Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
particular period
Monday shots from the after times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found one walking a friend who has recently acquired the photography habit around the industrial quarters of Long Island City. My intent was to inculcate a few safety oriented customs into his mind, since the first rounds of photos he had been posting scared the heck out of a humble narrator. As is often repeated, Newtown Creek and the industrial business zone areas surrounding it are an easy place to get dead if you’re not cautious, careful, or have some background knowledge of the way that the “hard hats” operate. Photos my friend had been posting demonstrated that he had no understanding of the place’s code, which I set out to rectify. Dutch Kills in LIC was a great place to start.
I sort of gave him a tour, which is something I miss doing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One did not gather too many pictures on this outing, but I couldn’t resist a shot of this ivy which had been graffitied over. The weird sodium lamp light pouring out of a nearby shipping company’s property just added to the attraction.
The shipping business continues to expand and expand around the Newtown Creek, and despite the fact that I broke the story last year that an enormous Amazon facility is about to be constructed over in Maspeth on Grand Avenue, other people are acting like it’s news. Of course, nobody cares about this, until the tractor trailer and delivery trucks leave the IBZ and drive through the residential neighborhoods lying between it and the highways or the approaches to Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I can’t say this scientifically, as in I can’t point to a traffic study conducted by a professional outfit like the one run by Sam Schwartz, but observationally I’ve seen heavy traffic in and out of the Newtown Creek Industrial Business Zone magnify significantly over the last few years. It’s all part of the ever evolving national economy, of course, and what with the pandemic and all, we’re all relying on businesses like United Parcel Service or FedEx to service our needs more and more.
I do wish that our elected officials would demand that these companies incorporate more rail and water transport into the plan. The UPS barn pictured above is across the street from Dutch Kills, and a giant FedEx facility is directly located on the bulkheads of the same waterway about a block away, and there are freight tracks everywhere in LIC just awaiting reactivation. Saying that, there’s some fairly big news on the water transport front along the Creek that is still forming up. I’ll keep you posted.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, July 13th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates here, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
momentous talk
Tuesday photos from the before times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few more archive shots greet you today, captured during the before times. The shot above was captured prior to Antifa establishing its moon colony, or Jared Kushner’s daily release of a list of newly proscribed citizens to round up for ideological offenses. Good times, back then, in the before times. Bill De Blasio was still quite tall, not having been diminished by hubris, and Andrew Cuomo had not yet displayed his god level Sith Lord persona to the general public. Today is March 129th.
Managed to get out for a walk last night, and had a friend with me, so I didn’t take too many pics. Accordingly, today’s archive post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Is it legal to ride a cop horse while texting? I’ve wondered this since recording the shot above. Do as I say not as I do always seems to be the way with the gendarmes. Double parking, parking on sidewalks, blowing lights… set an example, I always say.
All I can say is that I wish I had a horsey to ride around on right now, as it would make me feel like a grown up fella. I’d gallop, trot, even gambol. That’s what I need… a horse. I’d name it Xavier, or X for short.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Coney Island pictured above. In the before time, a point would have made of performing a visitation to my ancestral estates on this side of Brooklyn but since those ubiquitous lunar based vandals at Antifa stole the ocean to teach us all a lesson – what’s the point?
Back tomorrow, stay cool, yo.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, July 6th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
scarcely envisaged
Monday photos from the before time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been a dirty rotten stay at home for the last few days, which I can blame on a number of factors, but I’ve mainly been lazy. It’s been hot, damnit! Accordingly, a few shots – from 2020 – are on offer today. These are from the before times, when the calendar’s opinion still applied to what day it might be. I’m of the opinion that today’s date very well might be March 128th. Just last night, as the neighborhood gathered around a roaring hearth of fireworks, we told tales of the old days to all the children.
That was before Antifa stole the ocean, of course. Those ubiquitous rascals do make for intriguing right wind bogey men, don’t they? Wasn’t it the Mexicans before them, or the Arabs, or… some woman who wore a turtle neck sweater? Or was it some guy with glasses… I’m sorry it’s all become quite a blur.
I used to have the story straight, in the before times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I told the neighborhood kids about how we used to ride around in metal boxes on tracks, they didn’t believe me. The limited grunting and chirping language, which is the only speech now allowed after the leftist hordes came through the neighborhood and re-educated us all, made it hard to describe the dual contracts era but I did my best. Then Karen showed up, and well… Karen.
