Posts Tagged ‘Long Island City’
dominant concern
I hate Christmas, but I do like puppies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the worst time of year for one such as myself. The forced social encounters at Christmas parties, the darkness, the cold. One gets invited to a few holiday parties, which I agree to go to, then back out of the day of. This is kind of a dick move on my part, it is realized, but in reality I’m trying to spare the party giver that certain shadow which I carry around with me. Nobody actually wants me around their homes during the holidays, just like a kitchen fire. Y’know how a lighthouse looks? The bright beam of light scanning about? Imagine a beam of utter darkness emanating from it instead, that’s me.
During December, I always feel like some demon cursed and quite useless object that spreads an acerbic contagion to whatever it touches, or a tumor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I prefer to work on updating my enemies list during December, looking through my calendar for those who’ve slighted or annoyed me during the preceding year, and begin to develop my plans for exacting vengeance on them. There’s a few people out there who I can already tell you will be having a very difficult time of it in 2017. Bah.
Usually, when I say “bah,” somebody chimes in with “humbug.” I don’t know what a humbug is, but I suspect it’s one of those angry red razor bumps people get from ingrown hairs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s best for all that one remains secure in his hermitage this time of year. The humans all seem happy to be enacting their odd rituals, giving manufactured items to each other in the presence of a tree which they’ve had killed and then brought into the house. Luckily, the seasonal bacchanal ends in a couple of weeks,
Bah.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
dread aperture
There’s so many of us, at least for a couple of hours each day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling down Skillman Avenue and approaching Queens Plaza, one was reminded of a conversation recently enjoyed with a locally deployed NYPD Commander about the unique nature of this area. For a couple of hours, each morning and evening, this is theoretically one of the most densely populated places on the planet, but the individual members of this population blob are seldom in the neighborhood for longer than a few minutes and they are in vehicular motion (however stunted) the whole time.
To put it simply, the multitudes moving through western Queens during the rush hours, on their way to work or home to other places – traveling by car, bus, subway, railroad, bicycle, or autogyro perhaps – create a statistically irrelevant but nonetheless astounding jump in the “persons per square foot” or population density of LIC. Thing is, lots of people elected to suffer a long commute when they moved to Eastern Queens, or Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Lots of time to read, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Statistical relevance is part of how planning decisions are made. It big math – “quant” stuff, actually, and beyond my understanding. The theory behind the relevance of statistical information is summed up by that quote from Josef Stalin that a single death is a tragedy whereas a million deaths are a statistic. A lot of policy decisions revolve around, or at least they’re supposed to, the greatest good for the greatest number.
“Greatest number” inherently means that someone gets left out, which translates as “not statistically relevant.” Planning of public works in recent decades has strived to expand and include traditionally marginalized groups, most notably folks with health related mobility issues – thanks to the ADA or Americans with Disabilities Act. A lot of public spaces and City buildings out there were formally denied to people in wheelchairs, since the era in which most of these public buildings were erected, the disabled population wasn’t considered as being “statistically relevant.”
Access to mass, affordable, and reliable transit – which parallels what’s available to “abled” people – still remains a problem, I’m told.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Statistical relevance, I’m informed, is a big part of the algorithm under which the 311 service of NYC was designed to operate. One person from Blissville complaining to 311 about a cat in a tree is low priority and statistically irrelevant, but the City will send somebody out when they can. Twenty people from the same block call 311 about the cat? Help is on the way a lot faster, as the problem is now far more mathematically relevant and the City will send out Superman to investigate and mitigate.
Make me wonder what would happen if everybody who was commuting through Queens Plaza on any given day suddenly called 311 to complain about something.
Then again, I wonder why it is that everyone doesn’t vote on Election Day.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
possible reinforcements
Block by block in LIC, from grave to rail.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In a post last week – I mentioned that shortly after visiting the Kosciuszko Bridge construction site, the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself had managed to burn off the atmospheric gray miasma which had occluded it. As I moved inexorably northwards back to Astoria, via First Calvary Cemetery, the sky – and light – seemed to get better and better.
