Posts Tagged ‘Long Island City’
subtler properties
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
During a moon lit night at Dutch Kills, one found himself feeling kind of minimalist. This isn’t so easy in an environment as visually complicated as the Newtown Creek watershed. One found himself fascinated by ambient lighting, cast colors, and vibe.
The shot above is looking eastwards along the Borden Avenue Bridge, towards Review Avenue, with the eye of Hecate sitting swollen and glowing in the spring sky. This was a supermoon, by the way, one of several we will be experiencing between now and autumn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Montauk Cutoff is pictured above, drenched in automotive brake light. One of the reasons behind my upgrade of camera equipment in the last six months revolves around being able to capture this sort of scene minus the usage of tripods or other camera support.
This shot is also from Borden Avenue in Long Island City, for the curious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s also the Montauk Cutoff in the shot above, with the point of view changed to the “Empty Corridor” under the Long Island Expressway.
Back tomorrow with more 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.
hidden legacy
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots are from Monday the 26th of April, and collected during an evening walk from Astoria to Long Island City’s hinterlands. The route I walked was largely my “stations of the cross” walk, perpetrated regularly during the pandemic year, with the notable difference being that since I’m fully vaccinated these days the walk took place right around sunset.
Perihelions at this time of year, given the relative angling of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself relative to the street grids of NYC, are efficacious. Within 4-6 weeks, the light simply won’t be as good. That’s the Northern Blvd. Shield Wall of the Sunnyside Yards, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My walk from Astoria sees me scuttling southwards over the truss bridges spanning Sunnyside Yards, to Skillman Avenue which carries my bloated meat suit down to the Degnon Terminal section of Long Island City where Dutch Kills is found. Over at Dutch Kills, a tributary of the gruesome extravaganza known as the Newtown Creek, I spotted a bird.
Given that every time I try to describe a bird, its speciation, common name – whatever – I’m inevitably wrong, I now just make up invented names for them. That’s a Two Fingered Butter Hawk, I’d say. This is part of why the Audubon Society hates me. You should see their faces when I advocate for feral cats as an alternative for chemical pesticides for rodent control on industrial sites.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a bit of maintenance work being performed on Dutch Kills by contractors for the NYC DOT. They’re specifically working on the wood pile “dolphins” protecting the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge from non existent maritime traffic.
The barge they’re using is interesting, and something I haven’t seen before. There are multiple snap together sections of the thing. I guess it was chosen as a work platform because of that non functioning MTA rail bridge at the head of the canal. You need something you can unload from a truck and assemble directly in the water, presumptively.
“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.
hieroglyphed dial
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Green Asphalt company operates out of a property in the Blissville section of Long Island City, along the inscrutable Newtown Creek. Green Asphalt is in the recycling business, ultimately. When the NYC DOT or its contractors are resurfacing a road, milling machines are brought in first, which scratch away the top layers of “road armor” which are collected in dump trucks. That road armor is asphalt, which is an admixture of concrete and petroleum oil and tar. It seems that asphalt can be renewed, rather than dumped, using an industrial process involving very hot steam and lots of machinery.
Green Asphalt operates within the regulatory framework of NYC’s 2010 Solid Waste Management policy. They divert literally millions of tons of asphalt from expensively going into landfills. They also employ a lot of Unionized Blue Collar employees. Win.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s some of the equipment they have deployed over in Blissville. My colleagues and I from Newtown Creek Alliance were invited to attend a presentation and open site day the company offered. There was a neat shwag bag on offer, and they gave us coffee and sandwiches during the event. The Deputy Borough President of Queens attended, as did a few of the other “powers that be” here in the World’s Borough.
Overall, some pretty nice people run the show over there, working in an ecologically important role. It’s a heavy industry, yes, and one that’s currently entirely truck based (they’re going to be expanding use of their maritime bulkhead along the Creek soon) but before companies like Green Asphalt came along, NYC used to pay through the nose for dumping asphalt in landfills located in distant places.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post, by the way, is where the “adventures of vaccinated Mitch” really start. Like a bat let out of a cage is how I’d describe the last few weeks of activity. These photos were gathered at the end of April, shortly after the second shot had fully soaked in. I’ve been in 4 of the 5 Boroughs just in the last few weeks, traveling on boats and trains and of course by foot.
