"What in hell does [Bloomberg right-hand man Dan Doctoroff] know about life in working class Queens?" (Mitch Waxman)

If you find yourself in the neighborhood -- Sheepshead Bay, that is -- follow Mitch's recommendation of the roast beef "au jus" sandwich, and be sure to have them pile on the (free) onions and extra gravy.


"Something happened during the Bloomberg era, however. 'Gubmint' jobs suddenly accrued a new status and the suits from corporate America began to talk about 'service.' They took the pay cut, accepted a position at this agency or that, and began applying the rules of business to government policy. . . .

"Thing is, most of these 'Gubmint' people aren't from 'here,' and they seem to regard New York City with a thinly veiled disgust. For example - remember when Dan Doctoroff described the Sunnyside Yards as 'a scar' he saw from his office window in Manhattan a couple of years ago? . . . [W]hat in hell does Dan Doctoroff know about life in working class Queens?"

-- Mitch Waxman, in his Newtown
Pentacle blogpost today, "leaden jars"

by Ken

In a July Newtown Pentacle post, "tinkling flames," Mitch finished up his tale of an excursion to Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay by sharing his discovery that a cherished haunt of his Canarsie youth "is still there, at the corner of Emmons and East 29th, just where I left it . . . And inside of RnR, nothing has changed since the 1980’s, except for the prices."

As I've said here a number of times, Mitch Waxman's Newtown Pentacle blog is the one blog I follow rigorously, reading every damned post, Monday through Friday. I don't know anybody who gets more mileage out of the basic blog tools of words and pictures -- a resource set, he has pointed out to me, that he has been using dating back to his former life as a creator of comic books. Keeping up with The Newtown Pentacle is made easier and more rewarding by the fact that you never know what's going to set Mitch off on any given day.

For example, in the July post "tinkling flames" Mitch finished up his account of an excursion from his current home base, Astoria, Queens, to Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay by sharing the delighted discovery that a cherished haunt of his Canarsie youth --

is still there, at the corner of Emmons and East 29th, just where I left it. And inside of RnR, nothing has changed since the 1980’s, except for the prices.

Don't think for a moment that that didn't burrow deep into my brain. And sure enough, the next time I found myself within striking distance of the shrine -- one day in September when I'd journeyed out beyond Sheepshead Bay to Plumb (or "Plum"; the point is hotly contested) Beach to participate in a beach cleanup organized by NYC H2O and one or two other environmental groups in conjunction with the National Parks Service -- I had it in mind all day that the distance from Plumb (or Plum) Beach to Roll n Roaster should be eminently walkable. And when the time came, rather than continuing to await the delayed arrival of our promised lunch (tacos, wasn't it?), you better believe I struck out for the hallowed corner of Emmons Ave. and E. 29th St. And when I got there, I remembered Mitch's report, in picture (click to enlarge) and words --

"I went with the lemonade, and the roast beef 'as jus' sandwich. If you have the opportunity, get the above. If it’s wintertime, get the cheese fries as well. Fried potatoes just don’t go with the summer heat, IMHO."

I passed on the lemonade -- and the cheese fries (it was only late September, after all) -- but indeed went for the roast beef sandwich, and while I was devouring it, by studying the changing menu video screens I discovered that at no extra charge I could have had both onions and extra gravy. I've stored that information away for the next time I'm in the vicinity, and by "vicinity" I mean to draw fairly wide boundary lines.


MOST OFTEN, OF COURSE, MITCH CAN BE FOUND
AMBLING ABOUT HIS BELOVED NEWTOWN CREEK

On land or water, camera in hand, with varying amounts of camera gear in stowed in the bag he's schlepping. I've reported frequently on Mitch's wanderings, and you can sample those reports as well as the photographs that accompanied them by hitting the tag below.

Which brings us to today's post, "leaden jars," in which we encounter Mitch in his "outer borough" voice -- a Brooklyn lad now transplanted to western Queens, which is now undergoing rapid transformation at the hands of moneyed Manhattan-based elites who don't know or care anything about it except that it's one of the city's current best places to enrich their kind beyond most of our wildest imaginings, without any concern for the people who live there now -- or how the rich people being deposited there are going to live without any serious infrastructure investment to make life there livable.

The story is told so elegantly and powerfully that I wouldn't dare presume to paraphrase or edit it.

Failure is often the only option, in today's post.


- photo by Mitch Waxman [click to enlarge -- Ed.]

One has been on a holy tear of late on the real estate development and gentrification situation here in Western Queens. I've been pissing off a bunch of people I know in government by doing so, and have received the usual "who do you think you are?" accusations and chides. My standard response is "I'm a citizen, and how dare you act like some sort of landed gentry towards me when ultimately all you've got is a government job." It was common sense when I was growing up that taking a government job (as opposed to working for a corporation) was all about the security and pension benefits. What you didn't get in terms of annual salary today, you'd get back in the long term during retirement. In my neighborhood - DSNY was considered a good career bet, as well as becoming a teacher, as they had the strongest Unions with the best "bennys." My pal "Special Ed"'s dad told us all that we should seriously consider becoming court bailiffs.

Of course, that's my "working class" outlook at work, and back then the gub'mint wasn't the pathway one took in pursuance of eventually securing a high paid corporate consultancy job.


- photo by Mitch Waxman [click to enlarge -- Ed.]

Something happened during the Bloomberg era, however. "Gubmint" jobs suddenly accrued a new status and the suits from corporate America began to talk about "service." They took the pay cut, accepted a position at this agency or that, and began applying the rules of business to government policy. Now, don't get me wrong, these are pretty clever folks and the amount of brain (and Rolodex) power they brought with them to lower Manhattan is impressive. Problem being, they have an inherently profit based modus operandi due to their experiences in the "real world." The "Gubmint" ain't supposed to turn a profit.

Thing is, most of these "Gubmint" people aren't from "here," and they seem to regard New York City with a thinly veiled disgust.

For example - remember when Dan Doctoroff described the Sunnyside Yards as "a scar" he saw from his office window in Manhattan a couple of years ago? Mr. Doctoroff was born in Newark, but grew up in Birmingham, Michigan and then attended Harvard University. A suburb of Detroit, the demographics of Birmingham are 96% Caucasian (according to the 2000 census), and a mere 1.6% of the population of Birmingham lives below the poverty line. The median income for a household in that city in 2000 was $80,861, and the median income for a family was $110,627. Not exactly East New York, or the South Bronx, or Astoria. Mr. Doctoroff is famously Michael Bloomberg's right hand man and the fellow who ran Bloomberg LLC while his boss was Mayor, and is accordingly quite affluent. He's the very definition of the "one percent" and a leading member of the "elite." I don't imagine Mr. Doctoroff goes fishing in his penny jar for bagel money when it's the Thursday before payday, has never had to "borrow from Peter to pay Paul," or lived in financial fear that the City DOB might impoverish him with an unexpected order to repair or replace his concrete sidewalk.

In other words, what in hell does Dan Doctoroff know about life in working class Queens?

Doctoroff and his cohorts created the term "affordable housing" which the current Mayor has made his own. The question often asked is "affordable by who"? The Citizens Budget Commission boiled that down in this post from last year. The upshot of it is that in order to create this so called "affordable" apartment stock, which is unaffordable to the low income people it's meant to serve, the rent on "market" rate apartments actually has to go up to cover the cost. This redistribution of wealth hits the middle and working class on two fronts - higher monthly rents, and the application of their tax dollars to subsidize the real estate development which reluctantly includes the so called "affordable" units.


- photo by Mitch Waxman [click to enlarge -- Ed.]

Personal experience from having actually grown up in NYC suggests that whomever the politicians and planners set out to "help" end up getting hurt.

