Posts Tagged ‘queens’
came from without
You can tell from the way this song is, Astoria Queens rules.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The quotation above is from the Murphys Law song “A day in the life” which pretty much sums up life around these parts. Pictured above is the assortment of safety equipment which my upstairs neighbor Mario keeps at the ready for situations which might present trip hazards.
My landlord recently received notice from the City that his sidewalk concrete required replacement, and his crew of noise makers got busy demolishing the old pavement and replacing it with fresher stuff. Mario got busy with the cones and barriers after they left, in the hope that he could divert the footsteps of the neighbors.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted this fellow on 43rd street at the borders of Sunnside and Astoria recently. He was a delivery guy, and in the frames not presented above, was draining a can of “cerveza.” The presence of someone who was likely Mexican or Ecuadorian in front of a wall with the LIC skyline behind him made me think of Donald Trump for some reason. Something about luxury towers, and a wall.
As a note – like the villain from Harry Potter, if you stop saying Donald Trump’s name, he’ll lose his powers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fellow pictured above was grifting on Astoria’s Broadway recently, claiming that he had tripped and gotten hurt on a sidewalk grate in front of one of the multitudes of “nail and pedi” shops hereabouts. Since the “nail and pedi” shops are part of the same Asian slave labor industry as the local massage parlors – rub and tugs, as they’re known – the grifter knew that the owners would pay him off in cash. The cops in the shot above realized this too, of course, and the kabuki show of Queens just continues.
Someday, a real rain will fall, but Astoria Queens does – indeed – rule.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, May 21st at 3:30 p.m. –
A Return to The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek,
with Atlas Obscura, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
imperfect posture
Just a short, and selfie, one today
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As one scuttles about from place to place, lots of things are observed. Recently, the young lady pictured above was taking advantage of a (fairly) recently installed bike lane on one of the truss bridges crossing the Sunnyside Yards, at 39th street, to capture a series of selfies as she rode along. Vision Zero, or zero vision?
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, May 21st at 3:30 p.m. –
A Return to The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek,
with Atlas Obscura, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
that chafe
Catching up, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been on a tremendous “run” for the last couple of weeks, with several back to back walking tours of Newtown Creek thrown into the mix. Luckily, a slight window of opportunity to draw a breath is finally apparent, as I’ve only got three or four horribly important and time sensitive things to do this week.
The good news for me, and perhaps for you, is that I’m announcing two new excursions happening in the second half of May.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
DUKBO, or Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp, in Greepoint has been off limits – tour wise – for a while due to the early phases of the Kosciuszko Bridge project. There was a lot of demolition, airborne nastiness, and several blocked or closed streets in this area which I’ve long referred to as “The Poison Cauldron,” and I haven’t felt it was advisable to bring anyone back there for health and safety reasons.
Whereas DUKBO is still a hellscape and littered with contaminants and filth… well, if you’ve got the stones… the Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek awaits you on May 21st.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On Thursday the 26th, I’ll be one of three speakers on the Working Harbor Committee’s Brooklyn Waterfront boat tour. We’ll be cruising the East River coast of Brooklyn from Newtown Creek to the Brooklyn Army Terminal, and I’ll be doing my “thang” with the history onboard. Also, since it’s an evening event – there should be some pretty good photographic opportunities as the sun will be setting while we’re out.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Saturday, May 21st at 3:30 p.m. –
A Return to The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek,
with Atlas Obscura, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. –
Brooklyn Waterfront: Past & Present Boat Tour,
with Working Harbor Committee. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
fetter upon
Wandering the post industrial wastelands of America’s Work Shop – that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted the numeral above in LIC recently, adorning the loading dock of some nameless warehousing company housed in the former Waldes Koh-I-Noor site nearby Dutch Kills. The Real Estate Industrial Complex recently discovered the former Degnon Terminal, it seems, and the Waldes buildings are currently being marketed as “The Zipper Building” by the powers that be and to opportunists who have connected themselves to LIC as some sort of stepping stone from Wall Street.
