Posts Tagged ‘Long Island City’
overhead scarce
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling, always scuttling. Filthy black raincoat waving about in the breeze, shoes dragging through the mud. Friendless in dark places. Camera in hand, sometimes it doesn’t rain.
One found himself perambulating towards the Blissville section of Long Island City one recent evening, following the path less travelled – by foot at any rate. Cannot tell you how often it is that I find myself walking along Highway off ramps. Well… in this case Expressway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, one spotted this particularly well developed homeless encampment that was set up in a wooded area adjoining the expressway’s various ramps and overpasses. Having mentioned this particular dwelling to some of the Astoria commentariat subsequently, one was stunned at the hard hearted responses offered in return.
Whatever your opinion of such matters is, it doesn’t negate the fact that this is a human being, or beings, who are living rough. They have nowhere to bathe, or take a dump, or enjoy any sense of personal security while they’re sleeping. I don’t care if they’re nuts, or addicted to nuts, or if they are literally motherfuckers – these are human beings, fellow travelers, somebody’s kid. Have a little empathy for your fellow man, and remember that “but for the grace of god, there go I.” Poor bastards… this photo was captured in freaking January, and depicts the homestead of somebody who lives in an unheated tent made of garbage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I get the disdain, especially from the crew of first generation immigrants who were offering it here in Astoria. To their mind, they showed up here without two cents to rub together and they’ve made something out of themselves so why should they feel sorry for some bum who had every opportunity to do the same. My bleeding heart could not be quieted, however, and I had to remind the commentariat about empathy and their self identification as “Christians.”
I’m not saying that the guy living in the garbage tent is a preferred choice for marrying your daughter, but jeez – on a purely human level you have to feel some sort of pity for their circumstance. Everybody in NYC is a few short months from the street if circumstance goes against us. A friend of a friend went from Wall Street wealthy to homeless shelter in just six months after a health crisis set off a cascade of disasters. Garbage tent can literally happen to anyone of us.
Personally, I distribute old clothing to people in this sort of situation. Socks, t-shirts, etc. I’ll either hand them over in person or just leave a bag near the entrance to their shack with a note. I’m not virtue signaling or anything, just saying that it wouldn’t hurt to help and be empathetic towards another’s circumstance rather than to castigate them for a series of bad choices and or circumstance.
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“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.
stirred not
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator ponders the deep stuff while out scuttling. “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood” and the like. Aglets, which are the plastic or metal tips of shoelaces, have an unspoken and quite sinister purpose. Is house paint just nicely colored industrial waste? Are the fire retardant chemicals that federal law demands factory inclusion of, into carpets and furniture, actually fire accelerants? Does “new car smell” cause cancer? Also, whereas you see an occasional dead pigeon, where do they go to die – in their multitudes. Is there a vast pigeon graveyard somewhere? I bet it’s in the Bronx, if there is such a place – with grand shoals of pigeon ivory glittering white in the radiances of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself.
Penguins aren’t who or what you think they are. They’re assholes like geese. For a while now, I’ve been wondering about how to control insects, given that they’re essentially biological robots who receive information packet instructions through pheromone messaging. If we figure out the right chemical syntax and steroidal language, could the Ants and Termites start working for – rather than against – us?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Have you ever read any of the muckrakers? Ida Tarbull, or Upton Sinclair? I have. Sinclair’s “The Jungle” is in my top ten, ever. The book is so old that it’s entered the public domain, and I’ve been thinking about doing a find/replace text project and releasing an appended version for modern audiences called “La Jungla.” I’d search for all instances of “Lithuania” and replace the word with “Mexico.” Same thing with turning “Jurgis” to “Jorge.” It’s a surprisingly modern day story, and speaks to the fact that not much has fundamentally changed in American Society since the late 19th century. Culturally, we seem to be in a rut. Superman is still large and in charge, and he’s been around since the Great Depression. Another Batman movie is in the theaters, and he’s a Depression era eidolon as well. The Marvel crew are all Cold War and 1960’s cultural icons. What’s come along since The Beatles? Since Star Wars? Wait… the Cold War is back on again?
Fire hydrants of the type pictured above are welded onto the water pipe that feeds them. If a vehicle was to allide with a hydrant of this type, the water would flow freely and the DEP would have to shut off the block’s entire water line and dig up the street in order to fix it. They’re replacing this hydrant model, citywide, with one that is flanged onto the buried pipe and incorporates a localized valve into the operating system. The hydrant is filled with drinking water, just like your toilet is, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Free car storage,” that’s the Bicycle Advocacy Lobby calls street parking. A humble narrator gets particularly annoyed at scenes like this one which seem to escape their notice, where a private outfit involved in the yellow cab game takes over entire blocks to store their inventory. Nearby this spot, you’ll also notice that the NYC DOT and other City Agencies have set aside parking spots for their own exclusive usage. As a matter of fact, due to ongoing work on the Queensboro Bridge, DOT and it’s contractors have recently seized 80 additional parking spots in LIC for free storage of their vehicles over the next 24 months. In the midst of the City of Greater New York’s quest to ameliorate climate issues, the question as to why municipal employees don’t take the train or a bus to get where they’re going to never seems to come up. Hypocrisy abounds.
