Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
unholy centuries
It’s Rush Limbaugh and Rob Zombie’s birthdays today, and the day that Saint Aelred of Rievaulx died.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering through Woodside one fine day, I happened across this bit of memorial statuary at the corner of 65th place and Laurel Hill Blvd. Technically speaking, I wasn’t in Woodside, this is actually Winfield. The Real Estate shit flies have more or less eradicated that name from current discourse, calling this area “East Woodside,” but it’s Winfield. Winfield was named for Mexican and Civil War General Winfield Scott, if you’re curious, who died in 1866.
The statue commemorates 7 local soldiers lost to combat in the First World War, and was erected and paid for by the people of Winfield.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Originally installed at the corner of Fisk Avenue and Queens Blvd., Robert Moses’s people moved it here when they were building the Brooklyn Queens Expressway back in the 1950’s. It’s bronze, and was sculpted by Italian-American sculptor James S. J. Novelli. Seven feet tall, the statue’s official nomen is “Winfield War Memorial and Victorious America.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The statue has not had an easy time of it over the last century, particularly since 1958 owing to its location at an on ramp for a highway, according to the NYC Parks Dept. who maintain it and whom I gleaned the information for this post from.
from nycgovparks.org
Due to its location at 65th Place and Laurel Hill Boulevard adjacent to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Winfield Memorial has suffered various indignities over the years. In 1958, completion of the nearby section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway bisected the community, and orphaned the monument to this park triangle located perilously close to an off-ramp. In 1969 and 1989 the statue was knocked from its perch by vehicles, and on the second occasion the head was severed from the body and reattached. The monument suffered from weathering, frequent attacks of graffiti, and other assaults by vandals; it received an in-house reconditioning in the 1990s by Parks crews.
In 1999 a City Capital contract restored the monument, replaced its damaged granite base with a replica, and the surrounding plaza was upgraded in an attempt to beautify its setting and better protect the sculpture. Unfortunately, in December 2001 the sculpture was again injured in a horrific car accident that dragged the sculpture several hundred feet into the expressway. In 2010-11 Parks’ Citywide Monuments Conservation Program repaired the damages and reinstalled the artwork at its rightful place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Novelli bronze, which is seven feet and four inches tall above the base, seems to be in fairly fine fettle these days. Why not take a walk or ride your bike over to check it out, and contemplate the war to end all wars that happened a century ago. You can also muse about the Powerbroker, just like I do everytime I visit the “House of Moses.”
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flaming thing
It’s Tag des Deutschen Apfels (German Apples) day in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The bright passage, it’s a not unlikely spot to find a group of cultists dropping a bizarre golden diadem into the water hoping to contact those who might lie below the seething waters. Hells Gate, with its bizarre and blasted subterrene topography, cannot possibly host a race of non human intelligences, can it? That would be crazy.
I mean, is this Queens or Innsmouth?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of alien intelligences with unintelligible plans for the future, the DEP’s MV Red Hook sludge boat slid through the bright passage while one was contemplating what sort of life might inhabit the craggy bottom. Between the strong cross currents of the tide, all the endemic pollution… it boggles.
It’s almost as if the area is being terra formed for a different and quite alien species.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was pleased that a concurrence of maritime and locomotive subject matter occurred as Amtrak’s Acella came rolling by on the Hell Gate bridge at the same time as Buchanan 1 tug slid through the Hells Gate narrows of the East River. When I left the house this day, I rued not having the time to visit Staten Island and the Kill Van Kull – my original intention for the afternoon. What with the sun setting in the late afternoon, it’s kind of difficult to complete that journey from Point A in Astoria while the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself is still hanging in the sky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back to worrying about the ones who cannot possibly exist in the deepest waters of Hells Gate, and their land dwelling acolytes who surreptitiously accompanied the wholesome Hellenes during their 1970’s migration to Astoria, did a humble narrator’s thoughts turn.
