Posts Tagged ‘M line’
he flees
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On one of the very few public facing Newtown Creek walks of 2021, I was approached afterwards by one of the Gradate Students who had attended the thing. They asked me if I’d be willing to “show them the ropes” on the eastern side of Newtown Creek. This was before the current Pandemic surge condition set up, so I said “sure.”
I set a meet up point at 43rd street and Queens Blvd., but decided to take the train there from Astoria instead of the Q104 bus or just walking. M line to Jackson Heights, and transfer to the 7.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A buddy of mine in Astoria gives me the “you’re crazy” face when I tell him to go this way, as he likes transferring to the 7 Line at Court Square. He’s wrong, as it’s three stops to Jackson Heights from my stop in Astoria and 4 stops to Court Square. Given that his route goes through Queens Plaza, it’s always going to take longer.
I’m smart… Smart, not dumb, not like people say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The particular path I took the grad student on involved some of the less visited spots along Newtown Creek like Maspeth Creek. As open sewers go, it’s a beauty.
Foliage, that’s what I kept on thinking. Foliage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, the pandemic has annihilated another Newtown Creek business, this one a distribution hub for an international bakery company that sells snack cakes. Accordingly, open fences, and an opportunity to get a shot that I’ve never gathered before.
Funnily enough, some of my Newtown Creek people – who always tell me that I’ve seen too many movies – recently discovered that the Mafia are still active in the Maspeth area. Surprising, huh? Beverage and snack food distribution using fleets of trucks to deliver to all cash businesses like Bodegas… who would associate the Mafia with that… I mean, it’s not like you grew up in New England and I grew up in 1980’s Flatbush and Canarsie. Thereby, your point of view on this topic is superior to mine. Saying that, I had a neighbor whose car horn literally played “The Godfather”’s theme music.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Around the end of our walk, I asked the Grad Student where they wanted to be for sunset, which was greeted with a shrug. I suggested the Grand Street Bridge, and the view you see above.
This shot is from early December, which ended up being a pretty productive month for a humble narrator. The reason I’m embedding six shots in the posts at the moment is to try and catch up with the actual calendar.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Technically, this shot was captured in Brooklyn. The actual dividing line between the boroughs is more or less the dead bang center of the Grand Street Bridge.
More tomorrow.
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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.
local manifestation
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Well, you just had to figure that as soon as I was able to ride the trains again, y’all would be seeing multiple posts of trains here, huh? It has been a fairly nightmarish couple of weeks for a humble narrator, watching the world roll by while he’s been stuck in multiple holocausts of zoom meetings. Last week got gobbled up preparing for a virtual lecture on Dutch Kills for the Queens Public Library, which is online at the Queens Memory Project in case you’ve missed the dulcet sounds of my voice, followed by social obligations. After that, I got sucked into community board stuff.
Additionally, a little side project of mine for the last few months has been walking candidates for office in LIC around Newtown Creek and detailing problems or opportunities which the successor to Jimmy Van Bramer in the 26th council district will find landing on their plates. You very well might want to defund the cops, candidate, but you’re also going to have to form an opinion about a Federal Superfund site where 17,500 blue collar jobs can be either saved, magnified, or thrown away – in your potential district.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, Community Board breaks for the summer as do several of the various obligatory meetings for Newtown Creek. I’m actually heading up to the Empire State Building observatory this evening to do some shooting. One desires perspective, and when putting together the presentation for the Queens Library mentioned above I came to realize that all of the “top down” shots I’ve got of Newtown Creek have the old Koscisuzcko Bridge in them. Have to maintain the image library, me.
Additionally, as far as summer stuff goes, Our Lady of the Pentacle turned me on to a couple of great offers by Amtrak for regional rail travel. Might just take advantage of that, and take the camera out for a few day trips to the lesser Cities of North America.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Snap back answers are a big part of the current problem when discussing anything these days. So’s virtue signaling. Why do you have to have an opinion about everything?
Are you a racist? Probably not, but you’re a lying fool if you don’t admit to harboring prejudices. Are you an idiot? Probably not, but if you don’t offer that there are things you are completely ignorant about you are similarly a lying fool. There’s being a fool, and then there’s being sinister and weaponizing all of this current cultural bullshit going on for short term political gain. I’ve already seen “me too” weaponized.