Having grown up in what would be considered a "low income" family under modern terms, we members of the Waxman clan migrated to the outer edges of the City (Brooklyn's Canarsie section) where housing was found that we could afford. That's where relative affluence and dire poverty comingled, and created a culture. This was possible due to a preexisting infrastructure of subways and highways that allowed egress to and from the commercial center in Manhattan, but there were still plenty of jobs to be had locally. Manufacturing, commercial, shops. If you played your cards right, you could earn a living and never once have to go into the City. That's changed, and the ongoing loss of this manufacturing and commercial side of the working class economy is excaberated by this affordable housing craze which perceives any large footprint lot as being a potential development site.

If a building went up in the 1970's or 80's, which included low income housing, that had a separate entrance or "poor door" there would have been bloody riots.

The reason for that is the City planners and "Gubmint" officialdom were mostly native New Yorkers who lived in and were loyal to the neighborhoods they oversaw, and who understood that "it's not all about Manhattan." Doctoroff and his acolytes see the City as the solution and not the problem. The looming infrastructure crisis this rapid development is causing will impoverish the City. A century ago, when the newly consolidated City of Greater New York was being similarly developed - the politicians built the subways and sewers first, then they sold off or awarded the adjoining properties at bargain prices to their cronies like Cord Meyer and Fred Trump.

The infrastructure investments made between 1898 and 1940 allowed NYC to grow beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Unfortunately, these days we are doing the opposite, and allowing the buildings to be erected first. The bill for all of the municipal machinery will come after the population loading is finished.

I GNASH MY TEETH WHEN SUPPOSEDLY SERIOUS
PUNDITS SUGGEST THAT THE BILLION-DOLLAR LOSER . . .

. . . has staked out a serious position with his stunning insight that our system is broken. The system is broken, of course, but nobody has done more to break it or to profit from the breakage. Oh, he might have in mind some shifting of the exact cast of 1-percent characters destined to pillage and plunder the economy in a Trump administration. But is there anything in his grotesque lifetime's worth of words or deeds to suggest that he has any interest in un-breaking the system, or in fact doing anything but exploit the gullibility of actual victims of the breakage in order to further service his seemingly limitless greed and boundless ego?

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Remembering 9/14 (that's right, 9/14) with the one and only Mitch Waxman, who muses on "the American way"

Mitch writes: "When I was out wandering around on the 11th in Long Island City, it was somewhat forefront in my mind that I wanted to get an uncommon shot of the Freedom Tower from Newtown Creek, which is why I was wandering around in spots which are normally avoided due to fear of arrest for trespassing. The shot above overlooks the DB Cabin railroad bridge and the mouth of Dutch Kills, incidentally." Note 1 World Trade Center -- once, but no longer, aka the Freedom Tower -- popping out of the Manhattan skyline in the background. [All photos by Mitch; click to enlarge.]

by Ken

Especially since my Wednesday-Friday-Sunday DWT schedule had me posting on 9/11, I gave a fair amount of thought to some sort of 9/11-themed post, only to decide that, even with a deadline looming, I didn't have anything sufficiently post-worthy to pull it off -- not even in the week when I finally paid a visit to the One World Observatory, occupying the top three floors of the finally-open-for-business One World Trade Center (which somewhere along the way lost its original designation of "Freedom Tower." I gather the point along the way was when the developers figured out that it would be a lot easier to rent out a building called One World Trade Center than one called Freedom Tower.)

So I've had a ball today with the Newtown Pentacle post by my intrepid NYC-gadding pal Mitch Waxman, titled "fear him," which features an assortment of predictably sensational photos he took on a rare Sunday of solo gadding on this 9/11. (He explains that, while he does frequently get to wander solo during the week, more often than not on the weekends he's leading tours or participating in other public events.)

It turns out that on Sunday Mitch was assailed by a quasi-biblical plague:

I was attacked by friggin Grasshoppers while in pursuit of some of the images in today's post. Grasshoppers, as in a biblical plague like swarm of giant bugs flying at me with murder on their minds -- a gang of grasshoppers in friggin Long Island City. . . .


It was while I was crouched down to get the shot above [which you can click on to enlarge -- Ed.] that the Grasshoppers grew angry at me, and hundreds of chitin clad bullets suddenly erupted from the brush. While I was flailing about in the buzzing crowd, a cramp developed in my left arm and one of my "spells" came upon me. I must've been laying on the tracks crying for a good half hour, cursing the fact that I hadn't decided on studio photography rather than urban landscape. The horror...

For a reason I'll explain in a moment, today Mitch has taken to looking back at what we might call This Day in History, 9/14, sprinkling these remembrances through the post:

On this day in 326 A.D., Emperor Constantine the Great's mom Helena (Helena was the Augusta Imperatrix) is said to have recovered a piece of the True Cross in Palestine, as well as finding the site of the burning bush and a few other odds and ends. She's a Saint now, the Augusta Imperatrix.

In 1741, George Frideric Handel's oratorio "Messiah" was completed on this day.

In 1812, an antichrist named Napoleon marched the Grand Armée of France into the City of Moscow on September 14th.

In 1901, President William McKinley died. The President was shot by an anarchist on Sept. 6th, and it was gangrene that ended up doing him in. McKinley's Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, succeeded him.

On Sept. 14th in 1959, a Soviet built probe called "Luna 2" crashed into the moon, making it the first man made object to reach the satellite.

In 1715, the French monk Dom Pérignon died on September 14th, and in 1836 - so did Aaron Burr. In the United States, September 14th is "National Eat a Hoagie day."

So what's got Mitch chronicling all those 9/14s past? Here again let me put together two paragraphs from Mitch's post, which you'll not take him back to 9/11 itself:

It occurs, since these shots were largely collected on the 11th of September, that there are certain calendrical markers which loom large in the collective mind. Unfortunately, these events tend to reflect recent history, whereas other moments which were once considered to be of maximum importance are forgotten. September 11th will be remembered for the events of 2001, of course, but what about September the 14th? . . .

Even on the day of the attacks, I mentioned to the little gaggle of refugees who had gathered at my home office in Upper Manhattan that it would be just a matter of two to three decades before Sept. 11th became a legal holiday of national remembrance like Labor Day. Within five to six decades, it would lose its significance, like Labor Day or Veterans Day have. Future generations would figure their vacations around the week between Labor Day and what will likely be called Remembrance Day, and there would be sales at retailers. It’s crass, but that’s the American way.

Yessir, that's the American way. And at the 15-year mark, Mitch's vision seems to be taking shape pretty much on schedule.



A new take on a favorite Long Island City-scape of Mitch's: Below grade in the foreground, a Long Island Rail Road train emerges from its tunnel under the East River, while overhead the subway viaduct waits for no. 1 7 [thanks for correction, D!] trains heading toward or coming from their tunnel not far from the LIRR one, and everywhere else in the photo the new supertall LIC skyscape takes shape. [Again, click to enlarge.]

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Catching up with Mitch Waxman: "If you see something, say something" -- but what of it?

"If you see something, say something"? Just another day on the platform of the 46th Street station of the R train, in Long Island City, Queens. But wait, what's that silver kitchen-trash-can thing, and what's it doing sitting unattended on the platform?

by Ken

I assume folks outside NYC are also told constantly, "If you see something, say something." But certainly we NY-ers have heard it a lot in the post-9/11 world. But what happens, you may wonder, when you see something and you do say something? Not for the first time, our old pal Mitch Waxman had occasion to ask this question, and not for the first time he wasn't exactly crazy about what he found out.

