Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
cupboard linings
It’s National Sangria Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
File this one under “Old Man shakes fist at passing cloud.” We really have to do something about these utility wires here in Western Queens. You’re looking at an amalgamated twenty five to thirty years of wire in the shots today. Somebody moves in to an apartment, they order cable or internet service, and next thing you know – there’s a new lead coming off of the utility pole that gets tacked loosely onto their wall.
Thing is, the cable people never seem to remove the old wire, and just leave it in place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s when it snows that you can really discern the clot of coaxial cabling which owns the sky here in Astoria. The scene hereabouts is reminiscent of those old photos of Manhattan, the ones from the late 19th century when the telegraph and telephones had just come to town.
There has to be close to a ton of cable criss crossing back and forth on every single block in Western Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I say Western Queens, I really mean the totality of it, incidentally. I see this mess everywhere that the local community board didn’t force the cable people to put their wires underground, as they are in Sunnyside Gardens and other parts of Community Board 2.
It’s not just the cable folks either, Verizon and Con Ed can boast rather impressive bundles of electronic spaghetti mingling with the street trees.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve witnessed a couple of disasters, and a few near disasters associated with this utility wire situation. Thanks to the intervention of Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer, the NYS Utility Commission compelled Cond Ed to replace a bowing utility pole on Astoria’s Broadway last year. Saying that, neither RCN nor Spectrum have bothered to move their wire hookups to the new pole yet, and their conductive tonnages are still being supported by the ancient wooden one.
Additionally, as a note, the Spectrum Installers Union strike is still going on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A summer ago, the entire RCN grid began to simmer and smoke on the poles. To their credit, the company brought in extra crews and got their customers back online in a day or two. To their detriment, they left all the damaged cables in place. One hopes that at some point in the future, a cohesive plan to rationalize this situation will be undertaken wherein Government officialdom will compel the utilities…
Aww. Crap. Forgot the Borough motto. “Welcome to Queens. Now go fuck yourself.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nothing will be done, and everything will get worse. Storm clouds will gather, rain will fall, and the puppies will be unhappy all about the neighborhood. The cables will fall and randomly kill us all, falling like asps from the sky. Ruination and death will be answered by calls for a rezoning by City Planning, with increased height and residential density in mind.
That’s when the wires will disappear into the ground.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is ruination and death. Everywhere you look.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
insinuated lapse
It’s National Hard Candy Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We recently had some company staying over, at HQ here in Astoria. Amongst our lodgers was a 12 year old fellow who lives in the (extremely) exurbs of Denver out in Colorado, which is a somewhat “sheltered” place as far as the tangible realities of life go. As we were moving along, he pointed out an older woman on Broadway who was collecting cans and bottles for recycling and cash redemption, and asked me if she was homeless. The kid had apparently never seen a homeless person before, which is a whole other story, and I had to explain to him about the industry of the “canners.”
Somehow I ended up in a lefty speech about personal initiative and the streets being paved with gold from an immigrants point of view, lauding the canners for their pluck and chiding native born New Yorkers for literally throwing money out in the garbage. The kid wasn’t impressed and went back to playing with his phone. He just wanted to say he saw a bum when he was in the City, I think.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My dog Zuzu is quite used to these little invectives and flights of politique fancy. Whomever to and whenever I’m trying to make some long winded and esoteric point, Zuzu just sort of hunkers down and waits. She knows it’s going to be awhile, especially when my response to someone starts with “No, that’s not how things work… it’s complicated…”
Don’t get me started, really.
Funnily enough, I’ve recently had several of the people in my “social media” world label me as a “liberal.” Most of the real lefties I know think of me as a “stealth Conservative,” whereas I argue that none of these labels actually mean anything anymore. Might as well call me a Whig.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are, of course, things encountered in NYC that just defy description, and if you didn’t take a picture of them – nobody would believe you. Zuzu the dog won’t commit to anything more than a quick sniffing of such anomalous items, and the kid from Colorado barely seemed to register most of what was going on around him.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
defeated aspirations
It’s National Roast Suckling Pig Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The other night, I mentioned to a friend that I had no reason to get up in the morning, and he inquired as to whether or not I was depressed. My statement had nothing to do with mood or mental state, instead it was factual – my daytime calendar is fairly empty between the first week of December and middle January. Part of this is my peculiar vulnerability to cold weather which necessitates a certain amount of hermitage, another part of it is that this is the time of the year when I’m hitting the books and doing research into this or that, and working on presentation materials (working on the 2018 photo portfolio, me). This has really hampered photo gathering – as a note – which is a negative, but I’ve got to get my house of cards together for the new year. You’re only as good as the last provable shutter flop.
