Posts Tagged ‘queens’
Archives #026
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m able to ‘sort of’ walk again as this one publishes, albeit with a ‘walking boot’ sort of brace. Since the cast for my broken ankle came off a couple of weeks ago, every day has seen me doing something that would’ve been impossible just a 48 hours earlier. Still not capable of ‘normal’ activity, but…
These archive posts are reaching into Newtown Pentacle’s backups, and are pulling posts that went public on this date, in their respective years, going back to 2009. This practice will continue until I’m back on both feet full time, and new photos and stories can be gathered. For anyone who hasn’t heard the news, I broke my left ankle at the end of September.
This 2015 posting was titled ‘duplicate and exceed’ and it described a night time walk around the happy place of industrial Maspeth. This is right around when the low light shooting bug got installed in my head.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What with the agony from the ankle and all, grooming has not been high on the list of ‘have-to’s,’ but that’s also something I can do finally again so I cut my hair and trimmed the beard just yesterday. It’s nice to recognize the guy in the bathroom mirror again, I tell’s ya. I was looking wild, with two months worth of gray wool sticking out of my head.
On November 11 in 2019, a humble narrator was enduring a different injury than the one I’m currently enjoying, as discussed in ‘inherent deficiency.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a note, it’s Veteran’s Day and I’m going to be missing all of the PA parades this year. Looking forward to waving the camera around again. This walking boot produces a fairly severe limp, due to its static bracing of the ankle and calf, so wherever I end up taking the camera to it’s going to a ‘stand or sit around’ rather than ‘photowalk’ sort of situation.
Finally, this post from 2020 dubbed ‘darkly probable,’ discusses walking a tripod/camera setup around Queens Plaza at night.
“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.
Archives #025
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These archive posts are reaching into Newtown Pentacle’s backups, and are pulling posts that went public on this date, in their respective years, going back to 2009. This practice will continue until I’m back on both feet full time, and new photos and stories can be gathered. For anyone who hasn’t heard the news, I broke my left ankle at the end of September.
This post is from 2012, and it’s a part of the post Hurricane Sandy survey I was conducting along Newtown Creek’s Queens side.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the time this post publishes, a humble narrator is once again at a ‘physical therapy’ or ‘PT’ appointment, exercising and stretching the broken ankle under medical supervision. Apparently this is now how I spend a significant amount of my time, three times a week in the office with homework assignments for the entire week. An interesting movement exercise is that three times a day I’m meant to draw the shapes of the alphabet, using my great toe on the affected foot as a pointer. The letter ‘Y’ really hurts, as a note.
This 2019 post was published when I had a different severe injury on my left foot than the one at crux of my current dilemma. It’s always my left foot that gets busted up for some reason.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This weekend, I’m planning on finally programming a radio scanner I bought, which will let me listen to locomotive radio communications and preclude the ‘standing around for two hours and nothing’ factor of photographing trains. Used to be, I’d just stand at a rail choke point and they’d come to me.
This posting from 2022 is from the period when I was trying to see everything one last time before moving away. I spent a lot of time and effort photographing Sunnyside Yards, during all of those years that I lived in Astoria.
Back next week.
“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.
Archives #024
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Things continue to improve for a humble narrator, who attended the first of many ‘physical therapy’ or ‘PT’ appointments yesterday. At one point, I actually stood up on both feet without any sort of brace on my busted ankle, although most of the appointment involved various stretches and exercises to get the thing working properly again. Needless to say, last night and this morning the limb is sort of angry.
These archives posts are reaching into Newtown Pentacle’s backups, and are pulling posts from this date in their respective years going back to 2009. This practice will continue until I’m back on both feet full time, and new photos and stories can be gathered.
November 7th in 2016 saw a series of photos of Astoria’s Halloween festivities presented, as captured from the old ‘local’ bar on the corner of 42nd and Broadway – the Times Square of Astoria – which I used to hang out at.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Man, I miss just being to do ‘stuff.’ It’s been fifty days since this rather crappy adventure began, but I prefer to think it in hours – as in its been 1,211 hours of constant and often overwhelming pain. There’s been no way to be ‘comfortable,’ so I’ve just had to compartmentalize the agonies. It’s an interesting part of the human brain which allows us to ignore deep wounds and fundamental problems just in the name of sleeping.
