Posts Tagged ‘Long Island City’
gathered here
Mitch Waxman, working for YOU!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The pathway which will allow access to the bike and pedestrian lane of the new Kosciuszcko Bridge is pictured above, a terrifying “last mile” section which is owned by the City. This is the approach at “Queens Midtown Expressway” or “Borden Avenue” (depending on whose map it is) which you get to via a southward journey along 43rd street in Sunnyside. It’s also the onramp for the BQE, and there’s nothing separating you from traffic other than a three inch curb. If you’re wondering, this is actually a fairly well used foot path between industrial Maspeth and South Sunnyside – so it’s not just me.
Why do I go this particular way? I’ll show you at the end of the post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Inviting, ain’t it?
A humble narrator is ringing the alarm bells here for a fairly simple reason, the Kosciuszcko Bridge construction project is meant to be opening the second and final half of the project up to traffic (of all kinds) by the end of the summer, at the latest. The City, which is supposed to have been redesigning this section of things (they own it), hasn’t been shown to have started any risible progress yet. Supposedly NYC DOT has a design, but where is it? Shovels in the ground, boys?
I’d be happy with a bunch of jersey barriers, truth be told.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For years, literally years, I’ve been keeping an eye on this one.
I cannot tell you how many times in Western Queens that I’ve had the sudden realization that the sidewalk I was scuttling on led onto a highway. One time, after leaving St. Michael’s cemetery, the section of Astoria Blvd. I was walking along suddenly became the shoulder lane of the Grand Central Parkway as the sidewalk just ended.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This path leads to a pedestrian bridge, one that the K Bridge project has recently constructed as a replacement for a far older but similar lane. Friends who grew up on the southern flank of Sunnyside tell me that this path was well familiar to them growing up, and that the road and sidewalk conditions found in the shot above date back to their earliest recollection.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just last week, I was walking through here and spotted the condition above. Hadn’t been through in about a month, so it’s possible this collapsed in sewer grate had been lying in wait for an errant tire to enter it for weeks.
Here’s the “working for you part.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First things first, you document it. That’s me and the camera in the shadow on the left. Second, you report it.
Now, here’s the thing… I often have trouble making 311 or 911 operators understand that Queens has hyphenated addresses. Also, it took several paragraphs of text and a few photos to describe the location and condition of this place to you, my quite savvy and well traveled Lords and Ladies of the Pentacle. Additionally, this was a dangerous situation and I feared somebody could be seriously hurt if their tire entered the hole.
Prior experience with road condition and damaged sewer hatch reporting (yep, lots and lots of prior experience) has taught me that it can take weeks for the City to dispatch somebody to do repairs. They’ll send the cops out to throw down a traffic cone, but otherwise – weeks. I’m “Mitch Waxman” however, so a quick scan of the contact list on my phone allowed me to contact the K Bridge team’s Community Liason’s office, who in turn alerted the NYC DEP, whose sewer it is. DEP dispatched an emergency squad within the hour and they had the thing all fixed and repaired by the next morning. On the repair front, I let my pals at Jimmy Van Bramer’s office know about all the goings on and how great I thought it was how the K Bridge team and DEP handled the situation. That was also in the name of “reporting it” since JVB’s office keeps a list of complaints and problems in his District and since this one wouldn’t come to them via 311 or 911, there you are.
Nobody gets hurt. Street boo boo all better now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the other side of the “last mile” path, there is a permanently installed concrete separation between you and the onramp of the BQE. Where it slopes down and ends is the demarcation point of NYC and NYS’s property lines, or so I’m told. Want to guess why they’re there?
Yeah, that was me, suggesting it to the Engineering Team at K Bridge sometime back in 2012 or 2013.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My pal “Special” Ed once described his ideal job title as “freelance unsolicited criticism,” which would take the form of waking into a bank and decrying the arrangement of the padded ropes leading to the tellers, whereupon he would then hand them a bill for his services. I don’t charge, but I fear that I’m living out Ed’s dream. Ed used to live downstairs from me in an apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, one which was packed with high school and college friends. We lived a life disturbingly reminiscent of “Seinfeld,” I’m afraid. Ed had nothing in his refrigerator save for a single glass of water and a spoon, and stored his clothing in the kitchen cabinets. I miss Ed.
Pictured above is the K Bridge from that pedestrian ramp dealie which carries you over the onramps to it from the LIE onto Laurel Hill Blvd. at the border of Maspeth and Blissville, and between the Kosciuszcko Bridge and First Calvary Cemetery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is why I go this particular way. The view.
Just imagine what treasures await, when the ped and bike path is open. That’s presuming you don’t get squished by traffic on your way here, and end up in there.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
dark speculation
Ghosts, wolf ghosts, ghost teenagers, bears, witches, black mold, paranoia, vampires…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shots in today’s post are from a different night than the one I felt threatened by teenagers passing by, but still did a humble narrator lurk in fear. This time around, I found myself a couple of blocks from the future Amazon campus, an area which I’m trying to form a photographic record of before the furnaces of the real estate industry are fully stoked in response to the so called HQ2. Luckily for me, there was virtually no one about in this area after dark, but I can report that nearly every one of the squat industrial buildings found hereabouts bore a vinyl sign that read “available” followed by specific information leading one to a realtor’s name and phone number.
