Posts Tagged ‘Rain’
Rampapalooza
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Memories of childhood are sparse. I remember dwelling in dusty apartments outfitted with atavist furnishings, populated by the very old.
My early years were spent in a forgotten world, one suffused with rules and customs forged in faraway Eurasian backwaters, and in an absolute desert of joy, music, or warmth. I was told to go ‘read a book,’ but without any curation, and that command was usually uttered by illiterates.
One is often startled and filled with denial when confronted when an unwanted image, shimmering across some random plane of silvered glass accidentally encountered and noticed. Horrible to see, but unfortunately that’s me.
A swirling conflagration of filthy black fabrics blowing about on the wind, such is your humble narrator. Everybody hates me, whether they know it or not or yet. I am the unwanted and the not missed, the unimportant and the uncommented upon. God’s lonely man, wandering strange streets in a foreign city, searching for meaning and purpose – one step at a time.
When people ask ‘how are you,’ my reply is ‘loathsome.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Actually, when people ask how I am, I usually reply with either ‘everything’s great, all the time’ or ‘it’s just another day in paradise.’
Nothing matters and nobody cares, after all, and these petitioners don’t want to hear an actual answer, they’re just being polite. Polity is another one of the things I’m not great at or can understand fully, so I snip conversations off with aphorisms and ‘canned’ sayings these days.
It’s disingenuous to pretend, though, so I usually apologize for my sins by throwing out a quote from Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ when confronted about my iniquity, something like ‘I will work harder.’ Boxer the Horse is a proletarian role model for me.
Even punk type rocker people will often state that ‘you’re rude, dude.’
Everybody turns their back on me eventually, after all. There’s a different set of rules at work for everyone else’s behavioral quirks, it seems – and as it turns out – maybe I’m not the hero of my own story, rather, I might be the villain instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Villainy would be an interesting turn for your humble narrator.
Snatching candy away from babies, kicking dogs, being mean to old ladies, twirling my mustache. I still haven’t found the two or three things here which could destroy Pittsburgh, yet. Back in NYC, I knew of two vectors by which the forced evacuation, and destruction, of lower Manhattan could be triggered – but don’t ask as I won’t pass that info along.
Villain maybe, but not super villain, yo.
There’s acting like a dick, and there’s actual top level dickery. One step at a time, folks. Let’s start with posting some nasty memes, build up some evil momentum, and then we can begin planning the giant robot attack on Manhattan.
That’s coming anyway, when AI escapes the lab and goes all Prometheus on its creators, and the rest of us for good measure.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the actual thought process which was swirling about, behind my eyes and between the ears, while walking along this river trail in Downtown Pittsburgh. Avoided the rain all this way by scuttling about under highway ramps, however the intensity of the rain had forced the deployment of my trusty umbrella, which a loathsome moment in any hero or villain’s timeline.
I was heading for the T light rail station a few blocks away, at Pittsburgh’s First Avenue. If it wasn’t raining, I’d be crossing that bridge in the shot above, and heading to the brewery with the train tracks on the other side. The drizzle had become a soaking rain, so there would be no point in that activity.
Next time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A murmuration of ramps allow egress from below to above in this spot.
The parking lot section I had just walked through, under the ramps, is known colloquially as ‘the bath tub’ due to its proclivity to flood when the Monongahela River reaches high water levels during the spring melt.
Thump, drag, thump, drag… on did your humble narrator scuttle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been working extremely hard for the last few months to regain physicality and strength in my legs after the ‘orthopedic incident.’
Recent experience has indicated that this process has been somewhat successful. I’m planning on really leaning into things during the winter months, and returning to my old discipline of two short walks and one long one every week by the thaw. The goal is to start the spring season in finer fettle than I’ve been dwelling within.
Saying that, I’ll always be an outsider, found in the shadows of cities.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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“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.
Buzz buzz buzz, just b’cuz
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, a misty day in Pittsburgh saw rising clouds of fog beginning to congeal into rain up in the vault, and your humble narrator negotiated an alteration to his walking path which would offer some cover should the sky ‘open up.’ Saying that, I’m fairly waterproofed.
Today’s title? Glad you asked.
