Posts Tagged ‘railroad’
shines thinly
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Early will your humble narrator be rising today, with intentions of loitering about the neighborhood for an extended period. It’s been a few weeks since my last merry perambulation carried me across the Pentacle and I look forward to where my feet may take me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Supernal glories abound, sights to see and inventory. Queens is calling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, that thing which cannot possibly exist at the cupola of the Sapphire Megalith in Long Island City will be watching. What’s a Saturday without a sense of latent menace and paranoia, after all?
ancient idol
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Skillman Avenue in Queens is one of the thoroughfares via which pedestrian transits are accomplished between the blessed hillocks of Astoria and the lamentable post industrial flats surrounding the Newtown Creek. It is all downhill from here, your humble narrator often tells people, but at least there is some spectacular scenery along the route. To wit, the Sunnyside Yards.
Mayan Apocalypse Countdown: just 9 days left until the 13th b’ak’tun ends, initiating the Mayan Apocalypse on December 21st. Tick, tock.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Illegal dumping is an art form here in Queens, with scatter dash arrangements of discarded goods lining both fence and wall. An odd thing I’ve noticed over the last few years is the presence of discarded single shoes. I’d be able to look over a pair of shoes, but everywhere I go these days, I’m seeing single shoes. That is weird, and there’s a story behind it, I am sure. It will likely involve a serial killer, I think.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This beautiful bit of detritus, arranged upon the old iron fence of the rail yard, has obviously been in place for a long time. Many questions occur to me, regarding it, but like many of the things which Queens wishes to have noticed- there will never be an answer. Queens is like that.
blurred and fragmentary
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The scions who run the Newtown Creek Alliance declared that we all gather for a meeting recently, and not wanting to be mocked in absentia (rather in person), your humble narrator set out for the gathering. Only issue with this caucus was that it was being held in far off Ridgewood at the Onderdonk house, which is a pretty long walk from Newtown Pentacle HQ here in Astoria. After having moved things around, schedule wise, a vast scuttle was instituted. The shot above depicts the East Branch of the Newtown Creek at its terminus on Metropolitan Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, I decided to check out the Scott Avenue footbridge. This is a rusted metal and rotting concrete structure which rises over the tracks of the LIRR’s Bushwick Branch, allowing pedestrian traffic egress to Flushing Avenue- a structure seen from distance but never traversed. Due to the aforementioned distance from my quarters, it will be admitted, this is the section of the Newtown Creek watershed with which I am the least familiar and one which still offers pleasant surprises when visited. In the shot above, what you’re looking at is the northward facing tracks of the Bushwick Branch as they head towards Fresh Ponds.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The inverse view, to the south and the infinity of Brooklyn. The train cars, homogenous and numerous, are awaiting service by the NY and Atlantic freight railway. What is colloquially known as the “garbage train”, they are gathered for usage at the Varick Street Waste Management facility which is nearby and adjoins the bitter end of the Newtown Creek tributary known as English Kills near Johnson and Morgan avenues. The undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens is also present in this shot, although I cannot tell you exactly where. Additionally, I am unsure as to whether these cars were loaded with their putrescent charge when I gathered these images.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Newtown Pentacle postings “approaching locomotive” and “skillfully wafted” discuss the Bushwick Branch and the Waste Management facility at Varick Street in some detail, why not check them out? Luckily, lords and ladies, your humble narrator goes to these spots so you don’t have to. If you did want to see some of the wonders described within these postings- why not consider coming on one of the upcoming excursions I’ll be leading?
for an expanded description of the October 20th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
for more information on the October 27th Newtown Creek Boat Tour, click here
for more information on the November 9th Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show, click here
for an expanded description of the November 11th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
budding branches
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Returning from scouting a tour in hoary Greenpoint recently, your humble narrator was lucky enough to encounter the shot above waiting for me on Hunters Point avenue in Queens. Whereas I do seem to take quite a few shots of locomotives, I am no “railfan”. A true railfan or “foamer” obsesses over schedules and would be waiting for this train to pass. With me, it’s just pure serendipity. This is, of course, an Amtrak train heading for the Belmont tunnels which offer egress from Long Island to Manhattan via the Sunnyside Yards rail complex in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In many ways, one can understand the apathy felt by the Manhattan elites toward Long Island City, for what do they see of the wonders hidden therein from the East River? Even the Newtown Creek appears to be just a simple bay from the water, another unremarkable inlet on the western coastline of a Long Island.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Perhaps this is why I’ve been drawn to conducting all of these tours. Famously, the Newtown Creek Alliance motto is “Reveal, Restore, Revitalize”, and in my capacity as group historian- I’m the “reveal” guy. Next Saturday, I’m going to be doing some of that “revealing”- there are still a few tickets left for “the Poison Cauldron” walk- do come along, if you dare.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long have I been reluctant to bring people to this place.
