a cigarette tumbles out of your pockets, or you leave some castaway clothing item at their camps, how do you think they interpret you?
As a mark, that’s how.
It’s not that the homeless are worse people than you and I, it’s a tribal thing. How would you feel if (metaphorical rich guy) Bloomberg showed up at your house, tsk-tsk’d at your squalor, and dropped you a few bucks to help out?
Wouldn’t you be trying to figure out some way to get his watch?
Old School 2
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are places where you just don’t want to park in Brooklyn.
This semi was spotted, appearing to have been picked over by a pack of scavenging dogs, in Greenpoint not too long ago. Please feel free to click through to the larger incarnations of this photo at Flickr, and examine the skeletonized husk of this truck. What I find puzzling, actually, is the fact that this rig still has tires and rims. Perhaps, at the end, it will be converted to some sort of horse drawn wagon?
For the first post in what will surely become a regular series click here for “Old School”.
Project Firebox 26
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hanging precipitously on Brooklyn’s Varick Avenue, in the shadow of the vast Kosciuszko Bridge, is found this emergency call box. Hedged and hidden by barbed undergrowth, neglected and forgotten by soporific politics, it nevertheless signals that a New Year has arrived in the Newtown Pentacle.
Welcome to 2012, lords and ladies, and don’t look back lest you become naught but a pillar of salt.
The Newtown Pentacle 