Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
high and wild
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sad and scared today, the Newtown Creek tours were yesterday, and your humble narrator spoke to 2 sold out boatloads of eager enthusiasts. This isn’t the first time I’ve spoken before a group, but anxiety and nervous energy ruled an otherwise beautiful autumn day, and I am exhausted. Accordingly, here are 3 pretty pictures to cheer up the mood, captured recently in the brilliant light of autumn in the borough of Queens. A single moment from the real world in 2011, found on Northern Blvd. is above.
from wikipedia
As opposed to nostalgia – the melancholia or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home – “solastalgia” is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. A paper published by Albrecht and collaborators focused on two contexts where collaborative research teams found solastalgia to be evident: the experiences of persistent drought in rural New South Wales (NSW) and the impact of large-scale open-cut coal mining on individuals in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. In both cases, people exposed to environmental change experienced negative effects exacerbated by a sense of powerlessness or lack of control over the unfolding change process.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I’m walking around, looking for moments of time to freeze and or document, the movements of my eyes seem mechanical. Up, down, all around- notice everything. The things I seldom photograph, as I find it rude, are the little domestic scenes which make life in this ancient community of Western Queens and North Brooklyn worth living in. The old guys posturing with a bottle of bear, some old lady shucking beans, yuppies arguing with their dogs. My “thing”, however, is found in lost thoroughfares, graveyards, and wherever the night winds are answered with defiance and howls.
from wikipedia
Hypervigilance is an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats. Hypervigilance is also accompanied by a state of increased anxiety which can cause exhaustion. Other symptoms include: abnormally increased arousal, a high responsiveness to stimuli, and a constant scanning of the environment for threats. Hypervigilance can be a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder and various types of anxiety disorder. It is distinguished from paranoia. Paranoid states, such as those in schizophrenia, can seem superficially similar, but are characteristically different.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the last week, the two walking tours of Dutch Kills for Open House NY, a private boat tour of Newtown Creek for an elect group of education professionals, and the two public tours on Sunday the 23rd have been accomplished. The massive preparation and study associated with speaking on these tours has flattened my psyche, and left my frail and ruined physique a shattered mess. Enjoy today’s photos, and I’ll be back tomorrow with another missive from deep within the Newtown Pentacle. Oh… almost forgot to say it… I’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
The onset of a stress response is associated with specific physiological actions in the sympathetic nervous system, both directly and indirectly through the release of epinephrine and to a lesser extent norepinephrine from the medulla of the adrenal glands. These catecholamine hormones facilitate immediate physical reactions by triggering increases in heart rate and breathing, constricting blood vessels. An abundance of catecholamines at neuroreceptor sites facilitates reliance on spontaneous or intuitive behaviors often related to combat or escape.
Normally, when a person is in a serene, unstimulated state, the “firing” of neurons in the locus ceruleus is minimal. A novel stimulus, once perceived, is relayed from the sensory cortex of the brain through the thalamus to the brain stem. That route of signaling increases the rate of noradrenergic activity in the locus ceruleus, and the person becomes alert and attentive to the environment.
If a stimulus is perceived as a threat, a more intense and prolonged discharge of the locus ceruleus activates the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (Thase & Howland, 1995). The activation of the sympathetic nervous system leads to the release of norepinephrine from nerve endings acting on the heart, blood vessels, respiratory centers, and other sites. The ensuing physiological changes constitute a major part of the acute stress response. The other major player in the acute stress response is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.
disjointed jargon
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst marching past the sky flung and quite cyclopean walls of First Calvary Cemetery, which form the border between life and death along Review Avenue here in Queens, your humble narrator found himself stricken with certain longings for times past. Not the usual longings, borne of long nocturnal studies into the occluded and dim history of the fabled Newtown Creek and environs, but instead a desire to return to that moment in time when it was all new to me- just a few years ago. Far have my solitary marches across the concrete desolations of the Newtown Pentacle taken me from that original path.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When that hellish green flame of revelation was first lit, before I found out about Conrad Wessel and Cord Meyer and had no idea who Michael Degnon or Dagger John might be, the wonderland of Newtown Creek was merely another industrial area which had fallen on hard times and the sort of place which I always found myself wandering through. As a kid, it was south Brooklyn and the maritime era leave behinds which adorn Jamaica Bay. These days I’m conducting tours of the area for academic and political crowds, and speaking extemporaneously on the historic ramifications of it. Fear has risen in me that I’m losing my focus.
I almost walked past this glob of risible decay without photographing it, for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent inundation, which has been typical for the storm addled year of 2011, has saturated the low lying alluvial plain around the Creek and betrayed its past as wetlands. Accordingly, anything lying on an open patch of dirt immediately becomes soaked. I couldn’t tell you what this glutinous mass with a vaguely fibrous texture once was, but I am oh so glad I was still capable to notice it. The thing about the Newtown Pentacle, a term coined to describe the pentangular geographic distribution of the early European colonies in western Queens and Northern Brooklyn, is that the devil is always in the details.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Microscopy upon any subject often obscures the larger themes surrounding it, in essence when you follow Alice down the rabbit hole, you forget that the shire still lies without. The pile of discarded newspapers in the shot above, which are curiously and analogously arranged in the shape of a fallen man, obscured a bag of pots and pans. Repulsively filthy, one of the cooking pans was filled with human excrement.
