Archive for February 2023
Hot Metal, 3 Rivers Heritage Trail
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The path which the Monongahela River enjoys is somewhat serpentine in nature, prior to the waterway’s juncture with the Allegheny River, where they mutually become the Ohio River nearby Downtown Pittsburgh. Last week, I drove the Mobile Oppression Platform (the Toyota) over to a neighborhood called the Southside Flats and parked in a lot associated with a park and the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. The MOP was left directly beneath the Birmingham Bridge, pictured above.
It’s a young bridge for this section of the world, having been opened for business in 1977. It’s another bowstring arch bridge, not unlike the Fort Penn bridge discussed last week. The fact that it’s not painted yellow indicates that it’s a state – rather than a city – bridge. My plan for the afternoon was pretty simple – I’d walk eastwards along the trail, cross the river and then walk westwards, whereupon I’d circle back to the MOP. It was overcast in Pittsburgh, with roiling clouds bolting around up in the vault, and the temperatures were comfortable and in the mid 50’s.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is another one of the sections of Pittsburgh where there used to be a steel mill, I’m told. The trail itself follows active freight rail tracks on the south side of the river. In tomorrow’s post, the north side of the scene will be explored, but for the first half of my walk it was all about the south side and getting to where my crossing would be found.
There’s gigantic infrastructural elements available for inspection and appreciation along the way – storm sewers, enormous concrete and iron retaining walls that keep the slopes of sedimentary soil deposits from sliding into the river. One section had steel plates holding up a wall of soils, with the steel plates bolted into place with giant lug nuts that were the size of dinner plates.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the 1887 vintage Hot Metal Bridge. During the Second World War, 15% of American steel production would travel over it on the rails. In 2000 AD, it was converted over to vehicle and pedestrian/bike usage. Its “official” name is the “Monongahela Connecting Railroad Bridge and Hot Metal Bridge.” On the path approaching it, there’s historic signage which describes the steel industry and the railroads which served it.
There’s post industrial development everywhere you look in this zone, and a few large corporate anchors are located nearby, including the clothing company American Eagle Outfitters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the Hot Metal Bridge’s pedestrian path, which is completely separated from the vehicular lanes, and heading north – that’s where this shot was gathered. I didn’t have any particular goal for the afternoon other than kicking my feet about and getting some exercise, but I was able to piece together a mental map of where I was scuttling based around prior explorations – which I’ve described here – of the Monongahela Valley. Locally, it’s referred to as the Mon Valley by the politicians, but when they say that it’s usually in reference to the still quite industrial areas to the east like Clairton and Braddock.
There were just a few other people on the bridge. A bike rider or three, joggers, one or two other pedestrians. No dogs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one looks back towards the south side of the river across the Hot Metal Bridge. My original plan was to circle back to the south side and the MOP using the Birmingham Bridge… but more on that tomorrow.
The north side has quite a different circumstance than the south does, with high speed roads like I-579 riding on elevated structures and an industrial and commercial zone. When you get to the north side, the Three Rivers Heritage trail is renamed as the Eliza trail to commemorate the J&L Steel mill which was located here. This bridge is also part of the Great Allegheny Passage trail.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the north side, I turned westwards. The neighborhoods around this intersectional area are Oakland and the Hill District. The terrain here is difficult due to its verticality, and I can tell you that it’s a real challenge to climb these hills on foot. Luckily, the path I was walking on was graded for rail, meaning one foot of elevation for every hundred feet horizontally.
Tomorrow, I find myself walking through the sort of place which most would logically go looking for my corpse, if I’d gone missing.
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Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself were desirous of getting out together and experiencing something new to us here in Pittsburgh. So we hopped into the Mobile Oppression Platform (my pet name for the Toyota) and drove over to Pittsburgh’s Oakland section, where the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is located. Parking cost $10, and non member admission tickets ran us $25 a head.
I’ve been to the British Museum in London, and quite obviously – the American Museum of Natural History back in NYC – so I’m a bit jaded by scale and scope, but this is one spectacular institution here in Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The 115,000 square foot museum was founded by Andrew Carnegie back in 1896, and is one of several cultural institutions which the founder of U.S. Steel endowed while feeling guilty about the Homestead Strike and massacre. The museum also incorporates an art museum into its design, and you can move freely between the two once inside. It was a cold day in Pittsburgh, and a Sunday, so there were lots of family groups moving around inside with their kids. The Oakland neighborhood surrounding it hosts multiple cultural institutions and churches, in addition to the university properties.
