Posts Tagged ‘Sunnyside Yards’
blazed effulgently
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shlepping along the increasingly mean streets of Queens, one found himself opposite St. Raphael’s Roman Catholic Church on Greenpoint Avenue, at a spot where a concrete retaining wall of about 36 inches in height can be found. Given that there is a dearth of actual street seating – no benches, for instance – hereabouts, one decided to take a load off for a few minutes and watch the Fords go by. There’s a lot of Fords, and Chevy’s, and everything else since the Long Island Expressway entrance and exit ramps are on this corner.
St. Raphael’s and its congregants provided me with one of the best “just stumbled upon it” photo days I’ve ever experienced here in Western Queens. Check out this Flickr album from 2010.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
90% of the time, I’m literally just wandering around. The other 10% is “I’m going to go to” with a plan, but you can’t force light and atmosphere to do your bidding. Over the last decade, one has learned that there are certain parts of “the study area” which are highly dynamic and regularly offer a cornucopia of random photographic subjects.
Nearby an FDNY facility in the LIC IBZ (industrial business zone) this ambulance/truck was encountered. Its insignia identifies it as belonging to New Jersey’s Ringwood Underwater Search and Recovery – which seems to be a non profit team of divers. What it was doing in Queens? Who knows? A lot of Jersey people will drive into Queens to find a place to park their vehicle, then take the 7 into Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In terms of fertile areas for photographic exploitation, especially ones which are a short walk from HQ, Sunnyside Yards almost never fails me. There’s a shot just waiting for you at almost anyone of the many fence holes that I catalog.
Given that heading south out of Astoria towards Newtown Creek or Brooklyn’s Greenpoint means an inevitable crossing of the gargantua rail yard… I get a lot of shots of trains.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The construction projects related to “East Side Access” have been going on for a generation at this point. It’s fairly routine for a road and or sidewalk around the yards to be blocked and or fenced off for some sort of construction project.
Luckily for me, on the particular night this shot was captured (which was the 18th of February, by the way) the construction guys left the fence open and I was able to crack out a couple of shots of their gear.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sunnyside Yards allows few junctures that you can make north/south crossings via. Queens Plaza, Honeywell Street, 39th/Harold, 43rd street, and 48th street. The latter is where an employee’s entrance to the yards can be found. Recent construction efforts at that location have seen the local street drains become clogged.
The flooding at this spot has allowed big piles of slippery mud to accrete. It’s been reported and the local authorities notified, but nobody cares and nothing matters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sigh… keeping an eye on it.
When the Governor is trying to sell you on giving $850 million of tax money to an NFL team in her home district for a new stadium, remember this picture. Also – the collapsing bulkhead along Newtown Creek, and the general shit level of infrastructure maintenance you see everywhere in NYC.
The Newtown Creekathon returns!
On April 10th, the all day death march around Newtown Creek awakens from its pandemic slumber.
DOOM! DOOM! Fully narrated by Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of Newtown Creek Alliance, this one starts in LIC at the East River, heads through Blissville, the happy place of Industrial Maspeth, dips a toe in Ridgewood and then plunges desperately into Brooklyn. East Williamsburgh and then Greenpoint are visited and a desperate trek to the East River in Brooklyn commences. DOOM! Click here for more information and to reserve a spot – but seriously – what’s wrong with you that you’re actually considering doing this? DOOM!
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
The Newtown Creekathon returns!
On April 10th, the all day death march around Newtown Creek awakens from its pandemic slumber.
DOOM! DOOM! Fully narrated by Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of Newtown Creek Alliance, this one starts in LIC at the East River, heads through Blissville, the happy place of Industrial Maspeth, dips a toe in Ridgewood and then plunges desperately into Brooklyn. East Williamsburgh and then Greenpoint are visited and a desperate trek to the East River in Brooklyn commences. DOOM! Click here for more information and to reserve a spot – but seriously – what’s wrong with you that you’re actually considering doing this? DOOM!
“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.
shimmers afar
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling always scuttling, camera in hand, filthy black raincoat flapping wildly about in the wind. Sometimes it’s really, really cold.
A bit of housekeeping, firstly. For the next few weeks you’re going to be seeing six image posts. One has been unusually motivated and somewhat prolific in recent months, and there are an abundance of images which I’m anxious to share. Problem is that I’m quite out of step with the calendar and if I was to continue doing the traditional three image posts, you’d still be seeing snow on the ground as late as June. Accordingly, six image posts are on the menu for an interval.
That’s the Long Island Railroad passing through the Harold Interlocking at Sunnyside Yards, in Long Island City, pictured above in a photo captured on the 5th of February of 2022.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was one of my short walks, a constitutional, if you will. One left HQ in Astoria, scuttled south over the Honeywell Street Truss Bridge that crosses over the rail yard, and then over to Queens Boulevard. The shot above was captured nearby Queens Boulevard’s very busy intersection with Van Dam Street.
