Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
furry thing
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wandering back towards home through Industrial Maspeth, my happy place, one encountered a cool car. This is a 1965 Mercury 4 door sedan, which I believe to be a “Monterey” model. This absolute unit of a car was parked on 56 drive/road/Rust Street in front of an operation which specializes in the revitalization of classic cars and the kitting out of more modern ones.
I’m of the opinion that every car in Industrial Maspeth should be at least 50 years old, guzzle a lot of premium “Hi-Test” gasoline, and be put on display for passing photography enthusiasts to marvel at.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For the last few years, there’s been a real dearth of “cool cars” encountered on my scuttles. There was a period, I’d say 2012-2015, when I couldn’t help but encounter one every time I left the house.
This 1965 Mercury was positively gangster.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The auto shop it was parked in front of, as I’ve recently learned, is sited on a property with quite a tragic history. In 1962, there was a soap factory here. A fire broke out and the soap company’s supplies of fat and other constituent chemicals caught fire. Six FDNY Firefighters died battling the blaze when a roof collapsed on them.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, August 17th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
cryptic designs
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last evening, I walked right through a conversation that two guys I know were having wherein one of them laid down his assertion that the world is indeed flat. NASA and the moon landings were actually a grandiose deception that allowed a group of pedophiles to siphon away billions of dollars in tax money to line their own pockets, and the Russians fell for the deception because of Hollywood. Upon hearing this particular narrative, I just folded my arms and smiled, wanting to hear the entire thing. The flat earth guy is a particular favorite of mine, as I’ve never known him to react positively to anything, even the time he won the bar’s Super Bowl pool.
For those of you on the fence, the planet is a slightly flattened at the poles spheroid. I have flown in a plane, and ridden within a ship on the ocean, and can confirm. As a point of NYC trivia, the Verazzano Bridge’s towers are far enough away from each other that calculations as to the curvature of the earth needed to factored into their design so as to have them square up to each other. You don’t go to those sort of lengths to uphold a conspiracy, bro.
That’s not the Verazzano pictured above, of course, it’s the Kosciuszcko Bridge over Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You got your right to think whatever you like, freedoms wise. You’ve also got the right to look like a dumb ass when you’re embracing concepts like the flat earth. It doesn’t matter what you believe, things are true or not. Fire is hot, water is wet. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but now we’re splitting hairs.
Other chestnuts from the good old days I’m waiting to hear include that animals cannot feel pain, tomatoes are poisonous, and that if a horse scares a pregnant woman her baby will be born deformed. Me? I’m going to stop bathing and go live in a barrel at the market square. I plan on freelance philosophizing for coins.
If you don’t get that reference, you should read more, and in particular about the Greek philosophers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I tend to read a lot and can tell you that the depths of my ignorance about most things is near total, which is why I tend to read a lot.
Pictured above and throughout today’s post are the former bulkheads of the Phelps Dodge (formerly Nichols or General Chemical) Company, found along the fabulous Newtown Creek, here in the Maspeth section of the borough of Queens. “Scientific Manufacturing” is what they used to call what the operation here did. The Nichols people manufactured primarily acid here, and when the Phelps people took over the mill they incorporated copper refining into the schedule.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, August 17th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
mathematical depths
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has no idea at all why he feels so exhausted and tired at the moment. Has nothing to do with illness, I would offer, nor is it the sensation of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” as 2020 has dropped a lot of shoes and things just promise to get more interesting as the wheel of the year turns towards Autumn. This part of August always offers that “time to go back to school” cue to me, and I feel like I’m about to have to go try on winter clothes while it’s still shorts weather. My mom would insist on buying my kid clothes from a store in either Midwood or Flatlands called “Widensky’s.” Let’s just say that even by 1970’s standards, the offerings of this particular shop were not the most fashionable choices which a young fella might make. Lots of orange courdoroy pants and multi colored velour sweaters, coupled with Buster Brown brand shoes. As soon as I started working and buying my own stuff, that story changed, but when you’re a kid you eat what they tell you to and wear what’s laid out. It’s a lot like being a prisoner, being a kid.
Seriously, I cannot tell you how uncomfortable most of those clothes were. Badly sewn, fabric that came out of a chemical drum, plastic shoes… wearing Sneakers was still seen as as an impolite gesture when worn for anything other than exercise back then. This was when the old lady had barbers craft me up the bangs and long sides Partridge Family haircut.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I remember a fad in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s where males of all ages began wearing matching sweatsuits. This was considered casual wear, and I would often notice men getting the sweat jacket (no hoodie) tailored at the dry cleaners. This was around the time that mirror sunglasses were in vogue, as well as casually wearing sweat bands on the wrists and head. I have never, ever, understood what a wrist mounted sweatband’s purpose is. If you wanted cargo shorts, you’d make them yourself out of a pair of army surplus pants you got at the second hand. People would also walk around back then wearing shirts with repeating screen printed patterns of anchors or traffic signs.
