Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
breathing body
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Before leaving Manhattan to transit back to the blessed soils of ancient Astoria, while walking down West 59th street (or Central Park South, as the well off would prefer) the other night, one was was suddenly confronted with a corruption of the ordinary scene when the FDNY showed up in no small numbers.
From what I could surmise, one of the many hotels along the edge of Central Park was in the midst of an emergency which demanded their presence.
from wikipedia
Central Park South is the portion of 59th Street that forms the southern border of Central Park in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It runs from Columbus Circle at Eighth Avenue on the west to Grand Army Plaza at Fifth Avenue on the east. Entry into Central Park is provided at Scholars Gate at Fifth Avenue, Artists Gate at Sixth, Artisans Gate at Seventh, and Merchants Gate at Eighth Avenue.
Central Park South contains four famous upscale hotels: the Plaza Hotel, the Ritz-Carlton (Central Park), which is the flagship of the Ritz-Carlton chain, the Park Lane, and JW Marriott Essex House. Central Park South is one of the most cosmopolitan streets in the world, and is located steps away from Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue shopping, the Time Warner Center, and Carnegie Hall. Some of the most expensive apartments in the United States are found here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
No concern whatsoever possessed me for the actual emergency, of course. Normal human empathy is an under developed organ in my emotional quiver, and the fate of Manhattan’s upper class visitors is well beyond any threshold at which my meager talents and abilities would be measurably effective. Like one of the anonymous ghouls that populate popular cinematic fiction, flesh eating and mindless, I was attracted by the tumult of flashing lights and sirens and stumbled forward.
from wikipedia
The flesh-hungry undead have been a fixture of world mythology dating at least since The Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the goddess Ishtar promises:
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld, I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down, and will let the dead go up to eat the living! And the dead will outnumber the living!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The whole event was very exciting, with strangely attired people carrying esoteric equipment about. A great sense of urgency, along with an omnipresent flow of vehicular traffic which snaked along the street negotiating the narrows formed by the gargantuan service trucks employed by fire fighting personnel. Multiple vehicles all were flashing their lights, and I counted at least one ladder and two other units as well as a couple of Ambulances. That’s a lot of light on a fairly dark street.
The German tourists were positively agog.
from wikipedia
Most of the engines in FDNY’s fleet are Seagrave Commander II’s and Seagrave Marauder II’s and include 500 gallon water tanks and either 1000 or 2000 gallon per minute pumps. The 2000gpm pumps are primarily located in the high-rise districts and are considered high pressure pumpers. With the loss of apparatus which occurred as a result of the September 11 attacks, FDNY began to use engines made by other companies including Ferrara and E-One. The FDNY is making the move from a fixed cab to a “Split-Tilt” cab, so the Seagrave Marauder II Pumper will fill the FDNY’s new order for 69 new pumpers.
Truck companies are generally equipped with Seagrave aerials. Ladder length varies and often depends on the geographic area to which the unit is assigned. Those in the older sections of the city often use tiller trucks to allow for greater maneuverability. Before Seagrave was the predominant builder, Mack CF’s built with Baker tower ladders were popular. Most FDNY aerials are built with 75’, 95′ or 100′ ladders. Tiller ladders, rear mount ladders and mid-mount tower ladders are the types of trucks used. In 2010, a new contract was issued for 10–100′ rear-mount ladder trucks to Ferrara Fire Apparatus, using a chassis and stainless steel cab custom-designed to FDNY specifications. Delivery of the first of these new trucks is anticipated in the 1st quarter of 2011.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Then the cops showed up.
I’ve always obeyed a singular rule in the Shining City of Manhattan, which is to depart and quit any location currently occupied once the cops show up. Following this dictum has kept your humble narrator from experiencing several unpleasant moments over the years, and kept my relations with the Police at an absolute minimum.
Accordingly, one spun upon his well worn heels and headed east toward the subway, which would carry me away from the Shining City towards the rolling hills of raven haired Astoria via its deeply buried tunnels.
from wikipedia
The FDNY, the largest municipal fire department in the United States, and the second largest in the world after the Tokyo Fire Department, has approximately 11,080 uniformed officers and firefighters and over 3,300 uniformed EMTs and paramedics. It faces extraordinarily varied firefighting challenges in many ways unique to New York. In addition to responding to building types that range from wood-frame single family homes to high-rise structures, there are many secluded bridges and tunnels, as well as large parks and wooded areas that can give rise to major brush fires. New York is also home to one of the largest subway systems in the world, consisting of hundreds of miles of tunnel with electrified track. The multifaceted challenges they face add yet another level of firefighting complexity and have led to the FDNY’s motto, New York’s Bravest.
what manner
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hideous memory recalls an age whereupon your humble narrator dwelt within the Shining City of Manhattan.
