Archive for January 2023
steep, man, steep
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator decided it was time to visit a few of the local establishments in my new neighborhood of Pennsylvania’s Dormont that serve adult beverages, and explore the “scene” as it were. Most of the commercial activity in my new zone is car based, but as you’d hope, there’s a few drinking parlors found in direct proximity of the T light rail station – pictured above – which is, coincidentally, about a 15 minute walk from HQ.
That’s the “Potomac” station for the Red Line T in Dormont. The street it runs on is called “Broadway Avenue.” Apparently, when they established Dormont, the idea that guided the naming of the roads here including the offering of “a town without streets,” so every street is an ‘Avenue’ instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Broadway Avenue is more or less the high point hereabouts. I don’t know if it qualifies as a “ridge” or not, but all of the streets which cross it fall off in altitude and drop down into valleys. It’s not uncommon for the roads here to be set at a 15-20 degree angle. The steepest street in North America is nearby, in the Beechview section, dubbed Canton Avenue.
Having grown up in a subsection of a part of Brooklyn called “Flatlands,” that’s next door to “Flatbush,” this sort of terrain continually blows my mind. When you’re driving and you come to an intersection, you’ll notice gouges in the asphalt left behind by people who tried to conquer this terrain at too high a rate of speed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s two ways for me to get to and from the T, with one being quite a bit easier to surmount than the other. The most direct connection to the transit line would involve usage of the street above, dubbed “Lasalle Avenue.” Quite a few of the roads here use pavers rather than asphalt for the surfacing. When a vehicle is negotiating down Lasalle, you hear a grinding vibration from its tires and the pavers clanking against each other.
This particular evening was quite cold and icy, and there were a couple of spots where I was literally standing still and still slipping down the road due to gravity and the abrogation of friction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While absorbing a few pints of beer, I also absorbed some local knowledge and lore from a couple of the different bartenders who were pouring the libations. Some of it was horrific, an unsolved and truly macabre murder from the 1980’s which occurred near that T station pictured above, and the Bookshop Killer was also mentioned (said Bookshop Killer has apparently gotten got.) I also got advice on restaurants, other bars, and an admonition to visit some wilderness in somewhat nearby Western Maryland for white water rafting. Y’know I’d like to take pictures of white water rafting, but…
After making my way back to HQ, and with a few belts in me, I decided to try and figure out what color the street lights are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can adjust the “color temperature” of your shot during the developing process in Photoshop, but as I’ve discovered over the years – it kind of matters what you had the camera set to when you’re capturing the photo. Particularly so in low light situations. It’s the “nitty gritty” side of digital photography, and it’s nuanced by knowing how digital images work when you “look under the hood.” The street lights in NYC create a luminance that’s best captured at about 3400 kelvin, which conquers the cool blue LED street lights. Pittsburgh still uses old school sodium maps, which produce an orange yellow light.
The camera will thereby attempt to build the image primarily on the red plate since that’s where most of the light’s coloration is found, which creates all sorts of problems as far as generating sensor noise. A bit of experimentation has revealed that my new “night setting” for captures in Pittsburgh should be 2800 Kelvin, which forces the pixel depth to build up on the green and blue plates, along with the red. This reduces the grainy noise issue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In daylight settings, I capture at 5200 Kelvin, if you’re curious. If it’s cloudy out, I’ll use 5800 Kelvin to make sure that the sky has something in it beyond just “blue gray.” I’ll adjust the actual color in Photoshop, which pushes the histogram into looking “normal.”
Digital images, of course are generally in RGB mode. If you’ve got Photoshop on your device, you can actually look at the three plates individually. It’s worth analyzing how the image is actually formed up, and why something you did in the field failed or succeeded during the developing process. Shoot for the edit, I always say.