I've been looking for an opportunity since I resumed blogging to catch up with Mitch Waxman, that inveterately cantankerous man-on-the-move-with-a-camera, usually found trudging through the precincts of Western Queens, including the Brooklyn side of his beloved Newtown Creek ("the Newtown Creek," as Mitch and other close personal aficionados of "the" Newtown Creek would put it) -- but also anyplace in the NYC metro area within hailing distance of water. And even, when dire necessity dictates it, in the underground precincts of the subway system, precincts he doesn't visit except under the duress of circumstance.

As I've said any number of times here, Mitch's Monday-Friday Newtown Pentacle blog is my only blogorific "must read." I love the way Mitch trains his formidable powers of observation and the way his wide-ranging mind processes all that material, and I don't know of anyone who makes richer, more revealing use of those basic blog tools: pictures and worse. As I've also mentioned here, when I made that observation to Mitch, he immediately connected it to his history as a comic-book creator, using those very same tools, pictures and words.

The pictures, of course, are peerless, and even for someone as photographically inept as yours truly there's fascination in the virtual photography clinic Mitch frequently includes in his blogposting. I imagine that for actual photo bugs his technical tips must be a treasurable resource. And the words, well, nobody looks at our fair city with quite the betrayed passion that Mitch does.

There was a splendid Newtown Pentacle post a couple of weeks ago, "reptilian devils," in which Mitch went off as only he can go off on worldly conspiracy-seers, built around his charmingly documented conviction that the standard suspects are far too inept to be masterminding and actually carrying out these grandiose webs of secrets. "I want to believe. The world would be so much more interesting if all the nutty and paranoid stuff was true. . . . Have you actually interacted with the government? Try it out, and that should sunder all notions of the 'hidden hand.' " Dark and hilarious -- vintage Mitch.

Then there's today's post, "tried every." It's not a post where the pictures loom as large as they often do on Newtown Pentacle -- this is more of a "story" post -- but still the pictures are gorgeous, aren't they? (You can see them larger-size onsite, with links to even larger sizes.)

tried every

I mentioned this over the weekend to my Facebook peeps, now it’s your turn…


– photo by Mitch Waxman

An old friend of mine recently hit a bit of a health crisis. Surgery ensued, and she’s having a bit of trouble with the purely existential part of her life during recovery – food shopping, laundry, the lifting and carrying sort of stuff. Our Lady of the Pentacle and I volunteered to help her out, and last Saturday our plan involved an afternoon trip to Hunters Point to help out with “whatever.” Before you ask: a) my old friend doesn’t live in one of the new buildings (it’s one of those century old and quite rickety walk up jobs on Jackson where she has lived for literally decades), and b) there was no connection between Court Square and the IND station at Queens Plaza due to maintenance work so we took the R from Astoria and hoofed it the rest of the way.

That’s not the story, though, that’s just the setup.

[SEE THE PHOTO ATOP THIS POST]

Now, this was Fourth of July weekend, of course. The news was abuzz with the news that NYPD was operating a full scale and City wide security operation, and that Hunters Point in particular was going to be focused on due to the gathering at the waterfront to watch the fireworks. I call it the Homeland Security Kabuki show, for various reasons. Pretty standard stuff, in the age of the Terror Wars.

What wasn’t standard was the steel cylinder, which appeared to be some sort of garbage can, sitting on the 46th street subway platform. Having “seen something” a humble narrator thereupon went over to the MTA Station Agent housed in the booth and let her know that the incongruous item was there. She indicated that the authorities would be alerted, and I boarded the incoming R train having “said something.”

As a note, when I arrived at Queens Plaza, I walked over to the NYPD office at the end of the platform and informed the on duty officer of the situation – and also showed him the picture positioned above. He seemed concerned about it.

I was thanked and told that it would be investigated.


– photo by Mitch Waxman

Of course, the 114th precinct being what it is, when Our Lady of the Pentacle and I returned to the 46th street station some three and change hours later… the curious cylinder was still there and clearly unmolested or investigated. That’s when I posted about my experience, and made sure that our local Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer was tagged in my missive. He let me know that he had contacted the precinct and that it would be dealt with. In my neighborhood, JVB is the motive force of all things, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, the council member has a unique ability to twist the dials and move the levers of the municipal machinery.

The thing about Queens which drives me absolutely mad is why it is that when someone “sees something” and “says something,” you still need a high government official to cajole the freaking cops into doing their damn jobs. As far as the MTA station agent goes, she probably didn’t have the union certifications for dialing the phone.

I think it’s the International Brotherhood of Button Pushers, Local 5, who does that. You also need three Union carpenters on duty, but you always need three carpenters for some reason.

WANDERING WITH MITCH

Read more »

Urban Gadabout: Return to Queens's historic First Calvary Cemetery

Plus: Where was Nancy Reagan born?


In Calvary Cemetery, Long Island City (Queens), with a familiar skyline in the distance. Photo by Mitch Waxman (click to enlarge).

All I need is an angle, an angle, an angle.
And some timing, timing.
All I need is an angle, an angle, an angle.
It's the angles and the timing that count.

-- Hubie Cram, in "Take a Job," from Do-Re-Mi (lyrics by
Betty Comden and Adolph Green, music by Jule Styne)

Nancy Walker (Kay Cram), Phil Silvers (Hubie Cram); Original Broadway Cast recording, Lehman Engel, cond. RCA, recorded December 1960

by Ken

Forget the angles. Just now my timing is, shall we say, off.

I got all excited last month when my pal Mitch Waxman mentioned, during a walking tour around the Dutch Kills tributary of his beloved Newtown Creek, that he was going to be doing a walk in First Calvary Cemetery, the original section of the now-mammoth Calvary Cemetery, on the northern shore of the Creek, in the Blissville neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens. Mitch had been enthusing mightily about First Calvary on his Newtown Pentacle blog, in a post called "ordinary interpretation" (with subsequent posts: "sepulchral adorations" and "obvious empiricism). As he's written:

It's the largest chunk of 'green infrastructure' found along the Newtown Creek as well as serving as the final resting place of literally millions of Roman Catholic New Yorkers. It's part of the firmament of LIC, and a significant touchstone for the history of 19th century NYC.

So I was gung-ho for the tour. But as soon as I was able to check my calendar, I discovered that I was conflicted out. Rats! But that's old business, which I wrote about (at the above link). Subsequently, even before Mitch announced it himself on the blog, I got excited all over to see that he was doing Calvary again -- this coming Saturday, October 3, at 11am -- for New York Obscura Society (the local arm of Atlas Obscura), with whom he does periodic tours, as he does with Brooklyn Brainery. (It was on account of Mitch, in fact, that I first learned about both outfits. I've now done a bunch of events with both.)

This time I approached my calendar gingerly, and found what I thought would be a tight fit but a perfect match: That same day I was already registered for a Municipal Art Society tour of Transmitter Brewing -- located under the Pulaski Bridge over Newtown Creek, on the Queens side. That's not exactly a stone's throw from Calvary up the creek, but it's about as neat a pairing as you could hope for. The timing might be a little tight getting from one to the other, but it was certainly workable, based on the 2pm start time I had entered on my calendar.

Unfortunately I had entered the Transmitter Brewing time wrong, as I discovered right after I registered for the Calvary tour. It starts at noon, not 2pm. The Obscura Society folks have been kind enough to refund my registration, and I'll have to wait for another opportunity to do Calvary with Mitch. But if you're free Saturday, you don't have to wait:

Flanked by the concrete devastations of western Queens’ industrial zone and backdropped by an omnipresent Manhattan skyline, Calvary Cemetery is a historical smorgasbord and aesthetic wonderland of sculptural monuments.

Founded in 1848 by the Roman Catholic Church, Calvary Cemetery is the resting place of over six million dead, among them Senators, Governors, Businessmen, Mafiosos, most of Tammany Hall in fact - and on a certain hill - an heir to the throne of Ireland. The Roman Catholic Church continues to upkeep and maintain its administration over the cemetery to this day. In addition to its original purpose, Calvary also serves the City of New York as a significant parcel of Green Infrastructure, a green oasis in the middle of the Newtown Creek's industrial zone which drinks up billions of gallons of water during storms.