Since I don’t have to necessarily be “somewhere” at 8 in the morning most days, what’s the point of maintaining a farcical kabuki and simulating adherence to the “ole nine to five”? I’m often up at the hour of the wolf this time of the year. If you’re sacking out at four or five in the morning, you ain’t getting up at seven, if you know what I’m saying.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing that’s emerged in my searching through multiple archives of photos, which number in the tens of thousands at this point, is that I seem to have fallen into a bit of a rut over the last year and a half. The other is that a bunch of my friends have died along the way. There’s a few long term projects which will be reaching fruition in the next twenty four months, and the stuff generated by this “rut” has become noticeably more refined, but it seems I need to get out more. That’s my New Years resolution, by the way.
“I been everywhere, man” is a bit of generalization and I certainly haven’t been “everywhere.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my annual habit, I plan to wallow in laziness and turpitude for another couple of weeks and get it out of my system. By the new year, boredom and self hatred will have expanded sufficiently to force me into action. Some pedantic and utterly banal explosion of activity inspired by Marcus Aurelius will form up and despite my ennui – me and the camera are going to be “out there” every single day.
For now, though, I still don’t have much of a reason to wake up in the mornings.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
festering wounds
It’s National Cupcake Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Stop, listen, and look. That’s what I try to do whilst moving about the world, with the occasional “sniff” thrown in as well. Stunning to me is the fact that so few actually monitor their environs as they navigate the great urban hive these days, with their mental focus zeroed in on the little rectangles of glowing glass we all carry. This has been a growing issue for years, but of late, I’ve noticed people intently watching television shows on their devices while walking along and crossing the streets of New York City.
What is wrong with all of us?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Caution is something one urges, constantly. Pay attention to your surroundings. Not paying attention is how we’ve arrived at this societal crossroad, and I fear that while somebody is catching up on “Breaking Bad” they will miss the freight train barreling right towards them.
Citizen Mitch despairs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Go. Outside. Talk to people. Put the device down for a few minutes and let yourself feel things. I know it’s scary.
Just do it.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
sickly complected
It’s National Bouillabaisse Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cliché, a “New Yorkers walking through steam boiling out of a lower Manhattan street grate” shot is presented above. Often, whilst moving around the City, one is confronted with imagery like this. It’s a shot which people far more talented and technically adept than I have taken a thousand thousand times before, and there’s little point to adding another specimen of it to the visual lexicon but there you are. Same thing with seeing a squirrel eating an acorn while perched on a fence or something. You just have to click the shutter.
This time of year, I don’t have much going on anyway, might as well take what the City offers you when it comes along.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Often has a humble narrator asserted that NYC is embedded with psychic firmament, and that the city itself is somewhat sentient – a “being” possessed of a seething cauldron of emotions and a radiant intellect. I believe the City to be female in gender and temperament – a mother goddess like the Hellenic “Hera.” She likes to mess with you, throwing pedantic and existential obstacles or tests your way, the city does.
“Oh great” usually precedes many of my observations concerning the MTA, or the sudden appearance of any number of City agency or utility employees on my block. “Oh great, Verizon is setting up on my corner at midnight. And, they’ve got a backhoe with them…” is the last one I can recall uttering. Occasionally it will be stated as “Wow, there’s a lot of Cops here all of a sudden.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thing is, the City is eternal. Long after the American experiment has faded away, New York City will still live on in some sort of decedent form. Cities almost always seem to live on in one form or another long after the Empire has fallen; Rome, Memphis, London, Istanbul, Beijing, Persepolis, Tokyo, Damascus… Babylon the great always falls. A certain point of view often comes up in modern conversations which looks back to a period just one century ago in NYC as some sort of heroic age. Giants existed, who built subways and great bridges and highways and tunnels. These giants are long gone, and we marvel at their works, which we lesser beings are barely able to maintain.
What do I know? I’m just some wandering mendicant in a filthy black raincoat, scuttling along the streets of an eternal elder goddess/City which is possessed of a malefic sense of humor, carrying a camera.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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