Anyway, that was my big night out in Dormont, Pennsylvania. Something different tomorrow, 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.
back to West End Overlook Park
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On December 29th, a humble narrator negotiated his way back to the West End Elliot Overlook Park in the Elliot section of Pittsburgh in the late afternoon. I offered a couple of shots I’d captured up here at dawn last week, but even while I was shooting those I was thinking “I have to come back here at sunset, this “view” is a sunset thing.” Also mentioned last week, sunset in Pittsburgh isn’t a couple of hours long like it is in NYC, with its oceanic skies. Due to the geography here, the setting sun casts the hard shadow of Mount Washington across the confluence of the three rivers and the city’s center midway through its descent.
One got to the spot in West End with plenty of time to spare and set up my gear. I had a nice conversation with some kid from the surrounding neighborhood, who was imbibing the devil’s cabbage and chilling out. He was the first of several folks I interacted with while shooting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the West End Bridge over the Ohio River, lit up all sexy like in the shot above. I had erroneously called it the McKees Rocks Bridge in a prior post but received a correction in the comments from one of you brilliant people.
Alexander McKee, for whom McKees Rocks and both the eponymous bridge and the nearby community of McKeesport are named for, was an early trader based in this region, whom initial research reveals as having displayed a surprisingly modern point of view towards the “First Nation” Native Americans that populated this part of the continent.
At any rate, while I was waiting for the sky and sun to align to my liking, and the local kid whom I was chatting with had departed, I began twisting my tripod head around. “Up, down, all around,” that’s one of my mottoes. A passing couple struck up conversation with me next. They were wearing Steelers gear, and told me that they were “Yinzers” or Pittsburgh “born and bred’s” who had moved out to “the country” a couple of decades ago and were “in town” for a few days to see a theatrical show and attend a sports ball game.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Off in the distance, I spotted the Allegheny Observatory which I had described to you – lords and ladies – a couple of weeks ago. As mentioned in that post, I’m attempting to visit the prominences surrounding the three rivers’ valleys to try and develop a sense of spatial relationship. When you’re driving along on the many, many high speed roads that transect Pittsburgh, it is fairly impossible to do so.
I’ve mentioned that there’s a different “etiquette” as far as driving here, as in with the “Pittsburgh Left,” but there’s also a very different polity at work on the roads. They don’t honk quite as much here, but it’s fairly common for somebody to crawl right up your butt if they think you’re driving too slowly. “Too slowly” in this area means you’re only exceeding the speed limit by 20-30%. Following distance is one of the most important thing to be aware of when driving on a highway. For every ten miles of speed, maintain at least one car length of space between you and the car in front of you. If you needed to jam down on and lock your brakes to screech to a complete stop, the minimum amount of space you’d need to come to a complete stop is one car length per ten miles of speed. Yup – that’s close to a hundred feet at 55 mph, which sounds crazy and unrealistic but isn’t. When I can see the brand of sunglasses you’re wearing in my rear view mirror, that’s way too close. Also…
I’m seriously having to learn a new style of performance driving around here, with the crazy hills and the serpentine curves that bend around prominences or along cliffs. Lots of hidden driveways as well, with blind turns happening at high speed, there’s highway exits that appear out of seemingly nowhere, stop signs on highway entrance ramps… a dynamic driving environment, Pittsburgh is.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See what I mean about that hard sunset shadow cast by Mount Washington? One hung about at the park overlook, and some woman with a very enthusiastic dog arrived and set herself up nearby to play some sort of steel drum like instrument as the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself disappeared. I was enjoying the jam she was playing and decided that I’d like to stick around until the lights in Pittsburgh came on.
Since I’m a suburban asshole now, I feel like I should refer to this downtown section as “The City” but there’s only one place which I’ll ever use that term for and it’s 400 miles diagonally east and north of here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post is being written at the end of the first week of January, and it was literally this morning that – for the first time in 5 weeks – I actually had a fond “miss that” thought about NYC. It was bagel related. The bagels here are strange and anemic little things.
