Posts Tagged ‘Queens Blvd.’
undreamed of
It’s called Thursday, if you’re bold enough to speak its name.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s Gas Station day at Newtown Pentacle. The one above is the first thing you see when entering Long Island City after crossing Newtown Creek on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge and it’s in the Blissville neighborhood. Remember the long gas lines after Hurricane Sandy back in 2012? They sure do at this gas station, as a 2012 customer lost their patience when the pumps got shut off, produced a firearm and proceeded to murder somebody who worked here. I think there’s different owners for the franchise location, and if memory serves – I don’t think it used to be a Gulf filling station. Might have been a Sunoco. Have to look in my archives.
Motherflowers. People walk around like they’re safe or something… what this City really needs is a good plague… oh… whoopsies…
Wonder how many of the other things we used to say while milling about in front of CBGB’s will come true someday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One hasn’t got a murder story to tell about this gas station, found at the corner of 49th and Greenpoint Avenues at the risible border of Blissville and Sunnyside, nearby the Long Island Expressway. A Mobil franchised filling station, this is a deucedly difficult setup to photograph. Something about the contrasty lighting and “red, white, and blue” neon brand colors necessitates a complicated and somewhat contradictory exposure triangle for the capture.
49th Avenue proceeds in a generally westerly direction, transversing from the altitudinal prominence of Laurel Hill, which Greenpoint Avenue rides along and Calvary Cemetery sits atop. 49th Avenue crosses Van Dam Street, and in doing so transmogrifies into Hunters Point Avenue shortly before crossing the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, and then regains it’s numerical dub at 21st street nearby the 7 train station.
It’s all very complicated.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you start with homicide, that’s all people want to hear about. This Sunnyside/LIC gas station on Queens Boulevard also sports a car wash, but I don’t have any tales of death or dismemberment associated with it in my quiver.
Another one of the weighty questions I’ve got about Queens is “where does LIC stop and Sunnyside begin”? I kind of place “proper” Sunnyside at no farther west than 36th or 37th street along Queens Blvd. If you’re south of Queens Blvd., however, Sunnyside continues all the way to the LIE. The eastern border is definitely Woodside Avenue/58th street, and Northern Blvd. provides another hard border for the area. Saying that, I consider Northern Blvd. to be an “LIC corridor” just like Skillman Avenue west of 39th street is, all the way from 31st street to Broadway.
Of course, any neighborhood in Queens whose zip code starts with a “111” is part of the historic municipality of Long Island City, which actually includes all of Astoria and most of Sunnyside – or at least the 11104 part of it.
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, March 15th. 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.
apoplectic faced
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator is taking a break this week, as his anxiety and or stress levels have become absolutely maxed out. Thusly, you’ll be seeing single shots and regular postings will resume next week.
Pictured above is the corner of 48th street and Queens Blvd., the fulcrum of a neighborhood angle twixt Woodside and Sunnyside here in Queens.
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, February 15th. 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.
indecipherable parchments
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fascination with photographing gasoline filling stations at night just consumes one such as myself, and I’ve found myself wandering twixt the East River and (so far) Jackson Heights in recent weeks looking for these roadside businesses. This one is found in the angle between Sunnyside and Queens Plaza along Queens Boulevard. There’s also a Car Wash at this one. Ubiquitous in prior decades, car washes and gas stations both are fewer in number these days than they used to be.
Wish it was because of environmental reasons, but instead it’s largely because these large footprint properties are extremely desirous to the real estate industrial complex as development sites.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Have I mentioned that creepy skeletal trees keep on catching my eye these days when I’m wandering about? This particular one adjoined an industrial lot with a malfunctioning light that was strobing. Took me about ten shots to catch the flash, which was happening at random intervals.
Must be lovely living on the residential plots just a block away, with a bright white/blue light flashing all night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I really don’t know how the medallion taxi industry is going to survive COVID. This has been mentioned before, and it’s another one of those problems which is hard to solve without surrendering a ton of taxpayer money in pursuit of bailing out an entire industry. As is the case with a lot of these kinds of situations, you feel pretty bad for the actual working stiffs doing the job, but the people who own and run these companies are not exactly salubrious characters – if you catch my drift.
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, January 11th. 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.
degraded parody
Thursday, and hindsight is 2020.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Survivors, rejoice. You made it. New Year’s Eve. It’s been 293 days since the New York State lockdown orders of Friday the 13th of March were announced. That’s 7,032 hours if you’re the curious type. There’s a few things I’d like you to think about as we move forward into the future, here in these United States…
The photo above depicts the Sunnyside Yards, which is rumored to have been the actual target used by the Soviets for their thermonuclear bomb tipped missiles. The United States has ostensibly been preparing and spending an astronomical amount of money for more than 70 years preparing for the various shapes which the apocalypse might take. That includes, as George W. Bush reminded us when updating the spending program twenty years ago, preparing and updating responses to attack vectors for “nuclear,” “chemical,” and “biological” weapons.
