Posts Tagged ‘Manhattan’
many went
My favorite place, when I was a kid.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Facebook the other day, I mentioned to my little collection of friends that I had signed up for one of those NYCID cards in pursuance of all the free stuff you get in return. There’s a collection of institutions which normally cost a larger than you’d expect fee at the front door, and the NYCID card gets you a free membership which negates any sort of payment for 12 months.
One of them is the American Museum of Natural History. You present your NYCID at the front desk, and you get a complimentary year of membership to the institution.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was in the City anyway, and had a couple of hours to kill in between appointments, so I hopped on the B and went over to 81st and Central Park West and did the deed. Having a little time to kill, I strolled around the museum before it got too crowded. By about 12:30 p.m., I had discovered where every tourist visiting NYC with small kids in tow goes in the afternoon and given my lack of patience with crowds – well, it was time to head back to Queens and get back to work at HQ anyway after about an hour and fifteen minutes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I did manage to visit a few exhibits. I’ve always been kind of partial to the ice age mammals, personally, but let’s face it – you don’t go to Natural History to see Mammoth bones. You go for the dinosaurs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned above, when I was a kid this was my favorite place in the world. Last time I spent any length of time at the museum was back in the early 90’s when I lived not too far away at the corner of 100th street and Broadway. I had been hanging around that section of the Upper West Side for awhile, going back to the late 80’s when I worked a college job as a non Union doorman in a building I would later live in.
Mostly boring work, but good for studying, and I had to get physical a few times with crack heads who wanted to use the lobby to smoke up. The neighborhood gentrified quickly, and became both crack head free and banal, back in the late 90’s and by 2003 – Astoria beckoned. I’ve been back to the Natural History museum just once in the interval since then, accompanying a buddy who was drawing a comic for Marvel and needed to do some Pterodactyl and Archaeopteryx research.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYCID thing was actually kind of painless to handle. I made an appointment, at LaGuardia Community College of all places, and showed up with proof of address and a couple of other required documents. The whole thing took about 15 minutes and the card came in the mail about a week later. I’m signed up at Moving Image here in Astoria and at Natural History, so far.
The part I’m excited about is the free zoo membership, of course. Only problem with that is that I have to go to Bronx Zoo to do the signup, which is a great example of the macabre sense of humor which New York City exhibits. Expect many, many, copulating monkeys at this – your Newtown Pentacle – in 2016.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The crowds at American Museum of Natural History really begin to dense up in the early afternoon, and as I was leaving it was noticed that there was a good sized lineup of people out on the steps waiting their turn to stand on the lines inside. Have to say – one of the many things which has changed since a humble narrator was young is that back in the 80’s and 90’s you were pretty much alone in these museums on week days.
There’s no way you could just drop yourself down on the floor and throw open a sketch book with all the tourists clodding about these days. New York really isn’t for New Yorkers anymore, I guess.
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obstinate retort
random things I’ve seen.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My pals at the North Brooklyn Boat Club collect bricks and other things they find along the shorelines of the lugubrious Newtown Creek. Historic bricks are a whole topic in themselves, but the ones you find along the creek can be somewhat revelatory, as many of them were used in the furnaces of the industrial revolution. The company which manufactured these so called “refractory” ceramics was founded in 1854, and located on Richards street, between Van Dyke and Beard streets, in Red Hook.
Odds are that it was used for the retort of a manufactured gas plant, based on the sort of discoloring and wear pattern it exhibits. It’s also likely infiltrated with all sorts of heavy metals and arsenic compounds.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Blissville, along Greenpoint Avenue at the corner of Starr, this (reportedly) 1930 model building hosts a deli at the street level and two apartments above. There’s a basement as well, and I’ve found conflicting accounts regarding the date of construction, with NYC’s Buildings Department displaying a “CofO” listing the place as having been first occupied in 1917. The records regarding Queens at DOB are pretty spotty, if you ask me, and I chalk up their inaccuracies to the chaos of LIC & New York City Consolidation.
According to the DOB, the building Newtown Pentacle HQ occupies in Astoria is actually the parking lot of an Italian restaurant in Rego Park, as an example.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one is shot from the last car of an N train leaving Queens Plaza, through that trippy lenticular plastic that MTA believes will defeat the armies of chaos. I dream of getting on an N, or Q, with clean windows. It’s part of the reason why I like taking the C, as those older model cars still allow an unimpeded view of the tunnels.
Regardless of optical distortion, I like the shot above for some reason.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Simply put, the shot above describes the proper Brooklyn pronunciation of the word “fifth.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in Queens, which is the only place in NYC where a private property owner can get away with hanging his own sign on the pedestrian sidewalk admonishing passerby to make way for his workers and their heavy equipment. Look out for forklifts indeed.