Join Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman for a walk upon the rolling hills of what was once known to Queens as Laurel Hill. We'll visit the 300 year old headstones of the colonial era Alsop cemetery - which is uniquely a Protestant cemetery encapsulated by a Catholic one - see the memorial to NYC's Civil War soldiers laid down by Boss Tweed and the Tammany elite, and one dedicated to the "fighting 69th."

Meeting Place: North east corner of Greenpoint and Review Avenue, nearby the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge in Blissville.

Details: We will be exiting the Cemetery through the main gates at Greenpoint and Gale Avenue, nearby Borden Avenue and the Long Island Expressway. Afterwards, discussion will continue informally over food and drinks at the Botany Bay Publick House, a bar and restaurant at the corner of Greenpoint and Bradley Avenues.

Dress and pack appropriately for hiking and the weather. Closed-toe shoes are highly recommended. Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the end of the walk.

The price is $30. For information and ticket purchase, go here.


WHERE WAS NANCY REAGAN BORN?

I thought I was going to get to this in tonight's post, but perhaps it's better to deal with it separately (perhaps tomorrow, perhaps not). It's not a trick question, and if you look it up, you'll probably get an answer that's correct as far as it goes but that doesn't go quite as far as one might have reason to expect. It's kind of as if Mrs. R has been hiding something all these years. (Speaking of which, just how many years has it been? This is another Nancy Reagan question that's just a little tricky.)

Stay tuned.

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Somewhere between spooky and romantic: images of Queens in the dark

We're looking at "the Long Island Expressway’s 106 foot trussed apex over the Dutch Kills tributary of the fabled Newtown Creek," according to Mitch Waxman, who took this picture (click to enlarge), which is included in today's Newtown Pentacle post, "could furnish."

by Ken

I love this picture -- not least, I think, for the upside-down reflection of the LIE overpass, which is more vivid, I guess being nearer, than the right-side-up original, except for the cool starburst lights adorning the real thing, but their creekly reflection not so much. Then there's the mind-confounding combination of subject matters and moods. Is it concretely imposing? Alluringly mysterious? Starkly romantic? Yes, and dark too!

"This happens every so often to a humble narrator," Mitch explains in the blogpost "could furnish."

Circadian rhythms short circuit somehow, and a distinctly nocturnal phase occurs. Desire to record scenes observed remains, however, and specialized kit is required. Queens looks so interesting at night, as the concrete devastations are generally well lit.

Mitch notes that today, like yesterday, while we've been sleeping, he's been "out working." In yesterday's post, "joined to," he reported: "One seems to have caught the “night shooting” bug again, and my various bits of camera support have been dusted off," and led off with this shot, "captured one recent evening during a thunderstorm," made with a 15-second interval. "NYC never looks better than it does during the rain," he noted. (There was also a gorgeous shot of a thunderstorming sky which he described as "cloud porn" -- "it doesn’t deliver anything other than a puerile thrill and doesn’t say much.")

Today's nocturnal post features two striking shots in addition to the LIE overpass up top -- the first featuring more spectral reflections in Dutch Kills, then this one of the overpass over Sunnyside Yards for the No. 7 subway line ("notorious for its multitudinous and unexplained delays"), newly risen from underground, atop which he chanced to find an actual train "just sitting there waiting for a humble narrator to record it." (Again, click to enlarge.)



In both yesterday's and today's posts Mitch provides some interesting technical notes on how a number of the photos were shot.

"GLITTERING REALMS," SUNDAY WITH MITCH

A Mitch's-eye view of Greenpoint, Brooklyn

I had intended to toss in a plug here for Mitch's Brooklyn Brainery walking tour this Sunday, "Glittering Realms: A Walking Tour of Greenpoint," Greenpoint being the hunk of land on the Brooklyn (i.e., southern) side of the mouth of Mitch's beloved Newtown Creek. I have multiple schedule conflicts for Sunday, but clicked through to get the link on the Brooklyn Brainery website, I discovered that the tour is all filled up -- though you can get on the waiting list. (Don't say I suggested it, but since the tour description does include the meeting point, if a person happened to show up there at the appointed time flashing the appropriate amount of cash, who's to say that something might not be worked out?)

Let this be a lesson to us all to keep track of Mitch's upcoming activities via the update at the end of each day's Newtown Pentacle post. Meanwhile, take a look at the tour description, and keep it in mind as you watch for it to be offered again.

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Urban Gadabout: Exploring Calvary Cemetery and the L train -- plus fall schedules from the NY Transit Museum and MAS

First Calvary Cemetery occupies a commanding position on the Queens side of the borough's western border with Brooklyn. (Click to enlarge.) Mitch Waxman will be leading a Calvary walking tour on Saturday, August 22, 11am to (approx.) 1pm.

by Ken

Awhile back Mitch Waxman devoted a Newtown Pentacle post to Queens's First Calvary Cemetery ("ordinary interpretation," August 5), when he called it "my favorite place in Queens." That post has taken such root in my head that I was delighted when he mentioned during his recent walking tour of Newtown Creek's Dutch Kills tributary that he'd cleared a date for a walking tour there: Saturday, August 22. The date left me with a bad feeling, and sure enough, when I was able to check my calendar, I was reminded that that's already my date from scheduling hell.

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW, ON THE 22ND --

I'll first be LIRR-ing it out to Port Washington, on the eastern shore of Long Island's Manhasset Bay, for a 2pm "Great Gatsby Boat Tour" with the Art Deco Society of New York, which you better believe I signed up for as soon as I saw the announcement. (And wisely so. ADSNY has a waiting list for the event.) I have been to Port Washington, and fairly recently; it was our lunch stop on a bus tour with Justin Ferate, en route between visits to two noteworthy Long Island estates. But I've never been out on a boat in Manhasset Bay.

Where things get crazy is that from there I absolutely must catch the 4:39pm train out of Port Washington, which, if everything goes right, should get me to the LIRR Woodside (Queens) station in time to get to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria for a 6pm screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm. (Lawrence is also being screened at 4pm Sunday the 23rd, but in order to do that I would have to leave an MAS tour of Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza with Francis Morrone after an hour or even less.)

If I were really crazy, I could top the day off with a wild overnight (10pm-1am) Obscura Society of New York outing to "a hidden Chinatown den of iniquity" for "The Cheaters Party -- A School for Scoundrels," where participants will be given demonstrations in the art of card-playing sleight of hand, including, yes, full-fledged cheating, with opportunities (and, yes, permission) to try out this newly acquired, er, skill, not to mention indulging an open bar dispensing "Rat Pack-inspired cocktails"! Actually, what's holding me back isn't so much a lack of craziness as a lack of any known gambling instinct. And even that open bar isn't the lure it might once have been. Also, music is promised, and I would expect that to be both deafening and horrible.)

First Calvary Cemetery, with a view! Photo by Mitch (click to enlarge)

By the way, Mitch -- wearing his hat as official historian of the Newtown Creek Alliance -- will also be participating in a pair of Open House New York boat trips up his "beloved" creek, along with NCA program manager Will Elkins and representatives of the NYC Department of Environmental Preservation (and I think I read somewhere of the EPA) on Thursday, September 3, at 5pm and 7pm. Scroll down to "Newtown Creek Boat Tour" on the OHNY programs page, or go directly to the ticket and booking info.


"LIFE ON THE L TRAIN" WITH JACK EICHENBAUM

The L train has a fascinating history -- and a booming present and near-term future, as ridership has been undergoing huge increases. (Click to enlarge.)