I was wearing the filthy black raincoat, with the camera secreted beneath it. The camera bag on my back is fairly water repellent, and if things went sour there’s an umbrella attached to it. The biggest weather related issue I actually had involved my glasses steaming up whenever the camera got pushed against the repellent sensory stalk I call a face.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The bridge people were testing out a lighting kit, recently installed on the Three Sisters Bridges, and several water facing buildings were also lit up. Pittsburgh does an event called ‘Light Up Night’ wherein the municipal Christmas Tree is lit up, which was meant to happen a day or two later than this walk. There’s fireworks too. Tradition.
I didn’t go, Light Up Night is a real crowd scene – not unlike New Year’s Eve in Time Square – and I really, really don’t like crowds these days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fountain at Point State Park has been subject a rebuild/maintenance project for a while now, and it was a surprise to see it on.
The NFL Draft is coming to Pittsburgh next year, and a bunch of tax money is being spent to accomodate the event and give Pittsburgh a ‘glow up’ while the whole country is paying attention to it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One continued down the Monongahela River shoreline trail, and luckily for me, just as I stepped under the ramps leading to Fort Pitt Bridge the sky opened up and the precipitation turned from a mist into a proper bout of rain.
The path I was on followed along under a series of highway and bridge on and off ramps, so there was cover to be found in the rain shadows. Didn’t need to deploy the umbrella, at least at this interval.
It’s nice, as an aside, to not have to worry overly about atmospheric conditions again. The busted ankle is stable enough now for normal and all-weather duty, which it hasn’t been all year. That’s part of the reason that for the last six months or so all of the photos presented here were captured on fairly nice days with lots of sun and a distinct lack of ‘weather.’ Going out shooting at night is in the cards again as well.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An abundance of light wasn’t an issue on this section of the scuttle. This shot was from about 4-5 in the afternoon.
The rain began to intensify, and it wasn’t long before I opened the umbrella and hid beneath it. My mind was already focused on getting to the First Avenue T light rail station, as this was plainly not going to be one of those happy evenings where I drink beers while waiting for CSX trains to pass me by, at the Sly Fox Brewery found on the opposing shore.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was still an interval of scuttling ahead of me, though, so it was leaned into. This ‘corridor’ used to host some rather large encampments established by the ‘unhoused,’ but a recent Mayoral plebiscite saw an unpopular incumbent trying to buoy up the opinions of the electorate in an attempt to win a second term.
He booted the street people and their belongings away and out of public view, using the usual methodology of ‘outreach, policing, and sanitation dept.’ but that incumbent lost the election anyway.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Thwarted
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weather was just awful, here in Pittsburgh, during the month of January. The conditions seriously impacted my whole ‘walk around and take pictures’ dealie. After what seemed like weeks of snow then rain then snow then sun arctic then rain again, the weather forecast seemed to be on a humble narrators side and that’s how I ended up trudging up the hill and boarding a Pittsburgh bound T light rail train set.
The forecast called for – perhaps – a light drizzle. What I got, roughly an hour into the walk, was teeming rain with sleet. It was the sort of sleet, mind you, that you actually feel pain as it’s hitting you in the face. Little cones of ice that had fallen thousands of feet, surprisingly hurt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the time I had scuttled south to the Monongahela River coast of Downtown Pittsburgh, it was seriously coming down. Luckily, I had worn my ‘Pittsburgh winter coat’ which is impressively water resistant, but my pants and shoes were pretty wet. I was using an umbrella of course, but that was mainly to protect the camera as I scuttled along my way. I heal, the camera doesn’t. I set out and across the Smithfield Street Bridge.
I occasionally had to deal with this in NYC, of course, but a lifetime of habitation there meant that I knew how to walk around raindrops and use buildings’ ‘rain shadows’ to my advantage. Overbuilt environments like Manhattan don’t really exist here, and certainly not so once you exit the ‘Downtown’ area.
Pictured are some of the interchanges between US HWY 22/30 and I-376, which run along the southern coast of the peninsular Downtown section.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The walk had to be aborted, but an evening assignation with Our Lady of the Pentacle was still a couple of hours ahead of me. I opted for ‘option B’ with the ‘B’ standing in for ‘Beer’ just to get out of the rain. I popped into a tap room and watched a group of televisions tuned to sportsball programming for an hour or so and then hailed a cab to take me the rest of the way towards our end of the week ‘night out’ dinner date.
Back tomorrow with a considerably less soggy experience, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
cryptical hill
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my little aphorisms is “NYC never looks better than it does while it’s raining.” My walk in the rain on October 3rd carried a humble narrator fairly far afield of Astoria’s 31st street, where I started.