We saw several interesting exhibits, notably the Alcoa Foundation Hall of American Indians and Polar World: Wyckoff Hall of Arctic Life. As is usually the case with a museum, we didn’t see everything on the first go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of the art on display during this visit was eminently modern, and the curatorial intention seemed to revolve around hot button modern day political issues. It was a nice space, and a great collection. Apparently the museum’s total collection include some 22 million individual specimens and artifacts, with some 10,000 items on public display.
There’s a lot of behind the scenes science work going on, we were told by museum staff. This includes the so called “Alcohol House” which is where they store the remains of collected animals and plants for future curation or study in sealed jars of alcohol.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The mineral rooms were fascinating, and quite well presented. Normally this is the sort of thing which a humble narrator walks right past, but this particular exhibit pulled me right in.
An old friend of mine once described walking around a museum like this as producing a psychological haze which he described as becoming “uberplexed,” a nearly narcotic level “high.” I can tell you, I was uberplexed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The big draw at the museum, obviously, involves Dinosaurs. Several diorama displays were on offer, and every kid in the museum was required to walk into this room and throw their arms into the air while yelling “rawwr.”
Ever wonder how different this experience would be if instead of ‘Dinosaur’ we used ‘Gigachicken?’ I’ll betcha that Dinosaurs would have probably tasted delicious – grilled with a bit of salt and pepper and maybe a squeeze of lemon. As a human, it’s my responsibility to assess first how I would kill one, then wonder what it would taste like. Alpha predators have to alpha, yo.
20 guys with spears, working in tandem, that’s how you’d kill it. That’s how they used to do elephants and mammoths. It would also make sense to have dug out a muddy pit in advance, to trap it in one place so it’s easier to poke at with the spears. Gigachicken.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The institution is famous for finding and identifying the Diplodocus speciation back in 1899. The skeletons above are identified as Diplodocus carnegii.
Back tomorrow with more from Pittsburgh, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Last steps
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s a Caterpillar 980c Wheel Loader, which is a piece of construction equipment that was manufactured sometime between 1987 and 1994. It weighs 66,877 pounds and is powered by a 322 horsepower engine. Behind it is the Panhandle Bridge, and there’s also a concrete company down here which has docks on the Monongahela River, here in Pittsburgh.
The Panhandle Bridge carries the T light rail service over the “Mon.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For the last month, whenever I’ve managed to conjure up the time to do so – and the weather has permitted it – a humble narrator has been working on developing a geospatial awareness of this place in the space twixt the ears and behind the eyes. Truth be told, I’m still working on the basics – east or west and so on. Learning the lay of the land.
That’s the T emerging from the Panhandle Bridge, on the south side of the river, heading towards a stop at Station Square.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since I was heading there myself, to board the T and head back to HQ, I decided to follow the elevated trackway on foot. Places like this are usually “my kind of thing.” A couple of teen aged kids were smoking the devils cabbage nearby, and they seemed to be on a date. A few people were walking dogs, and the occasional jogger or bike rider would flash by. As a rule, the bike people seem to wear “the outfit” (helmet, silky shirt, stretchy shorts, special bicycle shoes). Lots of vehicle traffic was moving around, but this was about 5 in the afternoon, so…
I began heading towards the end of my day’s movement.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One cut through a massive for pay parking lot, found directly across the street from the light rail station, which charged $9 for all day. Given that this light rail is the start of Pittsburgh’s free zone for the T, that’s a fairly good deal. There’s parts of the area which are straight up urban, with apartment houses and all that. Saying that, Pittsburgh has a tremendous suburban and semi rural population who live in towns and boroughs which are car based. The accommodation, thereby, to get people to use mass transit rather than drive to the center, is a park and ride setup, with large relatively affordable parking facilities like this one. So far, I have not ridden the bus, but I also moved fairly close to the T’s Red Line.
The region’s bus system is fairly sprawling, and reaches far out into the surrounding counties. My understanding of that system is that you buy a parking permit for the bus operation’s park and ride lots and then head into town from whatever exurb you live in. A friend of mine suggested that the reason most of the area’s centers are spaced about 50 miles from each other is that 50 miles is about how far you could get on a horse in a single day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned the other day, one of my particular tasks at the moment is figuring out how to shoot Pittsburgh. Unlike NYC, with its environmental devastation and utter lack of vegetative life, there’s all sorts of forestry happening everywhere here. Getting a “clean shot” of something is fairly impossible without branches or brush intruding on the shot, so I’ve been forced into including the stuff in the composition.
