Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
faded from
The fabulous Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The otherworldly light cast from the Koscisuzcko Bridge is like no earthly color, instead it’s like some colour out of space.
Its frequencies the other night, gauche and tacky, were magenta and near ultraviolet, and generated by LED luminaire heads mounted on the bridge’s superstructure. The richly saturated color of this radiation wreaks havoc on digital camera sensors, whose engineered color science doesn’t account for wavelengths of such an unnatural hue. The bridge light is the frequent subject of social media conjecture – on overcast nights in neighborhoods as far as ten miles away – with light pulses and coruscates soaring up to impact and stain the clouds.
Often have I seen queries and postulates offered from Queensican or Brooklynite alike as to why the vaulted cloudbanks over that legendarily undefended border between the two boroughs appears pink, purple, or red. Some theorize about extraterrestrials, others about a returned “Astoria Borealis.” I offer that the lighting design takes its cues from certain greek owned coffee shops here in Astoria, which are not noted for their decorative restraint in the area of lighting design.
Here, at the epicenter of the unearthly radiance, is the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
2.1 miles from the East River is where this volcano of LED generated light erupts nightly. The industrial zones of Blissville in Queens and eastern Greenpoint in Brooklyn are painted in whorish coloration by it, and even the preternatural darkness of Calvary Cemetery is punctured by the brightly colored display.
Darth Cuomo seeks to connect the new bridge’s lighting system to other facilities for something described as “the harbor of lights,” which will coordinate the lighting on all the structures which the Governor’s mailed fist controls for special events. If the Mets ever win a pennant, for instance, count on seeing a strobing blue and orange pattern pulsing from of the Empire State Building and then out to all of the NYS owned bridges and tunnels. It should be quite a bizarre sight, as the colour out of space here at Newtown Creek permeates out to the entire megalopolis.
Soon, we shall all know of the colour, and it will be a part of our lives just as we will be a part of its.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is actually a surprising amount of vibration, flexibility, and movement engineered into the new Kosciuszcko Bridge. This is somewhat problematic for my pursuits, regarding long exposure night time shots from its walkway. I can tell you that the fenceline on the bridge has vertical bars that are about 90mm apart from each other, and that my favorite camera lens is about 87mm in width. I would also suggest that I had absolutely nothing to do with this fact, and that I didn’t make it a point of injecting myself into the construction project’s community advisory group in the hope of avoiding the installation of a chain link fence in favor of some other design a bit friendlier to camera work. Saying that, there’s a lot of vibration and sway to deal with when a heavy truck blasts by on the BQE doing 50mph.
Unnatural light and swaying vibration, automotive exhaust, waste transfer stations, the vaporous emanations of a Federal Superfund site on a January night… nepenthe.
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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.
invocation addressed
Rain, rain, hold still while I take a picture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One didn’t get out too much over the week between Christmas and New Years due to a variety of reasons, amongst them was that spate of drenching rain which hit the neighborhood here in Astoria, Queens. Regardless, inactivity and I don’t enjoy each other’s company, so I set up the camera and experimented a bit right here at home.
If you were making your way down Astoria’s Broadway and saw the silhouette of a weird old guy and a camera up on a tripod in a window, you should have waved. That was me.
Since I’ve lived in this neighborhood, that bodega has had three owners and never changed its name. The first set of owners were brothers, ones whose family had a farm back in Lebanon. Back then, they had great produce, and either brother was your go to for finding out whether or not a pomegranate was ripe or not. They sold it to another Lebanese family, one which had a large group of sons that were all fitness fanatics. I used to call them the “Lebanese Olympic Weight Lifting team” and it was always fun watching what would happen when someone tried shoplifting at the bodega. Older brother Gazi once punched a crook so hard that the fellow lifted about four feet into the air and traveled about six feet horizontally, making a quite satisfying “slap thunk” sound upon his landing. The current owners are South East Asians (Indian or Bangla, I’m not sure), who don’t carry much in the way of produce you’d want to buy, and are not obsessed with going to the gym, but are otherwise nice.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whenever it rains for an extended period, my thoughts always drift toward my beloved Newtown Creek. One of the curses suffered by my favorite waterway involves the “combined sewer outfalls” which transport excess storm water mixed with untreated sewer water directly into it. These NYC owned pipes are often at least a century old, and use a pre modern era approach to waste water management summed up by the old adage “the answer to solution is dilution.” I know way too much about NYC’S sewer system, as a note.