Curiously, the pans were in the approximate location that a pelvis might be found on a human.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It has been painful to stand in public, as to be seen by so many diminishes me. Duty, however, demands that I tell the story of this place, no matter the personal cost.
This Sunday, the public tours of Newtown Creek will be departing from Pier 17 at South Street Seaport. The afternoon session is already sold out, but a few tickets are still available for the morning one. Heavily discounted (and I would point out that I have zero financial interest in the tours) at $10, due to a grant from NYCEF fund of the Hudson River Foundation, these will most likely be the last chance for the general public to see the Newtown Creek by boat until the spring.
And your humble narrator is anxious to get back out on the streets and find more mystery globs of risible decay, altars of unknown and foreign gods, and the graves of both Battle Ax Gleason and “he who must not be named”…
the First Big Announcement
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator will be conducting a walking tour in Long Island City as part of the Open House NY Weekend on October 15 and 16. The tour will be approximately two hours in length, starts at 11 am, and will visit several of the amazing industrial landmarks which distinguish the Queens side of the Newtown Creek Watershed. Much of the walk will follow the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek. Reservations are required, which can be had by visiting the following link:
http://www.ohny.org/site-programs/weekend/programs/walk-down-newtown-creek
Oh, did I neglect to mention that this walking tour is free, as in gratis, as in no cost to you- Lords and Ladies?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the first of two big announcements, the second is still under wraps and I’m not able to discuss it at this point. Hopefully, within the next couple of days, I’ll be able to say more. Open House NY weekend is a citywide event, and there are multiple opportunities to do cool and unique things. Please check out the rest of their offerings, but you definitely want to come on this exploration of a hidden and neglected waterway which is found less than one mile from midtown Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bring a camera, of course, but I would be remiss if I didn’t advise you that broken pavement and largish puddles might be encountered- so proper (closed toe) footwear is advised. Additionally, this is as close to an urban desert as you are ever likely to find, so if you are one of the folks who likes to “stay hydrated”, bring a beverage along. Sparks deli on Borden Avenue will most likely be open, but one never can tell. Looking forward to seeing you along the Dutch Kills, and as always-
Want to see something cool?
Bring a camera, and ID…
Follow me…
cheering illusion
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long island City, as we know it, was all about trains. Everywhere you go, tracks are. Despite this, the entire modern place is defined by it’s relationship to the automobile, which seems to have been the guiding principle behind much of its development in the middle 20th century- pull up the tracks and lay asphalt down for trucks. For those of you who might have seen me tagging along on one of Kevin Walsh’s audacious 2nd Saturday tours this summer, this will be a familiar refrain, but one of the things I’ve been going on about for the last several months is the “Locomotive City” versus the “Automotive City”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What I mean is that during the 19th and early 20th century, the place was set up and designed around access to rail based transportation rather than automotive needs. It’s why it’s so hard to park in LIC, except if you’re driving a train. 50 years ago, it was still not an uncommon or remarkable thing to see a Locomotive engine making its rounds at grade level around these parts, before everything switched over to truck and car based transport and the spars were cut.
This “locomotive city” had its own set of problems, of course, noise and pollution and accidents and all that- but the “automotive city” of the latter 20th century which we are all so familiar with is no picnic either. At least the earlier incarnation of the place was a lot more efficient.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As regular readers of this, your Newtown Pentacle, know- I’m kind of an infrastructure geek. One of my favorite topics are the sewers after all, and anyone who has accompanied me on a walk through LIC has had to endure me running over to a construction site and waxing rhapsodically about the layer cake of street systems which are revealed whenever workmen have dug their way down to perform maintenance or repairs on some buried subsystem.
In a single vertical yard, you will see asphalt, cement, belgian block cobblestones, macadamized or creosote treated wood blocks, oil saturated compacted earth- all the way down to the loose fill which was appropriate for horse carts. The industrial history of New York City, in cross section.
Today’s post is a bit of a placeholder, by the way, big announcements are imminent…
evasive outlines
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recently, your humble narrator was assisting a colleague in the execution of a walking tour of the Newtown Creek when this tug and barge were spotted sliding across the water.
This was “the short tour”, which includes only the tiniest part of Greenpoint’s north side and includes the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Nature Walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Esteemed, the person whom I was helping out has a rock solid grasp on the science and politics of the area, but had asked me to come along just in case anyone wanted to know who Provost Street or Kingsland Avenue are named for. That’s when I spotted this handsome scion of the McAllister towing company engaging in its occupation advancing down the Newtown Creek toward the East River.
The tugboat Resolute, side hitched to a fuel barge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An oft repeated but seldom comprehended statement which those of us involved with the story of this place like to throw out is “a century ago, this was the busiest waterway in North America, and the Creek carried more shipping traffic than the entire Mississippi river”. The official date for that high water mark is actually 1912, so next year we will be correct when saying century.
Your humble narrator, of course, will use the word “centuried” simply because it sounds creepy and cool.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In times past, it wasn’t just fuel barges mind you- vast amounts of mineral products destined for manufacturers like Phelps Dodge, or barge loads of putrescents destined for corporations like Van Iderstines were common sights as late as the 1970’s along the Newtown Creek.
But- like everywhere else in New York City- nobody really makes anything these days, and even the fuel which the Resolute’s barge carries is refined elsewhere.
