Posts Tagged ‘Washington DC’
Archives #007
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s the little things… like crossing your legs when sitting… that you miss when orthopedically challenged. The cast on my busted ankle is made of those fiberglass bandages which the Doctors like, and it’s both heavy and omnipresent. Even when asleep, you’re aware of it. Existential comfort is dearly wished for, even as the pain levels off.
This 2014 post details the existential dread I always experience while waiting for something interesting to happen, or for a subject to just pass in front of my lens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The busted ankle event occurred roughly a month ago, which kicked off an interval of some of the most challenging weeks I’ve ever experienced. Pain, painkillers, the annihilation of personal dignity, and the loss of ability to take care of all the little needs which pop up during the course of your day. I’ll never take being able to use the bathroom freely for granted again, for instance, nor drop a pen on the floor without worrying about causing a dog related crisis.
In 2019, this post discussed the fact that I had grown jaded as far as all the cool stuff I used to see, on the regular, back at Newtown Creek and NY Harbor in general.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator is crunched up in a sitting position, and aching to get some exercise. My phone’s health app just informed me that I’ve taken 3,495% fewer steps than usual in the last month. Yesterday, my step count was 45. I miss taking photos and moving around big and interesting landscapes. Hell, I miss standing.
Another series of shots from a 2021 Amtrak trip, which were captured in Washington D.C., are contained therein this post from October 15th.
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return therefrom
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a simple plan, really, but what happens when you dare the MTA to screw your day up is where simple plans go all wrong. As mentioned in the past, a humble narrator’s normal habit is to be very early for any appointment. A 10:52 a.m. Amtrak assignation at Penn/Moynihan saw me leaving HQ at just after 9:15 a.m., and after purchasing supplies for a long train journey I was down in the station waiting for a subway by 9:35. Ample time to get there. Right?
Of course, neither the MTA nor I planned on the E sitting under the East River for a little better than 45 minutes, or me missing my Amtrak ticket because of the Subway delay. $111 later, after rapidly buying a second ticket for the last train from NYC to Pittsburgh, I was on my way. Of course, my original journey was going to be about 8 hours long, but thanks to MTA, I now had a 13 hour ride ahead of me – one which saw me riding a local service Amtrak to Washington DC and then transferring onto a Capitol Line Chicago bound train to get to Pittsburgh. Grrr.
– photos by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit in such circumstance, there’s no point in getting angry about it. I settled into a seat and stared out the window, shooting random photos out the windows. The YouTube video above has no sound, nor does the other one below. The one above depicts what I saw on the journey from NYC to Washington DC – which includes the northeast rail corridor in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
I think it was something like four and change hours on this leg. Truth be told, it’s all kind of blurry after the ninth hour.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was a brief layover of about 40 minutes in Washington. The Amtrak ticket agent who saved my day back in NYC was fantastic, I should mention. I explained my situation to her, and she barked out “you’ve got seven minutes, give me a credit card and your drivers license.” That was followed by “sign this, and do you have explosives or weapons?” She handed me back my ID and credit card with the new ticket, and said “you have four minutes to catch the train at Track 15, RUN.”
When we arrived in Washington, I debarked the train and walked outside to get some air.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the appointed time, I began making my way down to the boarding area. The direct to Pittsburgh trip from NYC, as mentioned, is about 8 hours. This new combination, on the other hand, was going to be just over 13 hours. That’s Washington D.C.’s Union Station pictured above, by the way.
Our Lady of the Pentacle would be flying out from NYC the next day and meeting me at the airport in Pittsburgh, where our plan involved renting a car from the Avis outfit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, I ended up being assigned a seat on the Capitol Line next to a nice kid who liked to chat, and as it further turned out we shared several interests. He was a youngster, so we struck a deal where I’d buy the coffee if he would go wait on line at the cafe car for it at the other side of the train. This worked out great. For me, at least.
I played with my phone, stared out the Amtrak’s window, and occasionally affixed a little foam collar to my lens so that I could gather photos of the great American landscapes Amtrak puts on display as the train moved through basically all of Pennsylvania.
– photos by Mitch Waxman
It felt like I was on the cusp of attaining enlightenment, that’s how long this trip was… Saying that, I still prefer Amtrak to flying. It wasn’t their fault, me being delayed. For once, I didn’t leave my house two and a half hours in advance of an appointment, and thereby it’s my fault.