These vinyl signs are generally the “buboes” of a forthcoming plague of construction activity in Western Queens and North Brooklyn. It has begun, again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is one of those areas where you can go knock on a door looking for work, rather than submitting a resume to some automated system. HR is usually a mid 40’s woman named Esther or Shirly, and you get to work before the sun comes up most days, but get out at four in the afternoon. The job don’t pay well, but if you’re new to speaking English or just knocked your girlfriend up, this is the sort of thing you have to do to pay the bills. These are the jobs which will be extinguished by the coming of Amazon and the white collar economy of Manhattan.
If you’re one of the people who counted on finding a job, any job, and you don’t “know someone” you can just go to New Jersey or something. Neither the “Dark Prince of Albany” nor the “Dope from Park Slope” give two shits about you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Adolescents are real, and scary. So are political hacks. Saying that, I prefer my little world of eldritch horror and ghostly influences to the real world in Queens these days. At least monsters like vampires can be done away with by jamming a stake in their hearts and they don’t keep on getting reelected, or climbing the career ladder to new and higher positions. Ever feel like a rat trapped in a maze? I often do.
Pfah.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
inordinate amounts
Souring the milk, one day at a time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While hiding amongst the barren streetscape of industrial LIC from cadres of both ghostly and living adolescents, as well as a cohort of spectral forest animals, one found the time to crack out a few shots. When my nervous state emerges, solace is often found operating the camera. The technical aspect of it all pulls me back from the edge of madness, calms my frayed and often unctuous nerves, and allows me to lurk about in a normal rather than heightened level of fear. There’s a societal impulse to be afraid all the time these days, despite the fact that NYC is probably the “safest” it’s been in centuries.
Ask anyone. There’s pederasts hiding behind every tree waiting for an unwary parent to turn their back. Terrorists are everywhere, as are foreign born cartels of murder happy characters. Every employee of every corporation is working on new ways to give you cancer, defraud you, or conspiring to “sell your information.” Knife wielding pistoleros will addict you to amphetamines if you leave the house unarmed, and pistol wielding knifers will road rage you. Even University campuses aren’t safe anymore, with frequent bloody brawls occurring between pro and anti fascist, or so the Internet tells me. Your only hope seems to be in the embrace of the badged reverend in blue, who are the priestly class of an elected officialdom that are your only hope for succor before the descending curtain of a new dark age. They’ll protect you from all of these existential threats, the politicians will, unless they’ve been paid not to by a shadowy cabal of landlords who want you to move away. Your home isn’t safe either, as there’s black mold. Black mold is scarier than regular mold, because you know… black… which reveals that racism underlies everything. All is false, nothing is true, and there’s just no point so you might as well just accept it all and bunker down.
Ghosts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cognitive dissonance sells laundry detergent. Paranoid wonderings are fantastic fodder for people who sell security cameras and padlocks. Distraction and distrust of “the other,” who is everybody not as smart as you (who is everyone but you), are the best marketing gimmick of all time. Can you trust yourself? Our societal theater is crowded, and all are shouting fire, but nothing is actually burning. A humble narrator, however, who spends as much time as possible alone, asks this:
Are you so hungry you’d eat dirt, or haven’t had access to clean water for a long time? Have you ever experienced famine? Have you experienced drumfire artillery fired at your city? Are the teenaged packs of foreign born nationals in your nightmares just walking around and acting like dumbasses, or are they child soldiers riding around on a pickup truck that was modified to carry automatic weaponry on a mount? Are outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever common in your neighborhood?
Alternatively, do your biggest problems involve being overweight or spending too much money? Are you experiencing boredom since you’ve watched everything on Netflix already? That you’re worried about a nagging bit of nerve pain in your ass, caused by sitting around watching TV? How many violent attacks have you had to defend yourself from lately?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ghost teenagers stayed with me, but luckily I was able to lose the living ones in a maze of streets called Long Island City. On this particular evening, I had finally finished the audiobook I was listening to, which was “The Great Bridge” by David McCollough. Starting with the shot above, I started “I am Legend” by Richard Matheson, who is one of my all time favorite authors. That’s the one where the world is overrun by a plague of vampires and is told from the perspective of a “LMOE” or Last Man on Earth. It’s been adapted to film three times, with the first one (Last Man on Earth) starring Vincent Price being the best version in my opinion. I have some fondness for the Charlton Heston version (Omega Man), and the less said about the Will Smith version the better. If you want to know about Vampires, however, hang out under either the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn, or the elevated tracks along Jackson Avenue nearby Queens Plaza, and you’ll get to meet some. It’s a fantastic exploration – ultimately – of loneliness and isolation, that book.
