Posts Tagged ‘Manhattan’
stark mad
I know why it’s so hot, always, at the Times Square station.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s nothing quite as enjoyable as arriving on a Subway Platform in Manhattan and then finding out that there’s signal problems at Queens Plaza. The marketplace of aerosol pathogens carried by the human infestation into this subterranean structure is far better than getting a flu shot in terms of bolstering one’s immunological system, and the sheer unpleasantness of the ambient temperature is always a treat. Learning that you’re going to be spending a substantial bit of time waiting for your ride home – now that’s priceless. The “A” in MTA is for “adventure,” after all, and on Sunday nights the “M” stands for “Magnifique.”
The high temperature at the Times Square stop cannot solely be attributed to an annoying bureaucratic tendency amongst MTA station managers to not actuate their ventilation systems. Surely, it’s because the subway station was built atop the cavern carved out by Lucifer and the other rebel angels when they were swallowed into the ground during an argument they had with the Creator entity over Adam and Eve’s place in the celestial pecking order.
Said discourse occurred where Dave and Busters sits atop 42nd street, a location which was part of the Garden of Eden “back in the day.” Somewhere beneath the subway station itself is a lava tube that leads directly to hell. “Da Deuce” thereby, is a hellmouth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A succession of Subway trains which do not go anywhere close to where I needed to go arrived and departed the station, during an interminable interval. As is my habit, I passed the time photographing the trains entering the facility, which raised the suspicions of several dead eyed MTA employees. Of course, being employees of MTA, they barely gave a crap despite being suspicious. As any member of the International Brotherhood of Screw Turners Local 6 will tell you, that’s somebody else’s job.
My retirement plans involve capturing a photo of a suicidal human jumping off the platform in front of an arriving train. Sales and licensing of said shot will make me rich beyond the dreams of avarice. My wealth will allow me to exact Dante style revenge on those who have offended… sorry, that was the influence of the Times Square Hellmouth that I was standing on which was talking there.
It affects us all, in different ways, the hellmouth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While waiting, and boy oh boy I was waiting a good half hour at this point, I noticed that something had imparted a good amount of kinetic force onto one of the steel structural columns and blasted a hole in the paint covering it.
The modern day dark green paint MTA uses sat over a duller green which I seem to remember them using about 15 years ago. The white and the red layers seem familiar to me, from earlier eras in NYC. Might just be primer, but I seem to recall red being used in the early 1990’s for column paint. Again, might just be the hellmouth talking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another pneumatic piston arrived, driving the usual cloud of sewer smell, rat shit, and powdered cockroach onto the platform. Normally, one would happily take the N just to get out of Manhattan and away from the hellmouth at 42nd street, but maintenance work was causing the N to go no further into Queens than Queensborough. Really, there is no better time to experience the joys of the MTA than a Sunday night.
Ultimately, I needed to wait for an R to get anywhere close to home.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While I was studying the layers of paint on that column, a pigmentary coating which had to be layered on 3/8 to 1/2 inch thick mind you, an R finally arrived. Luckily it was quite crowded and the MTA had made the logical decision that since it was October you didn’t need to run any sort of ventilation or air conditioning onboard. This was especially well received by a humble narrator given that atmospheric humidity was close to 90% and also since it was raining all day, everybody onboard was soaking wet and their clothing was evaporating additional humidity into the subway car atmosphere.
It really is a pleasure to be in NYC these days, ain’t it? The fairness, the equity, the affordability of housing… truly has our Mayor improved things.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There has to be a word – if we were a German speaking culture there would be – for the sense of relief you experience upon finally boarding a subway train that’s heading back towards your home after passing through the gauntlet of MTA’s expert patience testers. Luckily, the folks already onboard the train were as well mannered as usual. You had the people playing games on their phones with the speaker turned on, the lady screaming into her phone in an unknown guttural at some remote husband, and there was a fellow eating a fried and quite aromatic fish dinner with his fingers.
If I could, I’d have held my breath the entire ride. Who eats on the Subway? Ugh.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 29th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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.
thinkers perspective
NYC looks best when it’s wet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Biblical scholars believe that the Garden of Eden is metaphorical, but theorize that its supposed location would be where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run into the Persian Gulf. Others postulate that Eden was on the Iranian Plateau, or on the Armenian plain. Hacks.
Eden, which is the metaphysical center and starting point of the entire universe as far as three of the major religions go, was in Manhattan. Specifically Times Square. Seriously, what would the rest of you do without me to set things straight?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was 42nd street between 7th and 8th avenues where the Adamic pair were presented to the angels by Yahweh, and this is the block where the great schism occurred amongst the sons of fire. That’s where Sammael became Lucifer, right where Dave and Busters is, along with a third of the angelic host who then fell into the ground with it and became demons. As a note, using “him” or “her” for god and the angels is incorrect both grammatically and factually. They are definitively “it’s.” Extradimensional and non material undying intelligences with seemingly limitless power are “it’s.”