There are too many individual and quite minor clues to mention which lend credence to the theory of their presence – odd smells and sounds, brief flashes of unrecognizable shapes seen when walking past closing doors, the popularity of Bosnian cuisine, bizarre chanting. This is an entirely different “thing” than the occluded witch cult operating out of St. Michael’s cemetery, incidentally, but perhaps I’ve already said too much.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The sound of chitinous scratching on my second floor garret window will no doubt resume after this posting, and the whispered calls to leave this life behind and to either go into the water or dance with the night ghouls of Nephren Ka across the rooftops and tombstones of western Queens will no doubt follow.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there, beneath the waters of the Bright Passage?
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grim castle
Today is the Fête du Vodoun in the Republic of Benin.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shlepping around Astoria one day, my footsteps found me over by Luyster Creek on the forbidden northern shore of Queens. The real estate shit flies have recently been getting pretty active nearby, with medium sized developments that absolutely do not have any connection to local elected officialdom’s blind trusts and out of office legal partnerships. That sort of thing could never happen in modern day NYC, after all. Dimly lit rooms have replaced the smoke filled ones, I’m told, as it’s now impolitique to smoke indoors. I don’t want to talk about any of that this week, however.
I came here for the boids.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another urban waterway in Queens which I describe as a “future superfund site,” Luyster Creek can also be referred to as Steinway Creek – as it adjoins the Steinway piano factory and once upon a time, old man Steinway used to have his mahogany delivered in log form via Bowery Bay and Long Island Sound by floating it into Luyster Creek lumberjack style. One wrote a profile of the waterway at my old Brownstoner Queens column a few years ago, click here for it.
To understand the modern incarnation of the waterway, let’s just say that these shots were captured from a spot at the end of Astoria’s 19th avenue and that I was standing on an open sewer leaking sewage overflow from the nearby Bowery Bay sewer plant. The shorelines on the western side are pretty much all Consolidated Edison property, but as you head north to where it meets Bowery Bay, you’ll encounter a couple of fuel depots on the eastern side. The water smells like bad cheese and goat poop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Despite all that, it’s still one of the spots where migratory water birds like to hang out during the winter. The shallows seem to host a fairly abundant amount of whatever delicacies they prefer to quaff. I’ve never been sure where “Duck” ends and “Mallard” begins, but there’s a few of one or the other in the shot above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m fairly sure that these friggin things are Mute Swans, which as of quite recently (January 1st) are no longer targeted by Department of Environmental Conservation hit squads for being a specie termed “invasive.” The DEC hit squads are nothing to mess around with, incidentally. A team of hard men and and women with combat experience and the “thousand yard stare,” they recently exterminated a group of coyotes in this area with extreme prejudice.
I’ve heard accounts of that operation which sounded like something from a Charles Bronson movie.
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rotting creation
It’s National Cassoulet Day, here in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Astoria Tumbleweeds doth fly. In accordance with the ancient village’s calendrical notch on the wheel of the year, it’s time to abandon the holiday tree to the vagaries of the wind. All the neighbors scoff at the idea of driving the thing over to one of the many municipal mulching drop offs. That ain’t natural.
What you are supposed to do, according to Astoria tradition, is drag it over to the corner and then skulk away.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Often there’ll be an orderliness to it all. One forlorn tree, excommunicated from the warm embrace of a family home, acts as an anchor point for others. Soon a veritable wagon train of trees can be observed. A recent perambulation carried me across several of these evergreen middens, which persisted well beyond the close attention which the redoubtable DSNY crews offered to their more mundane sort of waste collection duty – the black bag or putrescent waste, and the various recyclables encased in their respective blue and clear bags.
Apparently, medical waste is meant to be housed in red bags, so there you go. You’re also supposed to put grease in a can or bottle labeled appropriately, and spent batteries should also be in a labeled container.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily for one such as myself, as my walk was coming to its conclusion the wind began to kick up and the astoria tumbleweeds began to explore their migratory patterns. Speaking strictly as “a member of the tribe,” one has often wondered about the annual tonnage of lumber which the holiday month celebrations imports into NYC, by the various goyim, can be quantified as. I’m sure there’s somebody at DSNY who could inform. I’m sure there’s also someone else at DSNY who could and would catechize on the efficacy of mulching your Christmas Tree before it becomes an urban runabout.
