The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Onboard a Gateway Clipper excursion boat, here in Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh, the Captain navigated us around the “Point” of the Golden Triangle and off of the Monongahela River and onto the Allegheny River. Pictured is the confluence of the “Three Rivers” where the two form the one and the Ohio River begins.

That fountain above is the centerpiece of Point State Park, and was discussed in a prior post dubbed “certain circumstances.” When I was here, on Day One of my 72 hours in Pittsburgh, it was nighttime. The shots in today’s post are from Day Two.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Pictured above are, from the top – the Fort Duquesne Bridge (also briefly profiled in the post linked to above), and the three smaller yellow bridges beyond it are the Sixth Street Roberto Clemente, Seventh Street Andy Warhol, and Ninth Street Rachel Carson bridges – discussed in similarly brief fashion in this post – dubbed “human clothing.”

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The Gateway Clipper tour guide intoned that the reason why everything “Pittsburgh” is colored black and yellow dates back to its founding, and is related to how they came up with the romantic sounding name “Pittsburgh” in the first place. The City picked up its moniker in 1758, when a British General named the area in honor of a back home politician named William Pitt, the 1st earl of Chatham. From an American history POV, we remember this politician as “Pitt the Elder.” It seems that the feudal standard colors of the Pitts were black and gold.

Pittsburgh stays on “brand” all these centuries later, with black and gold municipal goodness; its bridges, its Steelers NFL team, Penguins NHL team, and the Pirates MLB uniforms. According to the tour guide, the gold color, as commercially supplied, is called “Aztec Yellow.”

That brings me back to the old days, “Aztec Yellow” does, I tell’s ya… reminds me of the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, the god of wizards and darkness often referred to as “the smoking mirror” lest invoking his name summon the entity. Tezcatlipoca was often depicted by the Nauali Priesthood of Tenochtitlan as man with obsidian black skin wearing yellow war paint, or simply as a Jaguar.

Nerrrrrrrrrrd.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Continuing up the Allegheny River, we encountered the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge, whose details and specifics were also discussed in the posting linked to above – dubbed “human clothing.” As mentioned on that occasion, captured also on Day One of this 72 hour portage, this is a very active railroad bridge.

Once the Gateway Clipper passed underneath it, the turnaround point for the excursion would be reached.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A humble narrator normally reacts with horror at the sort of architecture employed by a structure called the “David L. Lawrence Convention Center,” or colloquially the “Pittsburgh Convention Center,” but this massive 1.5 million square foot facility is actually pretty cool looking and a nice accommodation of the space. A section of it is cantilevered out over a highway or high speed road of some sort, as well as the Three Rivers Heritage Trail bike and pedestrian pathway. This is just past the “Strip district.”

It’s where I got my shots of the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge the day before, along the waterfront path.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Behind the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge, which had one of those seemingly half mile long Midwestern freight trains you hear about moving over it, that’s the “Veterans Bridge” truss bridge, and the 16th Street David McCullough Bridge in descending order.

Wow, it’s almost as if I had planned out my 72 hours in Pittsburgh to involve collecting a systemic catalog of the Golden Triangle’s bridges and interesting points, found on the Allegheny River between 31st street and Point State Park, and then the Monongahela River side Bridges and both Inclines – Monongahela and Duquesne – between Point State Park and the Smithfield Street Bridge. It’s almost as if the entire mission could then be visually summed up and compiled, via the rapid fire shooting and focal points offered by a 60 minute tourist boat excursion covering much of the same ground I had already travelled on foot.

That’s crazy, right, as I’m an idiot man child with a camera scuttling through junk yards and along riverbanks, right?

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