Don’t get me wrong, Pittsburgh is an environmental nightmare when you get down to it – heavy industry, a permissive regulatory system, historical footprints, all that. It’s just very, very well planted with self seeding trees and shrubs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s East Carson Street pictured above, where the T comes back to ground at the Station Square stop. East of this spot is a neighborhood called the South Side Flats, which has a disturbingly heterogeneous collection of buildings and what I’m told is a thriving nightlife scene. To the West you’ll find the Station Square development area and eventually the Fort Pitt bridge, where this week’s posts began.
Next week – more, now than ever – at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Scuttling, always scuttling
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After returning to the ground – Pennsyl-Firma, as it were – in a post facto interval experienced after walking over Pittsburgh’s Fort Pitt Bridge, one headed down for a rail to trail path which would place me in a convenient spot as far as boarding the T light rail service which would in turn take me back to HQ.
Along the way, I spotted the tug Vernon M. Weiland towing a chemical barge into the Monongahela River.
According to the experts at tugboatinformation.com, this boat was laid down in 1981 down in Arkansas and has been doing its duty in the Pittsburgh area since 2016. It’s owned by an outfit called Ohio River Salvage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I finally got to take a picture of a train, which has been something of a frustrating pursuit for me since moving to Pittsburgh despite the density of the industry here. Getting a photo of this sort of subject is a whole lot like going fishing. You pick a spot and wait. Eventually a train will come, or not. I know people who pack a lunch and bring a folding chair, and who will will sit there waiting for a train set for long intervals. This is completely the opposite of my entire “thing.”
I’m always moving, no matter what. If there’s a thing to see and it ain’t there when I’m passing by, then I missed it. I don’t like lingering about in any one spot for too long, as it makes me a target. Back in Queens, I learned to anticipate when LIRR or New York & Atlantic would likely be actively doing stuff. I haven’t developed that sort of sense here yet, and I keep on arriving at places just after a train has passed though or I’m leaving the spot as one arrives.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unsurprisingly, due to homeland security and commercial schedule factors, the freight people don’t exactly publish a schedule of when they’re coming through. Unlike tugboats and other maritime operations, there doesn’t seem to be a site with a live feed of who’s who and where they are. What that means is that either I start carrying a folding chair around with me in the cargo section of the Mobile Oppression Platform and just accept that I’ll have to sit down like the foamers and the train spotters, or that I’ll need to just accept that it’s catch as catch can.
I don’t imagine that this particular news story filtered back to NYC, but there was just a major derailment and chemical spill situation about 50 miles west of Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That gray line on the otherwise yellow steel of the Fort Pitt Bridge is the pedestrian pathway that I walked over, which was described in two posts this week – Part 1, and Part 2.
One is beginning to develop an understanding of how to shoot Pittsburgh. There’s a lot of vegetation here, albeit it’s winter time bare sticks at the moment. It’s a very difficult proposition finding a clean view without some sort of kitchie booger crawling in from the sides, so I’ve instead just started incorporating the stuff in the composition. Also, as it’s almost always cloudy here, I’ve taken a few proactive steps in the direction of exposing for that as well. When it’s a bit warmer, I’m planning on doing several get up early sessions to see what dawn looks like.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So far, none of the nightmare scenarios predicted by my NYC friends have come true. I haven’t found myself alone in a circle of pickup trucks with armed rednecks swirling about while loading their shotguns. Neither have I been buried in vertical yards of snow. They didn’t “just shoot me” when I was witnessed getting out of a car with New York plates. Give me time, as I’m sure I’ll piss somebody off, but so far the Pittsburgh people seem unusually nice and friendly. The local junkies would definitely boil you down for elements to pay for a fix, but they’d feel really bad about it afterwards. This could all change today, of course.
At any rate, I haven’t felt menaced or anything while roaming around in the area. One thing they’re really worried about in these parts are “Pedos” or pedophiles. Just the other day I was taking a photo of the Birmingham Bridge on the South Side of the Monongahela River, in a park, and I was approached by a young woman inquiring if I was taking pictures of her baby who was sleeping in a carriage. I didn’t want to explain to her that cameras can only take pictures of things they’re pointed at, so instead I bored her to death talking about the history of the bridge, and why I was photographing it. I continued on to a great recipe for soup that I had recently come across and… that’s how you handle a “Karen” in the wild.
