Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
noisome air
Rain, rain, rain. Bored, boredity, bored, bored.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing is certain, which is that the next few days will exhibit some truly ugly weather here in the Newtown Pentacle. In today’s post, library shots of wet weather are presented. Above, somewhere within the Shining City of Manhattan, from whence cometh the greater part of that flow of sewer juice that doth enter my beloved Creek during rain events.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everybody I meet gets a lecture at one point or another about the sewer system, and the Combined Sewer problem that bedevils our community. Suffice to say that it takes as little as a quarter inch of rain, citywide, for a billion gallons of storm water to propagate into our waterways. Days like this one, and the next few, will carry hundreds of billions of gallons of raw sewage into the water.
Pictured above, a manhole or access cover, originally laid in place by the “Bureau of Sewers Borough of Queens” which I believe to have been absorbed into the larger Municpal entity that would someday become the DEP around the time of the LaGuardia administration. I’m a bit hazy on this one, historical like, and promise that I’ll find out more and report the facts when they’re in hand.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From what I’ve been told, the MTA hasn’t been having too good a time for the last 24 hours or so, with more than a few outages on major lines. One wonders, and more than wonders, why the MTA only seems to plan and engineer the system around the conditions of ideal weather?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I mean… it’s going to rain. It’s also going to snow, eventually.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m the first person, literally, to throw shade at the commissioners and deputy commissars of the DEP during their periodic visits to Newtown Creek. DEP bosses lie like rugs, do so with a smirk, and every time there’s a political shake up in City Hall – the new guy isn’t bound by the promises made by the last set of “powers that be.” Saying that, I’m thankful for the rank and file who will be doing what they can during the coming deluges. Pictured above is the sewer plant in Greenpoint, getting rained upon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Here in Astoria, folks are taking the gathering storm quite seriously. There’s chanting and everything, and store shelves are fairly bereft of the puzzling combination of batteries, milk, bread, and toilet paper that everyone seems to require when a storm is on the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My neighbor Mario spent yesterday evening cleaning our sewer catch basin and the gutter of leaves and the garbage which everyone just seems to drop. Saying that, there’s a whole lot of sweeping to do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One last rainy day shot, which was captured close to a decade ago at Greenwood Cemetery. Good luck, lords and ladies, with the stormy weekend. If you’re reading this on Monday, it’s likely my internet is out, and I’ll post as soon as Time Warner comes back online.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
October 10th, 2015
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour
with Atlas Obscura, click here for details and tickets
swinging and plunging
It’s all so depressing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not too long ago, a humble narrator left HQ and soon found himself at Hells Gate. One always finds it amazing how alone you can feel when surrounded by literally thousands of people, but there you go. Melancholy and regret notwithstanding, it was decided to sit down and watch the surrounding city for a spell from a stationary vantage point.
“Winter is coming” is what was on my mind.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Off in the distance – a tugboat was towing a barge down the East River from the direction of Flushing Bay, and since there was literally nowhere else for me to go, I sat and waited for it to transit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The tug was the McAllister Girls. The fuel barge it was towing was clearly empty, given how high it was riding in the swirling maelstroms of the Hells Gate section of the estuarine East River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The background was provided by the DEP’s Wards Island plant, where centrifugal machinery separates a pestilence of filth out of a watery solution which the sewer people refer to as “honey” but the rest of just call “sludge.” In NY Harbor, it is difficult to avoid fecal matter, as the harbor is full of it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The currents in this section of the river, spanned by both Triborough and Hell Gate bridges, are notorious and powerful. Once, Hells Gate was a breaker of ships and consumer of lives, before the Army Corps of Engineers exploded the underwater geology which promulgated the formation of whirlpools and ripping tides.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Even today, it takes a bit of skill – and a powerful set of engines – for Mariners to conquer the cross currents and tidal action of Hells Gate. It’s nowhere close to the historical force of water, spoken about with awe and respect by sailors in the historical record, but this stretch of the river is still fairly treacherous.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
McAllister Girls, of course, managed Hells Gate with little trouble. The tug and barge continued along, entering the east channel of the river and continuing along to the south. Likely, she was headed for Kill Van Kull or Arthur Kill to drop off the empty barge and begin the process of moving another full one to some farm of coastal fuel tanks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was all pretty depressing though. Winter is coming.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
October 10th, 2015
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour
with Atlas Obscura, click here for details and tickets
abnormal horrors
Salutations and Happy Wednesday, from here in the dimly lit Newtown Pentacle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found one wandering about in the early evening, along the border betwixt Sunnyside, Woodside, and Astoria. Pictured above, a gas station found at the corner of Northern Blvd. and Woodside Avenue. It’s a Mobil station, as the corporate branding would imply, which historically means that it’s a SOCONY or Standard Oil Company of New York filling station.