Where has all that money gone, and why were was the greatest military power in history caught so flat footed by a predictable respiratory pandemic whose scope doesn’t begin to touch what an engineered bioweapon would do to us?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Governor Nelson Rockefeller and President Richard Nixon oversaw the nationalization of local and inter city transit systems in the early 1970’s. Bankrupt private capital railroad firms were turned into publicly owned and operated “authorities” and “corporations.” Nixon created Amtrak for passenger service, and Conrail for freight. Rockefeller combined the subways, buses, and commuter trains in New York State into the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The MTA’s annual budget is 17 billion dollars. If you were to stack individual dollar bills until arriving at the amount of 17 billion, you’d have a stack of money which is 1,154.3 miles high.
Fifty years later the MTA still operates its systems as if it was day one after the nationalization of the Subways, Buses, and Penn Central commuter services, with little or no interoperability having been achieved between its various divisions in the interim, and they operate in a state of perennial near bankruptcy. Conrail is largely irrelevant these days due to the private capital underlying modern rail shipping companies like CSX, whereas Amtrak has become a political football bandied about and abused by Congressional game players. Where does all that money go, and why hasn’t NYC’s regional transit system been modernized with interoperability and shared resources in mind?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can vow to wean your culture off of petroleum all you want, but without massive capital expenditures and tax breaks for those having to junk and replace their “installed base” of equipment you’re just blowing hot air. You can’t just quit heroin without withdrawal symptoms, can’t stop drinking without the “DT’s,” or just quit smoking the Crack without some sort of psychotic reaction. Petroleum is a drug, which you pour over your economy to make it go “vrooooom.”
Historically, any new or novel technology – let’s say that Star Trek style unlimited and non-polluting energy reactors appear tomorrow, for instance – it would be a good 50 years before they became commonplace. New fuel sources have historically had a long adoption period where the installed base of the last energy source is phased out and the new one is deployed. In the case of wood to coal in industry, it was about 150 years. Coal to Petroleum took around 75 years, and there are still several major industries (notably manufactured gas) which consume a magnificent amount of coal. Look to the United States Navy as the bel weather on this subject.
Happy New Year, ya filthy animals!
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, December 28th. 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.
oddly sunburned
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Half of everyone I know act like dicks more than half of the time, which is why I like to wander around by myself in the dead of night.
Doesn’t matter what their politics or religious life is like, still “dick” half the time. I know Christians who embrace cruelty and conformity, lefties who want to ensure their own freedoms by attenuating yours, and ideologues abound for every philosophical point and bent. Everybody has a badly formed opinion about everything, or doesn’t care about who gets annoyed as they endlessly beat their drums and drone on about something they haven’t personally dealt with. Everybody, and everything, is so freaking predictable in this behavioral climate that I find it depressing. Actuate an idea, make it real. Otherwise shut up and go along, stop trying to hurt other people in the name of making yourself feel better about the things you see when you look in the mirror. Empathy? Compassion? Bah.
Also, here’s a bit of advice – strategy and tactic are two different things. If you’re “busting a move,” it’s best to keep it to yourself until afterwards. Conservation of energy dictates that if you are, indeed, “busting a move” you should have a goal in mind while doing so. Otherwise you’re just a feeble peacock spreading your feathers and saying “look at me.” “Busting a move” is a tactic, not a strategy.
What wasn’t predictable to one as all wise and knowing as myself was encountering the weird digital looking light pattern cast through a fence by security lights and onto a line of inactive taxi cabs in Long Island City. Neato.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
During this particular photo outing, a humble narrator found himself being “eyeballed” by some guy in a gray sedan. On more than one occasion during my walk, I looked up and there he was, watching me. I smiled and waved, even when he made it a point of pulling up in front of me with his headlights pointed directly into the lens. My response was to walk around his car, while smiling, and then set up on the passenger side of the vehicle. Mood that I’ve been in lately, I was absolutely praying that he got out of the thing and started some shit with me. It’s been a long, long time…
I’m scared of groups of teenagers, not other middle aged men.
If you want to see somebody act like a dick, piss me off. Once I’ve decided – and it’s me who decides, not you – that I no longer have to pretend to be a nice guy with you it ain’t pretty. Full Brooklyn mode is engaged. Should you not wither and die before the verbal assault – and it is an assault – the physical attack is spring loaded and ready. Not bragging here, and it’s not a set of behaviors I’m proud of, but screw with the bull and you get the horns. I live my life in this manner, knowing that lots and lots of people are simmering all the time, just like me, and are ready to pop like a firecracker. Knowing that I’ve got one of those flare up kind of tempers, I’ve gone to great lengths to institute a series of psychological stop gaps in my reactive mind, which is why you’ve never seen me on one of those wanted posters at the Post Office.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So why do people act like dicks half the time, when we all implicitly know that there are pressure cooker mentalities like mine ready to go off? Not everybody has learned to put a leash on their temper the way I have. Mike Tyson has famously opined that the reason for this is the lack of physical peril offered by the Internet when you say something ugly. You can’t get punched in the nose by Mike Tyson via Twitter. If Mike Tyson is ringing your doorbell, I guarantee you are going to try polity when attempting conflict resolution with him.
It’s good to be angry, and to argue your ideas. Just don’t be a dick about it, and maybe – just maybe – think about what you’re trying to achieve the next time you cancel or shun someone. Maybe it’s better to have somebody be a known quantity whom you can use tactically as part of an overarching strategy. When anybody gets too “woke” with me, I have a Libertarian or two in my social circles whom I unleash on them.
That’s the half of the time when I’m backed into acting like a dick.
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, October 19th. 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 