Posts Tagged ‘Long Island City’
not utter
Curious marking, everywhere.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While wandering through the megalopolis, one is exposed to a constant barrage of information. Bill board, signage, even the streets have instructions and a complex code of symbols that instruct and inform. It is impossible, for the literate, to not translate these graphical representations of words directly into thought. You can’t “not” read something, if you can – in fact – read. It would be like ignoring a smell.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The thing is though, and I’ve mentioned environmental adaptation before (in reference to the fact that I don’t really smell Newtown Creek or the sewer plant in Greenpoint anymore), unless something painted or posted to the wall is truly extraordinary, I can’t distinguish it out from the rest of the visual clutter. The way I see it is that even if only a letter or two of a word triggers recognition (that’s an “A” and that’s a “B”) in me, the graffiti person has won. Same thing goes for advertising, I guess. Either way, I don’t like being forced into thinking. That’s the direction in which trouble lies, when one begins to think.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is currently occupying a sidewalk here in Astoria, and a Brazilian fellow walking a strange dog told me that the word is Portuguese and translates as “corruption”. It really stands out, as no one else has written anything on any nearby sidewalks, or in front of other houses. My Brazilian friend shrugged his shoulders, and sauntered off with his odd pet. Also, I must compliment the handwriting on this graffito, and would love to own a font which follows its esthetic.
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exponent of escape
It’s nothing but darkness down there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Loathsome, your humble narrator is nevertheless and occasionally required to put in an appearance now and then. Shattering disillusionment is what normally accompanies me, as It is my nature to fail. Hopes that I might eventually arrive at some combination of personality traits which a vast majority would find nonobjectionable are vainglorious, as I seem to have become exactly what my school instructors warned about decades ago. Sometimes, I’ll just ride the subway, and bathe in the clouds of powderized rat shit which herald their coming.
All I deserve, I suppose, as I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This has been an extraordinarily busy week for me, running about the City of Brooklyn and the villages of Queens. Newtown Creek, Red Hook and the Gowanus – and even the Brooklyn Navy Yard has been on my agenda. Last night, a friend asked me to attend a reading by Tirella from his new book about the 1964 World’s Fair at the Astoria Bookshop and by the time we were discussing it at a neighborhood pub afterwards, I was actually starting to nod out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apologies are offered for the late post today, but even one such as myself needs to fall unconscious and wildly hallucinate for 7-8 hours periodically. Such opportunity was denied for two days in a row, wherein one caught less than 6 hours of such activity in a 48 hour period. My normal late night antics, which find me at the computer during the witching hours, were cut short by the omnipresent needs of my biology.
All too human, I fear.
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rattling carts
“Last stop for gas” spake the feckless quisling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For some reason, NYC’s Gasoline Filling Stations keep on catching my eye, but I think they’re supposed to do that. Probably, this interest has a lot to do with all the history posts about the Petrochemical industry along Newtown Creek, but it just might be something as simple as the usage of bright primary colors used in their trade dressings as I am simple and foolish. The one above is in Maspeth, at a location which is neither tick or tock but is instead found between them.
from wikipedia
A filling station, fuelling station, garage, gasbar (Canada), gas station (United States and Canada), petrol bunk or petrol pump (India), petrol garage, petrol station (Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and United Kingdom), service station (Australia, United Kingdom and United States), or servo (Australia), is a facility which sells fuel and usually lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold today are gasoline (gasoline or gas in the U.S. and Canada, typically petrol elsewhere), diesel fuel, and electric energy. Filling stations that sell only electric energy are also known as charging stations.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Worry about imaginary Police reports, ones which describe a suspicious middle aged man that has been taking photos of fuel stations in Queens, have crossed my mind. So much so that the last time I had the ear of my local City Councilman – my paranoid imaginings were mentioned. He promised me that he wouldn’t let them take me to Guantanamo Bay, but couldn’t offer any specific guarantees about Rikers. Either way, the elected fellow promised to ensure that I got extra cookies with my dinner, should I end up in either institution.
from wikipedia
Gasoline /ˈɡæsəliːn/, or petrol /ˈpɛtrəl/, is a transparent, petroleum-derived liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain ethanol as an alternative fuel. In North America, the term gasoline is often shortened in colloquial usage to gas. Elsewhere petrol is the common name in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Australia and in most of the other Commonwealth countries.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of the pumps I see are the modern kind, dressed with digital payment terminals and all sorts of fancy kit. One suspects that there’s probably more computing power in a modern gas pump than would have been found in a high end desktop pc from just ten years ago. I’ve actually seen the old timey style pumps still at work in certain quaint hamlets in the backwoods of Vermont and Massachusetts as well as standing extant in the vast archaea of Crete.
from wikipedia
The first gasoline pump was invented and sold by Sylvanus F. Bowser in Fort Wayne, Indiana on September 5, 1885. This pump was not used for automobiles, as they had not been invented yet. It was instead used for some kerosene lamps and stoves. He later improved upon the pump by adding safety measures, and also by adding a hose to directly dispense fuel into automobiles.
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noxiously abroad
Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last Saturday, one found himself in the company of Craig Nunn and his Shorewalkers tour group running around LIC in a deep fog. The so called Polar Vortex had dissipated, and the abnormally cold water and frozen ground suddenly found themselves interacting with air that had suddenly grown 30-40 degrees warmer than that which had been circulating formerly.
The result: a whole pile of fog.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were gathered down at the East River shoreline, although you’d hardly recognize it. Manhattan was virtually obscured, and much of it seemed to have disappeared entirely, which is in many ways a dream come true for one such as myself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Queensboro, which is hard to miss normally, was relegated down to a mere shadow in the mist. Passerby, here in Tower Town, were heard to mention that they perceived something was moving about in the fog – something huge. Some thought it might be the Circle Line or some other large vessel.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Roosevelt Island’s southern extent was positively gothic in appearance. The fog was behaving in the manner of clouds, as observed from a high altitude plane, rising and falling with the tepid breeze and threading between tree and building.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, newly constructed, was nicely framed by the clouds of moisture. My camera was getting soaked while shooting, incidentally, and I had to retire it to the saftey of my camera bag shortly after capturing these shots.
Oy, it was so humid.
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brief space
An interesting effect observed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By this stage of the game, lords and ladies, the shot above must depict a scene quite familiar to your eyes. The waterway is the Dutch Kills tributary of the fabled Newtown Creek, and the industrial buildings framing it part of the Degnon Terminal here in Long Island City, Queens. The water is frozen, as would be expected in this frigid month.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hanging around with the Newtown Creek Alliance folks, one of the terms I’ve learned which cannot be expunged from active memory is “sediment mound.” That’s when an open sewer deposits layer after layer of its cargo, over the course of decades, and piles up a mound. These mounds are normally indistinct to the eye, sitting hidden in the turbid water.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What’s interesting in these shots, to me at least, is that the sediment mounds and other features of the bed which Dutch Kills flows through, are visible in the melting edges of the ice. It appeared that the ice didn’t form as solidly at the shorelines as it did in the center of the water. The center was, in fact, a solid plate of ice which had garbage rolling around on it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These were captured on January the 11th, a very foggy day. The shot above is a stitched panorama, which depicts the entire water way while facing roughly southwards.
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The Newtown Pentacle 