SOCONY was based, of course, along my beloved Newtown Creek in Brooklyn. The modern world may be dross, but if you know what you’re looking at, history is writ large across it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above was shot from a spot solidly within Astoria, and depicts the iconic credo of the LIC Turn Verein. The Turners were a Duetche organization, who are actually still around but based further east of Queens than formerly, who promulgated the idea that physical and spiritual exercise were inextricably linked. This rather esoteric idea is what’s behind their iconic combination of a dollar sign and a crucifix, as seen above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Woodside Avenue, one is happy to report, is still there. I will check in on and confirm the continuing presence of the ancient lane once the week long rain event that has begun today has reached its conclusion.
On the subject of Tropical Storm, or possibly Hurricane, Joaquin – this weekend’s walking tour of Calvary Cemetery with Atlas Obscura has been rescheduled for the following weekend, specifically for Saturday the tenth of October. It just ain’t going to be too safe to walk around on the saturated ground there, as my long experience with the property informs that the turf will be syrupy and difficult for perambulation. Last thing I ever want to happen on one of my tours is for someone to get hurt, and a slip and fall at Calvary could easily result in a serious injury, what with the vertical slabs of stone sticking up all over the place.
Also, lightning and open fields really aren’t a good combination.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Newtown Road’s terminus at Northern Blvd. is where you’ll find the NYCHA Woodside Houses, depicted in the shot above. Hopefully, Mayor Vain de Glorioso isn’t planning on instituting his asinine plan to build condos on the green space and playgrounds of this public housing development, but you never know. He is so tall that his head is literally lost in the clouds, and he walks upon the earth with gigantic feet that progressively crush all that are regressive enough to not get out of his way. When Ragnarok arrives in November of 2017, the Jotun (storm giant) is likely to experience some stormy weather and lightning. Hopefully, an electoral hammer will be thrown and find its mark, which will drive him and his ludicrous ideology back to the frosty shores of Park Slope.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
October 10th, 2015
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour
with Atlas Obscura, click here for details and tickets
khephrens gateway
Shooting for the moon, in Astoria, Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Like everyone else in North America, a humble narrator was up on the roof the other night getting shots of the supermoon/lunar eclipse.
My experience was somewhat less than salubrious, due to the fact that the restaurant on the first floor of the building I live in was still open and their exhaust system operating. This equipment created a constant vibration in the concrete surface of the roof, which is ruinous for long lens shots. Pictured above, a view of the moonlight drenched Shining City as seen from Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The actual eclipse itself, a so called “blood moon.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking east from my vantage, and through a flight path leading to LaGuardia airport.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The moon as the eclipse was still forming up, moving towards penumbra.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A vertical shot looking eastward along Broadway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As long as I was up there, one last shot of the shining city. In an ideal world, the eclipse would have happened later in the night, when the moon was stationed above Manhattan.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
October 3rd, 2015
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour
with Atlas Obscura, click here for details and tickets
consistently toward
It has been one heck of a couple of weeks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One tends to become a bit overwhelmed at times, and the last couple of weeks are an exemplar of this truism. Accordingly, posts at this – your Newtown Pentacle – have been a bit… light on the hidden facts and occluded history and all the other stuff I’m normally obsessed with bringing you. A particular series of recent imbroglios surrounding my beloved Newtown Creek have occupied a bit of the brain space. Pictured above is the Kosciuszko Bridge spanning the troubled waterway.
Recent meetings and presentations offered by the various powers that be in the Superfund story have been generating a tremendous amount of debate amongst the activist community on the Creek – which is actually a great thing. It is only through hand wringing and intellectual conflict that a community can find the correct path towards the future by finding the “middle way.” There is a corporate side, a governmental side, and a community side to the story of rectifying Newtown Creek’s environmental issues. All have valid interests, and all must be acknowledged as we proceed through the superfund process.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor, the sort of thing one occupies himself with when the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself dips below the horizon offered by the shield wall of Manhattan, is presented in the “table shot” above. The photographic exercise was less about the technical aspects of the shot than it was about color purity and reproduction. The pencils were part of my old kit from back when I was drawing comics, and representative of the sort of palette which was often employed in the manufacture of my four color fantasies. This was a one light source one camera flash shot, for you curious shutterbugs out there.
The big flaw in the image is the color pollution notable in the orange brown shadows falling on the white substrate at the bottom of the shot, something which I’d retouch away if it was a “commerical” image rather than an exercise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Around two in the morning one recent night, the sound of an angry toddler screaming drifted through my windows from the sidewalk below. Turns out that this kid wanted to go for a midnight walk and his VERY patient Dad was trying to explain to him why that was a bad idea. This fellow deserved the “Dad of the Year” award, imho. The kid kept on trying for the street, and Poppa kept on pulling him back in a kind manner, patiently explaining that playing in the streets was a bad idea.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lastly, the 5 train entering the bunker found at 59th street in Manhattan. For the last year or so, my normal habit of just getting on some Manhattan bound local train and lazily “sitting out” the trip has been avoided. I’ve been trying to use the system in a somewhat more intelligent way, which involves a lot of transfers. Don’t want you to think I’ve become a transit nerd… but I’m becoming a transit nerd.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Upcoming Tours –
October 3rd, 2015
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour
with Atlas Obscura, click here for details and tickets
