Posts Tagged ‘Subway’
rusty impediments
Your motive is loco, man.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So few places to go, no one to see. The gray frigidity has me down, lords and ladies, and it is not impossible that over the last few weeks, I’ve watched everything on Netflix- including a couple of episodes of “Power Rangers Jungle Fury.” Playing with the cords on my hoodie, counting the floor tiles, bored. That’s me. Cabin Fever, I think they call it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Been reading lots of good stuff, including a marathon exploration of the dissimilar topics of leprosy and the genetic consequences of multi generational incest- both of which led to the Hapsburgs. None of this relates one little bit to the history of Newtown Creek nor Queens, which actually has been my intention. Little projects like mine tend to drag you down a long drill hole, and you become so focused that you lose sight of the bigger picture… which somehow includes leprosy and incest.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Its cheerier reading than I normally do during this time of year, when my google searches have historically included “stages of putrefaction of cadaver” and “common practices of yeast distillation in 19th century america.” Hey, a guy gets curious about things. Its better to know something, well… some things… than to remain willfully ignorant about unpleasantries.
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crystal dais
Everybody has someplace to go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
New York City marathon day offers one the opportunity to wander around a largely traffic free Queens Plaza. An event I used to photograph regularly, I avoided it this year in the wake of the Boston bombings. Didn’t want to get all tangled up in the security web of the terror warriors.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
moist verdure
A life well lived is a series of dull events.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My annual pilgrimage to the MTA Holiday Nostalgia “Shoppers Special” Subway event carried me to Queens Plaza one recent Sunday. It’s a fun and wholesome thing to do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, I have more than just a few acquaintances and friends who also enact this yearly journey, wherein legacy subway cars are run on the M line in a circuit between Queens Plaza and 2nd avenue in Manhattan.
It’s always nice to see someone you know.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weird thing, for me, is that it involves willingly heading down into the rat infested tunnels- an activity which normally fills me with a malign dread.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These are all retired subway cars, once typical, that represent various eras of design. At the time of their original deployment, each of these legacy units were state of the art.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The legacy cars performed well, although they are quite rickety in comparison to modern subways units. There was a brief interval wherein a door got stuck in the open position, but the MTA guys sorted that out in no time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An odd mix of folks were observed onboard. Some were ordinary commuters and customers of the M line, while many were hardcore rail fans. More than one photographer was spotted shooting models in period dress.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rail guys, they’re mostly guys, are the quiet ones on the train who watch every little detail and are listening to the machine. These cats can tell you the part number for individual screws on these trains, and you ignore their knowledge at your own peril. Foamers indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This show will be running every Sunday on the M line in December, operating between Manhattan’s 2nd Avenue and Queens Plaza. Check out the MTA Holiday Train page for schedule info.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
discern nothing
Always moving, no place to go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As one who detests entering the Subway system, it fits neatly within New York City’s macabre sense of humor to force me to enter the labyrinth on a fairly regular basis. The fits of depth born panic and revulsion suffered whilst encased in the rotting concrete bunkers must be controlled. It would be untoward to inflict my own insecurities and phobias upon those fellow unfortunates traveling alongside me, and positively dismissive of a social order in which “anything goes.” Why shouldn’t one defecate in public?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fear of offering loquacious discomforts to others isn’t something reflected by the general population, for course. It would be ridiculous to complain about the manner in which some behave while down here. Eating fried and highly aromatic dishes, performing basic grooming of hair and nails, or applying face paint- there are those for whom the Subway is an extension of the home. Last week, a woman I was sitting next to was utilizing the atomizer of a perfume bottle to liberally paint the confined air, and the rest of us, with her chosen scent.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It must be a wonderful thing, to be so confident in one’s self. The thought of exposing one’s private moments in such a brazen fashion is beyond me, as I was urged during toilet training to consider certain acts as “private.” Just the other day I was thinking, while watching a mid 40’s woman squeezing out a zit on the R train, that we really need to reintroduce the concept of shame and shunning back into society. You are not, my pimply friend, simply “free to be you and me” when out amongst the other humans. Decorum, please.
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winks ruddily
More things I am irrationally afraid of in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst transversing a vast system of labyrinths, those ones which underlie the shining city, and anxiously awaiting the arrival of a certain chain of electrically driven aluminum and glass boxes whose motive path would carry this humble narrator deep into the expanses of infinite Brooklyn, my attentions became fixed upon this ridiculously steep staircase and the so called escalator it adjoined. The term “Escalator” has always sounded kind of French to me, and anything emanating from what Caesar called Gaul is not to be trusted.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular escalator steeply spans an incredible distance, here in the center of a great human hive which is known as Manhattan. Populations of labor and management utilize it to move between high and low throughout the day, and few realize the existential danger which an individual dares when surmounting one of these Gallic sounding things. Have you ever seen what happens to primates when one of these escalator mechanisms malfunctions?
These stairways to heaven can chew up flesh and bone, inhaling living meat into their spinning gears – spitting out the sort of crimson spray one would expect from a Sam Raimi film – and are capable of reducing a wholesome citizen down into a broken chowder of gruesome countenance in mere seconds. Brrr.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Vertigo inducing, examining this “via subterranea,” with its vastly Euclidean angles, caused a humble narrator to experience no small amount of nausea. The horrible potentialities of “might” or “could” began to overwhelm, and no small amount of nervous energy powered an anticipatory hopefulness that the electrically driven chain of aluminum and glass boxes might hasten their arrival at the platform, announced by the usual piston blast of powderized rat feces driven before them and gathered enroute via pneumatic action. One such as myself no longer feels disappointment, as it is my fate to experience only a lukewarm existence, but I was crestfallen when no sign of relief thundered in.
Darkness began to creep into the periphery of my vision as I pondered the possibility of falling up, instead of down, this soaring flight of mechanically moving steps.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Afraid of the dark- a humble narrator always carries a variety of portable lights with him, just in case of the unplanned absence of light on my daily round. When I stop to think of all that must scurry about within these tiled walls of rotting cement, the untold things which slither amongst those shadowy pillars of concrete, iron, and brick which encase and imprison the trackways, it is enough to drive one to the gates of a madhouse forthwith.
Upcoming Tours
Saturday – October 19, 2013
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek with Atlas Obscura- tickets on sale now.
Sunday- October 20th, 2013
The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek with Brooklyn Brainery- tickets on sale now.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 