As a note, five is the only prime number that ends with the number five. It’s also the only number which seems to be entirely European in origin, having little verisimilitude to Arabic or Indian glyphs that represent the number. There’s five senses, five books in the Torah, five wounds of Jesus, five pillars of Islam, and in western music – a perfect fifth is considered to be the most consonant of all the harmonies. In geometry, there’s the Pentagram, and of course – you’re reading the pentacle.
Five.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of Dutch Kills, when you see a structure of creosoted logs held together with iron, as you do nearby the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge – the official term for this sort of thing is a “dolphin.” It’s meant to vouchsafe the bridge against an accidental collision by maritime traffic, but since there’s little to no maritime traffic on Dutch Kills – a tributary of the legendary Newtown Creek – these days, it’s just a thing to take pictures of.
There’s twelve former trees, infused with creosote oil, in that shot above.
Twelve is thought to be a Germanic/Old English term describing the smallest composite number which has exactly six divisors. It’s the largest number that has a single syllable name in the English language. A cube has twelve edges, the human body has twelve cranial nerves. The Western zodiac has twelve signs, as does the Chinese variant, and the 12th moon of Jupiter is called Lysithea.
Twelve.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant Nature Walk in Greenpoint, should you have a medium long zoom lens on your camera, you can observe the Sims Metal Management Company at work – processing all sorts of metallic things. In the case of the shot above, it’s derelict cars in the process of being recycled. After collection at Sims on Newtown Creek, these automobile carcasses will be barged out to New Jersey where they will be fed into a shredder that will reduce them down to metallic bits and a cloud of dust.
As I count it, there’s eighteen automobiles in the shot above.
The number eighteen translates from the Hebrew word for it (Chai) as “Life.” There’s 18 chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, which is part of the 18 book Mahabharata. Chinese tradition declares the number eighteen as a lucky one. Eighteen in binary code is “10010” which is a seven block long zip code in Manhattan – from 20th to 27th, and from Sixth avenue to the East River.
51218, you ask? According to the National Institue of Helath, that’s the numerical designation of a gene we inherited from our single cell ancestors.
What all of this means, I can’t say, but it’s kind of freaking me out.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, May 8th at 11 a.m. – North Henry Street Project,
with Municipal Arts Society Janeswalk and Newtown Creek Alliance,
in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
into which
I been everywhere, man.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator is fully “back in action” after a long hermitage. In the last seven days – I’ve conducted three walking tours of the Newtown Creek watershed, visited the Kosciuszko Bridge construction project, attended and partcipated in a Working Harbor Committee tour, and have also found myself cathechizing elected officialdom about the dangers of CSO’s (Combined Sewer Outfalls). I also shot and developed a few hundred photos, and you’ll be seeing some of them over the next few days.
I also got to take the most photogenic of NYC’s subway lines the other day, which is the IRT Flushing or 7 line, as evinced by the shot above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Two of my walking tours last week were private affairs, and involved exposing groups of students to LIC. I brought the kids down the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek, then along the main stem of the Creek itself, and we eventually ended up along the East River waterfront in Hunters Point.
The counterpoints between “America’s Workshop” and the “Modern Corridor” are jarring, and seeing the post industrial section contrasted with the gentrified residential sections really seemed to hit home with them. I love taking out groups of students, incidentally, as ultimately our world will be theirs someday, and they have to start thinking up the solutions to the colossal mess we’re going to be leaving behind.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Funnily enough, what with all the running around, I ended up walking close to forty miles last week as I scuttled around from place to place. This weekend, I’ve got another private group tour on Saturday, but on Sunday there’s a free event I’m helping to conduct with my colleague Will Elkins from Newtown Creek Alliance. Details are found below for attending the “North Henry Street Project,” which will meet up at 11 a.m on the corner of Kingsland and Norman Avenues in Greenpoint.
This one is part of the citywide MAS Janeswalk event, and I’m hoping you can come along and check out the plans NCA has been concocting for the “Unnamed Canal,” a minor tributary of Newtown Creek.
Upcoming Events and Tours
Sunday, May 8th at 11 a.m. – North Henry Street Project,
with Municipal Arts Society Janeswalk and Newtown Creek Alliance,
in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