The Upper West Side, as I knew it (I lived upper upper west side, just a few blocks shy of Harlem), was a bit seedier in those days than it is today. The neighborhood has gone strictly upper crust in the last decade and has in the process lost an idiosyncratic charm which once possessed it.
Atavist professional relationships from that period of my life persist, which have drawn me uptown on a semi regular basis over the last few weeks.
from wikipedia
The Upper West Side is bounded on the south by 58th Street, Central Park to the east, and the Hudson River to the west. Its northern boundary is somewhat less obvious. Although it has historically been cited as 110th Street, which fixes the neighborhood alongside Central Park, it is now sometimes considered to be 125th Street, encompassing Morningside Heights. This reflects demographic shifts in Morningside Heights, as well as the tendency of real estate brokers to co-opt the tony Upper West Side name when listing Morningside Heights and Harlem apartments. The area north of West 96th Street and east of Broadway is also identified as Manhattan Valley. The overlapping area west of Amsterdam Avenue to Riverside Park was once known as the Bloomingdale District.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An Accountant and an Optometrist are my only ties to this place, for like me, most of my friends have long vacated. The latter relationship, the one with my Optometrist, has been developing into a bit of an ongoing and somewhat endless saga but I won’t bore you with tales of incompetence today. A few old acquaintances still inhabit here, but most of the restaurants and bars frequented during a long tenancy are either lost or have transformed beyond all recognition due to the influences of the Real Estate Industrial Complex.
Big Nick’s is still open, thank christ.
Regarding the legendary Sal and Carmines Pizza… “Hank the Elevator Guy” texted me the other day with this exact quote:
“Ah, even with sal now making pizza for god this place still got it, carmine is still there looking like he always did, pissed off. But the pizza is just the way it always is. Pretty fucking good.”
from businessweek.com
…thousands of homebuilders, real estate agents, civil-rights leaders, and bankers who aim to deliver a similar message to Congress: Preserve government support for housing. Together, these groups represent what one might call, with apologies to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a real estate-industrial complex that transcends partisan politics, geography, and socio-economic divides.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One could simply take the Astoria to Manhattan bound train to midtown and transfer from the Broadway local to… a Broadway local… but instead the path one elects to follow is defined by walking from 5th and 59th up to Broadway in the 70’s. Interesting Architecture on the way, well cared for, Upper West Side is the poster child for gentrification.
Not for me anymore, but not some blasted hell hole. Me, I like blasted hell holes.
The only part of the walk I mind is when the carriage horses, whose tenders await customers along Central Park South, gaze at me. I fully understand the role and reality of working animals, attempt not to project an anthropomorphized soul upon them, but it is impossible to not feel empathy for pack animals who spend their days around automobile traffic.
I feel guilty when these critters look me directly in my eye, how about you?
from aspca.org
The ASPCA believes that carriage horses were never meant to live and work in today’s urban setting. In addition to the dangers of working in congested areas, these horses spend their days directly behind cars, trucks and buses, inhaling their fumes. Given the constraints and challenges that New York City presents, and as the primary enforcer of New York City’s carriage horse laws, the ASPCA does not believe New York City can meet the needs of its horses. Neither the New York City environment nor the current law can provide horses with the fundamental necessities to ensure their safety and well being.
hollow voiced
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A specialized filter for my camera lens arrived one day, in the mail. I had not ordered the thing, but beggars cannot be choosers- as is oft repeated by area wags- and the optic element was attached. Happily enough, your humble narrator went about his tasks and recorded a few hundred images over the course of a few days whilst moving about the Megaloloplis.
When one emptied the memory card of the camera, loosing a flood of images onto the hard drive of my trusty computer, a phantasmagoric cavalcade of horror was unleashed. In “the field” these odd… they must be some sort of digital artifacts… lets just call them artifacts… artifacts were not displayed upon the preview screen of the camera nor were they detectable by any of the normal compliment of human senses.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Seeking to track down who sent me this bizarre optic, your humble narrator soon found himself in the back of a mobile phone franchise storefront, on Main Street in Flushing, arguing with an aged woman via the proxy and translations of her American born grandson. The old woman informed me that the package I had received, whose shipping address resolved back to the very shop she owned, was a complete mystery to her and that I should stop wasting her time and go find a job.