What’s been really weird for me has been being awake during the daylight hours after the long nocturnal interval.
“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.
apparent sphere
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We’ve covered a lot this week; how to dispose of a body, how to crime, explored a civil war between Brooklyn and Queens, and the intriguing technological possibilities offered by my newish camera. The shots in today’s post didn’t quite fit into the others but I like them anyway so…
This one is from Long Island City, nearby the Dutch Kills tributary of the loquacious Newtown Creek. It depicts the operational equipment utilized by an aggregates processing yard. What that means is that stones and soil go in, get fed into gizmos, and get sorted by particle size. Rock, gravel, sand. In the fullness of time, even the sand will face away. Nothing lasts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in the happy place of Industrial Maspeth, there is a gargantuan NYC Department of Sanitation maintenance facility and garage. They have all kinds of cool stuff there, including this absolute specimen of kit. I don’t even know what to call this thing. A front loader? A bull dozer? A mobile oppression platform? It’s cool, it’s orange, and they left the door open so I was sorely tempted to take it for a joy ride because I’m from Brooklyn.
Freaking Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the burned out Goodfella’s Diner in Maspeth, nearby the fabled Haberman rail siding of the Long Island Railroad – specifically in the Diner’s parking lot – I spotted this cool looking truck. What? It’s a truck. I like taking pictures or trucks. What do you do? Practice spitting?
On a side note, what the hell is up with all the spitting these days? If you’re a male under the age of 30 and live in Queens, it seems you produce copious amounts of saliva and need to bleed some out roughly about every three sidewalk boxes. This isn’t “hawking a loogie,” mind you, this is a little “psst” bead of snot and spit which gets expelled at regular intervals. Have any of you blokes heard about about public health, or the whole pandemic deal?
How much saliva do you generate, brü? See a doctor.
“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.
forgotten sculptor
Friday, again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent daylight perambulation found a humble narrator in DUGABO, Down Under the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge Onramp, in the Blissville section of Long Island City. The bridge crosses the fabulous Newtown Creek, and provides a concrete manifestation of the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens. Famously, the so called “garbage train” is assembled at the LIRR’s Blissville rail yard, and is normally hauled about by locomotive engines painted with the brand colors of the New York & Atlantic outfit. This bluebird GATX unit was a surprise, but my beloved Creek is never entirely predictable. The street down here is dubbed “Railroad Avenue” aptly.
GATX, as it turns out, is an 1898 vintage corporate entity based in Chicago that leases rail equipment on several continents and also has a sideline in aviation heavy equipment. If you want to take a deep dive, here’s their site.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The signal bells began clanging and the train started moving eastwards along the Lower Montauk tracks. As you can see in the shot above, somebody has set up housekeeping under the bridge, having constructed a shelter/shanty out of shipping palettes and other industrial leave behinds. As of yet, I haven’t talked to this fellow, but I already like him since he’s got quite a collection of cats living with him.
Thrilling is how I describe the sensation of seeing freight rail moving around at street grade in NYC. Once common, there are so few places where you see this these days… this train and it’s box cars of garbage remove hundreds of long distance truck trips every day from our roads.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Blissville’s Railroad Avenue offers quite a gallery of street art/graffiti- if you’re into that sort of thing. The building just behind the locomotive used to be a lead factory, although in recent years it’s also been home to a company that worked with plastics. These days it’s a warehouse, with a tire shop on the Review Avenue facing side.
There’s quite a bit of industrial/commercial activity going on down here in DUGABO. The N.Y. Paving Company has an enormous property where they manage a fleet of hundreds of heavy construction vehicles and store sand, gravel, and other tools of their trade. Across the street at the former HQ of the Tidewater Pipeline Company, later called the Lukoil Getty terminal, the busy Broadway Stages outfit handles movie and tv productions for Hollywood. There’s also a self storage company housed in a factory building that used to be the home of BG Pickles.
Back next week with more, 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 