Of course, it was kind of a big deal back then that cops didn’t have bullet proof vests routinely assigned to them, and don’t get me started about the hair. I recently got sent a shot of myself from tenth grade which displayed the most embarrassing hair cut I ever had. It was the 80’s, I was young, so what can I tell you?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you get down to it, all of us are kind of different people at different stages of our lives. Some old suit of clothes of the type you used to be known for wearing doesn’t fit anymore, so you move on to another. Shoes wear out, hair gets long and then short and then it goes and changes color on you.
Ever heard about the philosophical conundrum called “Theseus’s Ship”? It seems that when Theseus sailed back to Athens, they preserved the great hero’s boat. The thing was maintained and cared for, and if a plank of wood became rotten over time an exact copy of it was created and installed. Over several centuries, every molecule of the original boat was replaced, and the eventual realization that whereas every replacement part was an exact duplicate of the original no part of the original boat still was present offered up a metaphysical crisis. Was it still Theseus’ ship?
I often wonder if I’m still all the people I used to be.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, August 17th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
chittering scavenger
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is colossally bored, and wandering around the Newtown Creek is basically all I’ve got these days. Recent endeavor found a humble narrator on the Queens side of DUKBO – Down Under the Kosciuszcko Bridge Onramp. The difference between the two fencelines in the shot above is profound, with the chain link section rooted in the Blissville section of Long Island City and the iron fence planted firmly in the soil of Maspeth. Once upon a time, this was a municipal border, rather than a bit of geographic trivia.
When Robert Moses built a bridge, or highway viaduct, he often did so along these sorts of borders.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Bob Moses 1939 version Kosciuszcko Bridge went bye bye in 2017, of course, and that’s the spanking new Andy Cuomo 21st century style one pictured above, from a bit further back along the Newtown Creek than I usually show you. I got to meet the security guy at Restaurant Depot just prior to this shot being captured, and I can tell you he was a heck of a nice guy once we established that I wasn’t a graffiti artist, skateboarder, or illegal street racing enthusiast. Unique set of problems this particular fellow has in his daily round, thought I. Also, the sound of generators was omnipresent, since this is one of the sections of western Queens which lost power entirely after that recent storm. The air was vibrating.
This section of the Newtown Creek – east of DUKBO, south of the Maspeth Creek tributary, and west of the Maspeth Avenue Plank Road – is called the “Turning Basin.” It’s an intentionally wide and fairly deep area that allows shipping to reverse course.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Turning Basin is far and away the most chemically contaminated section of the waterway, if degree matters when discussing Newtown Creek. The black mayonnaise – which is the goo found at the bottom – is a devils brew compound of coal tar, petroleum, organocoppers, and a whole lot more. This is where the amount of time for “benthic survival,” as the environmental professionals would call a fishie’s chances of making it from one side to the other alive, is surprisingly narrow. A copper refinery and a manufactured gas plant, an enameling factory and an oil refinery, fertilizer mills and rendering plants, a night soil dock. That pretty much describes the Turning Basin shorelines of about a century ago. They all were pretty sloppy with the industrial waste, and there’s a lot of that Black Mayonnaise down there.
The oil guys, the gas guys, and the copper guys are all on the hook here with the Feds to clean the Turning Basin. They have to scoop out the yuck, and cap what’s left over to keep whatever they missed sequestered away. The argument right now is about how deep a depth they will need to dredge to. The deeper you go, the more money gets put into the water.
Personally, I won’t be happy until they’re bringing up arrowheads and tomahawks.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, August 10th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
human toothmarks
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUPBO, or Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp, is a section of the fabulous Newtown Creek which I haven’t been paying too much attention to during the pandemic months. It’s a bit more “populated” than I’ve been comfortable being around, what with the homeless colony that’s popped up on the LIC side. There’s several RV’s you’ll notice down there, which a few humans and several rather bark prone doggies are living in, and that violates my goal of going to places where nobody else is. What this city needs is a good…
As you can see, there was a full moon on the night these shots were gathered, with the one above looking due East towards Calvary Cemetery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Pulaski Bridge pictured above, a double bascule drawbridge owned and operated by the NYC DOT. Fundamentally speaking, this section of Newtown Creek isn’t the environmental horror show you encounter further east, rather it’s more akin to the environmental horror show that is the East River. A recent assertion by one of the Superfund Investigatory teams was that there were more “chemicals of concern” entering the Creek in this zone via the East River than from the upland post industrial properties. This, of course, causes me to wonder and ponder whether or not the East River itself should be considered a Superfund site.
When you start peeling a banana, you’re sort of committed to eating the thing, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the Hunters Point Yard of the Long Island Railroad, which adjoins the Pulaski, I noticed these work trains sitting and idling. Can’t tell you what they were up to, but it’s likely that track and right of way maintenance was on the dance card.
Back tomorrow with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, August 10th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 