That sewer grate, which is on my corner, is connected to a large pipe found under Broadway which connects all of the corner grates. That large pipe connects to an even larger pipe found at 42nd street called an interceptor. If you stand on the north side of 42nd and a Broadway in Astoria, you can hear water roaring through it through the access or manhole cover. This pipe goes to Northern Blvd. where it takes a right and follows the slope of the street through Queens Plaza, then goes diagonally under the Sunnyside Yards and towards the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek where it outfalls.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I dream of dropping rubber duckies into the drain during a roaring thunderstorm, then racing over to Dutch Kills to catch a photo of them popping out of one of the outfalls. I’ve also fantasized while in the grip of somnambulant hallucinations, about pouring tons and tons of gelatin into the sewer, just to see what happens. Yes, I literally dream of such things.
Last night – for instance – I had a dream that I had adopted a gigantic French Bulldog the size of an ox, and that I was able to put a saddle across its back and ride it around. I mention that in an attempt to dissuade you of wondering why I dream about sewers, and to point out that rubber ducky fantasies are hardly the weirdest thing my brain manufactures.
“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.
whatever remained
Manhattan, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in yesterday’s post at this – your Newtown Pentacle – a humble narrator found himself out of schedule with the rest of the world and wholly awake while everybody else was asleep. This is one of the quirks which Our Lady of the Pentacle endures periodically, watching me go to bed later and later every day until finally my circadian rhythms are in tune only with certain Asia Pacific time zones. I find myself in this situation periodically, and in particular around this time of the year. My remedy for has always been the same, stay up and then go to bed “early” the next night, same as you do when traveling to or from the Eurasian continent. I’m an odd duck, what can I tell you.
To pass the hours of the wolf, I packed up my old kit bag – and smiled – while heading into Manhattan via the 7 line subway, which was subsequently debarked at Grand Central Terminal. From there, I headed in a diagonal direction towards my eventual rendezvous with a package that was waiting for me at the camera shop. In the meantime, I got busy with the clicking and the whirring.
That’s the main NYPL library building on 5th Avenue pictured above, quite obviously, at about 4:30 in the morning.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The garment district seems to be the spot in Midtown where the gendarmes are tolerating homeless encampments, curbside buggerers, madmen, junk fiends, and a generally lawless state of affairs to exist during the overnight hours. It looks a great deal like the 1980’s around these parts at 4:30 in the morning. Good times, the De Blasio era, good times.
If you’re interested in becoming the Mayor of New York City in the next cycle, my advice to you is to run as a Republican espousing a harsh return to law and order policies, and an unleashing of the NYPD. Say “see what happens when these people are in charge?” Announce your candidacy in eastern Brooklyn, not on Staten Island, and mention the endemic smell of weed a few times. Throw in bike lane abolition, too and you’re gold. Present your self as the “Antidote to De Blasio and his crew of clueless limousine liberals,” talk about his reckless spending, his coddling of criminals, and the sort of endemic corruption you get when a single political party controls both the legislative and executive branches of a municipal (or any) government.
Here’s my prediction for who our next Mayor will be – Unnamed Republican. Also, the above does not represent my personal belief system for how NYC should operate, it instead points out the simplest possible strategy for becoming the Mayor after Bill De Blasio heads off to run for either Emperor of China or Sultan of the Ottomans.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My scuttle carried me from the Garment District ever westward and slightly south, whereupon I discovered that a particular corner in midtown Manhattan had been anointed with a couple of those solar powered garbage cans.
Unlike the coal and petroleum powered garbage cans of prior years, these solar powered ones only pollute during their manufacturing process. As you might discern from the shot above, however, the failings of the solar powered garbage can are excaberated at night, because solar.
Without either an internal combustion engine or the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself powering the thing, how can a garbage can hope to can garbage?
“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.
sifted dust
Mind numbingly bored yet?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a short one today, with a few more shots of Astoria Queens from a recent and quite rainy night. Believe it or not, one of my goals for 2019 was to figure out a decent system for bad weather shooting. By “system,” a general approach to the problem is indicated, not a specific mechanical or device based solution. There’s a lot of technical “making the camera work” stuff involved in photography which becomes second nature, but there’s also a whole series of body postures and other physical matters which figure into it that one develops over time.