As an example of weaponized politics, a casual friend of mine who is running for office in Flushing just got booted off his community board because the old guard thereabouts decided they didn’t like him or his opposition to a real estate mega project. This fellow is obviously East Asian in ancestry, but the specifics of his ethnicity never came up in the decade or so that I’ve known him. We mainly talk about food and transit, truth be told. As it turns out, he’s Korean, which I discovered on social media. This ethnicity thing became an issue since the specifics of race are very important to the anti racist lefties (dichotomy much?) who think that not building luxury condos is racist, and this fellow’s enemies – on the left – are accusing him of taking money from Pyongyang and acting as a Communist sleeper agent for North Korea. Wow.
Great thing about riding the trains again is having time to ponder, and think.
“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.
copper eyed
The timid banality of it, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One enjoys the pained expression on the faces of Subway train operators and that uncomfortable look which washes across them when they see some odd character in a filthy black rain coat on the subway platform, in the process of photographing them while in their offices. A rare caprice, for one such as myself, are the moments which occur only when a momentary glimmer of joy breaks through that dire cloud normally occluding my mood. Few of these glimmers are more dearly held than those that are coincidental to some other task, which renders these annoyed expressions intrinsically whimsical.
The task, in these cases, is the continuing usage of NYC’s finest low light photography workshop – by a humble narrator for his endless experimentation with camera exposure triangles. Hey, I’m down there anyway, and headed on my way towards some miserable fate, might as well make some use of otherwise wasted time.
F 3.2, ISO 6400, 1/125th of a second, tungsten color temperature.
Btw, that’s the R line entering the 46th street station along Broadway in Astoria. The R line came online in this part of Queens back on the 19th of August in 1933.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the E line entering Queens Plaza on its way towards Manhattan. The IND (underground) station at Queens Plaza also opened on August 19th in 1933, but back then it only ran as deep into Queens as Jackson Heights at Roosevelt Avenue. On the Manhattan Side, it went to what was once called Hudson Terminal, a spot which we refer to as Ground Zero these days. The E’s range was extended several times throughout the 1930’s until it achieved a route which extended deep into Queens. Cutbacks began in the 1940’s, and continue to this day on the E.
F 3.2, ISO 6400, 1/160th of a second, tungsten color temperature.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 23rd street Ely Avenue IND Station, over in Long Island City, opened on August 28 in 1939, about six years after the elevated IRT station “Court Square” was opened for business. That’s the M train coming into the station. The M line is part of the (in LIC and part of Manhattan) IND 53rd street line, which is a section of the IND Queens Boulevard line in terms of the larger system.
There you go.
F 2.8, ISO 5000, 1/160th of a second, tungsten color temperature.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Manhattan, at the deepest kind of a subway platform which one can mentally conjure, and at what has to be only 20-39 feet above hell itself – the 4 train illuminates one of those rotting concrete tunnels it inhabits while entering the scene. Notice how the train jockey is writhing whilst realizing he’s being photographed… hee hee. Why so serious, say I?
This station opened at two in the afternoon on the 17th of July in 1918. I’ve been using this line more and more often these days, as the less time the spent on the Subway the better, and the Lexington Express gets me to the Staten Island Ferry in Lower Manhattan just as quick as you can.
F 3.2, ISO 5000, 1/125th of a second, tungsten color temperature.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan, and the 5 train is entering the tableau. This used to be the terminal stop for the Lexington line, when the station opened on the 10th of July in 1905. Service to Brooklyn also started in 1905. It’s an IRT station, just like 59th street. IND and IRT are terms which refer to the old dual contracts era of the Subway construction era, which have created the A and B divisions of the modern day MTA New York City Transit Authority.
F 3.2, ISO 5000, 1/200th of a second, tungsten color temperature.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the G train entering the Greenpoint Avenue stop in the shot above, and also showcasing the decidedly uncomfortable expression characteristic of an MTA subway employee who suddenly realizes he or she is being photographed while at work. Another of the August 19th of 1933 era lines in Brooklyn and Queens, the G is officially called the IND Crosstown Line by MTA insider and rail fan alike.
F 4.0, ISO 5000, 1/160th of a second, tungsten color temperature.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An IRT train, the 7 line enjoys its elevated existence under the ever watchful burning thermonuclear eye of God itself, upon having entered Queens. The stop at which this shot was captured is the 40th street Lowery stop, which opened for business in 1917.
One is always amazed at the series of late dates upon which these stations opened, incidentally. Assumptions that the Broadway line through Astoria opened in the 1920’s are acknowledged, given the density of apartment houses along the line which are both admitted to and offered at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
F 7.1, ISO 250, 1/250th of a second, daylight color temperature.
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