Posts Tagged ‘queens’
sharp toothed
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My weekly visit to the Dutch Kills tributary of the fabulous Newtown Creek, found in the Degnon Terminal section of the Long Island City industrial zone here in Queens, was perpetrated recently. My pandemic long investigations into the presence of “it” continue, here in the former “Workshop of America.”
What is “it”? It is likely people having some cruel fun with my credulous nature, and taking advantage of the boredom and anxiety which the pandemic has induced in a humble narrator. Regardless, most of the stories I’ve received about “it” revolve around the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge section of the waterway so I keep on finding myself here. I’m also kind of obsessed with the indomitable nature of that tree in the shot above, and have been making it the focal point of various photos all year.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been forced into using certain esoteric practices behind the camera to properly record the darkness down on the water. Next up in my bag of tricks will be the use of polarizing filters to reduce the reflectivity of the water and allow the device to peer down into the gelatinous fathoms. It’s actually only about a single fathom, maybe a fathom and a half, here at Dutch Kills. It is fairly gelatinous, however.
One way or another, what I can say is that I didn’t see “it” but had the definite impression that there was something odd going on in the water. There were all sorts of splashes and ripples being caused by one critter or another down there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The streaks in the water are the reflections of fish scales moving around during what ended up being a thirty second exposure. I’ve actually become quite fascinated by the artifacts of movement which turn up in these shots. Can’t tell you what sort of fishies were swimming around down there, but it’s likely these were Mummichogs.
Mummichogs (Fundulus heteroclitus) are essentially the bottom of the vertebrate food chain at Newtown Creek, but in a larger sense that’s the niche they occupy in the brackish and environmentally compromised waterways of the northeastern United States. They are omnivorous, and can thrive in fairly awful conditions. A bit of pescatarian trivia is that a Mummichog was the first fish to go to Space, having been studied on NASA’s Skylab back in 1973. Environmental scientists use these fishies as an indicator specie, meaning that you catch a bunch of Mummichogs and then grind them into a goo. The goo is then analyzed for the presence and concentration of certain chemical compounds like pcb’s or heavy metals.
The search for “it” continues.
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, August 10th. 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.
persistent presence
Monday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Anxious, that’s the way a humble narrator recently described his state of mind to a medical professional who was catechizing him. Anxious is how one has felt for quite a while now. The pressure valve one regularly turns to relieve a few atmospheres of this background anxiety involves exercise and solitude, but that isn’t some new survival strategy one has evolved during this interminable pandemic period, it’s rather my “go-to.” Were this a normal summer, things I’d be complaining right now about; A) I want a weekend off from doing tours, B) how hot it is, C) my desires to just “get out there” by myself with the camera.
This isn’t a normal summer, but I’ll still complain about “B” and “C.” One fo my “go-to’s” throughout the pandemic has been to follow a pathway out of Astoria and into the industrial zones of Long Island City. Unfortunately, a lot of other people have discovered the areas surrounding Newtown Creek in recent months. This too makes me anxious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve done a lot of cool stuff over the years, all of which caused me endless amounts of anxiety while in pursuit thereof. I’ve ghost hunted in Crete, for instance, which involved my father in law and I avoiding the attentions of shot gun toting bandits on a country road in Greece at 4 in the morning. I’ve worked on neat projects in the advertising world – a Times Square bill board, marquee ads placed in The NY Times magazine section, and for about 5 years everytime you walked into a Footlocker store to buy sneakers all that stuff on the walls and in the windows you saw promoting new shoes was probably something I had a hand in. There are comic books out there which I wrote and drew, and I was responsible for an entire comic company’s studio production schedule for a while. I’ve worked for major ad agencies, huge Wall Street companies, you name it. I’ve been happily married for decades, have friends whom I’ve been hanging out with since I was a teenager, and have multiple rings of friends and acquaintances that sound like a who’s who list of NYC. When I say it all out loud, it sounds like I’m bragging, but these are all things I’ve done. Saying that, every day when I wake up, it’s a “reset” and I have to find some way to justify my existence.
Right now, caught up in this wave of never ending tumult, it’s difficult to say that any of that stuff matters. Hence, anxiety.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One practices a thought modality which I call “branch logic.” It’s game theory, ultimately. Every action I take has two possible outcomes, which in turn offer further binary choices that branch off of whatever decision was undertaken. “If I cross Van Dam Street, when I get to the jail, I can either head north (Queens Plaza) or south (Greenpoint Avenue Bridge) – which is decision 1 – or just continue West towards decision 2. If I head west, I can go to Dutch Kills or follow it to Skillman Avenue. At Dutch Kills I can, or at Skillman I can… you get the idea. Interpersonally – I can punch this guy at the bar in the mouth, or I can just humor him. If I punch him, these two possibilities happen or if I humor him, another set of binaries occurs. This make the world somewhat predictable, which allows one to plan. If I save $20 a week, I’ll have a thousand bucks at the end of the year. If I have a thousand bucks in January, I can…
Thing is, and this is where all that anxiety is coming from, the world has become utterly and incomprehensibly unpredictable. I can’t predict anything more than two moves out right now, which is something that makes me anxious.