Ghosts, wolf ghosts, ghost teenagers, bears, witches, black mold, paranoia, vampires.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
central figure
Adolescent and Ghostly predation, it affects us all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Terrified by the sudden appearance of a group of teenagers, spotted while out for a recent nocturnal walk, a humble narrator embarked on a panic fueled scuttle across Long Island City seeking safe shelter from their probably malign notice. Convincing myself that they were indeed material and living creatures, rather than ghosts, my footsteps carried me into the upland industrial zone which separates the Degnon Terminal area surrounding the Dutch Kills tributary of the fabulous Newtown Creek from residential Sunnyside and the lanes of shadow haunted Blissville. I pressed myself up against a factory window seeking help or shelter from the nearby adolescents, but like the key master…
Really, you people have no idea how much fun it would be if you could listen to my inner dialogue. The voice(s) in my head are a freaking riot, one of them even sounds just like jackie mason doing the aardvark voice.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
According to the historic record, there used to be quite a wolf problem around these parts. So much so that the Dutch, and later English, authorities over in Manhattan offered a bounty for wolf pelts right up until the Revolutionary War. The folks who settled into the parcels around these parts were farmers, mostly, and were happy to reduce the population of predators roaming around what we call Long Island City. Why all the wolves? Lots of deer. Why all the deer? Deciduous forest land punctuated by grassy marshes, creeks, and swamps. Know what else there was a lot of? Bears.
So, is Long Island City teeming with the specters of deer, wolves, and bears (as well as ghost teenagers)? Oh my.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve done a lot of targetted research looking for witch panics in the colonial era of Long Island City and Maspeth. There’s a couple of interesting stories, but nothing too crazy. It seems that the farmers of Newtown were a fairly laconic bunch who didn’t go in for a lot of hysterical jumping about and ecstatic garment tearing – unlike the folks who settled in New England. Generally, I try to avoid targetted research about social trends like witch panics since you end up finding only what you want to find. As an example, I’m famously not a fan of the current Mayor of NYC, so anything I read about him or any the policies he enacts are automatically interpreted negatively. I’m not the guy who should write his biography, as I’d paint the seven year old De Blasio as a scheming and disingenuous first grader with ridiculous ambitions.
It’s an entirely unscientific approach, history wise, when you go hunting for something you want to find, as a note. You can approach the record from a number of different “forensic” points of view, (economic, social, technological etc.) but you’re not supposed to say “I’m looking for” and then comb through the old books looking for what you want to find or to prove some political point about the modern world you’re trying to make. Directed research introduces a confirmation bias and you end up cherry picking the facts to prove your postulate, ignoring those which disprove it, in the same manner that a Prosecutor builds a case against the accused in court. Historical events can be interpreted through the various filters mentioned above, but what happened is what happened. This is something I learned while writing about Newtown Creek here at your Newtown Pentacle.
Ghosts, wolf ghosts, ghost teenagers, bears, witches.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
averring that
Lurking, in fear.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The other night, I was a bit restless and in need of some exercise, so a short scuttle ensued. As I was making my way, a group of adolescents was noticed walking on the other side of the street which induced a state of panic in me. Was this a wolf pack? Juvenile delinquents? An amoral band of street gypsies, or urban privateers? Junior stick up men? Cowering behind a cast off cardboard box, I noticed that a few new holes had appeared in the fencelines at the Sunnyside Yards and one decided to pass the behind the box time spent hiding from the teenagers by sticking my lens through these new chain link apertures.
Teenagers are scary. I was cold, and I think there might have been wolves – or ghost wolves – following me. Ghost wolves are scarier than either teenagers or regular wolves because… y’know… ghosts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking eastwards from the 39th street or Harold Avenue viaduct, towards the balloon track at Sunnyside Yards. No ghosts are apparent in this shot, but that’s no guarantee that there wasn’t some spectral tomb legion staring back up at me from the oily mud below. I’ve repeatedly asked my landlord if anybody has ever died in my apartment, but he’s always pretended that he didn’t hear the query. It would explain some of the hot water issues enjoyed at HQ in Astoria, were there a few extra invisible people showering at inconvenient times in the other units, but I really have no way of knowing.
Supposedly, there’s about seven million people in NYC these days. Historically speaking, there’s got to be at least a quarter billion ghosts roaming around the five boroughs, maybe even half a billion. That’s a lot of ghosts. I wonder how many of the living seven million are teenagers, though, as that’s the population I really worry about. Ghosts have impulse control, teenagers don’t. Teenagers are the absolute worst.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ghost wolves are scary to contemplate, but what about ghost teenagers? I knew a few people who died in High School and college through a variety of mishaps – mainly car accidents or drug overdoses, or some combination thereof. How many people have checked out at the corner of Northern Blvd. and Steinway over the centuries? Ok, it’s only been Northern Blvd. for about eighty years and Steinway for just over a hundred and change, yes, so let’s just call it the intersection of Jackson and Harold Avenues? Ok?
Ghosts.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 