Thankfully, Pittsburgh actually has decent Pizza. Finding a pizzeria that does slices is a bit of a deal (they do 8” personal pizzas instead), but the local Pizza is actually pretty good. They tend to overdo it with toppings, giving into the tendency in this part of the country to throw every kind of meat you can imagine on top of the thing, but the thick crust is nice. Thankfully, it’s not the abrogation of all that’s right which… Philadelphia… calls Pizza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot was the one I was waiting around for, and soon after shooting it I decided to get out of dodge and back to HQ in neighboring Dormont. This decision was influenced by the dynamic driving environment mentioned above, as I don’t feel at all confident driving around at night around here and won’t until I get to know these roads and their peculiarities a bit better.
I had a rare moment of spare time, in between “have-to’s” and rainy days, so I decided to try and make the most of an unusually warm week in Pittsburgh over the first few days of 2023. My reward for the efforts of December and November was the few days I had to explore, I’d posit.
More tomorrow 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.
finding perspective
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Getting high is kind of a thing when you’re behind the camera. I don’t mean “smokin a doobie,” I’m talking about altitude. Finding somebody who will let me into an office building or up on a rooftop somewhere for a less common point of view is going to take me a while, I reckon.
At the start of the week, I was at West End Overlook park, and later on Polish Hill – both overlook the surrounding area. I’m trying to get a sense of where things are, how the light and weather travel through Pittsburgh, and develop a general geospatial awareness. I’ve mentioned a few times this week that even in Downtown Pittsburgh, it’s fairly easy to park at a metered spot and even simpler to put the car into one of the many multi story municipal lots. By a New Yorker’s standard, the price of parking in Pittsburgh is outlandishly cheap. The lot that I was on the roof of in this and the next few shots cost $6 for an hour, and it would have been $3 an hour afterwards.
Last time I was looking for a spot in Manhattan, a garage in Chelsea was charging $39 per hour. What? Yeah, I drove into the City. Why? Go ‘eff yourself, and mind your own business. Pfah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one is looking more or less south, towards the PPG building, which is the mirrored job with the castellations. Wish I could tell you in one of my typically granular manners what it is you’re looking at, but I don’t know myself. Yet.
I have done no specific work regarding railroads yet. They’re everywhere here, and it’s pretty normal to spot a freight train going this way or that. So far, I’ve only seen Norfolk & Southern or CSX units. I did learn what the “Pittsburgh Subdivision” is, though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An observation I’ve made is that there’s a whole big bunch of stuff which the Pittsburgh natives grew up with and consider as being “normal,” and they thereby expect everybody to automatically know these things, and if they don’t they’re “jag offs.” The Pittsburgh Left is one of these things, for instance. It’s all learned cultural expectation, like the way that New Yorkers stand in the street while waiting for the light to change so you can make it across the road quicker when the traffic flow abides. I’ve been a New Yorker, living amongst 8 million other super predators, my whole life. Don’t believe you’re a super predator? Next time you’re on vacation, just try not to start a crime family or a revolution. We’re ready to kill if the kid at the bagel shop is working too slow, if somebody blows their horn too long, or if somebody is wearing too much cologne on the subway.
Also, everybody seems super nice here, which makes me nervous. It’s been impossible for me to not “last thing” check the various locks adorning the house New York style by pulling on the handle, to go outside and check if anybody is messing around near my car… that sort of thing, due to having always lived amongst this group of super predators.
Also, nobody’s this nice, they have to be hiding something… Additionally, Pickup Trucks are just called trucks here. There’s also “pierogi pizza,” which is surprisingly good.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot directly above this one and the one directly above with the “crown building” that looks like a super villain’s lair in it were shot from a second parking lot a few blocks from the first. Both gave me six stories worth of elevation, and together cost me $11. There’s another downtown lot I’m going to hit soon, one which will theoretically give me a point of view over a set of railroad tracks leading off a bridge over a river.
