Hey Now! and then Sterling
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Same old, huh? This shot of CSX #917 was captured at my ‘usual’ spot, nearby that brewery on Pittsburgh’s South Side which I hang around.
Wasn’t out for a walk on this particular evening, rather Our Lady and myself were on our way to a fantastic sushi dinner and had decided to stop off for a quick pint as we were early for the reservation. Birthday.
Saying that, a desire has been building of late in my mind, for the novel.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nevertheless – exercise day arrived again, and despite my desire to experience something which I hadn’t seen before – one nevertheless returned to Sterling Street’s City Steps – in Pittsburgh’s South Side Slopes section.
This is a particularly long set of City Steps, and as I keep reminding myself – every scuttle doesn’t have to the Odyssey, or be about ‘art.’
Sometimes a walk is just a walk.
I was dropped off by a rideshare car, thereupon my ghastly physical realities oozed from the thing and one puddled up on the street, where I belong. Your humble narrator got organized, straightening out all my bag straps and dangling camera gear, whereupon my feet got down to kicking dirt again.
An infinity of time was not on my menu, as I’d had a fairly busy early morning and there was ‘stuff’ to do in the evening, so only a three to four hour window to wander about was available to me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Stage one of this outing involved Sterling Street’s installation of one of the Pittsburgh’s City Step infrastructure. To the left in the shot above is the extant property of a city park, and within there were a group of people from its ‘friends of’ group planting and caring for trees.
From this POV, it looks like a ‘straight shot’ to the Birmingham Bridge spanning the Monongahela River below, but the relationship between appearances and deception is an old trope.
Especially so in Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the span – mentioned above – pictured, and it’s dubbed as being the Birmingham Bridge, which is often featured here at Newtown Pentacle as I cross it on foot and also by car frequently.
It was a fairly warm day, but the humidity and breeze were both at comfortable levels, as far a day in late August goes.
The Newtown Pentacle time warp has alleviated slightly as I secretly took a bit of time off at the end of the summer, from all of the writing and photography. Didn’t go anywhere or do anything worth mentioning, but I’m still maintaining my ‘advance padding’ of scheduled posts. These shots were gathered on the 24th of August, and the words were mostly written on the 6th of September. If the scheduling works out as anticipated, you’re seeing this on the 15th of October.
Yes, I’m now six weeks out from publication date. This is not a bad thing, for me at least, but I’ve got to spend some time getting Halloween posts together for spooky season.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking back at where I’d just scuttled…
These long downward courses have absolutely been what the doctor ordered, as far as getting my legs back into shape and reversing the muscular atrophy experienced during the broken ankle interval.
I’m still dealing with muscular and tendon related after effects from that injury, as a note. They said it would take two years or more, for full recovery, at my orthopedist’s office…
Sigh…
As described in the past, the benefit of walking these long downward step courses involves development in the front meat of the thighs and calves, which are otherwise hard muscles to ‘hit.’
The act of walking down these steps, despite the background PTSD I experience (the injury occurred on a set of steps in my house) while scuttling down long courses of rises and runs, also causes the actuation of a bunch of those hidden ‘rubber bands’ found in the foot and ankle which are otherwise calcified, and still stiff from the injury.
I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you descend, the steps take the form of several homes sidewalks.
I always muse to myself about how difficult it must be to handle the ‘business of life’ here in the South Side Slopes. Food shopping, parking the car, getting a delivery – all must be informed and constrained by this crazy terrain.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Liminal Space overload part 2
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the Pittsburgh Mills Galleria, a fairly empty shopping mall nearby Pittsburgh in Fraser Township, your humble narrator just kept on shooting photos. Our Lady and myself were struck by the surreal neature of the experience in this ‘liminal space.’
As mentioned yesterday, one kept on noticing how ‘maintained’ everything was. Dusted, vacuumed, mopped.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We had to cancel an outdoor activity – due to high waters on areal waterways, caused by unusual precipitant volumes recently fallen – which promulgated ‘flash flood’ warnings from the authorities. Our initial ‘out of doors’ destination was thereby scrapped, so we visited this place instead.