As regular readers are aware, one of my favorite genres of NYC tours is Jack Eichenbaum's day-long single-subway line explorations -- most famously his "World of the #7 Train" (the Flushing line), which he describes as his "signature" tour, and which he does pretty much every year. Over the length of the route, Jack has picked out half a dozen stops as sites for mini-walking tours of neighborhoods that not only are enormously different from one another but have rich and various histories unto themselves, all scheduled around a long lunch stop at the Flushing end of the line, with all the dining options of Flushing's flourishing Chinatown and Koreatown.

I was delighted finally to get to "do" the #7 train again in June, at which time Jack noted that by the next time he does this tour, it will undergo major changes, starting with the incorporation of the under-construction extension of the #7 from Times Square to the Javits Center at 11th Avenue and 34th Street. (Completion dates have come and gone fairly regularly since the days when then-Mayor Bloomberg liked to terrorize NYC Transit with phone calls demanding to know when it would be done. Mayor Mike really didn't have much interest in improved transit as such, but he wound up deeply immersed not just in the #7 expansion but in the massive East Side Access project that will bring Long Island Rail Road passengers into Grand Central Terminal -- because they're both crucial to multi-zillion-dollar area redevelopments, something our billionaire ex-mayor was very interested in.)

Jack does other subway lines too, though, in that same basic format: usually a half-dozen mini-walking tours along the route, visiting enormously contrasting neighborhoods with even more contrasted histories. In recent years I've had the pleasure of joining Jack in explorations of the J line, which runs from Lower Manhattan across to Brooklyn and on into Queens, and Brooklyn's Brighton Line (now the Q), the descendant of one of the original steam railroads to the resort haven of Coney Island. During the June "World of the #7 Train," Jack announced that he would soon be doing the L train, which actually functions as a crosstown subway in Manhattan, running across 14th Street from Eighth Avenue to First Avenue, then under the East River to Brooklyn's Williamsburg and Bushwick and onward, till it comes to rest in Canarsie, within bus reach of the shore of Jamaica Bay.

Somehow I missed Jack's announcement of the actual date -- Saturday, October 17 -- and by the time I learned the date, I had a schedule conflict, and now that MAS tour prices have increased to $20 for members ($30 for non-members), I'm not as quick to blow off the tour I've registered for as I might once have been. (Besides, I want to do that tour!) So it looks like I'm going to miss:

LIFE ALONG THE L TRAIN
Saturday. October 17, 10am-5:30pm

The L train has a complex history: first as a steam railroad line, later as an elevated BRT train, eventually integrated into the subway system with its expansion to Eighth Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930’s. Beginning in the 1950’s the L train has stimulated artist-spearheaded gentrification along its route. We’ll explore the West Village and meatpacking district— including a portion of the new Highline Park— and then on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood, noting the status of transformation in each of these neighborhoods.

This tour is limited to 25 participants and requires registration by check of $42/pp to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St #6C, Flushing, NY 11354. For a prospectus and any questions, contact Jack at jaconet@aol.com

These days, owing in good part to its Williamsburg (and now Bushwick) connection, the L train is the city's fastest-growing, ridership-wise, and has gone from being a stepchild of the system to its proudest prodigy, with much-improved service finally catching up to the dramatic increase in use.


NEW SCHEDULES FROM MAS AND THE TRANSIT
MUSEUM -- AND SOME SURPRISES FROM MAS

I should mention too that both the New York Transit Museum and the Municipal Art Society have announced and begun booking tours for September and October.

As noted, the fall MAS offerings come with the price increase (I mentioned earlier, from $15 to $20 for members, and from $20 to $30 for non-members). On the plus side, tour registrants now get nearest-transit information for the meeting point (not exactly an innovation, since this used to be included in all tour descriptions) and also -- and this is new, and most welcome -- approximate tour end-point information.

All of this was mentioned in a covering e-mail to MAS members. What was not mentioned, and I didn't in fact learn until I registered for five tours that I knew I wanted to do and didn't want to get closed out of, is that tours have been shrunk from two hours to 90 minutes.

Of course we don't buy tours by the minute, but if we did, then the member price has increased not by 33 percent but by 78 percent, and the non-member price not by 50 percent but by a full 100 percent. It's not the price that concerns me, at least not so much, as what represents a radical change in format. A 90-minute tour isn't just shorter than a 120-minute one; it's really a different animal, especially when you consider how long it takes any tour to actually "get going." And while there are undoubtedly tour subjects that are better-suited to a 90-minute format, and would have to be padded out to fill two hours, a two-hour tour that was a proper two-hour tour to begin with is probably going to have to be reconceived to make the cut, and I can't help thinking shrunk in ways other than just time.

In fact, the two-hour format, which has become a much more rigidly enforced time limit since I began doing MAS tours not that many years ago, was really more like two and a half hours back then. I gather, though, that MAS received enough complaints to start cracking the whip about the time limit. This boggles my mind, that people would complain about getting more than they paid for. But there you are.

Clearly the people in charge believe that this is what people want. (I'm pretty sure that I don't count among the "people" they're concerned about.) And the September-October list contains lots of interesting-looking offerings -- I jotted down 17 tours I was interested in, after allowing for known schedule conflicts. As I mentioned, I've already registered for five, and it was when I downloaded my tour info that I discovered that what I registered for are 90-minute tours. Suddenly I found myself thinking that maybe the five tours I've registered for will do it for me.

Like I said, at some point we should probably talk about this. But not now.

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As Mitch Waxman prepares to tramp around his beloved Newtown Creek, we look at a blogpost that shows what blogposts can do

As recently as two years ago, when binary_bob took the top photo, posted on Reddit (click to enlarge), the once-mighty but long-doomed-following-abandonment Domino Sugar plant on Brooklyn's once-industrial waterfront still retained a large measure of its grandeur. The lower image, is a rendering of the redevelopment plan (click to enlarge), courtesy of SHoP Architects, looking east and slightly southward, with the Williamsburg Bridge at the right. Quick: Can you find the refinery building itself?

"One cannot help but drop his jaw whenever the former Havemeyer or Domino Sugar plant site comes into view. It is being redeveloped as a residential structure – more luxury condos for the children of the rich to dwell within. The question of what will happen to these structures when NYC slides backwards into an era of degeneracy and decay is one few ask."

-- from Mitch Waxman's Monday Newtown Pentacle post, "last stages"

by Ken

All week I've been meaning to talk a bit about our pal Mitch Waxman's Monday Newtown Pentacle post, "last stages," which seems to me a textbook-worthy demonstration of what the blog format can do when it's crackling. A blogpost, after all, has two fundamental resources: pictures and words. (Videos seem to me for the most part less a resource than a brain-draining abomination.) And Mitch has a way with both. You may recall that he's a compulsive NYC urban wanderer and photographer with a deep connection to place and time.

In terms of "place," he's based in Astoria, Queens, and along the way has developed a special connection to legendarily pollluted Newtown Creek, which forms the western part of the boundary between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and which once was the industrial heartland not just of the New York City but of the U.S.A., which after all is how it got so polluted. So before we get to that blogpost, I thought I would mention that there are two immediately upcoming opportunities to take advantage of his obsession with his "beloved" Newtown Creek for anyone who might be in the New York City area tomorrow (August 2 -- kind of late notice on this one, I know; sorry!) and/or next Saturday (August 8), when Mitch is doing two of his signature Newtown Creek-related tours:

THE INSALUBRIOUS VALLEY OF THE NEWTOWN CREEK
Bushwick and Maspeth walking tour

NEWTOWN CREEK ALLIANCE
Sunday, August 2, 10am-12:30pm

Join Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman for walk through the industrial heartlands of New York City and along the Newtown Creek. Following the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens, we will be exploring the colonial, industrial, and environmental history of the borderland communities. We will encounter century old movable bridges, visit the remains of a 19th century highway, and explore two of the lesser known tributaries of the troubled Newtown Creek watershed. For the vulgarly curious, Conrad Wissell's Dead Animal and Night Soil wharf will be described.