One was quite distracted while gathering this one, as some bloke decided that I was very interesting and he had maintained a constant position roughly 20 feet away from me and parallel to my back for a few blocks. One was sort of waiting for him to come rushing at me, but when I turned around and gave him the patented “Mitch Waxman laser eyes” look, he lost interest and shuffled off to find an easier victim.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was specifically trying to avoid visiting Newtown Creek or any of its tributaries for a change, so after having executed a confusion of evasion maneuvers to obfuscate any attempt that this fellow might enact to reacquire me as a target, I decided to stick to a few more commonly travelled places. A solid bit of 1980’s NYC advice I would offer – signal them so that they know that you know, keep moving, and don’t act like you wouldn’t be into fucking them up if they tried.
In future posts, we’ll explore – for those of you under the age of 40 – how to live with the existential dread of the Cold War and the threat of looming nuclear annihilation. If any of you have ever wondered the what’s and why’s of the paranoid psychology underlying the Baby Boomer and Generation X mentality, then welcome to the party kids. I’d suggest hitting the YouTube and watching “Threads” and then “The Day After” and then reconsidering the hardened black and white absolutism of your politics while embracing the singular fact that our world is painted in shades of gray. “Special Bulletin” also comes to mind… what?… how many episodes of “The Walking Dead” have you sat through? What do you think all those Zombie and Alien Invasion movies are really about?
The Cold War generations didn’t receive grief counseling or consolation, we got shelter drills and invented Punk Rock and Hip Hop. Go make some art, you’ll feel better.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news is that you’re looking at, in the shot above, what would probably be ground zero for a nuclear strike if the Russians actually decided to commit suicide and launch. I’ve heard from multiple sources that Sunnyside Yards is what that particular group of militarist apocalypse engineers use to target NYC. Russians don’t go for precision, they go for “Grozny,” a term which translates as terrible or horrible. The good news is that I live a few blocks from here and thereby it would all be over pretty quickly for me. Nanoseconds, in fact.
It wasn’t Ivan the Terrible, it was Ivan Grozny. “Russians don’t even trust themselves, so it’s folly to trust Russia as a country.” Bismarck said that. “Never trust a Russian, the only people they love – in their dog hearts – are the last ones who fed them.” My Ukrainian Jewish Grandmother said that one, and she once got to see a Cossack behead one of her brothers.
“You lost that Cold War feelin’
Whoa, that Cold War feelin’
You lost that Cold War feelin’
Now it’s gone, gone, gone, whoa-oh
Now there’s no welcome look in your eyes when I reach for you
And now you’re starting to criticize little things I do
It makes me just feel like crying
‘Cause baby, something beautiful’s dyin”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On a lighter note, I’ve been encountering all sorts of street furniture of late, here in Queens. I don’t mean street benches, utility poles, or fire hydrants by “street furniture,” I mean actual feral decor which has been released into the wild.
Pictured above is what I’d describe as a work desk, of the kind once used by mechanical engineers. What makes it cool is that little knobby thing on the side, which would allow you to adjust the angle of the work surface. I’ve still got my old drafting table folded up in a corner here at HQ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just up the block from the drafting desk, these seats were encountered. These look like the sort of seating you encounter in an airport bus, or one of those passenger vans that work as “dollar cars” along Flatbush Avenue. Or sitting out on a street in Astoria, I guess.
More tomorrow.
The Newtown Creekathon returns!
On April 10th, the all day death march around Newtown Creek awakens from its pandemic slumber.
DOOM! DOOM! Fully narrated by Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of Newtown Creek Alliance, this one starts in LIC at the East River, heads through Blissville, the happy place of Industrial Maspeth, dips a toe in Ridgewood and then plunges desperately into Brooklyn. East Williamsburgh and then Greenpoint are visited and a desperate trek to the East River in Brooklyn commences. DOOM! Click here for more information and to reserve a spot – but seriously – what’s wrong with you that you’re actually considering doing this? DOOM!
“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.
hellish hours
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling, forever scuttling, in the dark and cold of the Queensican night, camera in hand. Shoes scraping along the frozen concrete, friendless, filthy black raincoat flapping about in the stiff wind. Nothing matters, nobody cares. Sometimes it snows.
This time around, one was heading off in the direction of the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek here in Long Island City. As is my habit, a visit was paid to some of the better holes found in the fence lines of the cyclopean Sunnyside Yards. Fortuitous timing was achieved, since I got there just as a Long Island Railroad train set rolled past, navigating its way through the Harold Interlocking. Harold is the busiest passenger train junction in the United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s quite a bit of work underway down “on the deck” at Sunnyside Yards, as the latest phase of the MTA’s “East Side Access” project plays out. What that means to the passing photography enthusiast is that they’ve increased the intervals of time between trains to allow for longer periods of uninterrupted construction work, and they also seem to be timing things so that when they need to have the laborers step back to allow a train to pass safely, generally more than one train set is doing so during that interval.
