Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
burned out
Hey, what’s with all this Northern Blvd. stuff?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I know what is to come. In recent years, the NYC Dept. of City Planning was working on something they called “LIC Core,” a planning document centering around Northern Blvd. between 31st street and Woodside Avenue. My understanding is that the planning document has been abandoned, and that the Real Estate Industrial Complex will just be allowed to do whatever they want under the proviso that a politically viable number of “affordable” apartments are a part of their plan. The whole “affordable” thing, and the arithmetic by which the concept of affordability is determined, is a bugbear of political deception which I don’t want to get into.
As mentioned in the past, I’m now a member of Community Board 1 here in Astoria, and before the summer break, a humble narrator was obliged to vote for or against a couple of these projects. Now, when you’re on a community board – and I seem to be the only person in Queens who adheres to this – it’s meant to be like serving on a jury. The petitioner presents their facts, you make inquiries, and then you vote. In the case of two large projects just a few blocks from my own home, I voted yes. Here’s why…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Close to transit, shopping, and City services? Check. Best use of the land? Well, I don’t think used car lots are the best use of the land within one to two miles of the East River. How densely populated is the area already? Well…. let’s just say that when the kids want to experiment with cannabinoids well outside the purview of their parents or just see how loud their car stereos are, the side streets along Northern Blvd. are where they go, as it’s a ghost town at night after all the car lots and mechanics shutter their doors. People sleep in their cars along these blocks, or on cardboard boxes piled up against the walls.
Just like when you’re on a jury, your CB vote is supposed to be based not on personal prejudices or preconceived notions, rather it’s meant to be guided by the presented facts and informed by your personal knowledge of the area. Saying that, my queries and comments to the various entities seeking to develop residential properties in the neighborhood revolved around topics that longtime Newtown Pentacle readers will find familiar – green roofs, truly public space, stormwater capture, hospital beds, school desks, and transit. Also, what are you going to plug the building into, since our electrical power system hereabouts… frankly… sucks.
Also – since this has come up a few times during the summer when I was talking to the press about unrelated Newtown Creek business – I in no way speak for CB1, and if you want an official opinion of the group on anything, talk to the Chair or call the office and ask for one. I’m still new to the Community Board, and getting to know not just my fellow members but also the procedural norms under which it operates. My plan for the next set of sessions, which begin again in September, is to show up and observe the way things work and then vote my conscience on the various issues presented. What you read here is from my personal POV, and all opinions are my own. If I’m speaking “officially” on behalf of any of the groups which I work with, I’ll state that. Otherwise, it’s just some schmuck with a camera mouthing off again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, and I’m still startled at the number of people who have willingly made their homes in Queens Plaza, living along Northern Blvd. seems like a poor choice. You do have fairly regular bus service, but the closest subway stops (other than the 36th street R/M) are all several blocks to the north – in Astoria proper – along Broadway. I’ve long called this stretch of Northern Blvd. the “Carridor” as it’s a super wide primary automobile and truck route that offers some of the scariest street crossings in all of Queens. Really, Steinway at Northern… brrrr…
At the moment, I’m spending some effort on recording what’s found on the Carridor right now, in order to create some kind of record before it all gets swept away by the forces of modernity and the rapacious hunger of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. The history of NYC is a story of wrenching, and quite sudden, change. Take a picture when something catches your interest, as it might not be there tomorrow.
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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.
hastily filling
Back in session.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator has enjoyed his self allotted time off, if you’re the curious type. Given the tropical clime and frequent rainstorms, the last two weeks haven’t exactly been a wonderland of joy, but evening hours when the temperatures were a bit more tolerable were exploited. During these nocturnal scuttlings around the various neighborhoods I keep an eye on, it was decided to severely limit the amount of “kit” one carried and utilized in my pursuits.
The normal “everyday carry” of heavy zoomable lenses, tripod, and all the other crap I normally drag around was left at HQ. Leaving the house, all I had on me were two prime lenses – a 24mm pancake lens and the 50mm “nifty fifty.” For camera support, I was carrying a gizmo called an “ultra pod,” which is a metal plate with a tripod head on it and four latex furniture caster feet. Beyond that, all I had on me was an air blower and a couple of lens cloths, a flash light, and a cable release. The camera bag weighed more than what was inside it. Perfect for roaming around on sultry August evenings, here in the Borough of Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the worst things you can tell any kind of artist is “do whatever you feel like.” Limitations are important, as that’s where challenge lies. The tyranny of the blank page has demolished the aspirations of many, whereas forcing oneself to write or draw or photograph within set limits is an invitation to “get creative.”
The cool thing about the ultrapod and the tiny and extremely light lenses I was using was that this setup forced me to slow down a bit and really put some thought into where the camera was placed, rather than just zooming in on a subject. Additionally, it put me back into the mental space I used to operate in back when I first got serious about shooting and was using a Canon G10 mounted on a magnetic tripod. My camera has been sitting on top of fireboxes, on the sidewalk, windowsills – you name it – for the last couple of weeks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, the one thing I was constantly wishing for during this particular two week long exercise was a more modern camera body with one of those neato keen flip out screens. Composing the shot above found a humble narrator lying prone and belly down onto the pavement on the corner of 38th street and Northern Blvd., which was kind of gross.
