A Long Walk ends
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured are various overhead trestles branching off the 33rd street rail bridge, here in Pittsburgh. This bridge serves as – more or less – the division marker for when you’re exiting the Lawrenceville section and entering Pittsburgh’s Strip District.
One had followed the shoreline of the Allegheny River from nearby the Highland Park Bridge, scuttled along Butler Street, and then headed slightly northwards to capture railroad shots. As the crow flies, this would be a six to seven mile walk, but with all the curves that the river introduces to the path, by the time I returned to HQ in Dormont, I had scuttled around twelve and change miles by the time I returned to HQ.
That’s what the phone said it was, at any rate.
This walk was a major ‘post broken ankle’ threshold point for me, as a note. Longest scuttle I’ve managed to pull off since shattering the joint back in the fall of 2024.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned at the start of this opus, I was traveling light. No tripods or other heavy gear, which I absolutely regretted when observing the scene above. I’ll be back for this one at some point. That’s the ‘Washington’s Crossing’ bridge, pictured above, as a note.
I actually stopped off at a sandwich shop and ‘filled my tanks’ for the last stage of things. The sandwich was shit, but the icy cold Gatorade was key.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From here, it was all ‘known territory’ for me.
I feel obliged to mention that the Newtown Pentacle time warp is still very much in effect. These shots were gathered on the 14th of September, and the posts are being written during the first week of October. If my scheduling is correct, you’re seeing this during the second week of November. Given that there are literally thousands of undeveloped shots on my hard drive at HQ which are ‘in production,’ it’s likely that the time warp will continue and intensify as we move into the winter months.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This pedestrian survey of mine has ranged all over Pittsburgh in the last year, as the ankle has healed and the post surgical atrophy of the musculature in my legs has receded.
North Side, South Side, East, West, all over the place.
At this point, I can pretty much say that if it’s within ten miles of downtown and there are sidewalks which you can see a river or train tracks from, I’ve likely wandered through it by this point. I’m beginning to understand the place, and develop some intimacy with it.
Next up, and one of my winter projects, will be ‘Operation Busway.’ That set of moves is still being planned, but I’m hoping to achieve some level of granularity on the subject in those posts. Long time readers of Newtown Pentacle will tell you – there’s nothing more interesting to me than novel transit infrastructure.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The long walk had taken a toll.
My ankle was sore, and so was my back. As mentioned above, I had stopped off for luncheon at a shop along the way but otherwise I’d pretty much been walking nonstop for something like four to five hours by this point.
As a note, that concrete wall you see in the distance there is ‘Crosstown Boulevard,’ and that blue tower is the brand new FNB building. Both of these were described in prior posts, click the links if interested.
Leaving the Strip District, you soon find yourself ‘Downtown.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The last scraping steps of this scuttle saw a horrific localized phenomenon best described as your humble narrator alter course, as it pointed that loathsome pre-corpse, within which I dwell, in the direction of the T Light Rail’s ‘Gateway’ station.
The usual wilting of plants and barking of dogs occurred as one moved along, as did the always welcome purse clutching, and defensive deployments of cell phones and pitchforks amongst the gentry. Security cameras swiveled, and followed my path. ‘Flock that,’ I said.
A quick ride on the T, and I was soon back in the tender embrace of Moe the Dog and Our Lady of the Pentacle. This spared anyone from outside the household any chance of being startled by my ignominy.
Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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A long… wait a minute, say what?
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So… as you might recall from last week, your humble narrator was involved in a long scuttle along the Allegheny River side of Pittsburgh’s central peninsula, one filled with lots of self-recrimination. Fun walk, lots to see and ponder. Everybody hates me. All caught up.
One had wandered into the Lawrenceville section, and encountered a passing freight train at street grade, and then…
I saw this street sign.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now – for some ‘behind the curtains’ POV – I’ve started inserting shots of street signs into the flow of photos at my Flickr account, to act as visual bookmarks and to remind me of where I was when one photo or another was captured. At the end of the week, when you’re looking at a thousand raw captures, this practice aids in the organizing of things, from a cogently geographical and narrative sense.
Yes, that is a real Pittsburgh street sign, signifying the intersection of Willow Street with 43 1/2 street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I stood there staring at this sign for a couple of minutes, in disbelief. Was it a fake? Something some real estate yahoo screwed onto a pole?
Nope.
From Google’s AI:
Origins and Naming Original Name: The lane was originally called Snowden Alley.
Landowner: It was named after H. Snowden, who owned property on both sides of the alley north of Butler Street around 1852.
Fractional Renaming: The city changed the name to 43rd ½ Street via a city ordinance in 1871. An 1881 ordinance accidentally listed it back as Snowden Alley, before it was officially updated again to “Forty-third and One-Half Street” in 1896.
Local Lore: Early Pittsburgh historian and columnist George T. Fleming joked in a 1915 Pittsburgh Gazette Times column that the quirky fractional name meant the street “surely has a name and a half”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I have no information, regarding the artist or intention of that mural painted on the residential building pictured above, but I dig it.
