Posts Tagged ‘Manhattan’
Archives #047
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My pals at Newtown Creek Alliance and I used to find ourselves reporting oil slicks and other petroleum related situations to the NYS DEC quite often. The head spill investigator for the agency, who was based in LIC, used to bring us in for an informal lecture and describing how to identify the type of conditions we were observing, and how to report it to the agency to get the quickest investigatory response. This relationship bore much fruit over the years, and still does.
Me? I’ve got at least three ‘reported observations’ which ended up becoming formal ‘remediation efforts’ by NYS officialdom. ‘Eyes on the Creek,’ that was one of the operative rules for us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Often has a humble narrator opined that the NYC Subway system provides circumstances favorable to the practice of a very technical form of photography. Low light, reflective surfaces, fast moving subject matter… add in a prohibition against tripods, lights, and flash… if you’re struggling to master hand held and low illumination photography skills, go ride the subways and get good at it. You’re commuting somewhere anyway, why not make creative use of otherwise lost time?
2015’s ‘copper eyed’ is all about subways, and photographing them as they enter the station. As a note: This is one of the very few times that I included the shot’s exposure triangle information, incidentally, which was me trying to pull back the curtain a bit to show how I do my thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I always figured that since half of my time outside the house in NYC was inevitably going to revolve around transit so I might as well make some usage of my wait times on the subway platform. Eventually this catalog of transit included every single public conveyance I could get a camera next to – taxis, buses, citibike… everything public.
These archive posts are reaching into Newtown Pentacle’s backups, and are pulling posts that went public on this date, in their respective years, going back to 2009. This practice will continue until I’m back on both feet full time, and new photos and stories can be gathered. For anyone who hasn’t heard the news, I broke my left ankle at the end of September.
“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.
vanished morning
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What with the looming move to Pittsburgh coming up in just one week, and with Thanksgiving and everything else going on at the moment, a humble narrator is forced into taking a bit of a break this week. Single images will be greeting you, thereby.
Hopefully – next week, “normal” posts will return, but there’s a possibility that during the first week of December you very well might still be seeing single images here. As mentioned – a lot of balls are in the air and are being actively juggled at the moment. At any rate, I’ll definitely be posting about NYC and Newtown Creek through the end of the year, and possibly a couple of weeks into the new one. I’ve really been all over hill and dale, and the blasted heaths and concrete devastations, in the last month. Everybody is asking, so – yes, I plan on continuing to post here at Newtown Pentacle and no – I’m not changing the name. Things will transition over to Pittsburgh, and I’m hoping that y’all will stick with me as I learn about and experience my new home. It’s an extremely interesting place.
Pictured above is a Tugboat on the Hudson River – competing in the 2019 Great North River Tugboat Race and Competition. As it turns out, this was my last rodeo at the Tug Race. Covid, the death of Working Harbor Committee’s prime movers… dissolution and depression… The Working Harbor Committee is marshaling itself for next year to attempt to pull off this event again for 2023, but I won’t be a part of it.
“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.
sleek neck
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What with the looming move to Pittsburgh coming up in just one week, and with Thanksgiving and everything else going on at the moment, a humble narrator is forced into taking a bit of a break this week. Single images will be greeting you, thereby.
Hopefully – next week, “normal” posts will return, but there’s a possibility that during the first week of December you very well might still be seeing single images here. As mentioned – a lot of balls are in the air and are being actively juggled at the moment. At any rate, I’ll definitely be posting about NYC and Newtown Creek through the end of the year, and possibly a couple of weeks into the new one. I’ve really been all over hill and dale, and the blasted heaths and concrete devastations, in the last month. Everybody is asking, so – yes, I plan on continuing to post here at Newtown Pentacle and no – I’m not changing the name. Things will transition over to Pittsburgh, and I’m hoping that y’all will stick with me as I learn about and experience my new home. It’s an extremely interesting place.
Pictured above is the Roosevelt Island Tram and Queensboro Bridge – seriously, one of the best “cheap thrills” you can have these days is a ride on the tram. When you get to Roosevelt Island, visit the historical society kiosk nearby the station. You’ll see the remains of the missing lamp post of the Queensboro Bridge, which I discovered one day on the LIC and Sunnyside border. Roosevelt Island Historical Society did the heavy lifting of actually saving the thing, but hey!