More than once, I thought that I spotted a young girl moving around behind the curtain separating the back room from the sales and service counters. It was an intuition, more than anything else, but I did hear a strange sort of clicking or gurgling back there and water was pooling on the floor. The girl was likely mopping up a flood and cursing under her breath, thought I.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Does this seemingly wholesome and quite utilitarian seeming lens filter have some coating or innate quality which allows it to discern the intangible, allowing the camera to record that occluded and squirming truth which is the true reality around us? Who sent this anonymous and possibly eldritch amulet to my home, and why?
In the week or so that these images have been festering on my hard drive, odd things have been happening around HQ. Sleep may never come easily again, as my computer has begun to randomly play early 1990’s modem sounds, and… sometimes the compositions in these images will appear change- entirely of their own accord. The shot above, for instance, is far more toothsome than when originally captured. Lets just call them… artifacts…
And if you believe anything like this fancily illustrated tall tale, especially on April 1, I’ve got this to sell you.
artificial means
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Maritime Sunday is suspended again this week, so as to incorporate the timely but dire warning that another Abomination has been spotted, moving freely through the community. This time the sighting was on Greenpoint Avenue in Sunnyside, whereas the last place and time I reported that such an entity walked amongst us was in Manhattan, back in December of 2012.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The beast had taken up station on the block opposite the park, and in some wild pantomime of clumsy gesticulations admonished passersby to accept a script of some kind. The blood chills thinking about what sort of bargain might be offered by such a creature, and one wonders if there are some things which might well be worth any cost.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The whirring staccato of my camera shutter attracted the attention of this rodent of great size, no doubt due to its overdeveloped auditory capabilities. Irregular coruscations of the cardiac action ensued deep within your humble narrator when the great beast suddenly stiffened and began to turn towards me, for given the speed legendarily attributed to its kind an attempt at escape would be, at best, a fruitless endeavor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cruelly baleful in expression, the monster fixed me in its glare while baring monstrous teeth, which were not fangs, instead its mandibular apparatus appeared to be bare plates of bone whose prominent shape and appearance reminded one of nothing less than the steel blades of jack hammers. ThIs halfling hare was around one and three quarter meters tall, and seemed both sturdily built and well armored by a dense hide which tended to hang loosely about its presumably sinewy limbs.
Watch your back out there today, it may be Easter Sunday, but this Abomination was lurking around, on the sunny side of the Newtown Pentacle, just yesterday.
decreasing wind
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Foaming, your humble narrator was scuttling his way to Brooklyn recently when sonic evidence of certain titanic exertions, whose only source could be a locomotive engine at work, penetrated through my ever present head phones.
On this particular afternoon, nearby the so called “Bliss Tower” along those tracks of the Long Island Railroad which snake along beneath the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge in a nameless section of Queens, once known as Blissville but which I describe as DUGABO, it was a NY and Atlantic freight operation which was raising the ruckus.
from anacostia.com
New York & Atlantic Railway began operation in May 1997 of the privatized concession to operate freight trains on the lines owned by Long Island Rail Road. The railway serves a diverse customer base and shares track with the densest passenger system in the United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My headphones were not playing Norwegian Black Metal, nor late 80’s NYC Hardcore. They were not transmitting one of my many H.P. Lovecraft audio books, the soundtrack from the first Omen movie, or any of my usual playlists of childish anthems and guitar driven ballads.
Instead, the audio files I was enthralled by were podcasts, specifically Dan Carlin’s “Wrath of the Khans” series, which is presented episodically at his Hardcore History show.
If you’re not listening to Dan, you’re missing out.
from wikipedia
There is an urban legend that Julius Caesar specified a legal width for chariots at the width of standard gauge, causing road ruts at that width, so all later wagons had to have the same width or else risk having one set of wheels suddenly fall into one deep rut but not the other.
In fact, the origins of the standard gauge considerably pre-date the Roman Empire, and may even pre-date the invention of the wheel. The width of prehistoric vehicles was determined by a number of interacting factors which gave rise to a fairly standard vehicle width of a little under 2 metres (6.6 ft). These factors have changed little over the millennia, and are still reflected in today’s motor vehicles. Road rutting was common in early roads, even with stone pavements. The initial impetus for the ruts probably came from the grooves made by sleds and slide cars dragged over the surfaces of ancient trackways. Since early carts had no steering and no brakes, negotiating hills and curves was dangerous, and cutting ruts into the stone helped them negotiate the hazardous parts of the roads.