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lured and
Adventure and pedantic excitement, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavors found me at what I’m fairly sure is the western boundary of the former garden of Eden, the modern day Times Square. Often have I advanced the theory that Eden was not only in North America, but in Manhattan, and that the Tree of Knowledge was found in the dead bang center of 42nd street between 7th Avenue and Broadway opposite the Subway entrance on the south, and the news ticker on the north. Furthermore, it is my belief that Times Square is actually the geographic center – or Omphalos – of the universe itself, but esotericism and magick seldom apply to cartography.
I am sure that Adam and Eve would have headed in the direction of modern day Port Authority after eating the forbidden fruit, as original sin and mortal damnation are inextricably linked to that hellish terminal building and all the lost souls who dwell therein.
Somewhere deep below Port Authority is a forgotten and unmapped subway platform servicing the H, E, and LL lines, with transfers available only from the S, I, and N lines. One needs to ride the latter in the correct order, in order to arrive at the entrance leading to the former.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of the E, and hellish subterranean complexes filled with ironic punishments, here’s one entering Queens Plaza. MTA played one of its little jokes on me last week, when I found out that they had instituted a “you can’t get there, from here” rule for the local R train on a Saturday afternoon.
Putting the signage up on the platform, rather than at the turnstile? Well played, MTA, well played.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The melting snow last week saw Steinway Street here in Astoria offering water curtains slipping off of construction sheds, which was actually kind of magical when the sun was out. I say it all the time – “NYC never looks so good as it does when it’s wet.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unfortunately, and this happens every year, some escaped toy had frozen to death and its corpse emerged as the snow pack dissolved. Why people who own toys don’t install screens on their windows, I cannot fathom. Personally, I won’t let any of my toys out of the house without a leash, and they’re all “chipped.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst waiting for the bagel shepherds to accomplish the fashioning of breakfast one day, I was fascinated by the forensics offered by a tree pit on Astoria’s Broadway. Notice the normal sized human boot print and the gargantuan one superimposed at the top of the shot.
I can confirm that there very well might be a Sasquatch family living here in Astoria, which would make sense as every other tribe of the hominids maintains a residence hereabouts, but that their big feet are clad in galoshes. Vibrant Diversity includes cryptids, you know.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside, I met a Mariachi one night.
He seemed nice. He was certainly vibrant, I believe he said his name was Luis, but I can’t say a thing about whether he was diverse or not. We have a LOT of guys who work as Mariachi musicians hereabouts, and I know more than just one Luis who lives in Western Queens.
We discussed Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi movies” and the gentleman affirmed that his guitar case held a musical instrument rather than a series of automatic weapons by producing the thing and strumming out a tune.
Luis (?) The Mariachi told me that he was a classically trained guitarist who loved Bach, but paid his rent working as an entertainer at restauarants and parties. I commented that I’m a fan of the Moorish influenced 12 string Spanish Guitar genre, whereupon he informed me that there is no such thing as Spanish guitar – it’s “Mexican Guitar” – that’s all there is. After parting company, I immediately regretted not mentioning Bix Beiderbecke, given where our encounter took place on Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside.
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serious bubbles
It’s all so depressing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A somewhat random series of images greets you today. As endlessly mentioned in recent posts, I’m bored boredity bored bored, tired of winter already, and literally dying for something interesting that isn’t horrible to happen. This horsey ride over in Sunnyside… I wish they made adult versions of these things so I could at least have something to look forward to after the goal of achieving fifty cents was accomplished.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted this arrangement over in LIC, on Jackson Avenue. I don’t think that the Union guys consciously create compositions when they’re doing their thing, but they are often responsible for moments of true rapture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The literal dust bin of history was stumbled across at the Vernon Blvd. street end in LIC’s DUPBO, where some thoughtful soul had disposed of a series of history textbooks and what seemed like an entire library of Time Life WW2 hard cover photo books.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While I was there, in LIC I mean, exploitation of one of the many holes in the fencing of the LIRR Hunters Point yard was undertaken. I’ve got a catalog of these holes and POV’s, incidentally, which includes the entire Sunnyside Yards and follows the Montauk line all the way back to Ridgewood. For those of you who live in Bushwick, Ridgewood, or East Williamsburg – two words – Scott Avenue (bet Randolph and Meserole).
Trust me, but be there early or late.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For some reason, I’m fascinated by laundromats at the moment, a subject which I’m planning on discussing with my team of physicians. This one is in Park Slope, where I somehow ended up one day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over at Central Park Zoo, there are Grizzly Bears. Their names are Betty and Veronica, and I have no idea which one this is. Where’s Archie, ask I?
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weak and tender
One last effort at combatting Cabin Fever, Dry Rot, and your SAD.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post will be your last dose of seasonal affective disorder medication, so drink in the color. Next week – it’s back to concrete devastations, chemical factories, superfund sites, cemeteries – you know, the usual.