This was June 21st, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just before midnight, Amtrak dropped me off in Pittsburgh. I still had to get to my rented room, an AirBNB found a few miles away in the Brookline section. A quick cab ride found me standing in front of the place at about 12:30 a.m. Funnily enough, about two blocks from where I was staying in Brookline, Pittsburgh has both a Flatbush and Queensboro Avenue. Brookline is really nice, but they obviously spelled it wrong. Lyn… it’s Brooklyn, not Brookline. Hicks.
More next week, at this – your traveling 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.
rolling hills
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Union Station in Washington D.C. is where Amtrak is headquartered, and is their second busiest train station with just under 5 million riders passing through it every year. It’s the southern terminus for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, and also handles several commuter rail lines as well as municipal Streetcar and Bus operations for the City of Washington D.C. (local, as opposed to the Federal side of things).
In the late 19th century, Washington was a real mess. Separate rail yards, including ones on the site of what’s now the National Mall, were operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In 1901, Penn RR and B&O RR announced that they had arrived at an agreement to partner up and build what would become Union Station. As part of their agreement, they would abandon and remove the tracks and depots which they had piecemeal installed over the last 50-70 years in Washington. The abandoned land became the National Mall which was partially described in last week’s postings here at Newtown Pentacle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Union Station was built under the supervision of Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. Congress got involved, and “S. 4825 (58th-1st session) entitled “An Act to provide a union railroad station in the District of Columbia” which was signed into law by 26th President Theodore Roosevelt on February 28, 1903. The Act created a Washington Terminal Company (jointly owned by the B&O and the PRR-controlled Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad) to construct a railroad station “monumental in character.” The budget was $4 million (roughly $98.3 million in modern valuation) but Washington is no different now than it was then, so in the end it cost $5.9 million to build the thing. Grade crossings in the City were also eliminated, which cost the taxpayers about $3 million additional smackeroos.
A bit of trivia encountered while reading up for this post is that the neighborhood that Union Station was built in used to be called Swampoodle, and it was a “lawless shanty town populated by Irish, Italians, and Negroes” where public drunkenness and other licentious behavior was common. There were livestock pens, and a collection of shops that housed tin smiths. By October 27, 1907, Swampoodle was gone, as that’s when Union Station opened for business and the B&O’s Pittsburgh Express first arrived, to much fanfare.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m told that there are 32 station tracks at Union Station. 20 of them enter from the Northeast, with the remaining 12 entering the facility via a tunnel under Capitol Hill. I’m sure there’s a lot of nuanced commentary that could offered by a rail historian or dedicated rail fan, but one prefers not to dwell too deeply on such matters unless he’s forced into it. Unlike Sunnyside Yards, I do not want to be in a position to tell you who the field engineer for the Pennsylvania Rail Road was.
It’s during the time period that this station was built that the America we know in modernity was being created. Petroleum was replacing coal, cities were enacting sanitary and health codes, foreign military adventures had become normal, and the idea that a non European country might be able to single-handily dominate and control an entire hemisphere of the planet had emerged. It was during the interval of Union Station’s construction – in 1903, specifically – that the Wright Brothers began flying. The Civil War was a bad memory that fathers and grandfathers told their children about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In 1971, the private capital version of rail road companies in the United States collapsed into bankruptcy, and President Richard Nixon nationalized the assets. Conrail was created to handle freight, Amtrak to handle inter city passenger travel, and the inner city and commuter rail businesses were allotted to a number of regional authorities – MTA, SEPTA, and so on. In the case of Union Station, the Federal Department of the Interior was put in charge of the place. Badly maintained, by 1983, it became apparent that a change was required if Union Station was to be saved. The Reagan administration transferred joint ownership of Union Station to Amtrak and the Federal Department of Transportation.
Far more renovations and rethinkings of the space occurred for me to pass on, but suffice to say that a significant and very expensive amount of work occurred here, resulting in gorgeous public areas like the grand hall – pictured above – being returned to their (somewhat) original glory. Union Station as you see it above reopened in 1988. There’s still work to be done, in both operational capability and the historic preservation spheres, and Amtrak keeps on talking about a fairly expensive vision for the future.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Great Hall/entrance is meant to be a waiting room, and when it’s time to start moving towards your train, you enter the concourse. That’s where the Amtrak counters are, as well as a series of shops and restaurants.