In all seriousness, I really am having trouble keeping track of the “outrage of the day” and the post-truth environment we’re living in.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One makes fun of the rightists all the time, so some turnaround fair play for my leftie pals is offered on the subject of the ubiquitous and colossal amount of fireworks in recent weeks. Now you want the cops? Can’t have a police state clamping down on laws you want enforced while ignoring the ones you don’t like. Change the laws. You could theoretically force the cops to wear hot pink short sets if you write the law correctly. Cops are automatons when it comes to the law, and have virtually zero ability to interpret justice creatively on the street due to the sort of judicial legislation passed during the drug war, or terror war, or whatever else the politicians have declared war on. Be careful with what you ask Cops to do. For the last forty years you’ve been looking to them to solve every problem we’ve actually got or even the ones we’ve imagined, and those of us warning against worshipping at the pulpit that the Reverend in Blue preaches at have been told to shut up because “child molestors,” “terrorists,” or whatever other bogeyman you fear takes precedence over liberty.
The whole “redefinition of what political terms mean” thing is summed up, for me, by the fact that the fellow who built that bridge pictured above was a Progressive Republican. Can you imagine anybody describing themselves that way today, the way they would in the before times?
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, July 6th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
wild whispers
Wednesday Kosciuszcko.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUKBO – Down Under the Kosciuszcko Bridge Onramp – has been regularly visited during this pandemic period. It’s both photogenic and within walking distance, and offers the plus of being a fairly unpopulated part of NYC during an era of respiratory plague. Back in March, one had finally figured out the magic formula for photographically capturing the lighting display of the bridge, camera settings wise. Hopefully this means that I can “port” the camera settings into other situations where garish LED lighting has been installed.
I still say the lighting design of the new Kosciuszcko Bridge over Newtown Creek looks like the exterior displays of a certain Greek coffee shop in Astoria, but there you go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not officially open yet, there’s a new “park” on the Queens side of the bridge, specifically at the corner of Review Avenue and Laurel Hill Blvd. which has already become quite well used by Blissvillians, Sunnysiders, and Maspethians, as well as visiting Greenpointers. The park, which is a series of brutalist concrete blocks arranged around various plantings, is slightly elevated over the surrounding area (Newtown Creek industrial business zone, First Calvary Cemetery) and offers a nice view of the bridge. That’s where these shots were captured.
I’m still carrying the ultra busted down lightweight mini camera kit, by the way. The two prime lens one which I started hauling around last year after having severely injuring the big toe of my left foot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lovely set of zoomable lenses have been awaiting being called back into service again, but I’ve really been enjoying the limitations. Worst thing you can say to a creative person is “do anything you want.” Best thing you can do is lay out a bunch of things not to do, make them stand on one foot while doing it, and throw in a gotcha. Limitation forces lateral thought and problem solving, I always say.
Back tomorrow, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, June 29th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
dimensional reality
Looking for it, Tuesday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Trying to get a shot of “it” has proven more difficult than I thought it would be. One is being purposely vague about “it,” since it cannot possibly exist. A different sort of “it” used to reside in the cupola of the Sapphire Megalith of Long Island City at 1 Court Square – a formless and immaterial monstrosity identified via a three lobed and unblinking eye that didst stare down at the world of men with disdain – but that “it” moved out shortly after the whole Amazon thing fell apart and headed back over to Manhattan. This new “it,” which might actually be a very old “it” if these unverified rumors I’m receiving carry any veracity at all, is something else entirely . It’s all quite intriguing, really.
After possibly sighting “it” in the waters of Dutch Kills, just north of here alongside the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge, one positively boogied over to Borden Avenue to see if “it” might just be hanging about the maritime basin found nearby the 1908 vintage Borden Avenue Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shape with what appears to be three glowing red eyes isn’t “it.” That’s just a reflection of a tree mixed in with three lights mounted on the high flying Long Island Expressway. “It” was definitely in the basin, however, evinced by the enormous ripples on the water’s surface and the panicked reactions of those smaller fishies who were schooling about in the dark fathoms there.
As a note, a fathom resolves down to about 1.8 meters or exactly six feet. In the center of the Dutch Kills channel, and it varies, you’re looking at probably 2-2.5 fathoms. At the sides, where shoaling is a serious issue, there are spots where the bottom sediments are exposed at low tide and the depth of the water is in negative fathoms. I’ve never heard anyone else use the term “negative fathoms” so it’s likely I just added something to the English Language again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One changed locations again, this time picking a spot with some brush cover, thinking that “it” very well might be aware of my silhouette against the night sky, with the sky dome all under lit by the street lamps and automotive traffic. Additionally, some fellow who was walking up Borden Avenue just stopped dead in his tracks about four feet away from me and was staring intently, at both me and his phone, and I got weirded out.
In the end, I didn’t get a shot of “it.” I’m trying though. If your journey carries you to Newtown Creek or its tributaries at night anytime soon, keep an eye out on the water near the shorelines and let me know what you see. It’s out there.
Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, June 29th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 