Meet up at the corner of Grand street and Morgan Avenue in Brooklyn. Map: https://goo.gl/psdEEO The L train stops nearby at Bushwick Avenue and Grand Street, and the Q54 and Q59 bus lines stop nearby as well. Check MTA.info the morning of for last minute transit changes.



Be prepared for rough terrain and possible heavy truck traffic. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking and hot weather. Closed-toe shoes are highly recommended. Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk.

13 STEPS AROUND DUTCH KILLS
Long Island City walking tour

ATLAS OBSCURA
Saturday, August 8, 10am-1pm

In 13 steps, Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman will be showing us the then and now of Dutch Kills tributary, once known as the "workshop of the United States."

A central maritime artery of Long Island City, Dutch Kills is surrounded by hundreds of factory buildings, titan rail yards, and crossed by century old bridges - and it's found just a few blocks away from Queens Plaza. During this three hour tour, we will cover three miles of Brooklyn and Queens to see where the industrial revolution actually happened. Bring your camera, as the tour will be revealing an incredible landscape along this section of the troubled Newtown Creek Watershed.

Be prepared for rough terrain and possible heavy truck traffic. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking and for weather. Closed-toe shoes are highly recommended. Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk.

Meet up at the Albert E. Short Triangle park found at the corner of Jackson Avenue and 23rd Street in Long Island City, Queens. This is the Court Square MTA station, and served by the 7, G, and M lines. Additionally, the Q39 and B62 buses have nearby stops. Drivers are encouraged to leave their vehicles near the Pulaski Bridge in either Greenpoint or Long Island City.

A "QUINTESSENTIALLY MITCH" TAKE ON THE
EMERGING BROOKLYN-QUEENS WATERFRONT

Now about that blogpost. I was talking a moment ago about Mitch's sense of "place, and for this post, our pal Mitch Waxman he was ensconced in one of his recently favorite places for wandering, the East River Ferry, taking some great shots of what's left of the once-teeming working waterfront of New York City's East River. Note that he hastens to clarify what he means by "a working waterfront," which is to say one "that is engaged in the production of something other than artisanal pickles."

However, he notes that observing "the modern day East River bums me out." And the quote at the top of this post is Mitch deep in bumnation, contemplating the finally-taking-place transformation of the Domino Sugar plant in Williamsburg, just north of the Williamsburg Bridge. Here are two photos he took, one with the bridge and one without (click to enlarge):





Not long ago, Open House New York -- as part of a new series, "Projects in Planning," which aims to "explore the design and planning process of a single project during its early stages of development," to give us a window on the process of a major development project still in the development stage -- offered members a presentation by Vishaan Chakrabarti of SHoP Architects on the "Domino Sugar Refinery Redevelopment" (see the photo above), for which redevelopment plans have been kicking around almost since the plant was shut down in 2004 Here was the description (scroll way down, to April 8, in the "Recent Programs" section of the OHNY programs page):

OHNY members are invited to a presentation of SHoP Architects' master plan for the redevelopment of Brooklyn's iconic Domino Sugar Refinery. With a renovated refinery building as its "nerve center," the project is expected to create a 24/7 mix of creative office space, market-rate and affordable housing, retail shops, community facilities, and public open spaces. The distinctive buildings, which will create a new skyline for Brooklyn, are designed to allow light and air to penetrate through the site into the neighborhood beyond.

Now Vishaan Chakrabarti is one heckuva presentation presenter. After all, while in this instance he was talking to a bunch of people whose only standing came from having ponied up OHNY's modest annual membership fee, he's accustomed to giving presentations to people who are contemplating spending zillions of dollars, or perhaps have the power to turn thumbs up or down on other people's expenditure of said zillions of dollars. And as he described the process that had brought the project to its present state, he persuaded me, at least, that as large-scale development projects go, this one -- which includes an array of new buildings as well as open spaces surrounding the old plant itself (which is one of three buildings on the site that have landmark protection) -- has been planned with unusual sensitivity to the site's history and to the current needs of the nearby community.

Nevertheless, it looks to be a blight on the waterfront (don't you just love that "doughnut hole" building?), and it doesn't matter, because in the end it all comes down to what it all always had to come down to: the triumph of money. Williamsburg, after all, is now NYC's hippest and perhaps also hottest neighborhood, and the whole point of hipness, at least from the commercial standpoint, and it's hard to think of any other standpoint that can be said to matter, is to create hotness, in the real-estate sense, of course. So if the shores of Long Island City (Queens) and Greenpoint (Williamsburg's Brooklyn neighbor to the north) are to be lined with sky-high and sky-high-priced giant glass boxes, and they are, you can be sure that Williamsburg is getting them even glassier and boxier. (The one concession that city has extracted from developers is parkfront development along the riverfront proper and free access to it, which is certainly very different from the waterfront in its old industrial stage.)

Now here's Mitch ruminating on the old Domino site:

Williamsburg is officially lost as a point of interest for me. Bland boxes of steel and glass will extend all along the East River soon enough, stretching from the former industrial heartland once called “America’s Workshop” in Long Island City all the way through the Gold Coast of North Brooklyn to the Williamsburg Bridge.

BUT HE ADDS "QUINTESSENTIALLY MITCH" TOUCHES

First, speaking of this span of high-priced glass-and-steel boxes rising above the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront north of the Williamsburg Bridge, he notes:

Criminals are already beginning to focus their attentions on this area, just as they did in the age of industry. Why? Because predators go where the prey is.

Then he adds another characteristic touch -- a touch, one might say, of bumnation: "It’s cliché to even comment on it anymore, one realizes."

Except that Mitch has a comment on this redevelopment of the Domino site "as a residential structure -- more luxury condos for the children of the rich to dwell within."

The question of what will happen to these structures when NYC slides backwards into an era of degeneracy and decay is one few ask.

Any historian will tell you that it’s a cyclical thing here in the megalopolis, one that flips back and forth on a roughly forty year cycle which can be directly correlated to rates of crime, and that the City’s current upswing began in the late 1990’s – reversing a decline process that started shortly after the Second World War.

Rich people tend to move away from the City center when things get hairy. The rest of us are kind of stuck here.

This, I think, is sweet. Finally, here's Mitch's sendoff for this post:

Scenes long familiar, lost. The wilderness of the oligarchs is upon us, and deep in the woods – wolves howl to celebrate and delight. The nobles will be safe in their keeps, but the peasants – we’re on our own.

WHAT DOES A WORKING WATERFRONT LOOK LIKE?


On his ferry ride, Mitch observed "the Alice Oldendorf bulk cargo ship at work, making a delivery to a concrete plant at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The ship hosts a series of cranes and conveyors which unload her holds, producing the cyclopean mounds of sand and gravel witnessed above." (Again, click to enlarge.)

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Catching up with Mitch Waxman -- and his new camera (and helping him pay for it!)

One of the early pictures Mitch has taken with his new camera: the Bayonne Bridge, connecting Staten Island to New Jersey, viewed from Newark Bay (click to enlarge, and see below for descriptive comment)

by Ken

Our pal Mitch Waxman, among his many other distinctions, all pretty unusual, probably the most interesting photographers chronicling New York City, is now working with a brand-new camera, and has been sharing the early results, most of which were taken under unusual conditions. Of the shots taken at the same time as the "reverse" one of the Bayonne Bridge above, for example, he noted in his Newtown Pentacle post yesterday:

The weather was not conducive to the "lurid shimmering of pale light" thing which typifies most of the maritime shots I produce. It was dark, due to threatening storm clouds, and kind of misty. Luckily, it wasn't a "precipitating mist" wherein the moisture suspended in the air congeals onto any available surface. Instead, this was a light eating atmosphere. As my long lost pal Bernie would have advised - "use it" - so I went for composition and shadows of oily density. That's the Port Authority's Bayonne Bridge from the Newark Bay side, by the way.