On a personal note, man oh man was I tired at this stage of the game. It was about three in the afternoon, and I had left HQ in Astoria at 2:30 in the morning for a 3:30 a.m. train to D.C. I had wandered out into the National Mall at just after 7 a.m. and began shooting with the characteristically brutal “hot” of Washington oppressing me. I got pics of several interesting POV’s while engaging in a frustrating Covid era search for something to drink and a place to… ahem… use the toilet. I made it all the way down to the Potomac and then had to meet up with an old friend for lunch. Sleep deprived doesn’t begin to describe my state.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was thereby pretty loopy by the time this shot was taken. Honestly, I almost forgot to take it. The next leg of my September travels would involve a 7 hour and 40 minute Amtrak ride, and I’d be getting off the train at 11:44 p.m. Before boarding, I had slurped down a huge cup of coffee at Union Station, and my intention was to use the travel time to offload the Washington shots from my camera onto the very heavy laptop I was carrying with me. There’s a whole process to this – focus check, is it worth keeping, horizon straightening, cropping, key wording – before I even start to address what the color and tonality of the final shot will be. About one out of ten shots makes it through this process, and maybe one out of five of those makes it here.
Truth is that I fell asleep about a half hour after boarding the train, and remained passed out for about six hours. Sleeping in public is so outside of my ordinary mindset that I’m still shocked about it.
Human, all too human.
“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.
hovered about
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Washington D.C. was hot and overcast when I visited. I was in town for a rail layover, the interval between NYC and my next destination, and I had about five hours of photo time to “do my thing.” As mentioned yesterday, I had “stock shots” in mind. Saying that, I also had “serendipity” figured in. What that means are unplanned shots that just jump up and say “take a picture.”
Things were starting to go south for me physically due to sleep deprivation, hunger, and thirst. There was literally no place to pee other than directly on National Monuments, which really isn’t an option for me since “respect.” Luckily, I was thirsty and sweating so profusely that having to pee stopped being a problem about two hours into the excursion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The World War 2 monument in Washington D.C. hosts a fine fountain. As mentioned yesterday, for some reason or another I was very interested in photos of fountains on this particular morning. Maybe it was the thirst.
Maybe it was that I was able to stand in the shade while taking this shot. It was HOT, I tell you, HOT! Seriously, I left NYC where it had been about 65 degrees and stepped into an 87 degree Washington D.C. super humid/sun on my back morning while I’m carrying 25-30 pounds of back packs kind of deal. Uggh. I had three bags, two camera and one full of travel luggage stuff – clothes, toiletries, all that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One continued slouching roughly towards the Potomac River and across the Federal Mall after spending some time with the WW2 monument’s fountain. This monument is a fairly recent addition to the scene hereabouts, having been created in 2004.
Jeez. The last time I was in Washington was probably thirty five years ago. I needed a shot of Congress as reference for a comic book I was drawing, and drove through with a Kodak disposable camera on my way home from a comic convention in Virginia. This particular comic, which I also wrote, centered on an invasion of Washington by a group of Aztec supervillains (they had been hiding since 1520 in Venezuela and plotting their revenge on the Europeans under the tutelage of an immortal Wizard) which was countered by an army led by an American Battle Android which ended up housing the mind of President George H.W. Bush after the Aztecs speared him one through the chest.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The physical suffering was getting pretty awful by this point, and I had descended into bargaining with myself. One more shot dude, just one more.
It’s hard to describe the weird physicality side of photography, which can often involve being on your feet for 8-12 hours at a pop. I’m always outside, whether it’s hot or cold, raining or during snow. You end up squishing yourself into all of these uncomfortable yoga poses to get behind the camera to catch some uncommon angle, or spend all your time doing calisthenics while dropping to one knee for the shot. There’s also the carrying of the gear. That camera is always in my hand. Even if I’m not shooting, I’m ready to do so.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I liked the shot of the fountain at the Museum of the American Indian presented in yesterday’s post best, as my “shot of the day.” The runner up is the one above, depicting the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool. It was shortly after finishing up this one that I broke down the tripod and returned to hand held shooting mode.
This is also when I spotted – after something like three hours – an open shop selling refreshments. I inhaled an entire bottle of yellow Gatorade in two big gulps, sucked about two pints of water out of a bottle in three gulps, and also managed to score a large cup of steaming hot black coffee. As far as needing to urinate, let’s just say that where I found myself had very few national monuments and lots of bushes. Sorted!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the bank of the Potomac River, you encounter the Arlington Memorial Bridge leading out of the Federal District and into Virginia. As the name implies, this bridge leads the Arlington National Cemetery. Despite its appearance, this is a fairly modern structure, having been built in 1932.