The part of the Adam and Eve (or Adam and Hawwa for our Muslim friends) story everybody passes over, for some reason, is that the expulsion from Eden happened not just to punish the pair for eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it was to ensure that they didn’t also eat fruit from the Tree of Life. The latter’s ovum would impart immortality to the primeval gourmand, and was protected from consumption or approach by a cadre of fierce Cherubim (which are “lower” and automaton like Angels that have little room for interpreting their orders) and a free floating flaming sword which was set on smite.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The actual location of the Tree of Good and Evil is pictured above, and was more or less where the Times Square Subway station entrance is found (accounting for continental drift, of course). The Land of Nod where the whole Cain and Abel thing happened is obviously Staten Island, but back then there were land bridges between Manhattan and Richmond County. Humanity, therefore, populated the planet starting from Times Square out.
The crossing of a lot of geography and vast oceans, and the epic tale of how the bloodline of Adam made it to the modern day Middle East and then incestuously populated Eurasia, must have been lost during Noah’s flood. Suffice to say, Times Square is the literal and metaphorical actual center of the Universe.
It also looks great when it’s raining.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 29th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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.
mustered up
A series of dull events, that’s my life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not enough butter spread over too much bread. Desperately thirsty, but somebody has just shaken up the can of soda. Hungry and nauseous at the same time. Insomniac ponderings during the late night hours of the wolf. That’s me at the moment. The next person that says “you have to” or “you can’t” or tries to correct me based on something political which they literally just made up on the spot is going to reap the ‘effin whirlwind. “Who do you think you are” is going to get an answer, and the petitioner will not like the answer.
Go ahead, try me. I’ll burn your house down. I’m looking for a volunteer today, somebody whom I can unleash all of my sublimated rage, fears, and self pity upon. Try me. You’ll be doing me a favor, as it’s unhealthy to hold it in.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It has been quite a frustrating interval for me, with all sorts of existential problems that can’t be solved easily or simply by working through them popping up. Disconcerting, one feels as if he’s walking on the blade of a knife recently, and digging my fingernails as deeply into my palms as I can only results in wounding the skinvelope. There’s only so much one can eat before something vomits back out.
Volunteers?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wit’s end. I need, really ‘effin need, a vacation. Thinking about it, I haven’t left the confines of NYC’s five boroughs in so long that I don’t remember the last time I did.
Home sweet hell, huh?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 29th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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.
dreaming friend
Tugboat, baby, tugboat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found me riding north, and home to Astoria, on the NYC Ferry. The commuter boat passed by the Ruth M. Reinauer tug as it transited southwards beneath the Manhattan Bridge and down the East River. Ruth M. Reinauer is a relatively new tugboat by NY Harbor standards, where it’s not uncommon to spot tugs which have been in service since the Vietnam War, having been launched in 2009.
Rated at 4,720 horsepower, the Ruth M. is the first of a new class of Tug for Reinauer. Check out this page at tugboatinformation.com for all of her technical specs and so on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ruth M. Reinauer was towing an articulated fuel barge, which was fairly empty (an assumption based on how high it was riding in the water). As is often mentioned, whether a tug is pulling, pushing, or has barges riding “on the hip” it’s called “towing.”
That barge that the Ruth M. is towing was also built pretty recently, 2008 in fact, and it’s called the RTC 102. RTC 102 is a smidge over 413 feet long, has a capacity of 100,000 gross tons of liquid cargo, and weighs some 6,545 gross tons when unloaded.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given the general heading which the Ruth M. Reinauer was on, and were I a betting narrator, I’d say that it was heading to the Kill Van Kull between Staten Island and Bayonne, New Jersey for a fill up. Might be going further afield, as Port Elizabeth Newark and the Arthur Kill are found beyond the KVK.
Petroleum enters NYC – mostly – by either pipeline, ship, or barge. The latter methodology involves towing fuel barges like the RTC 102 to a shoreline tank farm somewhere along the coast. The fuel is pumped from barge to shore whereupon it’s loaded into trucks for delivery to gas stations, or other end customers (heating oil etc.). That single barge is the equivalent of thirty eight heavy trucks which would otherwise need to cross through the City using arterial and local streets.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 15th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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.
pillars grouped
Ugghhh.. Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After the boat trip with the United States Army Corps of Engineers ended when we docked at a ferry terminal in Lower Manhattan, I suddenly found myself thrust into the middle of a dystopian nightmare. One had to get home to Astoria to allow Zuzu the dog an opportunity to relive herself of bodily waste, and prepare myself for what turned out to be a highly annoying Community Board 1 Transportation Committee meeting. We were discussing ferries and bike lanes, so of course it got to the boiling point pretty quickly. Passions run deep amongst the bicycle fanatics.
Busy day for a humble narrator, huh?
It was hot when we arrived back in Manhattan, which is appropriate for an urban hellscape, I guess. Check out that little visible bit of the sky which hasn’t been appropriated to glass towers visible in the shot above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the site of National Tragedy, more and more reconstruction is going on. Eighteen years, I have to keep on reminding myself. Eighteen years.
I made my way into the rebuilt subway station at World Trade Center, which is now found under a shopping mall which is populated by shops where there’s naught an ordinary person such as myself could afford, and then boarded an E line train to get out of dodge and back to Western Queens where I belong.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A number of people have commented to me over the years that my demeanor actually alters for the better upon passing over or under the border between Manhattan and Queens. At Queens Plaza, with its rotting concrete and dripping masonry, one transferred to the M line which took me the rest of the way back to blessed Astoria. Zuzu the dog seemed quite amused when I opened the door to HQ, but then promptly fell asleep.
Tomorrow – the other really cool thing I got to do last week will be discussed. It was an actual adventure!
“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 