“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.
hollowed tree
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What with the looming move to Pittsburgh coming up in just one week, and with Thanksgiving and everything else going on at the moment, a humble narrator is forced into taking a bit of a break this week. Single images will be greeting you, thereby.
Hopefully – next week, “normal” posts will return, but there’s a possibility that during the first week of December you very well might still be seeing single images here. As mentioned – a lot of balls are in the air and are being actively juggled at the moment. At any rate, I’ll definitely be posting about NYC and Newtown Creek through the end of the year, and possibly a couple of weeks into the new one. I’ve really been all over hill and dale, and the blasted heaths and concrete devastations, in the last month. Everybody is asking, so – yes, I plan on continuing to post here at Newtown Pentacle and no – I’m not changing the name. Things will transition over to Pittsburgh, and I’m hoping that y’all will stick with me as I learn about and experience my new home. It’s an extremely interesting place.
Pictured above is the Chrysler Building shortly after a wicked series of thunderstorms blew through the Shining City back in 2009. The image above, and a horizontal landscape one shot during the same session, are my most pirated images. There’s seemingly a whole industrial sector in China devoted to exploiting it commercially without paying me for usage rights.
“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.
nightmare spawning
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hudson Yards is an abomination. The Related Companies have been allowed to steal the sky, blotting the firmament out and privatizing it for those who can afford to pay their price.
This is unfortunately the future, and one of the models that NYC will be using for future development. As you’re reading this, the “powers that be” are at work on the area just east of this development. The Penn Hotel is being torn down, as Midtown Manhattan is underdeveloped, and the Political Estate’s sponsors are slavering for more.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you flush a toilet here, your bodily waste flows through underground pipes to a NYC DEP facility on 13th street and Avenue D, right in the middle of the projects. It’s then pumped under the East River to Greenpoint, where it’s processed along Newtown Creek. If there’s a summer blackout in Brooklyn or the Bronx, you can bet your bottom dollar that the lights will stay on at Hudson Yards.
If you spend any time interacting with the vampiric aspirations of big Real Estate, and speak against one of their projects, you will be called a “NIMBY” by one of their sock puppet “non profit” organizations that describe themselves as being “YIMBY’s.” NIMBY is an acronym for “Not in my back yard,” and YIMBY is “Yes in my back yard.” These YIMBY’s will accuse you of denying people – who haven’t been born yet – homes because of racism. Never will the hundreds of thousands of apartment units currently warehoused, and purposefully kept off the market, by their masters in the Real Estate industry with the intention of keeping their market prices on an always upward trajectory be mentioned.
Jared Kushner. Donald Trump. The Durst Organization. Larry Silverstein. The Tishmans and the Speyers. These are the sort of creatures who control the discourse over housing and development in NYC. The aspirant politicians are sponsored by these forces, and expected to do their bidding when appointed elected to office. Oddly, the most “Socialist” of the electeds also happen to be YIMBY’s. So are the hardline Republicans, the middle of the road Democrats – everybody in office seems to be bought off to one degree of another by Real Estate.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hudson Yards is an abomination. Ever wonder what it must be like to live in a building where you can’t open the window for some fresh air?
On the plus side, you don’t have to worry too much about getting rained on in the Hudson Yards area. There ain’t that much visible sky there to allow a cloud to piss down on you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The only reason you can see the Empire State Building in the shot above is due to a NYC Dept. Of City Planning rule about “preserving sight lines.” The fellow who oversaw this project for City Planning was Vishaan Chakrabarti, who was the same guy that the NYC EDC hired to oversee the Sunnyside Yards proposal. Now… do you understand why I fought so hard and long against that one?
This is what was going to happen to Sunnyside and LIC if that project moved forward. If the Mayor overrules the Council member and Borough President on the Innovation Queens proposal, this is what Astoria is going to turn into in about 10 years. NIMBY my ass.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given the huge input of $1.2 billion in public money, you’d imagine that the rents here were somewhat reasonable, huh? Well, if you’ve got $7,100 a month for a furnished one bedroom – you’re set. That’s $85,200 a year, which would have to come out of your post taxation paycheck. If you want to buy instead, their available condos start at $5.5 million and range up to a 4 bedroom, 5,000 sq ft. one on sale for $29.5 million.
Does this sound like an industrial sector which requires tax breaks that divert moneys away from the public sector?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hudson Yards is an abomination.
“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 