Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
Walking Tours in June
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Despite my loathsome appearance, abhorrent personality, and an unwholesome nature which engenders disdain from strangers- the walking tours of the Newtown Creek Watershed I’ve been conducting have all proved to be quite popular and in fact- have sold out. There have been one or two that I’ve publicized, and a few that were privately organized.
Demand has dictated that an expanded schedule of these walks, albeit punctuated by my incessant prattle, be offered.
To wit:
June 16th, 2012- Newtown Creek Alliance Dutch Kills walk
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Newtown Creek Alliance has asked that, in my official capacity as group historian, a tour be conducted on the 16th of June- a Saturday. This walk will follow the Dutch Kills tributary, and will include a couple of guest speakers from the Alliance itself, which will provide welcome relief for tour goers from listening to me rattle on about Michael Degnon, Patrick “Battle Ax” Gleason, and a bunch of bridges that no one has ever heard of.
for June 16th tickets, click here for the Newtown Creek Alliance ticketing page
June 23rd, 2012- Atlas Obscura Thirteen Steps around Dutch Kills walk
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Additionally- the “Obscura Day” Thirteen Steps around Dutch Kills tour proved that the efficacy and charms of the Newtown Creek’s least known tributary, with its myriad points of interest, could cause a large group to overlook my various inadequacies and failings. The folks at Atlas Obscura, which is a fantastic website worthy of your attentions (btw), have asked me to repeat the tour on the 23rd of June- also a Saturday.
for June 23rd tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The tours will cover similar ground, but approach the subject from differing angles. Both share the same dire warnings about traffic and footwear and the “boiler plate” offer is included below. As a rule, walkups are allowed, but be warned- when the group get to a certain size, I’m forced to refuse additional participants.
Buying a ticket in advance is your best bet.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman for an intense exploration of Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary — found less than one mile from the East River. Dutch Kills is home to four movable (and one fixed span) bridges, including one of only two retractile bridges remaining in New York City. Dutch Kills is considered to be the central artery of industrial Long Island City and is ringed with enormous factory buildings, titan rail yards — it’s where the industrial revolution actually happened. Bring your camera, as the tour will be revealing an incredible landscape along this section of the troubled Newtown Creek Watershed.
Be prepared: We’ll be encountering broken pavement, sometimes heavy truck traffic, and moving through a virtual urban desert as we cross the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking, closed toe shoes are highly recommended.
Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk, which will be around three hours long and cover approximately three miles of ground.
Meetup – At the Albert E. Short Triangle park found at the corner of Jackson Avenue and 23rd Street in Long Island City, Queens. This is the Court Square MTA station, and served by the 7, G, and M lines. Additionally, the Q39 and B62 buses have nearby stops. Check MTA.info as ongoing construction at Queens Plaza often causes delays and interruptions.
Drivers, it would be wise to leave your vehicle in the vicinity of the Pulaski Bridge in either Greenpoint or Long Island City.
June 30th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My various interests out on the sixth borough, NY Harbor, have brought me into association with the Working Harbor Committee. A member of the group’s Steering Committee- I also serve as the “official” group photographer, am chairman and principal narrator of their annual Newtown Creek Boat Tour, and occasionally speak on the microphone during other tours (mainly the Brooklyn one). This year, the group has branched out into terrestrial explorations to compliment the intense and extant schedule of boat tours, and I’m going to be leading a Kill Van Kull walking tour that should be a lot of fun.
The Kill Van Kull, or tugboat alley as its known to we harbor rats, is a tidal strait that defines the border of Staten Island and New Jersey. A busy and highly industrialized waterfront, Working Harbor’s popular “Hidden Harbor – Newark Bay” boat tours provide water access to the Kill, but what is it like on the landward side?
Starting at the St. George Staten Island Ferry terminal, join WHC Steering Committee member Mitch Waxman for a walk up the Kill Van Kull via Staten Islands Richmond Terrace. You’ll encounter unrivaled views of the maritime traffic on the Kill itself, as well as the hidden past of the maritime communities which line it’s shores. Surprising and historic neighborhoods, an abandoned railway, and tales of prohibition era bootleggers await.