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, August 10th. 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.
about evocations
Tuesday, or “Tiwesdæg” in Old English, is named for the German god Tyr.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Why the debate? There’s a respiratory plague going around, and the doctors are telling us to wear surgical or cloth masks when out in public and congregating. You have an opinion? Did your own research? Think supernatural sky god/father will protect you because you like your version of his many books or scrolls? Is your first name “Doctor”?
Wear the damn mask. If you don’t want to…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are dozens and dozens of new interments at Calvary Cemetery, and thousands more spread out all over the country. Want to listen to a guy who went bankrupt owning a casino, went bankrupt with an airline, a tie company, a steaks company, and a real estate company who is telling you to take malaria drugs? Ok.
I’ve got a great investment opportunity for you, which is a bridge in Brooklyn…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wear the mask, for your kids. Wear the mask, for our country. Wear the mask, so we can get back to some semblance of normal life and put this interval behind us.
Or don’t. It’s not like the Antonine Plague was the actual event which began the decline of the Roman Empire, or that the Justinian Plague caused the end of the Byzantine Period. They didn’t know about the germ theory of disease, like we do, but because of the Justinian Plague, the Constantinopolitan armies were unable to keep the Turk at bay. The Turks then set up Sharia Law…
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, August 3rd. 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.
almost unassailably
Well, flippity floppity floop, it’s Friday again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found a humble narrator scuttling through the humidity thickened July atmospherics typical of Western Queens and heading towards Newtown Creek for a session of waving the camera around. Pictured above is the 1848 vintage First Calvary Cemetery in Blissville, looking westwards from Laurel Hill Blvd.
What with all of this pandemic business and the new Kosciuszcko Bridge offering a pedestrian and bike path between Greenpoint in Brooklyn and Blissville here in the Long Island City section of Queens, there’s now a lot of people milling around. For years and years, it was just me wandering around this area. It’s taking a lot of “getting used to” seeing others in my happy place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The views from the Kosciuszcko Bridge are epic, and I timed my walk to put me Center span just as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself was descending behind Manhattan and New Jersey. This point of view is 2.1 miles from the East River, for the morbidly curious. The right side of the shot is in Queens, the left is in Brooklyn.
Newtown Creek is a tributary of the East River which extends south/eastwards 3.8 miles from its junction with the larger waterway, eventually terminating in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. There are multiple tributaries of Newtown Creek which snake off the main stem of the waterway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, for me, a tug and barge combination was navigating its way eastwards while I was set up and shooting. Once one fo the busiest maritime industrial waterways in these United States, Newtown Creek is still quite busy. While I was out shooting, I saw the Greenpoint Avenue Draw Bridge – roughly a mile to the west – open and close three times.
A recent meeting with the United States Army Corps of Engineers described the ideal depth of these waters as being 23 feet. The last time a proper navigational dredging of the entire Newtown Creek occurred (other than a minor channel maintenance operation performed at the behest of the NYC DEP a few years ago) was in the early 1970’s. Tug and barges, therefore, stick to the center of the channel where the water is deepest when navigating through.
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 27th. 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.
bygone penmanship
Terrific, it’s Thursday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One managed to shvitz his way out last night and there’s a fresh batch of photos I’m cooking up on my hard drive, but couldn’t quite get them finished by this afternoon so a few recent archive shots greet you today. “Recent” as in late spring and early summer of 2020, as a note.
Pictured above is an Amtrak maintenance barn at the Sunnyside Yards, captured via a newly discovered hole in the fences surrounding the place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Skillman Avenue in the Long Island City section of Queens is where you’ll notice the remains of the Montauk Cutoff trackage crossing the byway on an overhead viaduct.
For some reason, and despite the fact that the overpass truncates and is abandoned, the Long Island Railroad keeps their signal boards electrified.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one is from the Penny Bridge site found along my beloved Newtown Creek. Penny Bridge is at the extreme north end of Meeker Avenue in Greenpoint. My pal Will from Newtown Creek Alliance just installed a historical sign board at Penny Bridge describing the site, so if you pay it a visit, you’ll understand why it’s called Penny Bridge.
Back tomorrow with some fresh steaming photography.
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 27th. 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 