As you can see in the shot’s background, this is right about where a bunch of the ‘new’ construction, found on the border between Pittsburgh’s ‘Lawrenceville’ and ‘Strip District,’ collides with older real estate schemes.
Were I as loquacious as I was back in Queens, I’d christen this as ‘an angle between’ those two neighborhoods. I’m not.
Neat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By this point, my walk through the ‘Butler Street Corridor’ had transmogrified into ‘the Willow Street Corridor is more interesting right about now,’ so I followed it under the 40th street Bridge where the roadway becomes a narrow pass for pedestrians and bike riders only.
The predominance of my scuttle having been accomplished, the route now became an expedient one, designed to angle my toes towards a T light rail station that was still at least a couple/three miles away in the ‘Downtown’ section.
Yep, could have always hopped on a bus, but that’s not the actual point of these endeavors. Got to keep moving or I’ll stop moving.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At 33rd street, where a gargantuan railroad bridge is found right along the waterfront of the Allegheny River, that’s where I walked past next.
There’s all sorts of signage from the railroad people warning off trespass, camping, and other morbid occupations, but I continue to operate in compliance with the rules of 1980’s Brooklyn.
‘Things are only illegal if there are Cops around,’ or if you break into or graffiti onto something, and as there weren’t any Cops hanging around and I had no intention of painting my name here, there we are. I did find a private spot in the bushes for a piss.
There’s rail tracks on the ground, I’d mention, but they are clearly not active and are quite overgrown. I’ve seen videos of camera wielders getting hassled around here by the RR Cops, but have a feeling that those particular videographers made themselves ostentatious to the gendarmerie.
Back tomorrow.
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A Long Walk, part 5
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oh boy, Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville really does remind me of the late 20th century version of North Brooklyn, in so many ways.
Centuried buildings standing alongside brand spanking new luxury residential towers, ancient and insufficient infrastructure which was built for a low density industrial zone suddenly finding itself handling a high density residential population – composed of self important ‘master of the universe’ type tech and real estate ‘bros’ – with their artsy fartsy hipster hanger on’s and arounds… all that good stuff.
After luckily running into a passing freight train, and having kicked around five to six miles of dirt around by this point, one realized that he was somewhere around the half way point for the day’s effort.
From this spot, I’d be angling my feet in the direction of a still distant series of T light Rail stations, where I’d find a ride back to HQ in Dormont.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the meanwhile, the area I was moving through was fairly deserted and I had a camera, so ‘wheee.’ Massing shapes, structures of expedient execution, busted up crap… all my kinds of bag.
It was a good time to remind myself of all the usual tropes;
- Everybody hates me, on sight.
- Nobody has a real friend.
- It’s best to not even try, anymore.
- No hope, and no future.
- All is dire, and colored a sickly pinkish gray.
- When I die, people will say ‘Good, that’s finally over with.’
Actually, I’ve long held a desire to have my corpse frozen solid in liquid nitrogen, and then fed into a wood chipper on the back of a boat on NY Harbor, which would then spray scarlet rainbows of ‘Mitch bits’ into the Newtown Creek.
At least I’d feed the fish on my way out…
My own corruptions, mixing with those of the Creek, and… and…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yeah… I do miss it sometimes. New York, I mean, not the human infestation it hosts.
I’m the type of person who feels completely alone in a room full of people who would profess to love me, but I’m sure they’d just be saying that anyway to set me up. As soon as I’d turn my back….
Me? I’m perfect, just like Caligula, and like that long ago Augustus I set the standard of sanity for the rest of the world to follow.
Anything that goes wrong when I’m in the room is something I should, or could have, stopped from happening. Everything bad is my ultimately my fault, somehow. You got cancer? Sorry, my bad.
It’s never been a good place, between my ears.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey, I think that those might be some of the ‘murder bots’ which Carnegie Mellon University is working on for the Marines.
Yep, whereas the conversation about AI has centered in on the resources that data centers will consume, we’ve all forgotten that the United States Military is currently working on building autonomous ‘Hunter-Killer’ battlefield technologies – here in Pittsburgh – with young geniuses whom I can tell you have never read Asimov. I know this because I’ve asked several of them, and in addition to ignorance of Asimov, they haven’t read Stanislaus Lem or Phillip K. Dick either.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sigh… I’m old and won’t last too much longer, so this is not my problem yet – but AI is likely to somehow be my fault somehow. Ask anyone.
Some street furniture was encountered. Looks like a comfy park bench, if you ask me, but it’s likely very unpleasant during rainy weather.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured is one of the more frustrating ‘things’ you regularly encounter in Pittsburgh, with some working guy parking his truck right in the middle of a narrow street.
No doubt the truck is there to facilitate something practical, but damn does it suck when you make a left turn and then see this in front of you.
Back next week with a bit more from this long walk – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Hey Now! and then, back to my long walk
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lucky. To start, that locomotive engine pictured prominently in today’s post is older than I am – and that’s saying something at this point in time.