As often mentioned, I’ve got ‘a list,’ and much of it is already pinpointed on a Google map. Whenever I find myself somewhere unexpectedly with time to kill, I’ll check that map, and see what’s nearby.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I didn’t see any part of Pennsylvania’s anti-vampire systems nearby – no giant white steel crosses on the hillsides, for instance – and wondered if perhaps this place gets real busy at night? Maybe the invasive vampire issue they’re vouchsafing against to the south is related to Maryland, or West Virginia, as you see more of those hillside crosses in that ‘border zone’ than in the northern parts of the region.
Go figure. Meshuggeneh Goyem, huh?
Churches, too, could make great use of the cavernous interior spaces here in this mall. Supposedly, there used to be a Baptist denomination which met up in here somewhere for services, and for some reason I seem to think that it was set up in the former movie theater.
One reads a lot of background stuff before writing one of these posts, some of it gets linked to, and some of it is just absorbed for texture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Concern began to grow that I had led Our Lady into a hellish maze.
It’s impossible to maintain a sense of ‘where’ you are in relation to the outside world in here. I kept on thinking that we’d make the next turn and see Judas being chewed up in Satan’s mouth, at the deepest levels of Gehenna. I was also worried about a series of Dungeons and Dragons monsters lurking about. Beholders… brr.
What an odd experience.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We began to near the entrance which brought us into this place, which would provide an exit back to the parking lot where we had stored the Mobile Oppression Platform, a Toyota. Getting here definitely requires a vehicle, although I’m sure that there’s an arcane and kind of weird multi hour route you could use Pittsburgh’s bus system to execute.
All told, this is just under an hour’s drive from HQ in the South Hills region where Newtown Pentacle HQ is found in Dormont.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Regarding the Newtown Pentacle time warp – these shots, and the ones from the Tour-Ed Mine, were gathered on the 14th of August and the text in these posts entered on the 23rd of the same month. As you’re receiving this in middle October, I’ve got a problem emerging.
Not publishing Halloween oriented posts at Christmas.
I’ll figure it out.
Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Liminal Space Overload
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After descending into a coal mine (and museum) in nearby Tarentum, and then having a lovely lunch – as described in prior posts – Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself drove over to the Pittsburgh Mills Galleria, a 2005 vintage shopping mall with quite a tumultuous history.
It was all very, very odd – this visit.
I don’t like or advocate use of the term ‘dead mall,’ as a note. If you were to search on YouTube for this location, you will hear that one a lot in the videos you see. Saying that, I don’t have an alternative terminology to offer, so…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This mall has a long and convoluted history, but it was the dream and life’s work of an entrepreneur named George Damias, and his quite controversial project began in the 1980’s, opening in 2005.
Rather than summarize the Wikipedia entry for you – go get it all right from the horse’s wikimouth here.
It was so odd in there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The only camera option for this place was to use the widest lens I had in the bag, which was a 16mm prime. The ISO sensitivity was set high, 6400 I think, and the lens’s aperture was set at f4.
There were a few other people present in the mall, but not so many, as there’s just a few smaller shops and office spaces occupied within. We saw maybe twenty or thirty others, all seemingly human.
Allegheny Health Network uses one of the large storefronts here as a school for nursing. There was also an open comic book store and also a snack shop, the kind that sells cotton candy and chocolate coated nuts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Despite the mall being de facto ‘kaput,’ and mostly unoccupied, one thing that just kept on jumping out at me was that this place was being ‘kept’ in a fairly immaculate manner. Somebody is dusting, and mopping those floors, polishing the glass.
That’s the food court pictured, incidentally.
The air conditioning was on, but was set high by shopping mall standard, around 78-80 degrees.
Haven’t spent much time in malls since the late 1980’s, but part of the ‘draw’ for those places always involved the air conditioning. Central and residential AC didn’t become ubiquitous until the last 25 years or so, and ‘back in the day,’ your best bet for staying cool – for free – during the high summer was heading over to a mall (Kings Plaza, in the case of my old neighborhood in Brooklyn) and literally ‘chill out.’