The tour will start at 11, sharp, and you must be on (at least) the 10:30 AM Staten Island Ferry to meet the group at St. George. Again, plan for transportation changes and unexpected weirdness to be revealed to you at MTA.info.
For June 30th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
smoking gulf
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ask anyone who lives here and they’ll tell you- Astoria Queens rules.
It’s one of the last places in New York City that actually still looks like New York City, and people who live here are generally idiosyncratic and gregarious types who enjoy life’s simpler pleasures wholeheartedly. The ancient village has its problems- of course, too much traffic, a disturbing amount of public inebriation, and when “it hits the fan” around here- things quickly tend to get messy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our streets seem to be collapsing, our sewers back up routinely, everything costs too much, and the new neighbors are noisy. The kids have no respect for the older folks, and litter in a casual manner. The deli guys let bums drink in the back yards of their storefronts, and the social contract which dictates that one should find an appropriate commode for the elimination of bodily wastes seems to have been forgotten. We still haven’t forgotten about the “Great Astoria Blackout of 2006” or the week we spent in the dark while a proverbial “Emperor Nero” fiddled away in City Hall and claimed nothing was wrong.
City services are applied haphazardly (at best) here, except in the case of handing out fines to homeowners and businesses- something handled by the authorities in a fashion best described by the aphorism of “Russian Efficiency”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A background hum- caused by highways and rail yards and millions of air conditioners, automobile engines, and oscillating fan blades- colors the air. There is always some sort of yelling, invariably in some foreign tongue, within earshot. Alternatively- kids are playing and squealing with delight, old ladies shuck beans on their stoops, and old men gather in loose groups to complain about the Mets and Rangers or brag about their grandkids.
Everywhere, one might find sidewalk cafes and tavernas glistening with vibrant crowds.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Indecent development by the real estate industrial complex crowds in on the older building stock, disillusioning long time residents and inflaming the passions of preservationists, but what are you going to do about it? People have a right to do what they want with their own property, and the Astoria way is to mind your own business, unless something directly affects you. The interesting thing about Astoria, as well, is that the whole “race thing” isn’t so much of an issue here. The kids in the neighborhood don’t run in ethnic packs like they do in other parts of the city, it’s more a block by block sort of thing. Brazilian, Irish, Italian, Greek, Korean, Egyptian, whatever- they’re all just “one of the boys” from this avenue or that block or those buildings. Doesn’t matter- as they’re all spoiled rotten, don’t know how good they’ve got it, won’t amount to anything, had it too easy, and all the other things that the old ladies say while making a “tsk tsk” sound.
This is what one might see on the streets, what it’s like to actually live here, and this posting is a response to something someone said to me a couple of weeks ago while I was over in the city- the actual quotation was: “Astoria, I love it there, it’s so diverse”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What does that mean? Every description I’ve ever heard of Astoria starts with the “diverse” thing, which connotes that the standard for the rest of the world is rigid social segregation along racial and ethnic lines, and that Astoria is some sort of gulag for foreigners who haven’t figured out that they should shop for clothes at JC Penny at the mall on Queens Blvd. and learn to lose the accent. Additionally, on the “diversometer”, do we score higher than Flushing or Ridgewood or Greenpoint?
If one more Manhattanite asks me if I’ve ever been to a) Elias’s Corner, b) the Bohemian Hall, or c) the Museum of the Moving Image- a humble narrator might just go screaming off into the night.
Anyway, Astoria Queens rules.
You got a problem with that?
time worn
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One hundred and twenty nine years ago- on May 30, 1883- 12 people were killed and 35 wounded upon the Brooklyn Bridge in what would best be described as constituting a personal nightmare scenario to your humble narrator. I’ve never liked crowds, and shy away from congested areas where a sudden panic might carry me toward apotheosis randomly. Surely this is born of an experience in racially polarized South Brooklyn back in the early 1980’s when I found myself swept in the surge of a small race riot while onboard a bus.
from nytimes.com
A woman fell down the wooden steps at the end of the New-York approach to the Brooklyn bridge yesterday afternoon while the pathway was crowded with thousands of men, women, and children walking and passing one another. As she lost her footing another woman screamed, and the throng behind crowded forward so rapidly that those at the top of the steps were pushed over and fell in a heap.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Weak, poorly developed physically, and given to panic- a young narrator watched with growing horror as a group of “Cugenes” (slang for Italian kids in my old hood) approached the Bushwick bound B78 bus intent on ferreting out a certain African American youth with whom they had a conflict. The Cugenes come onto the bus swinging, and as tribal affiliations ruled the day- the pushing started. I found myself a helpless and unwilling cork bobbing on a sea of witless hatred, an experience which has stayed with me to this day.
from wikipedia
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River. With a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m), it was the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and the first steel-wire suspension bridge.
Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge and as the East River Bridge, it was dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a name from an earlier January 25, 1867 letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since its opening, it has become an icon of New York City, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unending nightmares of such situations guide me to this day, and one is quite phobic about being trapped within a crowd without egress or a clear pathway of escape. I think it’s part of the reason that places like Times Square fill me with nameless dread, and I prefer the concrete desolations of the sparsely populated Newtown Creek.
I’m all ‘effed up.
from chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
A terrible disaster occurred yesterday afternoon on tho East River Bridge, by which twelve persons lost their lives and a great many others were injured more or less seriously. While there were no less than 15,000 persons on the Bridge, a blockade was formed on the footpath at the head of a flight of steps nine feet high extending from the masonry above the anchorage to the first iron truss, the same place at which blockades of people have occurred heretofore. A panic followed the pushing and struggling in which men and women tried to free themselves from the crowd. In the midst of this rush, started, it is thought by a gang of roughs, either thoughtlessly or with mischievous intent, several persons were carried over the edge of the steps. They fell on the landing and at the foot of the stairs, ethers stumbled on them, and more than forty persons were trampled underfoot by the panic-stricken multitude.
momentary panic
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve got a boo-boo.
On May 12, your humble narrator conducted a walking tour of Dutch Kills and Newtown Creek which ended at the Newtown Creek Nature Walk in Brooklyn. Having concluded the day’s exertions, the pathway back to benighted Astoria followed the familiar route of crossing the Pulaski Bridge.
At mid span, I noticed a tugboat- the Franklin Reinauer- waiting for the bridge to open, and decided to take advantage of its static position to gather a few shots.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Franklin Reinauer has been featured here in prior postings, and in an attempt to capture a slightly different angle of the vessel (as I’ve taken virtually identical shots of it from this very spot in the past), I decided to climb up on the weird wooden “art thing” which is installed mid span on the bridge.
Happy with the quality of light and the positioning of the ship in my shot, I noticed that the DOT bridge crew had shown up to open the Pulaski and allow the tug access to the Newtown Creek. Desire to get shots of the tug entering the Creek from below infected me and I tucked away my gear and attempted to dismount the “wooden art thing”.
That’s when it happened.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The injury wasn’t severe enough to preclude me from flying down the stairs and getting the shots I desired, as evinced above and below, but the swelling had already started.
As I was climbing down from the “wooden art thing”, I put my left hand down to steady myself as I descended back to the deck. My left thumb then exceeded its normal course and bent approximately forty five degrees in the wrong direction. While I didn’t hear the cracking sound familiar to anyone who has broken a bone, there was a distinct and rather disturbing “pop” that travelled up my arm.
It immediately began to swell.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the time that the shot above was captured, an ugly and redolent bruise was spreading around the joint, and the big muscle at the heel of my hand (where the thumb joins the wrist) had swollen up and it appeared as if I had an apricot growing in the shallow part of my palm. Ibuprofen and an ice pack were applied back at HQ, and the swelling subsided after a day or two. Full range of motion, and normal gripping strength, were confirmed and no doctoring seemed to be required. Today, it is still sore, but on the mend.
This is the tale of my boo-boo.
At least I got my shots.
ocean and firmament
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bedeviling, the fog has occasionally opened during the last week.
One such aperture provided this moment on the harbor, when an NYPD Harbor Patrol Launch came crashing across my point of view. Launch No. 36 would likely be what the boat is called by the Gendarme, and that’s the USCG Eagle anchored nearby the Statue of Liberty.
This Maritime Sunday falls on a holiday weekend, and your humble narrator finds himself in ever stranger and more dire predicaments whilst moving about the great human infestation.
All is odd.