The new camera wasn't, by the way, some sort of sudden impulse purchase. Mitch told the horror story in a July 10 post called, appropriately, "horror:

[Click to enlarge.]

The shot above is the very last one which will ever be captured by the camera which has been utilized to record the startling truth of our times, as presented in graphic narrative at this – your Newtown Pentacle – for the last 4 years. The device has been, as those of you who know me, omnipresent. Normally, the thing is strapped to me and never leaves my hand. If it was to be put down, extreme care and attention to its resting place has always been exercised. Friends often chide a humble narrator as to why the camera got its own chair.

All that is over now, due to a single careless moment on the 4th of July.

The other day, shots captured from Williamsburg depicted the 4th of July fireworks. After the rooftop gathering attended to view the show, which a friend had graciously invited Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself to join in on, Our Lady insisted that we hire a taxi to cross the short distance from Williamsburg back to Astoria. While exiting the vehicle, the camera tumbled out of my hand and struck the street.

The lens, my “good lens,” shattered into multiple pieces.

The camera body seemed fine at first, but soon revealed itself as non functional after just two mirror flips. Massive self recrimination ensued, as one might imagine, but just as in the case with any kind of accident – what are you going to do? “Command Z, undo, undo” cried I.

What indeed -- in, Mitch noted, Mitch's "tremulous financial equilibrium"? ("Hey," he asked parenthetically, "you think environmental activist -- historian -- blogger -- photographer -- tour guide -- actually pays well?")

One such as myself cannot be without a capture device, and replacement equipment was expensively acquired. The horror.

"The good news," he added, "is that I’m back in business." But yes, there was bad news:

I’m out a big chunk of change. For those of you that feel my pain, I beg you to buy some tickets to one of the walking tours I’m doing this summer.

This last suggestion is one that should be taken to heart without reference to these particular circumstances. If you've never done a walking tour with Mitch, you really should. His tours are as quirky, personal, informative, and transformative as, well, his blogposts. If you're going to be within striking distance of the Big Apple on one of his tour dates -- and you can always get information about planned tours at the end of his Newtown Creek blogposts -- you owe it to yourself to book yourself some tickets. As a bonus you'll usually have a chance to get acquainted with another NYC waterfront devotee, our pal -- and Mitch's frequent associate -- Mai Armstrong, also familiar to regular DWT readers as the tireless blogger for the Working Harbor Committee.)


SOMETIMES THE PEEPS COME THROUGH

But if you're so inspired, that's not all you can do, as we learned in Monday's short post, "stay and sing," which featured "one of the first shots acquired with my replacement camera," this beauty (click to enlarge):


Recently captured, the John J. Harvey Fireboat upon the Hudson River. The Harvey was saluting the memory of Working Harbor Committee’s own Capt. John Doswell with a water monitor display. [On January 29, DWT shared Mai Armstrong's lovely WHC Blog tribute to Captain John.]

There was news in "stay and sing": an outpouring of offers from readers "to help me with the crushing financial burden of replacing the destroyed camera and lens." ("Cannot begin to tell you how much these offers mean to one such as myself.") Which brings us back to yesterday's post, which kicked off with this note:

As detailed in this recent post, my camera was destroyed in an accident.

For those of you who have offered donations to pay for its replacement, the “Donate” button below will take you to paypal. Any contributions to the camera fund will be greatly appreciated, and rewarded when money isn’t quite as tight as it is at the moment.

The news is that there's now a Paypal page for contributions. I think of Mitch's photos as a public resource -- perhaps more public than he might wish! -- so for me it was a no-brainer to kick in a few bucks. No pressure; it's just a way of giving back to someone who does a whole lot of giving to us without getting much in return. And a hat tip to the readers who pitched the idea to Mitch.


MITCH IN BOOK FORM

Mitch mentioned recently that he has a book of his waterfront photos in print, and another in the works, which I finally got around to checking out. He has all sorts of other titles listed on Lulu.com, all available in e-book form and some in print form as well, including this one (in paperback form; also in downloadable e-book form -- for only $4.99!):

[Click to enlarge.]

There's also a collection of 80 Grand Canyon pictures, AZ, 86023, in paperback and two different e-book editions.


FINALLY, UPCOMING TOUR ACTIVITY

To my great regret, I was so jammed up time-wise over the weekend that I had to blow off Mitch's Greenpoint walking tour for the Newtown Creek Alliance (of which he's the official historian) Sunday morning -- but I was all paid up!

Next up is a July 26 "Modern Corridor: A Walking Tour of Long Island City's Hunters Point" (11am-1:30pm) for Brooklyn Brainery, which --

starts at the old city center, nearby Jackson Avenue and Court Square, and explores the brave new world rising from the ashes of a 19th century industrial titan -- the independent municipality of Long Island City.

This is a tricky call for me because I would have to leave early to get to an already-booked 2pm MAS walking tour. But the breakneck high-rise redevelopment of Long Island City -- as nothing compared with what salivating developers and many city officials are imagining -- with good transportation (though not so good for the waterfront Hunters Point area) but no other infrastructure in place is a subject that really gets Mitch's juices flowing.



This weekend Mitch will also be doing commentary for a City of Water Day boat trip via New York Water Taxi up his "beloved" Newtown Creek (Sunday, July 18, round trip from Governors Island, 11:15am-12:45pm). As i happens, I just did a Newtown Creek cruise with Mitch, for Working Harbor Committee. Even so, I'm tempted to sign up again while there's still space, but I hate to take up a space that could be used by someone who hasn't done such a tour -- the City of Water Day boat trips usually fill up pretty quickly. (They're free, but you have to pony up a $5 deposit, which is refunded if you actually show up.)

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It was a dark and stormy night -- or actually not night at all. Happy 4th of July Weekend!

Photo by Mitch Waxman (click to enlarge)

"[S]ome jerk pulling the pin on a dud hand grenade while riding on the 7 train would be sufficient to shut the entire Subway system down for weeks while the Terror Warriors installed metal detectors and biometric sensors on every turnstile."

-- from Mitch's blogpost yesterday, "all signs"

by Ken

I don't know about you, but I need this weekend. I'm not a qualified dreamologist, but after escaping the office, I realized what I had on my mind was this photo my pal Mitch Waxman shared with readers of his Newtown Pentacle blog today. Well, that's not a dream in any case, but maybe waking fixation is even worse. It must mean something, I'm thinking.

Here's what Mitch had to say about the picture:

Recently, an excursion upon the fabled Newtwon Creek with the Anchor QEA folks (they’re the scientists studying the Creek for the Superfund process) and the Newtown Creek CAG Steering Committee (which I’m a member of) was cut short by threatening weather. Anchor has all sorts of frammistats onboard which warn them of the approach of lightning, and all the gizmos began to go off as a powerful thunderstorm was approaching. The shot above is from roughly 2.5 miles back from the East River, and depicts the DUGABO side of Brooklyn as the storm blew in. We made it back to dock, but not before the first curtain of rain and hail began to pummel the Creek.

[DUBAGO, by the way, is Mitch's Greenpoint Avenue Bridge (over Newtown Creek) extrapolation from the goofy real-estate acronym DUMBO that's come into actual use for the Brooklyn neighborhood that's Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Mitch has a bridgeload of 'em.]