That is, of course, the reliable Q18 bus plying its way down 30th Avenue here in Astoria, on one of those gentle rolling hills which I often mention.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things which I’ve adopted, physical habits while shooting wise, is a technique used by snipers. Frame up the shot, get your exposure figured out, and then depress the shutter button while breathing out rather than in. You’d be surprised at how much bodily movement there is associated just with respiration.
The thundering pulsations of ones circulatory system also come into play, and whereas I’ve managed to pull off handheld shots as slow as 1/60th of a second – that’s a fluke. Your heart beats, while resting mind you, between 60 and 100 times a minute. That means a hydraulic tremor which you are not cognizant of ripples through your arms and into the camera you’re nestling in your hands. My “go to” for low light is about 1/160th of a second, and I can reliably get a non blurred exposure at 1/100th. Anything slower than that, it’s a 50/50 chance that I managed to get the shutter actuated in between heart beats.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Parking is something I hear Astorians complain about constantly. I’ve always opined that it depends on your ride, parking does. Let’s say you drive an excavator… you could theoretically park anywhere you want to. If you can’t find a spot, it’s not a stretch to imagine that you could just dig a hole and leave your wheels in it. If street parking is your bag, it wouldn’t be too hard to just move other parked vehicles out of the way.
The very first time I saw my name in print was in Grade School. The printed quotation from P.S. 208’s Annual gazette involved my six year old desire to drive a bulldozer professionally. This, like many other goals of my younger incarnations, never happened. I can take photos in the dark, and in the rain, so at least there’s that.
“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.
cowed to
All the holidays…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They say it’s Festivus, for the rest of us, as well as Channukah. Talk about eight crazy nights, tomorrow is Christmas Eve too. So much warmth and seasonal joy is afloat and available in the air, one can barely stand not sinking his teeth into its neck.
Last week, when I was limping over to the Community Board meeting here in Astoria, the camera was being waved about. I love that fruit stand pictured above and shop there occasionally, but have always wondered about the “United Brothers” name. Did these brothers used to quarrel with each other and maintained dueling fruit and vegetable stands before agreeing upon some set of terms in the hope of uniting under a single banner? Do the nieces and nephews get along? Is there a sister who got left out of the fraternal union? Do other branches of the family offer different kinds of produce – meat, or dairy? When they say “united” you don’t suppose that the place is owned by conjoined twins?
Also, would “fruit monger” be an appropriate term for their profession? Can you use “mong” as a verb? If you’re a monger or any sort, do you mong? When people get tired of your bullshit, do they ask if you don’t have any monging you should be doing instead of bothering them?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Drivers drive, painters paint. Carpenters don’t carpent though, and butchers don’t butch. Writers write, Cooks cook, Farmers Farm. Bricklayers lay bricks, Heavy Equipment Operators operate heavy equipment, Bartenders tend bars. Mongers?
We’ve got a lot of loaner words in modern English which came across the English Channel with the Normans in 1066 that are Medieval French in origin – like Carpenter – which replaced earlier Germanic Anglo Saxon sounding terms like “wood worker.”
The French speaking overlords who conquered England ate pork rather than swine, and lamb rather than mutton, and both were slurped up out of a saucer rather than a bowl. The conquered commoners who wore home spun britches retained the original Germanic terms, whereas the conquerors in their fancy pants used the French ones. After a thousand years, the term you commonly use is indicative of your social rank and class status.
I was thinking about all of this while listening to a group of people most would describe as “gentrifiers” discussing amenities in their tower apartment building at a Christmas Party recently. My root programming in blue collar Brooklyn would describe an amenity like access to a roof deck or a basement laundry room as “free shit you’re entitled to when you pay rent.” This would usually be followed by an admonition to not let “them” say no to you, and that I was just as good as everybody else so I shouldn’t be shy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve always been fascinated by the NYC usage of the term “them” and “they.” They stole Carl’s bike, and Lenny was beat up by them. Shut up, or they’ll hear you. You’re going where with them? They’ll be waiting for you. They own everything. They are going to know if you talked to the cops. They are taking over. Lots and lots of prejudice and class struggle is wrapped up in they and them, the way we New Yorkers use it.
When people ask me why I’m taking photos on the streets these days, I like to say “It’s OK, I’m with them.” Then I point to the right with my left hand at nothing in particular while making my raised eyebrow smile face. “Just kidding,” I continue, “I’m just a photo monger, and I’m busy monging.” Finding out I’m just some idiot with a camera versus having stumbled across a terrorist photographer really disappoints most petitioners.
Screw them.
“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.
