Posts Tagged ‘queens’
sinister matters
It’s National Ambrosia Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a single shot today, depicting the most photogenic of NYC’s Subway lines entering the Queensboro Plaza station in LIC.
Tomorrow night, at Jackson’s Eatery Bar in LIC (which sits atop the Vernon Jackson stop of the 7 line at 10-37 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, NY 11101), Newtown Creek Alliance’s holiday party will occur between 6 and 8:30 p.m. Come with?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
second search
It’s National Have a Bagel Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As much as I enjoy a good dystopian nightmare, a humble narrator is somewhat ready to shut the doors and lock the windows these days. Sheesh. “Best thing to do is lose yourself in work” and ignore everything else I always say, which is why one recently found himself perched on his porch with a tripod mounted camera while the so called supermoon hung squamously in the cloud stained skies of western Queens. The thing that drew me to set up the entire rig was actually the presence of the fast moving atmospheric system, rather than the presence of the satellite itself. The aural light passing through the clouds was just fantastic.
If I actually had a brain in my head, I would have shot some video of it as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the time of year when one feels as if he’s running at full speed but not making any headway. The tyranny of the now, the banal, and the pedantic is let loose. I owe everyone something, but the concurrence of an empty pocketbook and a complete inability to get anything substantial started – let alone delivered – means that all are disappointed.
The winter of my discontent has arrived. Bah.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The moon shots in today’s post, since I know someone is going to ask, were gathered with the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod and outfitted with a 300mm lens. The first shot was gathered at ISO 500, f.9, and a 1.3 second exposure (I wanted the clouds to “shmear”). For the one directly above, the rig was set to ISO 800, at f7.1, and the exposure was .3 of a second. The usual problems encountered with a bright moon, dark sky, and the counter movements of both planet and moon, and the quickly blowing clouds were all calculated into the equations above.
Procedure demands that you first do a few test shots of a scenario like the one pictured in today’s post to find the right exposure triangle(s), then you need to reorient the camera to where the Moon is going to be in a few minutes rather than where it was while you were doing your test shots. Remember that the moon is moving quite a bit faster through the sky than the naked eye would suggest, but you find that out fairly quickly while looking down a telephoto “soda straw.”
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furnace tending
It’s National Gazpacho Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sometimes one will catch a glimpse of himself in a store window or other reflective surface, and even a humble narrator is known to flinch at the sight. Loping along in a filthy black raincoat, a wandering mendicant burdened down with a heavy sack of lenses and other photographic accoutrements, the ravages and scars of a half century in a City affectionately referred to as “home sweet hell” are scribed deeply into his flesh. Corpulent and corrupted, disliked and denounced, egomaniacal and estranged, feckless and forgettable, ghoulish and ghastly… all of these words fail to fully and generally generate the hateful, hopeless, idiotic image obvious to all but revealed to a humble narrator only as he passes by a pane of silvered glass on area streets.
No wonder children burst into tears, dogs growl, cats haunch up, women clutch at their purses, security cameras swivel and follow when one appears. Police and security personell always watch me closely, with their hands resting upon the weapons they’ve been issued.
from komatsuamerica.com
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
One does not visit “the country” for fear of spreading an infection of blight. Like a pellet of some radioactive metal displayed in the midst of an otherwise verdant forest, one’s presence causes other living things to wither away. It has always been this way, for one such as myself.
The memories of childhood should be of summery afternoons spent in joyful pursuits, rather than locked rooms with tightly shuttered, and barred, windows decorated with atavist hangings. Sitting in the shadows of spare apartments, watching idle shafts of atmospheric dust lit by those few rays of light offered by the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself which somehow managed to permeate the barrack – these should not be the only recollections one is able to summon regarding those days. There was no joy, just tedium punctuated by wild and unpredictable furies erupting amongst those who cared for my needs.
Visitors to my caretakers were always of an advanced age. Often they brought plastic offerings obtained on a pilgrimage to some eastern land, formerly held by the Ottoman Turks. These plastic things often carried religious idioms written in English but rendered in a hebraized script. The visitors would carry on conversations in a language familiar only to the parts of Europe that have historically bordered Russia, and indeed within the Tsar’s former holdings. Sometimes these conversations would erupt into anger, others laughter. It was all very puzzling, but ultimately pedantic and boring.