For several months now, your humble narrator has been narrating in a not so humble fashion while leading boat and walking tours of the Newtown Creek watershed.
Literally hundreds of people have attended either the “Thirteen Steps around Dutch Kills“, “Insalubrious Valley“, or “Newtown Creek Boat Tour” events this year- and one question has been asked by all- “What about the Greenpoint Oil Spill?”.
Next week- a group of enthusiasts will be assembling, under the auspices of Atlas Obscura, to explore the lamentable “Poison Cauldron” of the Newtown Creek.
There are still tickets available, should you care to witness the place prior to its forthcoming demolition.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp, or DUKBO, is the name I’ve assigned to this lunar landscape of industrial mills and waste transfer stations which lines the Brooklyn side of the Creek. This year is functionally the last time you will be able to witness this place, as the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement project will be kicking into high gear in the spring of 2013.
For the urban explorer and photographer crowd, this is a wonderland of shattered streets and rusted infrastructure which will soon be eradicated from all but living memory.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The tour will tell the story of Standard Oil at its start and cross over the Greenpoint Oil Spill’s heart, revealing that lost world of industrial aspiration and 20th century dissolution which lies less than a mile from the geographic and population centers of New York City.
In the past, I’ve described the area as “Mordor” at this, your Newtown Pentacle, and the Tolkien analogy is apt. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume, the water is hopelessly tainted with bizarre combinations and millions of gallons of petroleum and industrial chemicals, the soil is impregnated with heavy metals, asbestos, and truly- who can guess all there is that might be buried down there?
An odd concentration of food distribution, waste transfer and garbage handling facilities, and energy industry plants make the area remarkable, and everywhere you look will be a “colour“- a bizarrely iridescent sheen which resembles no wholesome nor familiar earthly color but is instead like something from out of space- coating every bit of broken masonry and the sweat slicked skin of laborer and passerby alike.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Standard offer copy follows:
Meetup at the corner of Kingsland and Norman Avenues in Greenpoint at 11 on Saturday, August 25th.
We will be exploring the petroleum and waste transfer districts of the Newtown Creek watershed in North Brooklyn. Heavily industrialized, the area we will be walking through is the heart of the Greenpoint Oil Spill and home to scores of waste transfer stations and other heavy industries. We will be heading for the thrice damned Kosciuszko Bridge, which is scheduled for a demolition and replacement project which will be starting in 2013. Photographers, in particular, will find this an interesting walk through a little known and quite obscure section of New York City.
Be prepared: We’ll be encountering broken pavement, sometimes heavy truck traffic, and experiencing a virtual urban desert as we move through the concrete devastations of North Brooklyn. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking, closed toe shoes are highly recommended- as are a hat or parasol to shield you from the sun.
Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk, which will be around three hours long and cover approximately three miles of ground. Drivers, it would be wise to leave your cars in the vicinity of McGolrick Park in Greenpoint.
Click here for tickets, and as always- a limited number of walk ups will be welcomed- but for safety reasons we need to limit the group to a manageable size. Contact me at this email if you desire further details.
vain presence
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One feels as if enough attention hasn’t been paid to Queens of late, and special efforts to program my walks have been accordingly undertaken. Ambitions and obligations have drawn me, more often than not, to Brooklyn in the last few months and it seems as if I spend my days walking back and forth to the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge more than anywhere else.
I haven’t been east of Forest Hills so far this year, nor south of Ridgewood- for instance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Special attentions must, as always, be paid to the area around Court Square, Queens Plaza, and Hunters Point- all of which are undergoing thunderous transformations and metamorphoses. Blink just once, it seems, and an entire neighborhood might be transformed into something new and unrecognizably shiny. That thing which cannot possibly exist in the cupola of the Sapphire Megalith doesn’t ever blink, as its singular eye is lidless and likely triple lobed, but it isn’t talking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unadulterated and unbound, Western Queens never fails to disappoint the itinerant photographer plying its lanes. Rhapsodic, the lessons and parables freely observable and extant both inform and instruct. It is said, by physics scholars and quantum mechanists, that reality is altered merely by the act of observation itself.
A humble narrator, therefore, hopes to profoundly alter reality in the coming weeks.
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming walking and boat tours of Newtown Creek, and Staten Island’s Kill Van Kull
June 30th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk
for June 30th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
July 8th, 2012- Atlas Obscura Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
for July 8th tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
The Newtown Pentacle 