The Canon 7D is a champion camera body – tough, resistant to the constant physical and emotional abuse I inflict on it, and quite the omnivore as far as the number of common tasks it can handle ably. Saying that, I’m quite attracted to the new Canon mirrorless R series cameras, but everyone I know recommends getting a Sony A7 series with a third party adaptor for my lenses instead. This is all intellectual, of course, as a humble narrator doesn’t have two pennies to rub together. I’d need several hundred thousand rubbable pennies for a new camera.
“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.
falsetto panic
A few more archive shots, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As one hasn’t had anything particularly interesting going on for the last couple of weeks, or at least “interesting” visually speaking, so a humble narrator finds himself a bit short on content for the moment. Luckily, a great deal of time was spent during the cold months of this and last year scuttling about Long Island City in the dark of night and making with the camera clicking.
I’ve always thought the accidental compositions left behind by the workers of NYC are incredible looking, the middens of waste left behind by industrial labor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above was gathered one night when I was photographing the neighborhood which the City and State intended for the habitation of Amazon’s HQ2 project. Those of us who live in Western Queens are not surprised or shocked by such sights. The dearest secret kept away from potential customers by the Real Estate crowd relates back to the tremulous state of the centuried municipal infrastructure underlying the shiny new tower apartment buildings.
“Writus Postus Interruptus” occurred right here, at about 12:15 a.m.
So, as I was sitting and writing the above drivel last night, a sudden screeching of breaks and THUMPF broke into my reverie at about 12:05 a.m.. Didn’t see it, but when I stuck my head out to see what happened, a bike rider had been struck by a pickup truck on my corner. The bike guy was laying in the street and screaming at the driver. Always a good citizen, a humble narrator initiated a 911 call.
By the time that the operator was about to dispatch help, the bike rider had recovered and was preparing to ride away. I reported this to the operator, who told me that “we can’t cancel a call once it’s started.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The consequence of me being a good samaritan involved then receiving multiple phone calls from various emergency services – first from onboard a fire truck, then about ten minutes later from an ambulance. About two hours later, my phone rings – at 1:48 a.m., and it’s the cops, whose response time to this was an hour and forty three minutes. Had to spend a good fifteen minutes on the phone with the officer explaining the above, and being a cop he made me go back into the story at different starting points to ascertain whether or not it was a made up story or it really happened.
Sheesh, try to do the right thing and next thing you know the cops have you up until two in the morning. My delicate equilibrium upset, didn’t get to bed until the wee hours, and I was so distracted by the encounter that I didn’t get today’s post done until just now.
Long story short, infrastructure of all kinds – including emergency response – is stretched paper thin here in Queens.
“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.
feebly leaped
A few archive shots today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Meetings, have to’s, places to be and toes to break – these things affect us all and no one more so than I. Accordingly, a few archive shots are on offer today whilst one awaits the Götterdämmerung thunderstorm on schedule for this afternoon.
Pictured above and below are Flushing Bay, as captured one very cold night back in January of this year. In all actuality, the shot above actually depicts the intersection of Flushing Bay with Flushing Creek, but why get all technical?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All of this rain has caused an absolutely horrible consequence for the inland waterways of NYC, or so I’m led to believe by my friends who participate in the Citizen Science water testing program who have spoken of off the chart levels of sewage bacteria in their samples. The metric which is generally accepted by those in the know is that the Combined Sewer System can begin releasing untreated waste water into the harbor due to a tenth of an inch of rain falling on the City. A quarter inch of rain translates into a billion gallons of water entering the system, and virtually guarantees that the overage will start flowing into area waterways. Pictured above, you can see a containment boom surrounding one of the outfall pipes that empties into Flushing Bay.
Prior to today’s storm, the City has received 6.85 inches of rain just in July of 2019. Using the quarter inch equals a billion gallons equation, the City has had to deal with an extra 27.4 billion gallons of storm water just in the last month, which is on top of the normal wastewater flow coming from homes and businesses.
Bubble bubble, toil and trouble, indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Way on the other side of Queens, nearby Queens Plaza in LIC, you’ll find the Queensboro Bridge and the elevated tracks of the 7 line. Neither one of these structures has a drainage system directly feeding into the sewer system, instead, multi story tall pipes carry storm water and whatever else might get washed off the tracks or roadway down to street level where the water is expected to find its way to a sewer grate.
They look pretty, at least.
“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.
horrible yelps
You see things in Astoria, Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As predicate – two things; The first is that the Transportation Alternatives Bike Lane people never mention Unicycles in their agitprop for expanding the bike lane network. The second is that last Friday, an old friend was in town and I made it a point of getting to the local bar early to grab a choice outside table in the shade.
I wasn’t there five minutes before the fellow pictured above came rolling past.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I knew a guy in High School who rode a unicycle, but it was the smaller kind that circus clowns are known to frequent. The following series of shots are rare vertical format ones (rare for this publication, at least) as this specimen from Astoria put its rider’s center of gravity at least six to seven feet up from the pavement.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fellow was doing a bit of a dance as he rode the thing, throwing his arms about in a somewhat comical fashion to maintain balance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The best part of experiencing this was that he had a bluetooth speaker somewhere on his person, and he was loudly playing Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album while riding.
Specifically speaking, it was the song “Thriller.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I look forward to the day when the bike people begin advocating for Unicycles. #carnage? Someday, my friends, someday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Thrillercycle continued eastwards along Broadway in the direction of Woodside.
The first few people who had arrived at the bar for the gathering and I all looked at each other all quizzical like. Somebody asked “you saw that too, right”?
Yes, yes I did.
“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.
