The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As mentioned in prior posts, due to the challenging nature of the terrain here in Pittsburgh it’s best to have a well thought out route in mind if you’re planning on taking a long walk. The hills and valleys often create cul-de-sac areas that you’ve got to be mindful of lest you find yourself having to double back over a steep hill.

This particular walk began at a ‘T Streetcar’ station called ‘Steel Plaza’ in Pittsburgh’s Downtown business district, then led through and into a neighborhood called Uptown, with the ultimate goal of walking over the Birmingham Bridge spanning the Monongahela River governing the route guiding my steps. Said bridge is pictured above, in the left hand section of the shot.

The area pictured above squats upon a considerable prominence which offers a substantial and sheer drop off to a flatter patch of land far below, found along the river. That’s also where speedy and voluminously populated highway roads are found, as well as the waterfront Eliza Furnace Trail – which I’ve mentioned in the past.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Incidentally, I had finished listening to the ‘1984’ radio drama that was playing through my headphones at the start of the walk, and had switched over to enjoying some music instead. This time, it was Husker Du’s 1980’s perfect album ‘Zen Arcade.’ I like light hearted and cheery fare, music wise.

This spot seemed to be fairly industrial in character, but there’s a lot of construction work going on nearby so maybe that’s a temporary thing. Remember that bridge which collapsed about a year ago in Pittsburgh, when the President was in town? That was quite nearby.

The collapse set off a mad dash of engineering inspections city wide, scrutiny of an overpass bridge in this area revealed it was dangerously close to collapse, due to a lack of maintenance and heavy usage. They’ve (as in the local and state Govt.’s) been rebuilding the thing ever since. That’s why you’re starting to see all this construction ‘stuff’ popping up, as I got closer and closer to the Birmingham, which the circumspect overpass bridge overflies a part of. Big project underway, right here.

One wandered down the hill a bit, to get a better look at the bridge project, and see what might be lurking about, on my way to the Birmingham Bridge’s pathway.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Photo Tip: Something I’ve learned over the years – through long trial and years of error – is that you want to place your camera’s focusing point on the post between the windshield and driver’s side window when photographing vehicles, especially when they’re large ones like the truck above. This sort of knowledge really matters when shooting in low light and wide aperture, I’d offer.

The truck was rigged up with – what looked like to me – one of those giant suction pump and pressure cylinder frammistats you’d use to slurp water out of manholes and underground pipery.

A humble narrator always has to repeat a corny joke when witnessing one of these setups – Hey, ya see’s dat truck over dere? yeah? Aww, that truck, it just ‘effin sucks.

I’m here all week, two shows on Saturday…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Believe it or not, I wasn’t the only pedestrian. Saying that, it wasn’t exactly a well populated path that I was scuttling along. Except for cars, trucks, that sort of thing. I saw zero bicycle enthusiasts.

My plan for the second half of this longish walk would involve crossing the Monongahela River, on the Birmingham Bridge’s pedestrian and bike path. I hadn’t walked that one yet, although one has quite enjoyed several automotive drives across the span, while motoring upon the thing. Sick views, yo.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It always strikes me, how visually distinct Pittsburgh’s various sections are from each other. There aren’t ‘gradient areas’ between them, due to the geology of the place, I’d reckon. You cross a street with skyscrapers behind you and on the next corner there’s an abandoned Second Empire rooming house or a boarded up terracotta mansion. Off in the distance you see train tracks and highways, and then there’s a band of one family homes set into deep valleys or atop steep ridges. Just beyond that… and then… and then… Pittsburgh is just… fascinating.

Negotiating my steps towards, and finding a path to, the entryway of the Birmingham Bridge was my next move, so off I scuttled.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the Birmingham Bridge pictured above, and I’ll be taking y’all on a walk high over the Monongahela River upon it – soon.

I’m going to be taking next week off from the normal offerings, and do a week of single images you’ve seen here sometime in the past, (as is my habit) for the holiday interval between Christmas and New Years. We’ll pick up at the Birmingham Bridge for the rest of this walk on the 1st day of 2024, which I’m told will be a Monday.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.

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“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.

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One has seldom even driven through this part of Pittsburgh, possibly twice in my recollection, but a humble narrator had never taken a look at the ‘Uptown’ section while on foot.

Uptown sits on a high bluff overlooking the Monongahela River, on the southern side of Pittsburgh’s so called ‘Golden Triangle.’ Uptown is neighbored by a corporate tower dominated zone called ‘Downtown’ to the west, ‘Oakland’ with its universities and cultural institutions, and an affluent residential neighborhood called Squirrel Hill to the east. To the north is the ‘Hill District.’

There’s a gaggle of ‘Second Empire’ style buildings found in Uptown, with their mansard roofs and terracotta finishes. Many of them are abandoned, or have been burnt out by fires and are being used as squats, or they’re tightly boarded up.

One was walking up Pittsburgh’s Fifth Avenue on this particular Sunday afternoon.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The abandoned buildings ‘thing’ here is really startling.

When you saw something like this back in Brooklyn or Queens, it was generally because a real estate developer had bought the property, and was intentionally allowing it to rot away and become a nuisance, so as to avoid any sort of interference from historic preservationists or community groups getting in the way of their dreams of avarice plans. A friend of mine back in Greenpoint coined the term ‘Bloomblight’ for the practice of the Real Estate Industrial Complex.