Neolithic wheeled carts found in Europe had gauges varying from 130 to 175 centimetres (4 ft 3 in to 5 ft 9 in). By the Bronze age, wheel gauges appeared to have stabilized between 140 to 145 centimetres (4 ft 7 in to 4 ft 9 in) which was attributed to a tradition in ancient technology which was perpetuated throughout European history. The ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and Greeks constructed roads with artificial wheelruts cut in rock spaced the wheelspan of an ordinary carriage. Such ancient stone rutways connected major cities with sacred sites, such as Athens to Eleusis, Sparta to Ayklia, or Elis to Olympia. The gauge of these stone grooves was 138 to 144 centimetres (4 ft 6 in to 4 ft 9 in). The largest number of preserved stone trackways, over 150, are found on Malta.
Some of these ancient stone rutways were very ambitious. Around 600 BC the citizens of ancient Corinth constructed the Diolkos, which some consider the world’s first railway, a granite road with grooved tracks along which large wooden flatbed cars carrying ships and their cargo were pulled by slaves or draft animals. The space between the grooved tracks in the granite was a consistent 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in).
The Roman Empire actually made less use of stone trackways than the prior Greek civilization because the Roman roads were much better than those of previous civilizations. However, there is evidence that the Romans used a more or less consistent wheel gauge adopted from the Greeks throughout Europe, and brought it to England with the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43. After the Roman departure from Britain, this more-or-less standard gauge continued in use, so the wheel gauge of animal drawn vehicles in 19th century Britain was 1.4 to 1.5 metres (4 ft 7 in to 4 ft 10 in). In 1814 George Stephenson copied the gauge of British coal wagons in his area (about 1.42 metres (4 ft 8 in)) for his new locomotive, and for technical reasons widened it slightly to achieve the modern railway standard gauge of 1.435 metres (4 ft 8.5 in).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Normally, the media I consume is not something I think people would be interested in, at least that’s been my experience in real life. A recent conversation with Kevin Walsh of Forgotten-NY fame, wherein that intrepid explorer queried me about where to find some of these Lovecraft audio files which are so often mentioned, forced me to reconsider that maxim. Accordingly, since its a holiday weekend and you might have some free time, here you go.
The Atlanta Radio Theater Company is great. The website… their stuff is available as mp3’s at itunes and others, so go hunt them down.
The astounding H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.
ARTC made a better Dunwich, by my taste, but HPLHS did both “Mountains of Madness” and “Shadow Out of TIme” better and they made a freaking “Call of Cthulhu” silent movie as well as the unbelievably great “Whisperer in Darkness” film. Dark Adventure Radio Theatre just rocks.
Huge talents, a podcast performed by two of its associates is HPPodcraft.com.
Incidentally, just like the LIRR Engine 102 featured in yesterday’s post, today’s NY&A engine is an EMD SW1001.
from wikipedia
The EMD SW1001 was a 1,000-horsepower (750 kW) diesel locomotive for industrial switching service built by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division between September 1968 and June 1986. A total of 230 examples were constructed, mainly for North American railroads and industrial operations.
The SW1001 was developed because EMD’s SW1000 model had proved unpopular among industrial railroad customers, as the heights of its walkway and cab eaves were much greater than those of earlier EMD switcher models. The overall height was similar, but the SW1000′s roof was much flatter in curvature. Industrial railroads that only operated switchers often had facilities designed to the proportions of EMD’s earlier switchers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gold standard, the best of the best unabridged readings are from Audiorealms, featuring narrator Wayne June. Flat out readings of the Lovecraft Texts by professional voice talent in a studio. Genre defining, these are commercial works which really deserve support. Buy em, highest Mitch Waxman ratings- lengthy, mellifluous, well worth the hard slaved money. Six volumes, covering all the really good stuff. I think I got them through iTunes, although audible.com has them for sale.
The unmentionable Jeffry Combs reads “Herbert West Re-Animator.”
Additional mentions for theatrical productions of “Call of Cthulhu” and “Lurking Fear,” pro recordings from “back in the day,” when audio books were released on things called “audio cassettes.” Check out lovecraftzine.com for a list of free downloads which includes these two gems.
Archive.org is hosting Maria Lectrix‘s readings of “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.“ Free, and open sourced, go get em. Poke around at archive.org, by the way. This isn’t the only Lovecraft audio there- look for “Herbert West: Reanimator” and others.
from nyc.gov
Greenpoint Avenue is a four-lane local street in Queens and Brooklyn, running northeast from the East River in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to Roosevelt Avenue in Sunnyside, Queens. The Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, also known as the J. J. Byrne Memorial Bridge, is located approximately 2.2 km from the mouth of Newtown Creek. The bridge is situated between Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Review Avenue in the Blissville section of Queens.
The Newtown Pentacle 