Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
alluded to
All text today from H.P. Lovecraft’s “Azathoth,” courtesy wikisource
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of Spring’s flowering meads; when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to say that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that room used night after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the tall cities. After years he began to call the slow sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existance no common eye suspected. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher’s window to merge with the close air of his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men’s calendars the tides of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalates…
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blazing entity
Just a short one today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sorry for the late update, got a lot of stuff going on today. Here’s a view of LIC and the Manhattan skyline from atop the Pulaski Bridge. Back tomorrow with something more substantial.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
messages from
Somehow, everyone gets to where they deserve to be, it’s all very Faustian.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When one was still considered to have some sort of potential future, in those days of a long ago and wastrel youth, I had a girlfriend who lived in College Point. Problem is that I lived at the border, or angle, between Canarsie, Midwood, Georgetown, and Mill Basin – think exit 11n on the Belt Pkwy. Getting from my place to hers was a drag, but engendered a series of urban driving adventures which one fears to recount – lest the statute of limitations has not expired.
from wikipedia
The Grand Central Parkway (GCP) is a parkway that stretches from the Triborough Bridge in New York City to Nassau County on Long Island. At the Queens–Nassau border, it becomes the Northern State Parkway, which runs across the northern part of Long Island through Nassau County and into Suffolk County, where it ends in Hauppauge. The westernmost stretch (from the Triborough Bridge to exit 4) also carries a short stretch of Interstate 278 (I-278). The parkway runs through Queens and passes the Cross Island Parkway, Long Island Expressway, LaGuardia Airport and Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. The North Shore Towers is situated on the parkway on the Queens-side along the Nassau County border. The parkway is designated New York State Route 907M (NY 907M), an unsigned reference route. Despite its name, the Grand Central Parkway was not named after Grand Central Terminal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Foolhardy, a few years later I was dating a girl from Short Hills in New Jersey, and the epic drive between two wildly displaced spots (including the first time I drove over Bayonne Bridge on my way home) are fondly held. Both relationships ended badly, and not because of the commute. Rather it was manifestations of my inner corruption, the very worm that gnaws as it were, and I hope they have both expunged me from their official record. I’m all ‘effed up, and Our Lady of the Pentacle is more of a saint than any of you can ever know. Luckily, I’m married to her, so – no commute.
from wikipedia
Interstate 495 (I-495, also known as the LIE or simply the Expressway by locals) is an auxiliary Interstate Highway on Long Island in New York in the United States. The route extends for 71 miles (114 km) from the western portal of the Queens–Midtown Tunnel in the New York City borough of Manhattan to County Route 58 (CR 58) in Riverhead, Suffolk County. I-495 does not intersect its parent route, I-95. However, it does connect to I-95 through I-295, which it meets in Queens. The portion of I-495 in Nassau and Suffolk counties is known as the Long Island Expressway (LIE), a name commonly applied to the entirety of I-495. The section of the route west of the Nassau–Queens county line is also named the Queens–Midtown Expressway west of Queens Boulevard and the Horace Harding Expressway east of Queens Boulevard, though both names are not often used in common parlance and most signage refers only to the Long Island Expressway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What I never realized, in those halcyon days of misspent youth when driving through the megalopolis with the windows down and a mix tape from Dave the Skinhead playing loudly, was that the automobile itself will be the death of us all. Just like the central failing of “Obamacare” is the retention of the metaphor of “insurance” in national policy, the central failing of our time is rethinking the idea of engineering environmental and transportation policy around the auto itself. It’s like trying to make a safer gun, and I’m wondering if there really isn’t a better option for personal transportation?
Ahh, what do I know, anyway? I do wonder whether that deli in Short Hills is still there, the one with the “Jersey version” sloppy joes…
from wikipedia
Of all people who commute to work in New York City, 41% use the subway, 24% drive alone, 12% take the bus, 10% walk to work, 2% travel by commuter rail, 5% carpool, 1% use a taxi, 0.6% ride their bicycle to work, and 0.2% travel by ferry. 54% of households in New York City do not own a car, and rely on public transportation.
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peopled with
Today’s post is for the birds.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One remembers that time when the world was not frozen, an era when water ran freely, and there were wholesome creatures which existed in the open air. Some of these entities were classified as birds, holdovers and descendants of the mega saurians who ruled the planet in antiquity, and these bird things were actually capable of flight. This was, of course, before Ithaqua was given regency over the planet, and before New York City began to resemble the Plateau of Leng.
from wikipedia
Ithaqua is one of the Great Old Ones and appears as a horrifying giant with a roughly human shape and glowing red eyes. He has been reported from as far north as the Arctic to the Sub-Arctic, where Native Americans first encountered him. He is believed to prowl the Arctic waste, hunting down unwary travelers and slaying them gruesomely, and is said to have inspired the Native American legend of the Wendigo and possibly the Yeti.