Pictured above is the skyline of the Modern Corridor of LIC, rising beyond the tombstones set into what those who lived during the colonial era would have called Laurel Hill. Note the change in elevation. The flood plain of the East River and the Newtown Creek is what they’re built on. Back here in Blissville, the ground begins to rise as you head eastwards towards the start of the terminal moraine of Long Island in Maspeth, and the bluff which gives Ridgewood its name.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the main gate of Calvary Cemetery above, stout ironwork which is decorated with the fasces of the Romans. Obviously, leaving Calvary is a privilege, as most who enter it stay there forever. In the distance, beyond the Queens Midtown Expressway section of the world’s longest parking lot – called the Long Island Expressway (in hushed whispers) – is the Degnon Terminal. The former industrial park adjoins LIC’s tributary of Newtown Creek, called Dutch Kills.
The street closest to the gates is Greenpoint Avenue. To the left, or south – is the infinity of Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The LIE arrived in Long Island City as the same time as the Midtown Tunnel, and a year after the Kosciuszko Bridge opened. It cut LIC in half, but when you’re in the “House of Moses,” that’s a typical and oft repeated story. An argument I often end up in is with those who have grown up in Western Queens who tell me that they don’t live in LIC. They’ll claim Sunnyside or Astoria are distinct, separate, and that LIC is “over there.”
If you live in a zip code that starts with “111” you live in Long Island City. That’s the code associated with the municipality’s former holding by the United States Post Office. Using the example of the “Miracle on 34th street” movie, if th USPS says it – it’s true. I win.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This used to be Hoffman Avenue, in a time during which virtually no one currently alive would remember. It’s in Sunnyside, which is the name assigned to the neighborhood surrounding Queens Blvd. shortly after the IRT Flushing Line was built and opened. The so called “Philadelphia plan” rechristened the north/south “named” streets of “Long Island City” heights, later Sunnyside, with numbers instead of names like “Bliss” or “Lowery” or “Laurel Hill Blvd.”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An east/west avenue, Skillman is named for an old farming family and provides the century old southern border for the Sunnyside Yards. There used to be a “Pest House” nearby, during colonial and early 19th century times, where sick and dying residents would be quarantined away from the rest of the population to avoid the spread of epidemics. Skillman Avenue is built on a bluff, or ridge, that used to look down on the pestilential swamps that sat between it and through which Jackson (modern day Northern Blvd.) Avenue was built.
All of that changed with City consolidation in 1898, and the later construction of the gargantuan Sunnyside Yards by the Pennsylvania Railroad company at the start of the 20th century. Robert Moses renamed the stretch of Jackson Avenue that goes from 31st street to Flushing as Northern Blvd.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Famously, I can describe where you’ll find every single hole in the fencing surrounding the 180 plus acre Sunnyside Yards complex is located, and the one which provided vantage in the shot above is one of my favorites. It overlooks the Long Island Railroad Main Line, which has been carrying commuters from east to west, and back again, since 1870.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
strong nerved
LIC cat, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m taking a short break this week, and offering single images of the Internet’s favorite critter. These are all ferals, encountered in the nooks and crannies of NYC which I wander through. Have a great Thanksgiving.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
abominations and blasphemies
Fight.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gaze upon the Newtown Creek. Currently an EPA Superfund site. Is it going to be one for long? Will there be an EPA this time next year? Would this be a good place, instead, to site a black and gold casino? I’ve been considering the Trump victory, and its implications. I’ve been reading a bunch of stuff written by people like myself, who thought the Presidential Election would be a logical slam dunk in favor of the more qualified candidate. All of us “lefties” have had to admit that we were wrong in our assumptions that our fellow Americans would actually vote in their own economic and cultural interest.
C’Est la Vie.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Early thoughts on the “new normal” involve trying to take advantage of it, which is the American Way. Should Mr. Trump make good on his promise to build a wall across the narrow part of the North American Continent, rebar and Portland Cement futures look like they’ll be a promising investment. Also, I’m planning on finding out who the leading players in immigration law are, and whether or not they are publicly traded companies.
It’s the EPA thing that we’re all talking about on the Creek, I would mention.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s going to be a very interesting few years, I think.
Mainly, because the Republican Congress is likely going to eat the new President for lunch. Those are shark infested waters down in the District. Let’s face it though, all that Donald Trump actually wants to do stand in front of the cameras while cutting the ribbon on all the “bridges to nowhere” and crony projects they’re going to be building.
The game just continues.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, and as I’ve often opined – National Politics is way above my pay grade. I’ve got other, more decidedly local problems to worry about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been on a Newtown Creek vacation for the last month, and it’s time for me to get back on the job.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 