MITCH, BTW, IS FACING AN INSECURE 4TH

As he explained yesterday in a blogpost called "all signs," he has found himself -- in his Astoria (Queens) neck of the woods -- in supposed security of the homeland variety, even though, as anyone knows who has trod any part of the industrial borderlands of western Queens and Brooklyn, actual everyday security in the area, the site of much vital NYC infrastructure, in alarmingly hit or miss.

[Click to enlarge.]

Like many Queensicans, when it was announced that this year’s July 4th fireworks would be taking place in the East River just off the coast of LIC, a humble narrator grew excited. Then one began to read about frozen zones (pretty much from 11th street to the East River) and homeland security. My enthusiasm for the event began to wane as the Terror Warriors descended from their Manhattan aeries, discussed throwing down cordons, announcing entry checkpoints, and throwing a cage over the entire neighborhood. One “gets it” of course, as our enemies from “east austral Asia” specifically target public events that draw media attention, which is the very definition of what the July 4th fireworks show is.

The thing is, and I’ve been pointing this out for years, is that there is very little actual “homeland security” going on the rest of the year around these parts, and the Terror Warriors spend most of their time in Manhattan offices dreaming up scenarios which could only be accomplished by Nation/States with vast combined weapon system resources and functionally unlimited budgets. If we were at war with the United States or the People’s Republic of China, for instance, I’d be pooping my pants.

One is not so irresponsible to point the actual vulnerabilities out in any detail, as some moron out there might decide to exploit them (do your own research), but if you see graffiti along a train track or in a subway tunnel – that’s called time and opportunity. It should be impossible, literally, to sneak into a train yard or even get close to a moving train nearly two decades into the Terror Wars.

Problem is that our security personnel tend to focus on the outlandish notion that non state actors, who are basically mafiosos, can not only maintain but deploy complicated weapons systems that most nation states cannot even hope to possess. Jackass sappers like the Boston Marathon bombers, whose presence and intentions are THE real threat, just don’t fire the imagination or finger the purse strings of Congress.

It’s all a show, ultimately, designed to assuage the nagging truth that some jerk pulling the pin on a dud hand grenade while riding on the 7 train would be sufficient to shut the entire Subway system down for weeks while the Terror Warriors installed metal detectors and biometric sensors on every turnstile.

[Click to enlarge.]

I think I’m just going to go up on my roof this year on the 4th of July, photographing the fireworks at a distance from almond eyed Astoria. One is not interested in being part of a compacted herd of spectators, who are all potential suspects, in LIC. I’ll be out and about on the 5th of July, and will wager that I won’t see a single cop or security contractor protecting the vital infrastructure found hereabouts. To me, that’s terrifying.

The big show will be over by then, and the Terror Warriors will be worrying about space based laser systems at BBQ’s on Long Island and in Westchester County. They’ll muse whether or not ISIL has perfected a tractor beam that can pull asteroids down on targets (that’s called a mass driver, btw.) or developed a neutron bomb.

MITCH'S UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

Next weekend Mitch is doing his Glittering Realms Tour of Brooklyn's northernmost zone, Greenpoint ("a thriving neighborhood surrounded by environmental catastrophe which has been reborn in the 21st century") for the Newtown Creek Alliance (Sunday, July 12, 10am-12:30pm) -- tour and ticket info at the link.

I've probably already walked all this ground with Mitch, but that was then and now is now; I've already signed up for the Greenpoint walk. But for a schedule conflict I would do the same for the walk coming up in a few weeks: Modern Corridor: A Walking Tour of Long Island City's Hunters Point, for Brooklyn Brainery (Sunday, July 26, 11am-1:30pm).


COMING UP TOMORROW: 
GAIUS PUBLIUS RETURNS

As promised, GP weighs in from his current digs in Europe, and catches up on assorted pending matters -- and the sweltering heat. That's at 7am PT, 10am ET, and some other time on the other side of the pond.

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Our pal Mitch Waxman takes a walk through NYC's under-construction Second Avenue subway

Gathering for a descent into the under-construction Second Avenue subway: Says Mitch, "There were a sizable number of sharp elbowed reporters in the group, including the former First Lady of NYC, Donna Hanover. She seemed nice."

by Ken

Last weekend I had outings both days with our old pal Mitch Waxman, historian of the Newtown Creek Alliance and stalwart of the Working Harbor Committee, walking scholar of western Queens, and photographer-wanderer around the NYC metropolis -- Saturday, on the Obscura Society's Obscura Day, a walking tour of the Skillman Corridor in Long Island City, Queens, and Sunday he did a heroic job on the mike for a WHC voyage up Newtown Creek -- or, as he would likely refer to it, "my beloved Newtown Creek.

That gave me a chance to tell him how much I was loving the photos he had been sharing in a series of Newtown Pentacle blogposts in progress from a walk he'd been invited to participate in along with a gaggle of other journalists and photographers along the route of the still-under-construction Second Avenue subway in Manhattan, from the nearer-to-completion south end, at 63rd Street, up to 86th Street. (This first stretch of the Second Avenue line, when it opens, maybe in December 2015 and maybe not, will run as far as 96th Street, with stations at 63rd, 72nd, 85th, and 96th.)

I've done scant justice to the series by picking a single photo out of each day's wonderfully diverse offerings. (At least you can enlarge all the photos by clicking on them.) I encourage you to check it out.


"Who can guess . . ."
Lord and Ladies, the Second Avenue Subway project (May 26)


The 63rd Street station "is quite far along." "There’s track, for instance, and the far wall is sporting some actual finishes. The MTA didn’t use tile, to avoid the maintenance costs experienced whenever water infiltrates behind it. Instead, the wall has a sort of rack on it, and the “tiles” clip on to it leaving a bit of leeway for flowing liquids to find their way to drains."


". . . all that there is . . ."
Second Avenue Subway Series, continues in today's post (May 27)


"The atmosphere in this newly carven intestine of the Megalopolis was actually a bit on the warm side, but not uncomfortably so, and no unpleasant nor mephitic odors were encountered in any abundance. Curing concrete coupled with a somewhat static and dusty air mass contributed to bodily perspiration, however, a process exacerbated by the requirements for wearing 'PPE' or 'Personal Protective Equipment' insisted on by the work site management."


". . . that might be . . ."
From somewhere under Manhattan, the Second Avenue Subway Series continues (May 28)


"The design of the Second Avenue Subway passenger stations is distinct from the older sections of the system, there were no steel beams hanging down from the ceiling for instance. The stations take the shape of a series of flattened cylinders with cathedral like interiors."


". . . buried . . ."
Second Avenue subway, beyond 72nd Street (May 29)

The chamber that will be the 72nd Street station: "Northward, we continued moving through the construction site, and one paused for a moment to grab a shot of the chamber we had just exited."

The chamber that will be the 72nd Street station: "Northward, we continued moving through the construction site, and one paused for a moment to grab a shot of the chamber we had just exited."


" . . . down there?"
Second Avenue Subway, 72nd to 86th street (June 1)


The 130-step climb back up to daylight:: "Some anonymous laborer had scrawled the graffito “heart attack ridge” on the temporary landing and by the time a humble narrator had achieved that height, a heart attack felt like it was a real possibility. As my grandmother would have said – I couldn’t stop shvitzing."

MITCH'S UPCOMING TOURS

June 11th, 2015

MADE IN BROOKLYN Hidden Harbor Boat Tour
with Working Harbor Committee, click here for details and tickets.

June 13th, 2015

The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek Walking Tour
with Atlas Obscura, click here for details and tickets.

June 20th, 2015

Kill Van Kull Walking Tour

with Brooklyn Brainery, click here for details and tickets.

And of course keep up with Mitch's comings and goings on his Newtown Pentacle blog.

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