Funny thing about the shot above is that I used to know a girl called Mary Gold. What was funny was that she was named Mary and was from a Jewish family, but then again Christian Mary was from a Jewish family too, so maybe Mary is as Jewish a name as Abraham, Esther, or Sarah. In my family, there were two Aunt Rose’s, and my mother would call one of them “Rose Waxman” as she had married into the clan, and the other was Aunt Rosie as she had been born into it. There was only one Ida, but if memory serves she never grew any apples but made one heck of an apple cake.
Anyway, that’s my marigold rap.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve never met, nor am I knowingly related to anyone named Albizia Julibrissin. Commonly referred to as the Mimosa, the Persian Silk Tree is actually an invasive species here in North America. It’s native to Japan and Korea, apparently, and was a prized landscaping specie in the recent past. Persian Silk Trees, aka “the bastard tamarind” and or “Pink Siris,” is an allelopathic organism. Allelopathy is a ten dollar word for “secretes chemicals into its environment whose function is to inhibit or eliminate competitors.”
It’s pretty though. I’ve heard many members of the gentry hereabouts in Astoria complain about the so called Mimosa, as when its flowers drop, they create a sticky mess on their sidewalks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m pretty sure that the flower above is an Iris, but what I know about flowers is less than what I know about brands of luggage. I’ve known several Iris’s in my days, including one whose last name was Gold, but was not related to the aforementioned Mary G (who was the “OG” as I had met her first). This was all back in an earlier era, of course, when Brooklyn was a place people didn’t want to live in, Mtv played music, a young Joe Piscopo taught us all how to laugh, and Huey Lewis was the Hootie of his time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery, one moist afternoon. It was Autumn, raining, and the light was great. Turning leaves, of course, which violates today’s flowery thema but follows along with the palette of reds and pinks nicely. Red light is carried on a longer wavelength than blue, and is of a higher frequency. The human eye – according to a couple of sources – perceives about 390 to 700 nm wavelengths and frequencies which are (in a banded gradation) in the vicinity of 430–770 THz. There’s all sorts of light invisible to human eyes, but certain critters abandon one end of the spectrum for the other, like the honey bee and the gold fish who can discern the ultra violet but lose the infrared. In return for seeing deep blues and violets, they lose the ability to see any wavelength longer than orange, which is kind of a neat trade off.
Makes me think about the things which might be flopping all around me that I can’t see. Wonder what sort of critters there might be might who have evolved an effective invisibility to Homo Homicidis? This would be the ultimate defense mechanism against us. Might answer the question about “what is that smell, and where is it coming from”?
The reason why the sky is blue? It boils down to the shorter wavelengths and lower frequencies of the violet and blue range being scattering by the atmosphere, which is also why sunny days on Earth’s surface “look” warmer as the red light with its longer wavelength is able to penetrate down to the ground and is prevalent on deck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The most amazing skies I’ve ever witnessed were in Crete, over in the Peloponnesus of Greece.
Some awesome flower action is going on over there as well. Given the weather forecast, I sort of wish that that’s where I was right now. This is a back garden at a house which my In-Laws lived in for a number of years in a village called Tsiverus, a settlement which had the most treacherous road system I’ve ever experienced. Considering that this place has been settled by modern humans since the time of the pyramids, however, I’m willing to cut them some slack on the bad layout and placement of roads. I’m sure these paths were a lot easier to navigate with donkeys and slaves and stuff, but why there’s a highway with no guard rail placed on the ridge of a thousand foot gorge… it boggles.
Of course, the same day this was taken, I saw a work crew cutting a trench through the ruins of a Roman settlement to lay a sewage pipe into. Did you know that Greeks don’t call themselves that? They’re Hellenes, Athens and Kriti are in a country which is called the Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía, and the word Greek comes from “Grik” which is a Roman slur that means “short legged.” Travel broadens you, I’m told, for me – it’s just another set of things to do research on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is hoped that this week of bright colors has helped alleviate the seasonal affective disorder symptomology which we are all feeling. People always refer to “cabin fever” during this time of the year.
Cabin fever is no joke, it’s an actual “thing.” “Piblokto” or Arctic Hysteria, is a condition that appears in Inughuit (which is how you spell “Inuit” now) societies up in the Arctic Circle, but it’s certainly not confined to the natives as both sailors and soldiers posted to the Arctic experience it as well.
Symptoms of Arctic Hysteria include: social withdrawal, excitement, convulsions with stupor, and recovery – which kind of describes my life in high school, except for the recovery part. The excitement part involves stripping naked and running around in the snow. You might survive Arctic Hysteria, but high school?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
OK, back to January.
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The Newtown Pentacle 