One dreams of abandoning it all, moving to some Third World Jungle, and inventing his own race of Atomic Supermen. That’s step one. Next up is insect control, then getting some sort of lock down in place on the Penguins and Geese. Their perfidy has gone unanswered for too long.
“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.
it shines
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dutch Kills, and my little tree of paradise. I check in on this tree about once a week these days. It would absolutely break my heart if I showed up here and it was gone. Eventually, it will affect the structure it adjoins and will be removed, or it will be hydrologically undermined by the waterway and fall into the water. I understand this.
Saying that, gosh do I hope this thing continues growing and thriving in these horrific circumstances, along the Long Island City reaches of the fabulous Newtown Creek. These shots were captured in mid February, I should mention.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The thick plate of ice which Dutch Kills had been encased in was “rotting” away as I was moving around the zone. The polka dots effect was fascinating. I’ve had a few people ask me if this was due to some environmental factor, but I think it’s just what happens in a tepid tidal situation involving brackish water.
The extreme cold of early to mid February typically creates icing along the tributaries of Newtown Creek and in isolated sections along the main part of the waterway. Saying that, it has to be fairly cold for a protracted period of time for the “main stem” to get fully frozen over.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What I found kind of interesting was the presence of these snowflake shaped ice holes closer to the boundary between liquid and frozen. This particular spot is always lurking under the Borden Avenue Bridge.
As far as you seeing photos from February, with today being the Ides of March, one has been lucky enough to be a couple/three weeks ahead of schedule here at Newtown Pentacle for most of 2022. I’ve got some cool stuff coming your way, including another Amtrak based day trip to America’s consolation prize – Philadelphia. Also, I’m cooking up a few “in person” Newtown Creek events which I’ll be announcing soon.
More tomorrow, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
hellish hours
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling, forever scuttling, in the dark and cold of the Queensican night, camera in hand. Shoes scraping along the frozen concrete, friendless, filthy black raincoat flapping about in the stiff wind. Nothing matters, nobody cares. Sometimes it snows.
This time around, one was heading off in the direction of the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek here in Long Island City. As is my habit, a visit was paid to some of the better holes found in the fence lines of the cyclopean Sunnyside Yards. Fortuitous timing was achieved, since I got there just as a Long Island Railroad train set rolled past, navigating its way through the Harold Interlocking. Harold is the busiest passenger train junction in the United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s quite a bit of work underway down “on the deck” at Sunnyside Yards, as the latest phase of the MTA’s “East Side Access” project plays out. What that means to the passing photography enthusiast is that they’ve increased the intervals of time between trains to allow for longer periods of uninterrupted construction work, and they also seem to be timing things so that when they need to have the laborers step back to allow a train to pass safely, generally more than one train set is doing so during that interval.
“They” are the people in the control rooms at Grand Central and Pennsylvania Station who sit in front of large electronic screens detailing where, when, and how fast locomotives are moving about in the NYC system. I’ve seen the one at Grand Central, but I wasn’t allowed to photograph it due to “Homeland Security concerns.” “They” use homeland security whenever they don’t want you to report that they’re still using Windows 95 or something, as a note. The photo above depicts what is arguably the most strategic non military or political “spot” in the northeastern United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given the spate of rail activity observed, a humble narrator decided to just hang around the holes. I was particularly enjoying the snow on the ground, since it allowed a lot of the ambient light down on the tracks to bounce about and paint the scene in primaries and pastels.
Recently, one encountered a great YouTube channel for some rail museum, one which I’ve misplaced the specific links to, which explained – as if you were talking to a first grader – how to interpret the signals on the “traffic lights” found above rail tracks. This has been immensely helpful to me. Blinking yellow versus green? It also informed me about what the motions that train people make with their lanterns means. Now I know. If I hadn’t lost the link, you would too.
Scuttling, always scuttling…
“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.
harmless stupidity
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling, always scuttling, camera in hand, filthy black raincoat flapping about, shoes scraping the concrete. That’s my life. Wherever I go, there I am. Nothing ever changes, nothing matters, nobody cares. Everyday, it all starts over again. Sometimes it snows.
Frost bitten and friendless, there I was at Dutch Kills as the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself rose in the dawn sky. One hoped for the boughs of that little tree to be laden with snow, but this too was denied.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unfortunately, due to a series of reasons that I don’t really want to get into, the decision to walk over to a nearby collapsing bulkhead before heading back to a heated room in Astoria was arrived at. All ten fingers were numb, but only six of them were reporting. So too did a couple of my toes go offline. The tip of my nose was similarly missing without leave. It was 12 degrees Fahrenheit, with a steady wind.
This isn’t the coldest I’ve ever been. There was that negative 37 time in Vermont, and that time I had to ride a boat up the East River at 5 in the morning in January with my old pal Bernie… I’ve been cold before. Saying all that, it was pretty uncomfortable being out. It’s taken weeks for my fingertips to recover. Good news is that in the interval, I’ve been able to pinch out candles with zero discomfort.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As far as 29th street, and the collapsing bulkheads along it go, my pals and I at Newtown Creek Alliance have recently been working the channels of “officialdom” and got sign on’s for immediate action from Congresswoman Maloney, Senator Gianaris, Assemblywoman Nolan, Borough President Richards, and Council Member Won along with a few other powers and potentates, as well as a few local business owners. It’s still a developing situation, down there in LIC.
Back next week with more numbed finger action, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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 