Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
unholy ways
Returning to Flushing Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, I’m beginning to figure this place out after having developed an interest in it earlier this year. Secondly, I wish that there were parts of my particular highly industrialized and polluted waterway that looked this good. This is an intertidal zone, with a sandy beach that leads into a marsh. There’s all sorts of evidence of filter feeding shellfish, lots of birds doing bird stuff, and expansive mats of algae everywhere you look. I imagine that if you were to shovel down a few feet, the ground would be teeming with all sorts of invertebrates and creepy crawlies. In many ways, this shoreline reminds me of the Jamaica Bay waterfront which I used to explore when I was a kid in South East Brooklyn.
I have got to find somebody willing to let me get into a rowboat with them on Flushing Creek this summer. If you’re that someone, get in touch.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moving away from the water, and over into the parlor of the House of Moses, those highway ramps you see are (I think) the Northern Blvd. offramp of and the main stem of the Whitestone Expressway or “678.” The higher one on the right with the blue paint should be 678, but as I’m ignorant of exactly where the Van Wyck ends and the Whitestone starts, take that with a grain of salt. As mentioned, I’m still figuring this area out. If a google maps link helps, this shot was gathered right about here.
Apparently, this spot is often utilized by folks who want to smoke the weed, drink the drinks, or just do anything they want to without prying eyes. There’s lots of interesting graffiti on the pylons holding up the highway ramps, but otherwise it’s kind of a muddy no man’s land here in the House of Moses.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s all for this week, lords and ladies. This weekend, I’ll be conducting the Newtown Creekathon with my pal Will on Sunday, so a humble narrator will likely be fairly crippled afterwards.
There’s a few NYC anniversaries happening next week for those of you who like to “nerd out” about such things – on Monday the 29th, the Bronx Whitestone Bridge will turn 90, and on April 30 of 1921 The Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey officially opened for business. Additionally, on the 1st of May in 1931, the Empire State Building opened its doors.
“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.
Events!
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
schoolboys swapping
Iron Triangle behind, Flushing Creek ahead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shots presented this week at this – your Newtown Pentacle – we’re gathered whilst attending a walk presented by the NYC H2O outfit. We started on Roosevelt Avenue, proceeded through what remains of the Iron Triangle at Willets Point, and then looped down and around towards Flushing Creek. This entire area is what I’d define as the “House of Moses,” as in Robert Moses. Pedestrian unfriendly, few if any points of access to the waterfront, and the needs of high speed roads and automotive “flow” given prominence over all other considerations.
The group negotiated the various on and off ramps of the surrounding highways and we headed towards Northern Blvd. where there’s an opportunity to get down to the waterfront.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, we encountered this late model fire engine which had an RV motor home hitched up to it. Signage adorning both fire engine and motor home indicated that it was the property of the “Ministry of Abraham,” which a humble narrator surmised as being a Korean church of some kind (a no shit sherlock level deduction offered there, the signage had Korean lettering alongside the english).
Before I got to know anybody who was ethnically Korean (when I was a kid), I always figured that Buddhism or some other “asian” faith was dominant in that part of the world. Turns out that there’s a pretty significant Protestant and Evangelical Christian population amongst those folks. Assumptions like that one is something I try to avoid as an adult. It’s where that part of me which gregariously sidles up to strangers and starts chatting with them has evolved out of.
The more you know, amirite?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the nice things about attending somebody else’s tour of somebody else’s highly polluted industrial waterway is that I get to interact with people who came on one of my walking tours, and reconnect with others whom I haven’t seen in a while. At Flushing Creek, I suddenly noticed that a friend I haven’t seen in maybe eight years was there, and a few people I’d walked around Newtown Creek came over and reintroduced themselves.
Tomorrow, more from Flushing Creek.
“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.
Events!
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
calm calculativeness
Willets Point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Roman Army would arrive outside your city walls, then flood your fields with salt water, kill all your men, and rape all your women. The Romans would then declare peace as having broken out. So too, does the NYC EDC declare peace when they’ve set their sights on your corner of NYC. Just ask the people who work, and the one person who lives, in Willets Point. The City has had its crosshairs set on this part of Queens since the post WW2 period. There are no sewers in Willets Point, sanitary or storm. The City doesn’t pave the roads, nor approve permits for utility companies to service phone or electrical connections. Fire hydrants lie on their sides, utility poles bend and tilt, and despite all this – the businesses here continue on and on.
Peace has broken out in the Iron Triangle, or at least a Roman peace.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For those of you who were willing to accept the bag of polished stones the EDC offered LIC regarding the Amazon campus, or who are willing to drink their Kool Aid on the subject of the Sunnyside Yards – here is your fairness, your equity, your “tale of two cities.” Here is why I’d like to see the NYC EDC investigated on RICO charges.
Here is peace, Queens style.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That Economic Development Corporation think tank over in the City has gone out of its way to annihilate anywhere between a thousand and two thousand blue collar jobs here in Queens. They’ve been sued in Federal Court repeatedly for their double dealing, most recently for allegedly funding fake pro development groups calling for the creation of a shopping mall and “affordable” housing, and have threatened to use eminent domain powers to force businesses into shuttering their doors and sell their personal property. This so called “public benefit corporation” with its shady staff of Real Estate Industrial Complex insiders is the same crew of loathsome sentience who are driving the “Deck the Sunnyside Yards” train.
Look at your future, Sunnyside; and Astoria, and Woodside, and LIC. Peace is about to break out for us as well.
“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.
Events!
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
nightmare ghouls
A little bit of housekeeping.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, I think I’ve conquered the fortress and can stop taking pictures of the Q104 bus on Astoria’s Broadway after the shot above. Nailed! Secondly, the profusion of advertising that’s appeared of late at Newtown Pentacle has absolutely nothing to do with me, rather it’s WordPress (which hosts and provides the tech underpinnings) which is both inserting and profiting off your attentions. It’s something that I’m going to have to deal with, but nothing profound is going to occur before June.
As I’ve mentioned, the week of June 6th will mark the tenth year of publication at Newtown Pentacle. I’m early planning a couple of things to celebrate, but then again I’m not really the celebration type. I’m more of the “tear your clothing and throw ash on your face type,” really.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For an interminable number of recent weeks, one has been involved with a series of “have to’s” that have taken me away from contemplation of the existential miseries, logical fallacies, and quirky historical commentary which I enjoy so much. It’s also really gotten in the way of the camera work. A lot of recent shots have been caught on the fly, as I move from one “have to” to another. Luckily, Queens is visually interesting and there’s always something to see that’s worth clicking the shutter over.
Now, if it ever stops raining…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This past weekend, I actually got to attend somebody else’s event and learn a thing or two. Luckily, that interval occurred in between sessions of rain, so one didn’t get soaked to the skin in the process. In the meantime, however…
I’ll be doing a book signing and slideshow tomorrow night in Greenpoint to support my new “In the Shadows at Newtown Creek” publication, and this weekend on Sunday the third annual Newtown Creekathon will be conducted. Come with? Links below.
“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.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
aortic convulsions
Stop fixing what ain’t broken.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that of late, I spend a lot of time developing workarounds for “improvements” offered by software and website providers. Famously, I don’t see the need to constantly oblige the software development teams at Adobe or Apple every time they release new feature sets that will not benefit me – I don’t have one of those stupid watches, for instance. Saying that, there comes a point when you’re essentially forced into doing an upgrade, which is usually accompanied by a drop in your productivity as you are forced into discovering how to accomplish a formerly familiar task that is now either forbidden or obfuscated behind a wall of floating menus.
I hate everyone.
Single shot today, LIC, at night.
“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.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
The Newtown Pentacle 