Big deal during the summer, that mall AC was.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had to inspect the porcelain. There were some plumbing issues going on in there, but again – it’s some random bathroom, in a largely unoccupied shopping mall, and there were paper towels and soap, filled to spec, in their dispensers. It was clean in there.
As mentioned, we did see a few other people while walking this liminal space, whose excess in certain areas lent a sense of bizarre profanity to the experience. Elderly mall walkers were observed, seemingly walking endless circuits through an empty space.
I thought about Dante.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My head is full of ideas for saving these sorts of spaces. I’ve got a scheme in mind that could do it, but that would require some out of the box thinking and a budget, and that’s not something which people out here – or anywhere – are terribly enthusiastic about embracing these days.
Simply, tying these spaces to local agricultural businesses (Pittsburgh is surrounded by rural counties, and smallish family farms) for direct to consumer sales would be a bit difficult to handle, as far as setting things up, but would be a win/win for everyone concerned. Cut the national level AG distributors like Cysco out of the economic loop, so the profit stays with the farmer and the tax money remains local.
The citizenry gains access to local grown food, Wall Street is cut out of the loop, and the Pittsburgh Mills Galleria would have a reason to turn the air conditioning down around 70 degrees again.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Tour-Ed Mine part 2
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A simple fact, known by most photographers, is that the people and particularly the Coal Miners of Appalachia make for absolutely fantastic subjects, when the question of portraiture comes up. As the saying goes – the map of the world is written upon that face.
That’s Bob, a retired coal miner who was our tour guide at the Tour-Ed Mine and Museum, in Allegheny County’s Borough of Tarentum, which can be found after about 40 minute’s worth of highway driving east of Pittsburgh.
Bob was demonstrating how you’d keep the roof from collapsing in on yourself, were you to find yourself working in a coal mine.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m afraid I just have to get used to the presence of LED lighting everywhere, despite the fact that its garish coloration makes everything resemble the 1990 Warren Beatty movie production of ‘Dick Tracy.’
It’d been a while since I executed any low light photography, as a note. Real pleasure to slip back into the groove down here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bob demonstrated several of the mechanical tools used in his trade. A sort of rock drill, various systems that moved coal particles along a conveyor belt, a kind of vehicle that replaced the Donkeys which once hauled the mined coal back up to the portal. It was all pretty neat.
And loud, super loud, especially so in the confined spaces when he activated the equipment. Once again, and the third time I’m saying this, I would not have lasted a half hour at this job.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This gizmo was set into the floor, and there was a conveyor belt which moved towards those two lobster claw looking appendages, designed to sweep coal towards the belt, and fall into a chute that went to god knows where.
Wow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bob described life on the job to us. He filled us in on how miners communicate in the dusty dark environment, via head motions that move the lanterns on their hats in patterns.
Bob also said this manner of communication got so incorporated into his thoughts that he’d be at home and if his wife asked if he wanted dinner, his answer would often involve him just rotating his head around in a circle so as to say yes.
Bob was very, very good at presenting this material, and it was obvious he’s conducted this tour hundreds of times.
From one guide of unconventional places to another, good show, Bob.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I pulled my usual ‘blind shot’ gambit on the way back to the surface.
Shooting with the camera’s autofocus locked in the dead center of the frame, and hoping for the best. Lots of pictures of motion blurred rocks, but that link will take to iterations of the shots at Flickr if you’re curious.
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself had a great time here, which we followed up with a pretty nice luncheon at a nearby establishment called ‘JG’s Tarentum Station Grille,’ which is housed in Tarentum’s 1913 vintage former train station.
Good stuff, and Our Lady in particular was pleased indeed.
After lunch, well…
Back tomorrow with all that…
“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.
Tour-Ed Mine and Museum, Tarentum PA
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular location has been ‘on my list’ for a while now, and were it not for having shattered my left ankle a while back, it would have already been visited.