My time had run out, as far as the allotted period for this leg of my trip. A quick ride share trip took me to the Georgetown section of the greater Washington metro area, where a reunion with an old and dear friend occurred over a luncheon. I guzzled water, and a Bloody Mary, while we quaffed cheeseburgers and talked about Amtrak, Washington, and also caught up on where our lives were going. He eventually offered to give me a quick automotive tour of the surrounding area, with the proviso that I needed to return to Union Station for my assignation with Amtrak.
More next week, at your traveling 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.
slackened speed
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There will be a post later on in this series that focuses in solely on Washington D.C.’s Union Station, pictured above, but for today’s post – that’s what it looks like at about 7 in the morning. I was told by a friend who lives in the area, later on in the day, that the City of Washington distributes camping tents to homeless folks – which is why you see those tents in front of the station. That’s some basic humanity at work, I would offer.
Most of the street people I’ve known over the years, which is a considerable number – incidentally – worked assiduously towards ensuring their unfortunate circumstance. Addicts or Alcoholics, plain crazy or “bad crazy,” unlucky or unskilled. There isn’t a single “homeless problem,” rather there’s thousands of individual problems with the single commonality of living rough. No answer fits all of their questions.
Saying all that – empathy and kindness, and don’t judge them. Thank your lucky stars that your life has worked out differently and remember that “but for the grace of god, there go I.” Imagine walking around having to take a dump and not being allowed near a public bathroom, as a member of this proscribed class. Imagine being thirsty, or just wanting to wash your face, and seeing municipalities getting rid of public drinking fountains. Imagine living in a world where all that matters is money, and you have none. That’s what it’s like, with the extra layer of not being able to bathe and being surrounded by other people in the same circumstance who are equally desperate and hungry. So… we’re supposed to be a Christian morality influenced nation, right? Empathy. Kindness.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My goal for the morning – I had about five hours of photography time planned in before meeting up with my old friend for lunch at 12:30 – was to walk the National Mall in the direction of the Potomac River. Unfortunately for a sleep deprived but quite humble narrator, I was shlepping a week’s worth of clothing and a full camera bag. Having learned my lesson on the Burlington leg of my travels, a laptop computer had been added into the mix, which unfortunately also added about ten pounds of weight to my pack.
It was characteristically hot and humid in Washington, and the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself was staring directly at my back.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My plan for the excursion didn’t involve trying to find some unique view or anything. This is probably one of the most photographed places in human history, after all. Back in NYC, I generally don’t take the lens cap off when I’m anywhere near my alma mater, the School of Visual Arts on 23rd and 3rd. SVA has a world class photography program, and a saturation of street and architectural photos radiate out from their buildings.
Mainly what I was going for were the “stock” shots.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I made it a point of getting fancy pants with the tripod and filters at the reflecting pool leading towards the major Presidential monuments, but right about the moment I was taking this photo is when I started to physically crash. Having left Astoria at 2:30 in the morning, and boarded an Amtrak at 3:30 which I managed to nap for about 90 minutes on, then walked out into the bright and hot environs of Washington with all of the gear I was carrying… that’s where Covid ended up biting me in the butt.
Nothing was open. There were no food trucks or hot dog guys to buy a bottle of water or Gatorade from, no coffee to bolster my fading energy, nada. Nowhere to take a piss, either. Bleh. Regardless, I soldiered on, and thought about the people living in the tents back at Union Station.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian opened in 2004, and the fountain at its entrance is pictured above. The shot above ended being my “shot of the day” in Washington. For some reason, I was really into shooting fountains on this particular morning. I happened across it by accident, as I was mainly looking for a planted area with shady trees where I could divest myself of “my carry” for a few minutes and sit down. “Hot” in D.C. ain’t no joke, yo.
When I do my next bit of traveling, I’m going to be trying to find access to waterfalls in a natural setting. Something is calling me towards photographing flowing water these days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the weird things about the National Mall on this particular morning was a nearly complete lack of people there. No doubt due to Covid, but this is normally a very crowded area, even at 7-8 in the morning, with tour buses disgorging thousands of eighth graders from all around the country onto the Mall. There’s also usually a great tumult of other tourists and lookie loos. There were people there, yes, but you could describe them as being in the “dozens,” rather than “hundreds” or “thousands.” That’s why, ultimately, I was “plotzing” for a bottle of water. Why show up to vend, when there’s no one to vend to?
More tomorrow – at this – your traveling 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 