Posts Tagged ‘photowalk’
certain phases
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is another one of the shots I’ve been chasing all summer. It is not an easy thing to photograph a lit up moving thing from another moving thing, at night, and capture the background in acceptable sharpness- even on Maritime Sunday.
20th Annual Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just starting the “develop” process on the shots gathered at today’s Working Harbor Committee event, the running of the 20th annual Great North River Tugboat Race and Competition. The winner of the race is pictured above and below. That’s Kirby Marine’s Lincoln Sea.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It will be a couple of days before the entire set of photos is ready, but I figured that it made sense to rush a couple out for today. Happy Labor Day.
bland face
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lot of this Newtown Creek thing involves going to meetings in Greenpoint- this monitoring committee or that alliance or just some gathering at which an unelected official or designated regulator will speak at. This consumes quite a bit of time, which is amplified in my case, as I walk to the place from Astoria. Not a long walk by any stretch, roughly 3 miles, but sometimes it feels as if I spend all my time walking to and from the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long have I been intrigued by this little fix a flat building which sits at the cross roads of Greenpoint Avenue, Van Dam St., and Review avenue on the Queens side in Blissville. Run down, it seems to be held together with tape and tacks, but there has always been something about the structure which has caught my eye. “Something” seems significant about it, given its location. Despite efforts at finding that something, it has always remained an enigma. Until now, thanks to the NYC Municipal Archives LUNA website.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot, of the Sobol Brothers SOCONY station at the intersection of Greenpoint and Van Dam, is from August 20, 1930- roughly 82 years ago. SOCONY, of course, stands for Standard Oil Company of New York. Standard used to franchise out filling stations, in the same manner as its modern day incarnation ExxonMobil does. The name SOCONY indicates that the signage went up after 1911 when the Standard Trust was broken up, incidentally.
click here for the giant sharp version of the NYCMA image.
Also, at the ever reliable fultonhistory.com, I found this ad for the company, which seems to have had several locations in Queens.
lurking spark
– photo by Mitch Waxman
…Back in session…
So, whilst kicking the dust around in DUKBO a couple of weeks back (preparing for the recent Poison Cauldron tour), your humble narrator found himself on the eastern side of the Kosciuszko Bridge. Needing to clear my head of the myriad horrors witnessed on the west side and under the bridge, and to find a pack of gum on sale somewhere, my scuttling was directed toward Beadel Street with the eventual goal of crossing under the BQE- the technical border of Greenpoint and Bushwick.
The Real Estate Industrial Complex view of this border is somewhat different, of course, and to them- Williamsburg’s eastern border is probably Lake Ronkonkoma.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moving in my normal fashion, this scene was noticed, but I’m afraid that I startled these fellows somewhat. Can’t blame them, imagine what they saw, a shabby monster covered in Creek dust. They were building these odd bug cars which seemed to be constructed upon the chassis of a golf cart or small security vehicle.
Weird enough to notice, I waved and got some shots of them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, the second I put my camera away, that actor who plays the “Mayhem” character in the Allstate Insurance ads popped into view, but I was already moving on to other locales. A tour needed to be fleshed out!
old bugs
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Definitely on the mend, for my mind returns to thoughts of vengeance and contemplations upon the lamentations of my enemies. Still not quite at 100 percent, but the pernicious microorganisms which have infected my flesh seem to have realized their mistake in entering me.
Why not check out some lesser known Lovecraft stories while ill, I always ask- hence- check out the ineluctable pleasures contained at hplovecraft.com
From “Old Bugs” by HP Lovecraft
Sheehan’s Pool Room, which adorns one of the lesser alleys in the heart of Chicago’s stockyard district, is not a nice place. Its air, freighted with a thousand odours such as Coleridge may have found at Cologne, too seldom knows the purifying rays of the sun; but fights for space with the acrid fumes of unnumbered cheap cigars and cigarettes which dangle from the coarse lips of unnumbered human animals that haunt the place day and night. But the popularity of Sheehan’s remains unimpaired; and for this there is a reason—a reason obvious to anyone who will take the trouble to analyse the mixed stenches prevailing there. Over and above the fumes and sickening closeness rises an aroma once familiar throughout the land, but now happily banished to the back streets of life by the edict of a benevolent government—the aroma of strong, wicked whiskey—a precious kind of forbidden fruit indeed in this year of grace 1950.
Sheehan’s is the acknowledged centre to Chicago’s subterranean traffic in liquor and narcotics, and as such has a certain dignity which extends even to the unkempt attachés of the place; but there was until lately one who lay outside the pale of that dignity—one who shared the squalor and filth, but not the importance, of Sheehan’s. He was called “Old Bugs”, and was the most disreputable object in a disreputable environment. What he had once been, many tried to guess; for his language and mode of utterance when intoxicated to a certain degree were such as to excite wonderment; but what he was, presented less difficulty—for “Old Bugs”, in superlative degree, epitomised the pathetic species known as the “bum” or the “down-and-outer”. Whence he had come, no one could tell. One night he had burst wildly into Sheehan’s, foaming at the mouth and screaming for whiskey and hasheesh; and having been supplied in exchange for a promise to perform odd jobs, had hung about ever since, mopping floors, cleaning cuspidors and glasses, and attending to an hundred similar menial duties in exchange for the drink and drugs which were necessary to keep him alive and sane.
Read the rest at hplovecraft.com