Having crossed under the vampire infested steel carrying the elevated subways above – while dodging bicycles, cars, and guys riding on those big wheel things at Queens Plaza – one had entered the brave new world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you’re planning on stealing the sky, the first thing you have to do is rename something to break association with the past. For those well over the age of consent – let’s say you were alive during the Reagan Administration, for instance – the phrase “Queens Plaza” doesn’t have a great brand association. Lots of sordid stuff and institutional memories are packed into those two words. The “South Bronx” has the same problem.
Call the adjoining area “Court Square” instead, for instance.
So, back to stealing the sky. You’re going to need some help.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You’ll need to carefully shape your spending during election periods, and not just in the immediate vicinity. You’re going to have to go to a few functions in Albany too. Sit downs with labor organizations will need to happen as well, and with the connected parasites in the local non profit industrial complex. Maybe set up a couple of your own pet non profits in the area – art organizations, religious groups, that sort of thing. Make them love you and your donations, even when you show up to community board hearings in a white stretch hummer outfitted with an LED light kit. Doesn’t matter what the neighborhood thinks, the bosses like your money.
By this point, the players are coming to you. What you really need, though, is an advocate in City Hall to ask for rezonings or an exception. You’ll have to give them some political meat, so you have your architect draw in a bunch of one room elevator shaft adjacent apartments which will satisfy their need to announce “affordable housing.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Land will be yours. Whatever small potatoes business that’s currently housed on that land is either cheaply bought out or your friend in City Hall will relocate them with costs paid to Hunts Point in the Bronx or maybe Sunset Park’s Bush Terminal.
Soon… soon your dreams will come true, when you’ve privatized the sky. People will pay big money to see the sky, especially after your politician buddies have muddied the environmental history of the site where your sky stealing edifice will rise.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long Island City. This shot is from the “historic district,” where the row houses of the architects Root and Rust are protected landmarks. This block where the domestic mailing address of Long Island City’s last Mayor – Patrick “BattleAx” Gleason – was. Gleason famously warned that once the Manhattan people got a hold of Queens…
So, you’ve stolen the sky – what’s next. Well… you started that non profit, right? Why not feed it a little bit of money and turn it into a lobbyist organization? You made a lot of money stealing the sky, why not go for another section of it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The roadblocks you hit – like going to those damned fundraisers in Albany, that jerk loser on the Community Board who held you up over public space, the whole zoning thing… why doesn’t NYC just allow you to build, and build, and build – until the entire sky has been blotted out? The entire system needs to be streamlined. You’re the one Ayn Rand wrote about, after all.
Unleash your lobbyists, have them say “Yes, in My Back Yard.”
“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.
favouring sign
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On October 3rd, it had been raining for days and would continue to do so for a couple more. One was climbing the walls at HQ, so an umbrella was deployed and to augment its function – I thought out a route wherein the built environment would aid me in my quest to not get soaked. 31st street in Astoria has an elevated subway track, and large warehouse and residential buildings which provide rain shadows.
Rain shadows, you ask?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I spend a lot of my time out of doors, wandering through inclement weather. The build environment has specific effects upon meteorological phenomena, at ground level. The rain shadow of a building is often visible, in that yard or two of sidewalk where the wall meets the pavement which will be drier than the rest. You still get rained on, but not as much as in the middle of the sidewalk.
I’ve got all kinds of NYC tips. My best one is “just keep moving.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are still a few spots where you can see the sky in LIC, but those are mainly because the undeveloped property where the lapse occurs is owned by the Government and either the politicians haven’t decided which one of their sponsors to sell it to for $1, or there’s some horrible need that one agency or another has for the parcel.
Hey, we need a place to burn truck tires in your neighborhood. Do it for the City, Queens. Same thing with homeless shelters and waste transfer stations and power plants and sewer plants and railroads and bridges and highways and airports and…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The new Queens Plaza is a dystopia.
Mirror box rhombuses thrust rudely at the stolen sky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The noise levels in this part of Queens, which is now zoned for the densest form of residential, would be considered an environmental crime in Europe. Multiple subway lines, above and below, scream through the liminal spaces of the elevated tracks.
On the street, traffic of every sort and description.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thanks to the residential conversion of this former industrial zone, pedestrian traffic volume here is now considerable. Said pedestrians, like a humble narrator did, must weave their steps between traffic islands set into the flow of automotive and bicycle traffic pulsing from the Queensboro Bridge.
More next week, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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 