I spent the rest of this particular day driving around Pittsburgh and checking out the various neighborhoods and how they fit together.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s one of the famous “Steps of Pittsburgh” pictured above, in an area called Greenfield. There’s hundreds of these municipal staircases scattered about the City, an accommodation to the terrain. As a note, it’s not a field nor is it overly green.
One of the things I’ve learned is that you don’t necessarily want to live on a street which has the word “run” in its name. That’s “run” as in river run, and during the spring thaw or even just a heavy bout of rain, these low lying valley areas can easily flood out. It’s a “thing” here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things I’m just fascinated by are these extreme changes in elevation – says the kid from a part of Brooklyn called Flatlands. The roads interchange pictured above is part of the reason that the neighborhoods here are so distinct from each other. You’re separated from the next “massing” of people by topography and water, possibly by an interstate and or a rail line too.
What an interesting place Pittsburgh is. Can’t wait to learn more.
Back next week, 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.
a church on Polish Hill
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the 28th of December, one had an errand to run. It’s seems that the ubiquitous ATM machines of a certain NYC based bank which my accounts are with are not so commonly found here in Pittsburgh. That meant that in order to avoid paying a fee when withdrawing some cash, I needed to drive for a bit in order to do so. I will crawl through broken glass to avoid paying ATM fees, as a note. That’s how I ended up in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, nearby the campus of the University of Pittsburgh or “PITT.”
That’s the literal crowning glory of their campus, called the “Cathedral of Learning.” I know very little about it, but the Wikipedia link attached to the name can explain it all to you, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since I was sort of in the neighborhood, I satisfied my curiosity regarding an impressive religious building that I had spotted from the flatlands of the Strip District on prior outings to this area.
That’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, a 1905 structure that hosts a presumptively Polish Roman Catholic congregation. The prominence it is set onto is called Polish Hill.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing I can report, after my very limited experience here in the Pittsburgh area, is that the neighbors are quite friendly. Several times have I been approached while taking pictures of this or that, expecting the old refrain of “what are you doing, or you can’t do that, or are you in Al Qaeda” that I’ve often encountered. Instead, there’s a real pride in the neighborhood bubbling out of the locals, as in the case of an older gentleman who walked over to me while I was cracking out a few exposures. Before ten minutes rolled by, he told me his whole life’s story before he had to skedaddle off to meet a girlfriend. Dude had to be 80. You go, son, you go!
Most of the chats have been the usual ones – they have a camera that they don’t know how to use and do I know what it’s worth – that sort of thing. The second I open my mouth to speak, and they hear the accent, they’ll ask “where are you from.” When I tell them I just moved to Pittsburgh from New York, they look at me all puzzled and say “Why?”
This has happened several times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One circled around the church in the automobile, easily finding spots to park in when an interesting point of view appeared. This one is looking north towards the Allegheny River from up on Polish Hill.
A lot of my time at the moment is being spent trying to a) finish the moving process and get established here, and b) learn the jigsaw puzzle of the neighborhoods and roads which form Allegheny County.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an abandoned looking parochial school just up the hill from Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is one of the very few places I’ve seen graffiti. I don’t know if it’s municipal will or civic pride, but I find it striking how little of that sort of thing I’m seeing. Maybe it’s just how over the top NYC is with graffiti. I’m not talking about the nice “street art” murals kind of graffiti, mind you, I’m talking about “punks” “tagging” stuff.
It’s been very interesting living in a place where the government doesn’t seek to “monetize” you quite as much as the NYC one does. Robot cameras aren’t sitting on the traffic lights, there’s abundant free or fairly cheap parking for motor vehicles, especially so nearby mass transit centers, and when you need to go somewhere only a few miles away you can do so without passing through a crucible of purposely induced traffic jams. You can also go from one section of the metroplex to another without having to shell out an hour’s wages in tolls.
Again, it ain’t necessarily sunshine and handjobs out here, but it’s nice not having an army of professional assholes thinking up new ways to get the buckaroos out of your pocket so they can fund some numbnut’s political ambitions.