What is it with the impulse people have to police public spaces and try to control other people’s behavior?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ‘pedo’ thing is weird though. Back in NYC, if somebody is giving you Karen crap on the street, it’s generally accusations of some sort of criminality. I was once asked “are you a terrorist” when I was taking a photo of the Queensboro Bridge on the Manhattan side. I found the question hilarious in and of itself, and briefly considered whether or not a terrorist would say “yes,” and if Al Qaeda issued business cards to its members. You want to know something about a group of people – find out what they’re scared of. Fear is far more revelatory than aspiration.
Back tomorrow with more, 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.
Fort Pitt Bridge, part 2
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, one required a bit of exercise and thereby the Fort Pitt Bridge’s extremely icy pedestrian walkway beckoned. It was literally below freezing out, but a humble narrator was wrapped up tight in winter garb, including a brand new winter coat. A conscious decision was made to travel a bit lighter than usual, with just two lenses and no tripods or other extraneous gear to slow me down. As it turns out, I only needed the one lens (24-105mm).
After crossing over the Monongahela River, the walkway is set onto an elliptical path which eventually brings one back to the sidewalk nearby Pittsburgh’s famous Duquesne Incline.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Alluding to Tolkien – one lens to rule them all – is what I’ve been missing on the Canon RF mount since I upgraded from my old rig, which was a Canon 7D. The Canon R6 I’m using these days is in all ways a superior digital appliance to the former camera, but there are few if any third party lenses available for it. On the 7D, which is a “crop sensor” model, I almost always had a Sigma 18-300mm zoom lens attached to it for general “photowalk” usage. That lens, and several others in my kit, are designed specifically for the crop sensor and not the full frame chip inside of the R6. This sort of “all in one” range suggests that it would be a crappy lens, but I liked it for its versatility and once you got to know the thing and where and when it failed, it was actually pretty reliable. I find myself using the 24-105 a lot here in Pittsburgh.
Saying that, I’m not unhappy with what I’m getting from the 24-105mm – I mean, it’s a Canon L series lens with a red band and everything – but I miss the option of going from ultra wide to telephoto with just a twist of the lens barrel. Supposedly Canon isn’t licensing the RF mount to anyone right now. That’s a shame, since there’s some pretty amazing glass out there from Sigma and others in the Nikon and Sony mount spaces.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Fort Pitt Tunnel that the vehicle traffic is hurtling into. Right around this spot is where I ended up conversing with some bloke about the news of the day and we both landed on how cold it was. There wasn’t too much in the way of pedestrian or bike traffic on this particular afternoon, but it was – after all – January in Pittsburgh.
It has been fairly difficult to get out for my every other day walks for the last couple of weeks due to the January factor. Rain, snow, snow showers, rain, polar vortex, rain…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When time and opportunity present, though, I get my butt moving! The plan for the rest of the afternoon involved scuttling down the Monongahela River shoreline towards the Station Square “T” light rail stop. This pathway leads into a connection with the Three Rivers Heritage Trail, which is another one of the many (fantastic) rail-to-trail pathways that snake around the city. A couple of weeks ago, the Great Allegheny Passage’s trail in Homestead was discussed – part 1, part 2, part 3.
Just the other day, I was walking down the other side of the Monongahela River, on the golden triangle/city side. You’ll see those shots next week, but that’s where the waterfront trail’s path goes nowhere near the water and you’re separated from it by a massive highway and several waterfront industrial and commercial parcels. I was ecstatic about this, of course, since I got to walk around and photograph the footings of bridges and highways. I’ll show you all that next week, I think.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We are just about done with the moving process at this point. Furniture is in the house, I’ve now got a Pennsylvania Driver’s License, and have learned about seasonally available regional baked goods. Ever had a Pączki? One is looking forward to spring, exuberantly. The moving process consumed my entire autumn and winter. Y’know, you’d think moving from one state to another would be simple, huh?
The last major process we have to handle involves transferring my car registration and plates over to Pennsylvania ones. When that’s done, major combat operations will have concluded and I will realize the peace dividend of having fewer “have-to’s” listed in my column on a white board somewhere.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I kept on hoping for a train to roll through, which would have really made the shot above sing. As continually repeated – I’m scouting right now. Figuring out where the shots are, how I get there, what time of day would be best – all that. So far, I haven’t had very much luck as far as timing goes when it comes to freight rail traffic. I’m no train spotter, or railfan as it were, but damn… I wish there had been a CSX train set rolling through for this one.
Tomorrow, a few more shots from my walk along the Monongahela River here in the Paris of Appalachia.
“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 