Posts Tagged ‘photowalk’
frantic letter
It’s the Feast of St. Paul’s Shipwreck Day, in the Republic of Malta.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s just bad news all the time these days, huh? Storm clouds are always gathering – of course – and you have to remember that there are puppies and cake and everything, but it’s difficult at the moment to not be overly serious and somewhat morose about current circumstance. It’s not just the President, or the Mayor, I’m afraid. There’s a real sensation that the societal train has left the rails and that we are collectively hurtling full speed into some sort of dystopian abyss. In many ways, it feels like the asteroid impact that hit Russia in 1992 has finally arrived here.
Maybe it’s just me… after all… there’s puppies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thing is, everything is so urgent and “amped up” these days. Action is required, as in immediate action, is the message which greets every new problem or emergent scandal. There doesn’t seem to be a game plan anymore. One has been absorbed by the “product” recently released by the NYC EDC describing the feasibility study for decking the Sunnyside Yards. A vast document, and a treasure trove of carefully curated information, one will be discussing it in the coming weeks at this – your Newtown Pentacle – but they are essentially talking about building the Death Star along Northern Blvd.
I’m talking hundred foot high walls on 43rd street and 45 foot ones on Northern Blvd. at Steinway, which would lead up to a platform supporting dozens of 15-70 story tall towers. Hopefully Darth Dope from Park Slope gets voted out of office before this project takes one more step forward.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can, incidentally, fight City Hall. It’s not easy, as City Hall employs some pretty clever people, but it’s possible.
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ominous gossip
It’s International Safer Internet Day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recently, one found himself wandering about in legend cloaked and shadows haunted Greenpoint when my footsteps carried me past the beacon like NYPD’s 94th pct. house. The bulls are penned up here, on Meserole, and they like to keep it nice and bright. There’s a real sense of solidity to this building, and it’s somewhat evocative of a fortress. One wishes that the 114th pct. here in Astoria enjoyed such lush and stolid accommodations.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is preoccupied at the moment, given the recent release of the “Deck over the Sunnyside Yards” feasibility study by the NYC EDC at the behest of our Mayor – the Dope from Park Slope. It’s a massive document, and full of arcane detail to process and respond to.
Its arrival means that Western Queens has arrived at an existential threshold, and that my home is now threatened.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Accordingly, posts such as today’s and yesterday’s are somewhat truncated. One does not have the luxury of wandering around the Greenpoint Historic District and marveling at times gone by and the architectural monuments to earlier times.
The battle for Queens is afoot.
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auto hypnosis
It’s National Patty Melt Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Y’know, after all this time, it feels like certain sections of my particular oeuvre are running a bit dry. I mean, how much more can I possibly say about First Calvary Cemetery at this point in time. Of course, that’s the way it “feels,” not the way it actually is. Accordingly, I revisit my search parameters periodically and see if anything new has popped up. To wit – this 2016 link from the NY Post.
I say it all the time, you never know what you’re going to find in Calvary Cemetery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One cannot offer you any tales of goblins or phantoms harassing the 1933 vintage Court Square IND station, I just kind of like the shot offered above. I can tell you the place does seem pretty haunted, sometimes, but I know what lurks some fifty stories or so above this spot – in the cupola of the sapphire megalith of LIC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A shot in the dark, literally, I found a hole in a fence that my camera could rest in for the shot above and pulled off a near total darkness handheld thingamabob. That’s Bushwick Inlet at the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, for the curious. There’s a WHOLE lot going on at the moment, which I’ll be discussing later in the week, so forgive my brevity.
The battle of Queens, I’m afraid to say, is finally afoot.
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baffling lack
It’s Setsubun Day, in the nation of Japan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in yesterday’s post, the 21st of January was a pretty foggy day, which is something I consider pretty. One made it a point of visiting several distaff locations around Long Island City to capture the scene. The shot above is something that all of you reading this will be able to personally enjoy sometime in the very near future, when the Smiling Hogshead Ranch expands its operations up to the abandoned trackway of the Montauk Cutoff.
The photo above depicts the most photogenic of NYC’s subway lines – the IRT Flushing, or 7 line – exiting the elevated tracks of the Court Square Station and traveling on its way to Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One spent a bit of time up on the tracks, as I ran into an old friend while making my way up there and we spent some time catching up while I waved the camera around. The cutoff is brutally bare during the winter months, as all of the self seeded vegetation surrounding it is deep in hibernation. During the warmer months, it’s positively verdant up here – an island of green amidst the concrete devastations of Western Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Disturbingly, the Queens Cobbler seems to have visited the Cutoff recently, leaving behind one of the totemic “single shoes” signaling that he or she was here. The “Queens Cobbler” is the name I’ve assigned to a likely serial killer who claims human lives all around the Newtown Creek watershed, leaving behind a single shoe to announce that their latest hunt has been successful.
Someday, the NYPD will happen upon a hidden warehouse room in LIC or Maspeth filled with footwear and gore, and on that day – the metaphorical and literal “other shoe” will truly fall. Back next week with something completely different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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enjoined to
It’s National Tater Tot Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For a maritime city, New York doesn’t actually seem to get foggy all that much. Sure there’s mist and murk occasionally, but it’s actually pretty seldom that we get a full on “inversion” and the sky fills with straight up pea soup. Whenever fog conditions do occur, however, one makes sure that the camera is out and about.
Nothing I like more than some atmospheric diffusion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were gathered on the 21st of January, when just such an atmosphere permeated and propagated across the neighborhood. As I’m wont to remind everyone around Newtown Creek – constantly – if you can smell it, you’re breathing it. On this foggy Saturday in January, we were all breathing New York Harbor for a day.
Speaking of Newtown Creek, check out how the new Kosciuszcko Bridge’s cable stay towers are visible from the corner of 39th street and Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One left HQ relatively late in the day, hoping to catch that particular moment when the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself would angle itself properly to create sculptural lighting for the industrial landscape of LIC. Win!
The shot above looks down 47th avenue, as you travel down off the shallow ridge that Sunnyside and Woodside straddle towards the alluvial flatlands surrounding the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, just for the curious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As part of my “winter strategy,” which allows for taking some sort of transport in one direction to or from “Point A” in Astoria, a short ride on the “7 line” carried me to Queensboro Plaza where I transferred over to the Astoria bound “N line.” Glad that I did so, as the photo above was my “shot of the day” for the fog occluded 21st of January.
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The Newtown Pentacle 