Our Lady of the Pentacle joined me for this trip, which involved a not so long drive to one of Pittsburgh’s neighboring communities – Tarentum.
Tarentum is where the Tour-Ed Mine and Museum is found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The conceit of this experience begins with a short lecture, which is followed by a visit to a former coal mine, which is found some 160 feet below the surface. They sell tickets, and it’s a popular attraction.
We all piled into a ‘Man Riding Car’ which would carry us down to the depths. It was an interesting group, one which included families with young children. A cool vibe was in the air.
Yep, when I get interested in something, I’m ‘all in.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After piling into the tracked vehicle, it was all ‘shake, rattle, and roll’ on the way down. One of the things I soon discerned on this trip was that I wouldn’t have lasted a half hour at this job.
A blossom of existential horror was constantly unfolding, along with an illogical sense of paranoid terror that was stalking around at the edge of thought, polluting the environment between the ears and behind the eyes. I’m a little bit claustrophobic, it seems.
Our guide through these stygian depths under Tarentum was a retired coal miner, named ‘Bob.’
50 years on the job, he said. 12 hours a day, and six days a week. Bob mentioned that if even if you were having open heart surgery at six in the morning, the boss would still expect you to come in after lunch or lose ‘your place.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you can see above, the ‘Man Riding Car’ is rather shallow in terms of verticality, and it took a bit of a wiggle to get my fat butt in and out of it.
Historically: the coal industry would send recruiting agents to Southern and Eastern Europe, mainly, bringing people over who were Serfs in their home countries. They’d emigrate, and join the coal extraction work force in Appalachia, and along the way become Americans. The promise.
The agents and the bosses promised these people freedom, and a chance at fortune, and then when they arrived here… some of the darkest forms of capitalism awaited them, many of which which made the feudal system back home seem comparatively liberal and progressive… the company store, the Coal and Iron Police, the unincorporated company towns…
Another day older, and deeper in debt… huh?
Good old captains of industry, what a bunch of coy rascals they were. Definitely not Robber Barons.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You are obliged to wear a hard hat down in the Tour-Ed mine, as even a no more than five foot and nine inches tall but humble narrator kept accidentally bopping his head on the roof.
Bob continued with his demonstrations of the equipment installed down here, and regaled the crowd with tales of working in the extraction industry, spiced up with witty commentary and all ages jokes. I got the sense that Bob also answers to ‘Grandpa.’ He had that vibe about him.
The Pittsburgh Coal Seam forms a narrow band in the Appalachian soil’s Layer Cake, sometimes stretching less than five feet from top to bottom, but more often it’s around ten feet in depth. The economics of mining involve ascertaining just how far down you can afford to follow the seam, and transport the coal back to the surface, while maintaining your profit margin.
If you dig too deep, all sorts of problems can emerge.
Tour-Ed is what’s called a ‘Drift Mine,’ as the original miners back in the 19th century were able to start digging in at the surface level, and then they followed the coal seam into, and down the side of, the hill.
The entrance to a coal mine is called a ‘Portal,’ incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bob demonstrated the actual task of freeing the coal from the seam, which involved lying on his side and picking at the seam to create small holes, into which explosive charges would then be inserted.
Once you collapsed a section with the boom sticks, you’d shovel the freed coal into a cart, and attach your ‘chit’ (a metal disc with your employee ID number on it, used for accounting purposes) to a hook installed on the thing, and a donkey would then pull the cart and coal up and out of the mine, where it would be weighed and then recorded into a ledger alongside your chit ID. That’s how what you’d get paid for the day was calculated. ‘16 tons, and what do you get?’
Piece work.
For 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. That’s how those ‘Captains of Industry’ got it done, back when ‘America was Great.’ Bootstraps. All that.
Bob said you could expect to pull 80-90K a year as a coal miner, but that’s in modern times, and it’s due to unionization. Further, he asserted that if you followed the Union’s safety rules to the letter, you’d be just fine working down below.
As mentioned above, I wouldn’t last a half hour down here. These people are made of far sterner stuff than I am.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