There’s always a crisis at MTA, isn’t there? This 2019 post admittedly rants a bit, but points out that they never seem to blame the management.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, I’ve got friends who have been willing to endure my company, telephonically speaking. Our Lady has been caring for me, in ways I can never pay back. A humble narrator doesn’t enjoy feeling vulnerable, and especially doesn’t like having others observe such moments.
I was already packing stuff up back at HQ in November of 2022, when I was also trying to see and photograph everything one last time. I figured it might be a good thing to leave behind some instructions for the real estate people, on stealing more of the sky in Long Island City.
Two years later this sounds a lot like ‘City of Yes,’ don’t it?
“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.
Archives #019
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The most wonderful time of the year, and I’m missing it. Bah.
Some good news which this humble narrator can share with you is that my doctor has cleared me for use one of those boot things and then encouraged me to WALK AROUND WITH IT ON. I start physical therapy next week, so I’m taking things slow, but I actually left the house yesterday and drove around Pittsburgh for a few hours. Filled the car’s gas tank while I was out, and had the camera with me while I was motoring about and listening to Black Sabbath, on an atypically warm afternoon. Didn’t take a single shot, the camera just came along for the ride.
Hey! It’s Halloween!
A fairly well read post – by this point in time some 15 years after its original publishing date – is 2009’s Halloween offering of a western Queens ghost story called ‘The White Lady of Astoria.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I’ve mentioned in the past, given the number of people and residences in NYC, there are surprisingly few city ghost stories. I’ve always chalked this up to real estate valuation, as haunted condos don’t sell as well as the ones without spectral amenities. NYPD seems to not use the term ‘serial killer’ that often, I’d also mention. Probably don’t want to get the people nervous.
Just saying… If you calculate NYC’s head count (The New York City metropolitan region, often called the Tri-State Area, has a population of around 20 million people. This includes New York City itself and surrounding areas in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut), a strictly statistical point of view demands that there have to be at least a few serial killers loose and ‘doing their thing’ in the five boroughs at any given moment. (Historically, it’s estimated that about 0.3-0.4 serial killers per one million people are active in the U.S. each year. Translating that into a percentage, this rate would be approximately 0.00003% to 0.00004% per million people annually.)
2014 saw my revelation of the Queens Cobbler’s activities back in Western Queens and revealed them to the world. How’s that for a Halloween post?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I seem to recall being ‘stuck’ for a Halloween post for this one. A post I was working on fell apart, so I left the house and shot some spooky photos around LIC at night, and got to writing something ‘grimdark.’ The rail bridges in the shot above are the Montauk Cutoff, by the way, on Skillman Avenue.
This grimdark post was from Halloween, in 2018,
Back tomorrow.
“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.
Archives #018
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the hills that I stand on is that the NYC Subway system makes for an excellent photography workshop. Incredibly difficult conditions below – quite dark and very bright at the same time, with a large and reflective surfaced subject matter that’s moving at a pretty good speed through the frame… kind of difficult. I always had my camera out in NYC, instead of it riding around in a bag.
This 2014 post described the many precautions against ghostly and metaphysical invaders which HQ was being prepared with that year, in advance of Halloween’s ghostly assaults.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s ‘Saw Lady’ Natalia Paruz in the shot above, performing in a tomb at a cemetery in Brooklyn, in the shot above. I ‘dragged the shutter’ to get that ghostly quality while Natalia suffered the ecstasies of her melody.
In 2015, October 30th saw this post published, describing a nighttime visit to Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn with Atlas Obscura.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is nothing as surreal as being on a subway all by yourself. It ain’t right to occupy this sort of liminal space all alone.
This post from 2017 is a bit of an odd duck, and I seem to recall wanting to write a post in ‘full Lovecraft’ – for old times’ sake – about the experience.
“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 