from wikipedia
The expressway begins at the western portal of the Queens–Midtown Tunnel in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. The route heads eastward, passing under FDR Drive and the East River as it proceeds through the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority-maintained tunnel to Queens. Once on Long Island, the highway passes through the tunnel’s former toll plaza and becomes known as the Queens–Midtown Expressway as it travels through the western portion of the borough. A mile after entering Queens, I-495 meets I-278 (the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway) at exit 17. At this point, I-495 becomes the unsigned highway NY 495, although it is still signed as an Interstate Highway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The psychic plague which one was infected with at an early age is that nothing which is good or joyous or in any way positive stays with me for long. Others remonstrate the negative experiences of their lives, blocking out trauma, and do not realize that their lives are subconsciously shaped by avoiding similar pain. A humble narrator, on the other hand, gleefully rips away at his scabs every chance he gets, and likes to scratch away at scars. One has quite a bit of time for reflection, on my long scuttles around the concrete devastations of the Newtown Creek. Just the other day, one grew furious over an event which occurred in the Second Grade when I was accused of kicking someone in the leg as our class was on the way to Assembly in the school auditorium.
“My list” goes all the way back to before Kindergarden. All the good stuff thats ever happened to me? That one started when I woke up this morning, and it’s been a shitty day so far. What can I tell you, I’m all ‘effed up.
also from wikipedia
A portion of the path of the Long Island Expressway was along the former road path and right of way of a streetcar line that went from the southern part of Long Island City to southern Flushing.
The Long Island Expressway was constructed in stages over the course of three decades. The first piece, the Queens–Midtown Tunnel linking Manhattan and Queens, was opened to traffic on November 15, 1940. The highway connecting the tunnel to Laurel Hill Boulevard was built around the same time and named the “Midtown Highway”. The tunnel, the Midtown Highway, and the segment of Laurel Hill Boulevard between the highway and Queens Boulevard all became part of a realigned NY 24 in the mid-1940s. In the early 1950s, work began on an eastward extension of the Midtown Highway. The road was completed to 61st Street by 1954, at which point it became known as the “Queens–Midtown Expressway”. By 1956, the road was renamed the “Long Island Expressway” and extended east to the junction of Queens (NY 24 and NY 25) and Horace Harding (NY 25D) Boulevards. NY 24 initially remained routed on Laurel Hill Boulevard (by this point upgraded into the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway) and Queens Boulevard, however.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unfortunately for my self loathing, while these shots were being gathered, my attention was taken up by a conference call with environmental officialdom and hotly discussing Newtown Creek, so I didn’t have a chance to really work myself over about that thing in Second Grade, nor the debacle that was my ninth birthday, or any of the humiliations suffered but left unanswered in Junior High School. On the plus side, my left foot was giving me a bit of trouble, so at least there was some tangible physical pain I could enjoy, rather than the psychic kind I relish.
Such reveries, wherein a humble narrator spends his mental capacity on beating himself up, are a little luxury I like to enjoy. The internal soliloquy also has other tasks to work on – wondering about what’s making a certain smell, plotting vengeance, planning future walking tours, working the camera, avoiding getting squished by a truck. I hate getting squished more than anything. Regrets… I’ve had a few.
from wikipedia
The first known construction cranes were invented by the Ancient Greeks and were powered by men or beasts of burden, such as donkeys. These cranes were used for the construction of tall buildings. Larger cranes were later developed, employing the use of human treadwheels, permitting the lifting of heavier weights. In the High Middle Ages, harbour cranes were introduced to load and unload ships and assist with their construction – some were built into stone towers for extra strength and stability. The earliest cranes were constructed from wood, but cast iron, iron and steel took over with the coming of the Industrial Revolution.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long Island City’s Hunters Point and Degnon Terminal (LaGuardia Community College zone) areas have become positively infested with humans since this whole real estate frenzy has set in. Manifest, motley mobs of mankind now occupy these precincts of Queens’ rookeries. Lonely Island City is no more, if it ever was. The only place one can be truly alone, and avoid the shocking countenance of his own reflection, is industrial Maspeth. There are zero reflective surfaces hereabouts, except on the steel bumpers of newly washed heavy trucks. All is caked in grit, and clods of unknown substances. The waters in this section of the Newtown Creek offer a certain perfume, hinting at the respiratory or digestive processes of unknown biological or bacterial entities. Vast puddles of rancid water line the broken streets. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume.
A humble narrator is probably the only person on this entire Long Island, or one of the lesser islands of the archipelago, who actually longs for chances to visit Industrial Maspeth. Other than somebody who has something they need to illegally dump into the water or leave some junk on the street, of course. Most of the folks who come here do so simply to earn their keep, notably those who have to deal with the rest of us being slobs.