Say… how’s d’at fer da most Brooklynz t’ing I’s said inna last few weekz?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I really, really want to get inside this building. I’m positive that I’ll figure out a way to do so, and my desire to photograph whatever glories it contains should be obvious to longtime readers. I like photographing Catholic Churches (Greek ones too!). This is, of course, something I’m going to figure out a way to social engineer some official permission for. I’ve never been one of those guys who walks into a church and just starts shooting without asking. That’s rude.
I mean, I’ve done it, but it was rude. Like I said, this part of the country has manners, and is polite. They also don’t curse as much, if you can ‘effin believe 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.
riding the T
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On December 23rd, one awoke to the horror of not having any sort of gift to present on Christmas morning to Our Lady of the Pentacle. Not wanting to disappoint, nor to drive, one climbed up the hill in Dormont to the T streetcar line and headed into Downtown Pittsburgh to visit a holiday market that gets set up in a ritual center for the downtown area called “Market Square.”
As is my habit, I debarked the transit line a couple of blocks early and took a meandering scuttle to my destination. That skyscraper rising in the shot above is the U.S. Steel tower, and is home to that corporate entity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pittsburgh is experiencing the same phenomena that other American cities are in this age of hybrid and remote work. The streets are fairly deserted without the hustle or the bustle, and large numbers of the shops which would service the gastrointestinal or other needs of the office workers have gone out of business. Most of the people you see wandering around are living rough, and display a number of behavioral issues which cause one’s caution to rise.
Personally, having lived in NYC my whole life, I don’t feel at all threatened by this population but there you go. Regardless, shields up, and be aware of what’s happening around you. My big worry right now is that since I’m unfamiliar with the local culture, I won’t see it coming.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After purchasing a whimsical hat for Our Lady, one made his way over to the T to return back to Dormont, which is about 5 or so miles away from Downtown. There’s a few different lines on the T, all of which flow through downtown in a tunnel that originally carried freight trains under the city during the Steel City era.
I guess I waited about 15-20 minutes for my ride. Pictured above is a “Blue Line” light rail unit approaching the Gateway Center stop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As has continually been the case in this area, I was marveling at the lack of graffiti and cast off garbage and litter. We are absolute slobs in NYC. Admittedly, Pittsburgh makes it a lot easier than NYC to be responsible – there’s litter baskets everywhere, ones which even have separate receptacles for cigarette butts. I’ve seen a bit of graffiti tagging here and there, but comparatively nothing when contrasted with Brooklyn or Queens.
The “Broken Windows” theory of Bill Bratton is thoroughly debauched in the eyes of most in NYC these days, but there’s a corrosive effect in terms of civil order when the citizenry sees litter and graffiti everywhere. It makes you not care, since everything is shitty, and why should you go out of your way when nobody else does? Pittsburgh maintains itself much better, and thereby the citizenry seems to “make an effort.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My “Red Line” T finally arrived, and I soon boarded it. As mentioned previously, the way things work here is that transit is free in the city center, and you pay your fare when leaving the train on your way out of Pittsburgh. On the way in, you pay when you board.
Both buses and T train sets use a protected corridor called a “Bus Way” for part of their journey. The bus ways are also used by other municipal vehicles like Police, Public Works, and Ambulances. You encounter signage forbidding private vehicles from usage of these corridors at various intersections through the City.
Compared to the bloated nightmare which is New York City’s governmental system, Pittsburgh gets so much more “bang for the buck” with literally 1/10th the financial resources available to the agencies of NYC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T dropped me off back in Dormont, with Our Lady of the Pentacle’s whimsical Christmas hat stowed securely in my camera bag.
It was time for us to hunker down for the coming cold snap. By the time Christmas Eve rolled around the next day, atmospheric temperatures had dropped down to literally zero and with the wind chill factored in it was negative 20. We had prepared for this, and decided to just spend a couple of days at home unpacking and making the house a home.
More tomorrow, from Western Pennsylvania, at 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 