All I can say about the Jewish POV on this holiday tree madness is this – what, you paid how much… for a dead plant which you can’t eat, and that you threw out after just a month? Meshuggenehs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As seems to be a holiday tradition here in my neck of Astoria, wherein garbage and recycling pickup are dually scheduled for Sunday nights, the back to back “day off” for the long suffering truck crews of DSNY results in the neighborhood beginning to fill up with considerable amounts of trash. Add in the tidal wave of cardboard and wine bottles which appear in the domestic bin…
Astoria, our abundance runneth over, and the tumbleweeds doth fly.
btw – for those of you Luddites who don’t know what a Cassoulet is, click this link to Food Network for a recipe.
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luring skyline
It’s Christmas Eve, if you’re Russian Orthodox, and Christmas Day if you’re Armenian Orthodox.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself dipped behind New Jersey, whilst on my way to that Holiday party in Hells Kitchen I’ve been talking about all week, I was reminded of something about myself. I’m lucky. Despite the objectionable nature of my personality, the disgusting personal habits I readily display, my sloth, bizarre opinions loudly repeated, and everything else which causes those who know me to curl their upper lips up in disgust – I’m lucky. I also need to get out more often.
As I was passing by the Circle Line at 42nd street and found myself approaching Pier 84, I noticed a series of maritime cranes and tugs at work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was DonJon towing doing the work – the Sarah Ann and Brian Nicholas tugs were quite busy. You don’t get to see much maritime industrial stuff going on at the Hudson River coastline of Manhattan, in this century at least.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The DonJon tugs were “wrassling” two barges into place, one carried a maritime crane, the other was full of what I originally perceived as being scrap. Couldn’t have been more wrong, as it turned out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Longtime readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – know that I have a certain fascination with the DonJon towing company, who operate regularly on my beloved Newtown Creek. They have wonderful toys, DonJon does.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The flat top barge was carrying huge “lomticks” of steel, which conversation with one of many “hard hats” on the pier described as being destined for the Hudson Yards project. Scrap indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Part of the reason that I originally thought the flat top barge was handling scrap was the significant tonnage of the stuff that I normally observe the DonJon people moving around the harbor. This post from 2012 follows the DonJon Tug Sarah Ann, pictured above, towing metal and employed by the recycling people.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The other DonJon towing vessel on duty was the Brian Nicholas, discussed in another 2012 post, one which also happens to carry one of my all time favorite “tugboat on Newtown Creek” shots.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The location which the steel was being delivered to is a fairly narrow channel that’s normally used to launch human powered boats by the Manhattan Kayak club people, adjoins Hudson River Park, and it neighbors the Intrepid Air and Space museum. This location is analogous to the Manhattan street grid as being 44th street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The crane barge is DonJon’s Columbia New York. She’s got a 140 foot long boom, dates back to the 1970’s, and can lift 310 short tons while its base is revolving. Everything you’d care to know about the thing can be found here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The entire operation slowed down to a crawl as they approached the Manhattan bulkheads. A small workboat was zipping around, and everywhere you looked on the vessels there were sailors peering over the sides communicating on walkie talkies. I guess they didn’t want to scratch the Intrepid or something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Brian Nicholas hung back as the crane and flat top barges moved into position.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The crane barge began lowering its “spuds,” which are long steel bars that extend down to the bottom of the river and act as stabilizers (think table legs). While that was happening, ropes were flung around and tied off to bollards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having successfully killed the time between leaving Point A (Astoria) and that Holiday party in Hells Kitchen by walking through LIC, taking the 7 to Hudson Yards, checking out the Hudson Yards megaproject from the High Line, and then luckily running into this maritime industrial display – it was actually now time for me to begin heading there directly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Couldn’t resist one or two more shots, however.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s some of the structural steel being delivered to the Hudson Yards project, in a somewhat elevated shot gathered from a pedestrian bridge at West Street between 45 & 46th streets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the same elevated position, and from a bit of a distance, you can get a better idea of the size of the crane.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While all this was going on, rush hour was playing out on West Street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, that’s the story about all the stuff I saw because I got invited to a holiday party in Hells Kitchen. I should leave the house more often, I guess. See what happened the next time I went out, next week at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
Also, Merry Christmas to all you orthodox Russians and Armenians. Sunday the 7th is “Gristmas,” btw, or Greek Orthodox Christmas.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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