Ithaqua’s cult is small, but he is greatly feared in the far north. Fearful denizens of Siberia and Alaska often leave sacrifices for Ithaqua—not as worship but as appeasement. Those who join his cult will gain the ability to be completely unaffected by cold. He often uses Shantaks, a dragon-like “lesser race”, as servitors. A race of subhuman cannibals, the Gnophkehs, also worshiped him, along with Rhan-Tegoth and Aphoom-Zhah.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We dwell within now, building walls thickened by ice, cowering in the glow of electrical lights – and the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself occluded by frozen clouds. In the gloom and slush outside, shapes move about. Some are huddled masses of textiles wrapped around stiffly articulated ape things, others are vast encrustations of sodium with metallic endoskeletons and four robustly cylindrical rubber feet. The latter spews noxious gas which paints the ice black, and the former have been observed attacking the precipitants with curious tools and devices.
Remember the birds, remember the birds.
from hplovecraft.com
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Televisual news and information services operate in a fever pitch, describing roof collapses and downed power lines, informing and feeding a populace anxious for elevated states of emotion and experience. A new dark age is upon us, perhaps, and the foolish notion that the titans retreated out of weakness is proven out. Woe to you, mankind, for the great old ones of primal myth – those towering, all conquering masses that once ruled this planet have been awoken from their icy tombs and are on the move. The birds have survived them before, and likely will again, what of humanity however?
Leviathan, Jörmungandr, Tiamat – whatever your culture describes them as – these frozen giants whose very body can swell to continental levels – the Glaciers are returning. Lament!
also from hplovecraft.com
It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.
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marching things
Infrastructure geekery today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The center of the Williamsburg Bridge span offers a clearance to river going vessels of about 135 feet.
A building story is conventionally calculated as being around 10-12 feet, so that makes the Williamsburg Bridge tall enough to fit a roughly 11-12 story building under the apogee of its arc, water towers notwithstanding. That gives us a bit of an idea about the sort and size of maritime vessels which used the mercantile river during the late 19th and early 20th century. Remember that engineers always work around restrictions, and inadvertently create standards when they do.
from wikipedia
Construction on the bridge, the second to cross this river, began in 1896, with Leffert L. Buck as chief engineer, Henry Hornbostel as architect and Holton D. Robinson as assistant engineer, and the bridge opened on December 19, 1903 at a cost of $24,200,000
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A 75,000 ton pile of steel, we call it Queensboro, and this deck is around 130 feet over the water. When it went up in 1909, there were still concerns about navigability for warships and other large ocean going vessels moving between the Navy Yard in Williamsburg and Long Island Sound (via Hells Gate). This has never been the front door for NY Harbor though, most mariners prefer the shallow but safer route which carries them through Gerritsen Bay and the Narrows, which we call the Ambrose Channel, to Jamaica Bay and the open ocean.
from wikipedia
Serious proposals for a bridge linking Manhattan to Long Island City were first made as early as 1838 and attempts to finance such a bridge were made by a private company beginning in 1867. Its efforts never came to fruition and the company went bankrupt in the 1890s. Successful plans finally came about in 1903 under the city’s new Department of Bridges, led by Gustav Lindenthal (who was appointed to the new position of Commissioner of Bridges in 1902), in collaboration with Leffert L. Buck and Henry Hornbostel, designers of the Williamsburg Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
149 feet over the water, Manhattan Bridge offers a significant amount of clearance to shipping, nearly 20 feet more than its northern brethren. Admittedly, this has always been a busier part of the river than that spanned by Queensboro and Williamsburg, but I’ve always wondered why East River Bridge 2 (MB) was built higher than 3 (WB) and 4 (QB). I’m sure the answer is pedantic, and will likely be depressing.
from wikipedia
The bridge was opened to traffic on December 31, 1909 and was designed by Leon Moisseiff, who later designed the infamous original Tacoma Narrows Bridge that opened and collapsed in 1940. It has four vehicle lanes on the upper level (split between two roadways). The lower level has three lanes, four subway tracks, a walkway and a bikeway. The upper level, originally used for streetcars, has two lanes in each direction, and the lower level is one-way and has three lanes in peak direction. It once carried New York State Route 27 and later was planned to carry Interstate 478. No tolls are charged for motor vehicles to use the Manhattan Bridge.
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