Built in December of 1966, the ‘GP40’ engine originally showed up for work as engine number 183 for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. In 1970, it changed jobs after a merger and went to work for the Burlington Northern RR as engine number 3013.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In 1987, BN retired the engine, and it found a new job and identity at the National Railroad Equipment Company, where it became known as NREX 3013. In 1994, this old trooper received a rebuild which brought its emissions into line with modern regulation, whereupon the ‘Carload Express’ outfit bought the unit and branded it as ‘Allegheny Valley/AVR 4001.’
This particular set of tracks, as I understand it, is a part of what AVR calls its ‘Valley Line.’
I asked Google’s AI about this, and here’s its result:
AVR-2 (Valley Line Freight): Primarily a third-shift night job working Sunday–Thursday up the Allegheny River valley to New Kensington and Arnold. However, heavy fracking sand demands mean regular Saturday morning “Sand Extras” run in daylight along this corridor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Before you ponder, I was on the ‘correct side’ of the signal arms with my back planted firmly on some factory’s chain link fence.
Y’know, was kind of glad that I decided to divert from the Butler Street corridor right around here. Yeah! I’d been ‘out of sync’ with RR shots for the last few walks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All that I can tell you about their cargo is that these are the the kind of train cars which get filled up from chutes found above, and which then deposit their cargo into chutes found below. Maybe this is that ‘fracking sand’ train Gemini mentioned above? Could be, but as is often stated – I don’t ‘guess.’ All I can offer is the most general form of visual observation, which boils down to what sort of rail car this is.
Covered Hopper Car, I’d wager.
What do you think, railfans?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I backed away, the secondary locomotive engine appeared. It’s what they call a ‘DPU’ in railroad world.
Also via Google’s AI:
A Distributed Power Unit (DPU) is a locomotive or group of locomotives positioned in the middle or at the rear of a long freight train, rather than just at the front. These units are uncrewed and are operated remotely by the engineer inside the lead locomotive cab using a radio-based control link.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sated, your humble narrator returned to his miserable course.
If defeat, humiliation, and personal dissolution could be given human form, it wouldn’t appear as pathetic or horrific as that which greets me in the reflections of store windows while scuttling past. I used to be pretty.
I look like the personification of six of the seven deadly sins these days, manifested within a badly functioning human body that’s armored in scars and drowning in sorrow.
Children cry, dogs howl, birds fly away in a panic.
Well… most birds… the Canada Gooses are always a different story.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
A Long Walk part… Hey Now!
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Butler Street in Pittsburgh, which your humble narrator recently scuttled down. This post is the third part of a longer travelogue. Scroll back a couple of posts for the beginning, or you can just jump in here. All are welcome at Newtown Pentacle, as nothing matters and nobody cares – after all.
I should mention that the Newtown Pentacle time warp continues to swirl. I’ve intentionally cut the lead time down a bit, by largely goofing off in September, but these images were captured on the 14th of September, and the posts they are embedded in should be arriving in your inboxes during the first week of November if I’ve got my scheduling correct.
This section of Butler Street enters into a neighborhood called ‘Lawrenceville,’ which is where the gentrification furnaces burn most brightly in Pittsburgh. An infusion of ‘tech’ investments in the area has brought a new population to Lawrenceville in the 21st century – a group referred to locally as ‘the tech Bro’s.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Me? I’m of course focused on what used to be here, since the past is usually far more interesting and less worthy of an argument than the present is. On the register of ‘historic places’ is the former Hunter Saw & Machine Company’s 4 building complex. Caught my eye.
Now, I’m told by the locals that Lawrenceville used to be considered a dangerous and quite ‘crimey’ area, and was one of Pittsburgh’s ‘hoods.’
The gentrification hammers began to fall here sometime around the start of the 21st century, sort of analogous to the same real estate driven process that played out in North Brooklyn and Long Island City back in New York during that same interval.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve learned to identify where gentrification zones begin in the various Pittsburgh neighborhoods – and it’s right where you see a royal blue painted house with odd exterior modifications sticking out, right in the middle of a block of row houses. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be offering more real world proof of this observably ‘gentrification blue’ theory of mine.
It was right about here that I decided to abandon Butler Street for a spell, as I had walked the following section during an ‘Open Streets’ event just a few weeks prior. I headed vaguely northwards, towards the river.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A quick bit of gazing into Google Maps and at my compass ensued, just to confirm that I was heading towards where I thought I was going. Given my recent proclivity for walking in the opposite direction of where I intended to go, it’s best to double check. Had to make this a habit.
Yup, I was fixing to head off in the wrong direction, again.
After ascertaining the correct path, once more did I begin sloshing forward, like some sort of antagonistic jelly carrying a camera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a section of Lawrenceville which is still quite industrial, and… there happens to be an active set of rail tracks back there… so…
Big skies. You also get ‘big sky’ in industrial zones.
Honestly, wasn’t expecting to see a train back here, but…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now!
Here comes Allegheny Valley RR #4001!
More on all that tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
