Stairway to… heaven?
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apparently, Pennsylvania’s highway planners reached out to Robert Moses for advice on transit planning ‘back in the day,’ and his unmistakable trademark of running high speed roads along urban waterways is very much in effect here in Pittsburgh. This is from the Golden Triangle side of the Monongahela River, and it’s one of the busier high speed roads you’ll encounter here in the Paris of Appalachia. It ‘carries,’ and ‘connects,’ and ‘leads to.’
There’s pay parking lots below the highway ramps and along the Monongahela River’s banks, which I’m told are colloquially known as the ‘bathtub’ given their propensity for flooding during the spring thaw. A hiking and bike trail forms the actual ‘water’s edge.’
Of course, that’s what I was walking on and what I was heading towards was the bathtub.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were a couple of sections of this flood prone underworld which host collections of tents, occupied by the unhoused and indigent. This population of unfortunates is causing the local landlord class to gnash their teeth, and are being blamed for all sorts of problems in the Downtown area.
The Landlords blame declining real estate valuations in Pittsburgh, affecting their nearby office and commercial properties they own on the tent people, rather than acknowledging that the post Covid trend towards remote work is the causal factor. Additionally, taxes are quite a bit lower in other counties, and businesses can also find a decidedly lower rent for more spacious in office parks found in outlying areas a half hour in any direction.
Instead, punch down and blame the homeless.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I found a set of those famous municipal steps that are found all over Pittsburgh to carry me back up to the street level. Unfortunately, these would ultimately put me on the shoulder of an on ramp to one of those highways in the first shot, which was pretty terrifying. A lapse in traffic allowed me to scuttle quickly across the ramp and onto a nearby sidewalk. Brr.
Back next week, lords and ladies.
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The Newtown Pentacle 
My family lived in Pittsburgh way back in the dusty recesses of time (1960’s) and back then the land between those highways and the river’s edge were mostly steel mills. And steel mills were places where most folks never went – and didn’t want to go – so nobody lamented the location of those highways. The only exception, if memory serves, was Point State Park, which is at the tip of the city.
I was an exception, in that when I was a kid my great-uncle, who had been in the steel business, arranged for me to have a tour of the steel mill in Washington PA (long gone). It was supposed to be a big deal for which I’d be eternally grateful. I found it to be terrifying and really unpleasant.
Lawrence Lambert
June 9, 2023 at 6:10 pm