Posts Tagged ‘newtown creek’
serial distractions
An extremely minimalist Wednesday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The broken/bruised/severely injured toe drama continues around these parts. Despite the farked up phalange, I still managed to conduct a walking tour last night for Atlas Obscura, in the dark while it was raining, and I only fell down once. Pictured above is one of the “dolphins” protecting the piers of the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge spanning my beloved Newtown Creek.
I am obviously out of action this week, and had to cancel visiting a couple of cool spots which would otherwise be populating posts here at Newtown Pentacle this week and next. Hopefully I’ll be mobile again soon.
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.
mundi horriblus
It’s a bad year for toes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I actually wish that I had two priests praying for my big toe today. Yesterday, during that torrential rainstorm, I had to execute some emergency maintenance on a giant planting trough and the thing ended up dropping directly onto the big toe of left foot, smashing it flat. It’s something to look at today, but yesterday the swelling was so bad that the skin actually split, causing blood and other serums to ooze out. That makes two busted toes for me this year, and both are on the same foot.
Before you ask, no I haven’t gone to see a doctor yet. Waiting and seeing at the moment. 50/50 chance I shoot over to Mt. Sinai here in Astoria today to get it looked at, but there’s not really that much you can do for a broken toe. Rest, ice, compress, elevate is standard of care and I don’t really want to pay the hospital a thousand smackers to tell me that if I don’t have to. Still… owwwww.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s one heck of bruise, though. Still in the purple and red stage, and the entire left foot is swollen up. That trough which fell on it is about 7-8 feet long and about 15-16 inches deep. Filled with rain saturated soil, I figure that I had about two hundred pounds of force transfer into my toe when it dropped around two feet onto it. How did it drop? Well, you know those workplace safety videos that describe stupid things people do that cause injuries? That was me.
The world hates me, wants to kill me, and the groundling borrowers at Calvary Cemetery are just giggling about it right now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, I get to walk on it for around two miles tomorrow night while conducting a walking tour. Otherwise, if any of you reading this we’re planning on seeing me anywhere this week, feel free to make other plans.
Everything is cancelled except for the Newtown Creek walk. Ultimately, you always have to go to work.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 29th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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.
tardy confessions
Better late than never, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Single shot today, depicting the newly renamed Newtown Creek Waste Reclamation Center… or something like that… as DEP just changed its name again. Y’know, the sewer plant in Greenpoint with the big silver eggs? That one, yeah. At night.
Back tomorrow with something more substantial, but just as moist.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 29th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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.
watching sentinels
One more bit of Creekery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Even at three or four in the morning, it’s hard to find a thirty second interval on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge during which heavy trucks or buses aren’t passing over the double bascule drawbridge and causing it to quiver and quake. Getting any sort of usable long exposure shot from up there is a matter of luck for most. Since I give it a go every time I’m walking over it at night, the law of averages states that I’m occasionally going to be able to time it right.
That’s the new Kosciuszcko Bridge in the distance, poking its head up over the industrial zone found along Railroad Avenue in LIC’s Blissville section. That enormous smokestack is all that’s left of Van Iderstine’s fat rendering operation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If “over yonder” means the Greenpoint, Brooklyn side of Newtown Creek, then over yonder that’s what used to be called the BP Amoco yard. It’s a distribution hub for petroleum products, and those tanks contain various flavors of refined products. It sits in part of the footprint of the old Standard Oil Sone and Fleming refinery complex which would one day become Mobil Oil. Across Apollo Street to the east was another Standard refinery operation – Locust Hill. Apollo Street is the epicenter of the Greenpoint Oil Pill discovery and remediation process.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot is actually a handheld one, looking roughly westwards across Greenpoint towards Manhattan. Remember that heavy traffic I mentioned? Never, ever stops.
Back Monday with something different, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 15th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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.
spiritual dread
My beloved Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were gathered while I was riding on a hybrid ferry boat, which at the time was running on its electric mode. This was a novel experience, I must say. Beyond the whole environmental thing, what was fascinating about this vessel was how quiet it was, and how the deck plates weren’t vibrating with transmitted engine oscillations. Can’t tell you much about the thing, as it wasn’t my “show.”
Saying that, my “show” will be once again opening its curtains on Wednesday October 15th, with an Atlas Obscura/Airbnb “experience” offering my “Infrastructure Creek” walk to a very limited group of 12. This will be an evening/night walk, which should be pretty exciting. Link is both above and below, so please come with if you can. The same tour will be repeated on October 29th. These tours are part of how I keep a roof over my head, so any and all tickets sold essentially feed me, and fund the various technologies which allow me to bring you Newtown Pentacle five days a week and fifty two weeks a year.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Astoria Community Board 1 will be gathering at Astoria World Manor on Astoria Blvd. tonight at 6:30. It promises to be an interesting meeting. The Transportation Alternatives organization (Bicycle people) will be offering a presentation pushing for their latest advocacy position which asks the City to create a protected bike lane on Crescent Street connecting the Triborough and Queensboro Bridges. This is sure to be the subject of much conversation and gnashing of teeth in the coming months here in the ancient village, so… Additionally, there is a proposal to develop two currently industrially zoned properties on the Ditmars side of the neighborhood on 45th and 46th street into largish apartment houses.
Discussion of the latter has obsessed the frequent commenters found at Facebook’s Astoria discussion group for the last week. That particular cadre of opinion offerers seem to be composed largely of people who moved out of Astoria in the 1980’s that offer an overly sentimental picture of the “good old days” which has little resemblance to reality. For instance, somebody who is in their mid 60’s in 2019 that says “you could leave your doors unlocked back then” is referring to the late 1970’s in NYC. That’s the midst of an era when you not only triple locked your door, you also installed iron bars on both first AND second story windows.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That aphorism about leaving your door open is something I’ve encountered my entire life. My maternal grandparents offered it when referring to living in the “Shtetl” or Lower East Side of Manhattan during the 1920’s when they first got here. My mom and dad also repeated the refrain when referring to East New York’s Brownsville or Brooklyn’s Borough Park where they respectively grew up (the Waxman family’s ancestral property holdings are now a part of the Maimonides Hospital parking garage). You heard this in the neighborhoods which I grew up in, and the saying was always tinged with a certain amount of racism, with the underlying implication that things were better during a more segregated era (red lining was a practice in the real estate world which only allowed certain ethnicities to live in certain areas. It’s part of the “how and why” which NYC’s “ethnic” enclaves were formed by – African American Bed Stuy and Bushwick, Hispanic North Brooklyn, Jewish Midwood and Crown Heights, Italian Bensonhurst and so on).
Back tomorrow with something else. See you tonight at CB1 if you want to come watch the show. Me, I wish I was going to be on a boat tonight during the storm, electric or not. I spend too much of my life in meetings.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 15th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
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 