Posts Tagged ‘Subway’
damp rock
I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For the last couple of weeks, an abundance of “business” has occupied my days and nights. Nothing I’ve had to do has been too extreme, but a surfeit of multiple hour long tasks has plagued me. Today, one needs to prepare to see the accountant later in the week and tie off last years tax obligations, but a point will be made to experience some “r&r” in the afternoon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news is that after all these tasks are accomplished, I can get back to doing actual work. You know, the whole “walk around Queens and explore its amazing and oft occluded past” thing. The even better new is that a whole series of excursions which will allow me to share this wonderful place with others are coming as well, and some of them will even be free events.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit when so overwhelmed, Newtown Pentacle will be going into single image mode for the next few days. Keeping up with content discovery and capture is a bear sometimes, especially when constricted by the never ending series of storms and lousy weather which has so far made 2014 remarkable.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
by surprise
Cool atmospherics in Sunnyside.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of those periodic blasts of duty has been upon me for the last week or so, a lot to do with little time to do it, and the rain last week didn’t help. Got in the way of one project, delayed two others, and obliterated any semblance of free time when precipitants fell not. Accordingly, rather than walking everywhere, as I just did not have the time, mass transit was utilized.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unlike several of my friends, especially that walking encyclopedia of regional transport options – Kevin Walsh of Forgotten-NY, I generally don’t familiarize myself with transit lines that I don’t frequent. Limited space available on my internal hard drives, and the needs of the now often crowd out things I don’t need to use often. However, I was quite proud of myself while improvising a bus and train path on the fly, just the other day, which is how I ended up on the 7 train.
Normally, I’d just walk from Greenpoint to Flushing, as it’s only a few miles and carries one across a staggeringly interesting cross section of Brooklyn and Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news is that the first walking tour of 2014 is now accomplished, on Saturday I did the “13 Steps around Dutch Kills” tour with Atlas Obscura, which was one of the many things I had to do last week. Next tour with the Obscura Society will be “The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek” on April 26, tickets are available here.
The reason I was heading to Flushing, and lucky enough to catch these cool atmospherics and lighting in Sunnyside, was to get some shots of the Unisphere for my Brownstoner column – check them out here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
worried faces
Would it kill you to smile?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While riding the Subway in New York City, observation of the interesting social behaviors exhibited by the citizenry entertains. There are those who present the “pfft, ain’t no thing” and those who present the “what the hell are you looking at” and also present are the “please, for gods sake, do not notice me” lean. Others pretend to sleep, or stare blankly at the floor (that’s the one which I favor), while a small group of extroverts feel the need to shout and otherwise draw attention unto themselves. Then there’s the buskers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are Mariachi’s, young couples who perpetrate the “gypsy baby” scam, those three kids who dance and perform acrobatics. Worst of all are the religious zealots, whose clumsy attempts at evangelism are enough to drive one into the arms of Satan itself. Skillfully ignoring these buskers and con artists, or not, is what separates the true New Yorker from the tourist. The tourists are the worst, of course, breaking all of the unspoken rules of subway etiquette which “regular” riders subconsciously obey and enforce. Nobody smiles, the MTA has a rule against that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My camera is always at the ready whenever entering these concrete bunkers with their pungent atmospheres, and one of the odd things I’ve noticed in recent years is the reaction some have upon seeing the device. Lens cap on and power switch off, they will stare at the camera in the manner one would watch the countdown clock on a bomb. I don’t understand this. Humans, they’re weird, and need to smile more often.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
recognizable passages
One of those days, it’s one of those days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Today’s the day that Copernicus’s “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium” was “withdrawn from circulation” in 1616 over religious exceptions to its blasphemy, which is not exactly a high point in history for the Roman Catholic Church. In 1770, the Boston Massacre (aka the Incident on King Street) set the stage for an American Revolution amongst the North American holdings of the British Crown to occur. In 1933, the Nazi party and its leader Adolph Hitler received enough of a majority in nationwide elections to dissolve the German government and establish a dictatorship. In 1946, Winston Churchill introduced the public to the term “Iron Curtain” for the first time – in Missouri, of all places.
March 5 is just “one of those days,” I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In 1963, singer Patsy Cline died in a plane crash. She beat Joseph Stalin, who died a decade earlier from complications brought on by a stroke on March 5, 1953. More recently, in 2013 as a matter of fact, it was Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that suffered a cessation of his cardiac rhythms on March 5. Patsy Cline is the one to be missed out of this trio, as the two fellows were of the troublesome sort, and it would be crazy to want to see them again.
Today is also the 15th day of a month called Esfand, and it’s “National Tree Planting (or Arbor) Day” over in the Islamic Republic of Iran (additionally, it’s the year 1393 there, according to their Solar Hijri calendar).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in the middle kingdom of the People’s Republic of China, or “中国 or Zhōngguó” as they might call it, March 5 is “Learn from Lei Feng” day. Let your inner revolutionary flower, work for the proletarian masses today instead of selfishly poisoning minds, with your counterrevolutionary disestablishmentarianism and oppressively selfish bourgeois revisionism. Be like Lei Feng.
The Irish Saint Ciarán of Saigir enjoys a feast day on March 5th, which this year falls on Ash Wednesday, and he is one of the few Saints venerated for, or credited with, causing a castle roof to collapse on a company of rebel soldiers. Ciarán was only 29 when he went, and was way too young, if he ever existed at all. Lei Feng was only 21, and was likely fictional.
March 5th, 1982 is the day that John Belushi died. Belushi was real, but no saint.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
exponent of escape
It’s nothing but darkness down there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Loathsome, your humble narrator is nevertheless and occasionally required to put in an appearance now and then. Shattering disillusionment is what normally accompanies me, as It is my nature to fail. Hopes that I might eventually arrive at some combination of personality traits which a vast majority would find nonobjectionable are vainglorious, as I seem to have become exactly what my school instructors warned about decades ago. Sometimes, I’ll just ride the subway, and bathe in the clouds of powderized rat shit which herald their coming.
All I deserve, I suppose, as I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This has been an extraordinarily busy week for me, running about the City of Brooklyn and the villages of Queens. Newtown Creek, Red Hook and the Gowanus – and even the Brooklyn Navy Yard has been on my agenda. Last night, a friend asked me to attend a reading by Tirella from his new book about the 1964 World’s Fair at the Astoria Bookshop and by the time we were discussing it at a neighborhood pub afterwards, I was actually starting to nod out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apologies are offered for the late post today, but even one such as myself needs to fall unconscious and wildly hallucinate for 7-8 hours periodically. Such opportunity was denied for two days in a row, wherein one caught less than 6 hours of such activity in a 48 hour period. My normal late night antics, which find me at the computer during the witching hours, were cut short by the omnipresent needs of my biology.
All too human, I fear.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 