“They” are the people in the control rooms at Grand Central and Pennsylvania Station who sit in front of large electronic screens detailing where, when, and how fast locomotives are moving about in the NYC system. I’ve seen the one at Grand Central, but I wasn’t allowed to photograph it due to “Homeland Security concerns.” “They” use homeland security whenever they don’t want you to report that they’re still using Windows 95 or something, as a note. The photo above depicts what is arguably the most strategic non military or political “spot” in the northeastern United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given the spate of rail activity observed, a humble narrator decided to just hang around the holes. I was particularly enjoying the snow on the ground, since it allowed a lot of the ambient light down on the tracks to bounce about and paint the scene in primaries and pastels.
Recently, one encountered a great YouTube channel for some rail museum, one which I’ve misplaced the specific links to, which explained – as if you were talking to a first grader – how to interpret the signals on the “traffic lights” found above rail tracks. This has been immensely helpful to me. Blinking yellow versus green? It also informed me about what the motions that train people make with their lanterns means. Now I know. If I hadn’t lost the link, you would too.
Scuttling, always scuttling…
“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.
limitless limitations
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst scuttling about on a recent evening, one met an Opossum. I have no idea if the critter was a he or a she or a they, but it seemed nice. Are there trans or non gender conforming opossums, and do we have to worry about their feelings? The thing was vamping for me, and since I had just updated the firmware on my camera with what Canon promised as being “improvements to the eye tracking autofocus for animals and people” this situation presented an excellent opportunity for me to test the improved feature out.
Apparently, a big part of this face and eye tracking update involved adapting to the presence of Covid masks. The Opossum wasn’t wearing one, and neither was I for that matter, but there you are. Speaking as someone who has treated Covid with a great deal of respect over the last two years, it absolutely flummoxes me when I see people who are entirely alone – and outside – wearing masks. Same thing with people who are driving solo and wearing one. Why?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now, when I was riding around on various Amtrak’s in the September and December, and on Subways here in the City, you’d have had to pry the mask off my cold dead face before I’d remove it willingly in an unventilated congregate setting. Outside, though? Unless it’s a truly crowded sidewalk – a protest or maybe a press event – I’m bare faced. Ventilation, people, ventilation. Also, distancing, people, distancing. This isn’t advice, you do you.
Recent occasion found me at the Jackson Heights intermodal subway and bus station at Broadway and Roosevelt Avenue here in Queens, where a masked up crowd formed into tight rows less than a foot away from each other when either boarding the escalator or awaiting the train’s arrival. Me? I was masked up, but stood well away from everybody else and their clouds of cooties. Why crowd in? What advantage is there? Who are you trying to beat out for pole position in terms of boarding the R? I guarantee you’re going to get onto the train, why do you need to be first?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My evening’s destination, which the pursuance thereof had precipitated meeting the nice Opossum, was the Newtown Creek waterfront in Maspeth. The former bulkheads of a long gone copper refinery and chemical factory called Phelps Dodge offer a commanding set of views of the Kosciuszko Bridge as well as a few other interesting things to point a camera at.
As far as Newtown Creek goes, the waters which greasily lap at the Phelps Dodge shoreline are generally considered to be the most deeply compromised – environmentally speaking – on the entire waterway.
Back next week with more – 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.
unsatisfying uluations
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling, always scuttling, that’s me. Filthy black raincoat fluttering in the wind, camera in hand, shoes scraping along the sidewalk. It’s horrible to behold, my countenance, I’ve been told. I dread passing before a piece of silvered glass.
The good news is that a humble narrator was recently engaging in a bit of calisthenic stretching and one of the tendons in my trick left foot shifted and made a sound not unlike a cello’s base string being struck with a hammer. Ever since, the pain and tenderness in the left foot and ankle has ameliorated a bit, which has just been awesome. Of course, I’m in my 50’s, so my right hip immediately began to hurt instead.
I like to refer to this phenomena as my pain squirrel, which finds a different branch of the body’s tree to sit upon every day. My physical form is like a meaty Yggdrasil, with the Pain Squirrel Ratatoskr found above, and the Death Serpent Níðhöggr chewing his way up through my roots from below.
I have an entirely pedantic inner life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This time around, I was out for a short walk, which these days sees this shattered husk walking the equivalent of four to five subway stops in one direction and then looping back towards HQ. It’s malevolent, winter weather, and my particular “kryptonite” revolves around cold.
Partially, this is due to the medications prescribed by the team of doctors who labor to maintain my homeostasis. The ichor flowing though my circulatory system tends to run away from cold, rendering the extremities cold and pale. If I’m out for a long walk on a very cold night, it looks a great deal like this when I return home.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nearing HQ, this scene greeted me nearby a construction site. Obviously, somebody does not grasp the concept nor practice of municipal recycling, on a fundamental level.
More 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 