Me? I love the place.
from wikipedia
The Bureau of Cleaning and Collection is responsible for collecting recycling and garbage, cleaning streets and vacant lots, and clearing streets of snow and ice. BCC assigns personnel and equipment to standard routes while managing the weekly allocation of personnel to address litter and illegal dumping.
The Cleaning Office oversees the removal of litter and debris from city streets, collects material for recycling and garbage from public litter bins and coordinates with Derelict Vehicle Operations to remove abandoned vehicles. The Lot Cleaning Unit cleans vacant lots and the areas around them, and around city-owned buildings in order to meet the city’s Health Code standards.
The Collection Office oversees regularly scheduled recycling and garbage collection services to the city’s residential households, public schools, public buildings, and many large institutions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What I really like to do around here, however, is creep down to the shoreline and hide in the bushes. One will really let loose hereabouts, and start laughing maniacally, instead of my usual hissing and basso growling. The stoutest cord long broken, my crazy laugh will shortly turn into a sobbing cry and then wailing lament, before transitioning back to the hilarity. I’ll cycle through this a few times. Once a flock of geese came to investigate the racket, another a laborer came sniffing around thinking that somebody was drowning a pig in Newtown Creek. There’s a reason I hide in the bushes, along with all the other monsters I’ve seen.
I don’t get too close to the water though, due to an irrational phobia revolving around my whole “seeing ones own reflection unpreparedly, with all its sudden and dire implications” disorder.
As a note: You should never look too deeply, or too long, into a mirror lest a piece of yourself become trapped within it. At least that’s the opinion amongst certain occultists. In the case of the lugubrious Newtown Creek…
from wikipedia
Laughter is not always a pleasant experience and is associated with several negative phenomena. Excessive laughter can lead to cataplexy, and unpleasant laughter spells, excessive elation, and fits of laughter can all be considered negative aspects of laughter. Unpleasant laughter spells, or “sham mirth,” usually occur in people who have a neurological condition, including patients with pseudobulbar palsy, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. These patients appear to be laughing out of amusement but report that they are feeling undesirable sensations “at the time of the punch line.”
Excessive elation is a common symptom associated with manic-depressive psychoses and mania/hypomania. Those who suffer from schizophrenic psychoses seem to suffer the opposite—they do not understand humor or get any joy out of it. A fit describes an abnormal time when one cannot control the laughter or one’s body, sometimes leading to seizures or a brief period of unconsciousness. Some believe that fits of laughter represent a form of epilepsy.
Upcoming Tours and events
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour, with Atlas Obscura – Sunday, December 10th, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Explore NYC history, hidden inside sculptural monuments and mafioso grave sites, as you take in iconic city views on this walking tour, with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
after action
It’s National Have a Bagel Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Encountered at the corner of Hunters Point Avenue and 36th street, which is at the “angle” between the Blissville and Sunnyside sections of LIC here in Queens, this formerly cool car appears to have suffered through some sort of catastrophic event. You’ll notice that there’s more than few odd things about this scene. My reckoning, at least, is that I can’t imagine that this immolation of an expensive auto was desired by its owner – but who knows?
Kids these days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was a fairly thorough fire, by all appearances, but one that was quite selective in terms of what it consumed. Little green cards with NYPD logos on them were visible on the heap, instructing “Do Not Tow” and proclaiming the wreck as being “evidence.” The vehicle is of the Mercedes sedan type, or at least it was. This puppy is likely going to be seen somewhere along Newtown Creek in the coming weeks, squished into a pile of castoff vehicles at one scrap yard or another.
Anybody out there missing a black Mercedes sedan?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That had to be some sort of super hot fire, in my eyes, to have melted away the engine bonnet.
Apparently, though, that’s what happened. In some ways, it visually reminds one of that mysterious phenomena called “spontaneous human combustion.” That’s the one where a body is found that’s been partially burned all the way to ash but the flames were super selective, leaving behind a hand or foot that is otherwise unharmed, and with little damage to furniture or wall hangings in proximity to high temperature combustion. To get human flesh to ash, crematoriums create fiery environments that are 1,400 to 1,800 degrees fahrenheit. How can something anywhere even close to an environment of that temperature not get scorched?
I mean… this blaze was hot enough to melt the engine hood, parts of the engine, and the entire interior cabin – but the tires are perfectly intact? Weird.
Steel melts at 2,750 degrees fahrenheit, I’m told.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
familiar rookery
It’s National Eat a Red Apple Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The holiday season arrives at Newtown Creek in a manner alien to the neighborhoods surrounding it.