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, has an abundance of abandoned homes within its borders. I’ve read estimates suggesting there are more than 50,000 buildings of all types within the municipality which have simply been abandoned by their owners. When you start looking at the larger region, the abandonment and concurrent blight conditions are hard to ignore.

‘Blight Clearance’ is a budget item in Pittsburgh’s annual spending, as it is for many municipalities in the region.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I saw signage promising this area was an ‘opportunity zone,’ which means that if you show up with financing and a plan, the City will likely approve it and give you tax breaks and the land will almost be free to do nearly whatever you want to do with it. I asked a local friend who recently retired from the local Real Estate Industrial Complex about Uptown, and he told me that Uptown has been the ‘next big thing’ here for about 40 years.

Compared to surrounding areas, the City of Pittsburgh has relatively high taxes and a political estate which will insist on all sorts of requirements – affordability, access, inclusion – which drive up the cost of building anything. Just across the county line, however, are lower tax suburbs which will bend over backwards to get you to build something there instead of here.

There’s ‘the City of’ and ‘the county of’ and then there’s ‘the metro area.’ Each zone has advantages and disadvantages, from a business or development POV.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Check out that old apartment house!

I see this particular ‘style’ quite a bit here in Pittsburgh’s urban neighborhoods. Lots of windows and terraced spaces. This sort of inventory dates back to before air conditioning, when ventilation in Pittsburgh’s famously humid climate demanded lots and lots of windows. Every other building on that side of the block I was walking down had stout plywood covering the windows.

To be fair, Uptown is a neighbored by a couple of troubled and ‘crimey’ areas to the north, and is set along a steep bluff hemmed in by highways and bridges. A couple of high speed roads and interstates form its southern border and subject the neighborhood (as it were) to 24/7 traffic noise and pollution.

This is another one of the places which the native “Yinzers” have advised me to avoid at night, due to crime and other insalubrious activities.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The next big thing? It’s hard not to imagine some of these empty lots and historic homes housing some of the overflow population from the universities in nearby Oakland. Saying that – If I were in my early thirties and blessed with a large bank account, and looking to build my ‘compound,’ I’d probably be establishing ‘Waxman Manor’ somewhere else. Up in the hills, with a private stream for water.

I’ve long dreamt of building into a hillside, like a Hobbit, and surrounding my domicile with a murder fence and kill zones, which I’d hire a certain group of ‘Boomers’ to design – ones who had served in the Viet Cong.

Nobody but nobody knows how to keep the Americans out of your hair like the Viet Cong do.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The gentrification hammers seemed to be hard at work at a couple of spots here in Uptown. Mostly what I observed on this stretch were rotting old buildings, open brick lots, and a lot of people who definitely seemed to be living on an edge of some kind.

There were sparse examples of junkies and possibly a prostitute or two milling about, but otherwise there was very little in the way of street life. The occupied buildings I observed had the appearance of fortresses, which reminded me of the late 1970’s and 1980’s back in Brooklyn’s Flatbush and Canarsie. Bars on all the first floor windows, driveways adorned with barb wire fencing – that sort of thing.

Back tomorrow.

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“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.

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It was a ‘long walk’ kind of day for a humble narrator, and one trudged up the hill to the “T” streetcar line station from HQ, where a ride into the ‘Downtown’ section of Pittsburgh was actuated. My path for the afternoon walk wasn’t in Downtown, rather I was heading ‘Uptown.’

I’ve walked through a tiny slice of ‘Uptown’ before, when I was drawn to visit and walk down a ridiculous set of Municipal Steps along the Monongahela River, nearby the bluff that Duquesne University occupies, back in May.

I’ve been using my headphones again while scuttling about, and listening to audiobooks and ‘old time’ radio. This time around, it was a BBC radio production from 1949 – a dramatization of ‘George Orwell’s 1984’ starring David Niven. Good stuff, and something that I downloaded years ago. You can listen to it at this link,

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One rode the T streetcar to the Steel Tower stop, which – as you’d imagine – is nearby the U.S. Steel tower here in the Downtown section (native Pittsburghers would pronounce that as ‘Dahntahn’). This section is where Pittsburgh keeps its office buildings, Governmental Agencies, and corporate assets. It’s an interesting area, Pittsburgh’s business district, one which I haven’t fully built a mental map of yet.

After assessing my positioning, I set out for the scuttle along a route that I had crafted before leaving HQ.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It’s fascinating how utterly embraced the automobile is in Pittsburgh, with literal eight lane highways just rammed right into the densest section of the metro area. There’s a fairly terrific amount of parking available downtown, with metered spots on the street and massive multi story parking garages that are fairly affordable. I guess it’s the way things are, but it’s odd for this ex-New Yorker to see a city center built around automobiles rather than mass transit.

What was especially odd was how deserted this section of the City was.

Admittedly, this walk occurred on a Sunday afternoon, but it was notable to me how few people there were on the sidewalks. No doubt due to the low foot traffic and all that, nearly every retail establishment was closed with a ‘for rent’ sign in the window. Ghost town.

More tomorrow.

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“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

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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.