Hereabouts it’s truck tires roasting on a open fire, and that ain’t Jack Frost nipping at your nose kiddo, it’s benzene. Reviewing my year end list of; all the mistakes I’ve newly made, people I’ve offended, stupid things I’ve said in public, or generally humiliated myself somehow – it occurred that I hadn’t checked in on things in DUKBO (Down Under the Kosciuszcko Bridge Onramp) in about a month.
That’s the scene, above, at the spot where Review Avenue transmogrifies into Laurel Hill Blvd. at Penny Bridge, in the Blissville section of Long Island City, in the Borough of Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long time readers of this – your Newtown Pentacle – will tell you that this bridge replacement project has been explored before.
Documenting this project has been a long standing project of mine – this 2012 post tells you everything you could want to know about Robert Moses, Fiorella LaGuardia, and the origins of the 1939 model Kosciuszcko Bridge. Just before construction started, I swept through both the Brooklyn and Queens sides of Newtown Creek in the area I call “DUKBO” – Down Under the Kosciuszcko Bridge Onramp. Here’s a 2014 post, and another, showing what things used to look like on the Brooklyn side, and one dating back to 2010, and from 2012 discussing the Queens side – this. Construction started, and this 2014 post offers a look at things. There’s shots from the water of Newtown Creek, in this June 2015 post, and in this September 2015 post, which shows the bridge support towers rising. Additionally, this post from March of 2016 detailed the action on the Queens side. Most recently, here’s one from May of 2016, and one from June of the same year. Here’s one from August of 2016, the December 2016 one, one from March of 2017 which discusses the demolition of the 1939 bridge.
Here’s a post showing what I saw during a pre opening walk through in early April of 2017, and the fanfare surrounding the opening of half of the new bridge in April of 2017, a walk through of the Brooklyn side job site in June of 2017. Here’s some night shots from early July of 2017. A series of posts focused in on the removal of the central truss of the 1939 bridge from the summer of 2017 – a timelapse, some stills, and the barging out of the truss.
Most recently, in late September of 2017, a final series of shots of the old bridge were captured in this post. Acquisition of a souvenir chunk of steel from the 1939 bridge was described in this post, and a video of the “energetic felling” of the approaches on October 1st was offered in this one. Still shots and views of the aftermath from the waters of Newtown Creek from later in the day on Oct. 1 are found in this posting, and the aftermath of the demolition as seen from Calvary Cemetery in LIC’s Blissville section in this post from October 5th.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They’re still hard at work demolishing the rubble left behind by the “energetic felling” of the 1939 model Kosciuszcko Bridge at the start of October. These shots were captured from the hills of Calvary Cemetery, if you haven’t already figured that one out yet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The reinforced concrete piers that carried the roadway are being demolished using traditional means. That involves the yellow thingamabob being equipped with a chisel hammer, and the guy on the orange lift is spraying water on the concrete to mitigate dust.
The shots of the Queens side of DUKBO in today’s post were shot on November 17th, a Friday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the following Sunday the 19th, a humble narrator scuttled over to the Poison Cauldron in Greenpoint.
That’s my pet name for the section of DUKBO that begins at Kingsland Avenue and heads east past Meeker Avenue to the National Grid fencelines at Lombardy Street. It’s ugly in the Poison Cauldron, I tell you, ugly. Things can’t “get from bad to worse” because they’re already there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Similar industrial demolition and scrap removal practices to those in Queens are also occurring on the Brooklyn side. Unlike the Queens side, however, I was able to walk right up to and on the job site. I even used one of the Porta Potties they had stationed to blow some internal ballast (hey, it’s a fairly long walk from Astoria).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is odd for me to see light in this spot… this was always an area permeated by shadows, which I now long for.
Additionally, not being chased, threatened, or harassed by the questionable managers of a local waste transfer station as to “whatchu takin pictchas of asshole, getdafukouttaherre” – said operation having been displaced by the construction activity – was not missed at all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The only thing going through my mind was that this scene looked like a battle had been fought here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m sure I’ll have a bit more to tell you about the Kosciuszcko Bridge shortly, as there’s supposed to be a meeting of the Stakeholders Committee coming up in early December.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was only so far I wanted to go, as this was and is an active demolition site.
Luckily, that’s what zoom lenses are for.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The things you see along the Newtown Creek…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
… if you don’t take pictures of them, nobody would believe you.
How can such a place be real, and that so few people even know it exists, this omphalos of New York City?
Upcoming Tours and events
Calvary Cemetery Walking Tour, with Atlas Obscura – Sunday, December 10th, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Explore NYC history, hidden inside sculptural monuments and mafioso grave sites, as you take in iconic city views on this walking tour, with Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman – details here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
