The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That building pictured above (the West Penn Recreation Center) looks incredibly ‘New Deal’ to me, but it was opened in 1922… saying that, I’ve seen contradicting information suggesting that the current incarnation of the structure was opened in 1939. Puzzling, but I don’t care enough to go on a deep dive about a building I’ve only walked past once.

One gets in trouble for usage of the phrase ‘I don’t care’ pretty often. When I utter those three little words, it means that I do not object nor want to get involved with whatever ‘mishegoss’ is being presented to me. It isn’t that I’m ignoring or dismissing something happening to others, it’s just that if I don’t have skin in whatever game it is, being neutral is better than having an opinion.

For instance: Back on Madison Avenue in NYC, I’d be sweating some urgent deadline while some Art Director would be vacillating over adding 3% magenta ink, or not, into a red color, and then they’d say ‘what do you think?’ My answer was ‘I don’t care, and you don’t actually care what I think, so just make a decision.’

I was a soldier, not an officer, in the salt mines of advertising.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Not caring is hard to do, but it allows you to look at things clinically. You can see people and things for what they are rather than what you want them to be. I’ve got lots of opinions (probably why I started a blog, n’at), but as I’m wont to remind: ‘Nothing Matters, and Nobody Cares.’

I used to care a lot, but life beat that facility out of me. The only time I intervene in anything these days is when I see someone is about to get hurt. It means acting more like Spock and less like Kirk. It has taken me decades to reach this level of emotional numbness.

Things got a little complicated on the walking path leading away from Polish Hill, as I was heading down a medium steep street and had to modulate the speed that I was walking. Unfortunately, I had to scuttle down the sunny side of the street, in order to be where I’d want to be at the bottom of this hill.

That’s where my advance scouting comes in handy.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I was heading for the 28th street Bridge, which is a small steel truss that overflies a set of rail tracks, and one of the busways, that snake through Pittsburgh. I wanted to be on both sides of the road at the same time here, but I have to keep on reminding myself about the limitations introduced by the gamey ankle. I still can’t run, for instance. My movements are cautious, and slow.

Walking ‘fast’ is still a bit of a challenge, but walking speed has improved over the last couple of months by about a half mile per hour.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the 28th street Bridge. It’s a fairly unremarkable structure, but it overflies both heavy rail tracks and a busway, and the redoubtable historicbridges.org offers this page describing its specifics.

I keep on saying that I haven’t ridden a bus in Pittsburgh, which isn’t entirely true. I have ridden on a shuttle bus, one which the T light Rail people were running during a spate of construction. What I haven’t done, and what I mean by the statement, is that I haven’t ridden a bus that travels on one of the busways. These are private roads which snake around Pittsburgh, open only to municipal vehicles and mass transit.

Interesting, no? I don’t care.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There ain’t nothing a cop loves more than having their picture taken by a member of the public, and as a Pittsburg PD car was transiting the bridge and it popped into view just as I was cracking out a shot. They didn’t stop, but I got the hairy eyeball while they drove past.

Actually, I can’t wait to sit down next to a local cop at a watering hole somewhere, as I have so many questions. Multiple NYPD officers over the years expanded my POV’s about NYC, and helped me understand the way that the City actually functions. You gotta take cop talk with a grain of salt though. Just like when you’re talking to strippers.

Strippers won’t advance a positive view of males, as they see only men at their absolute yuckiest, everyday at work. Cops live in a similar space, as they experience the citizenry only at their absolute worst, all day and every day. Basically, cops and strippers don’t have a great opinion of the human infestation in general.

On a positive note: Globally, estimates state that there are 833 puppies born every single minute of the day. That’s 1.2 million puppies a day, and 36.48 million new puppies come online every month. I prefer to think about that. Go adopt a dog.

Still, if you want to know when – exactly – you should be driving with your headlights according to statute… a cop will always a better person to ask than a stripper. A dog can’t help you here, however.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s one of the busways pictured above, with a 28X Airport Flyer navigating it. They use ‘road buses’ in the Pittsburgh area.

The rail tracks in the shot are shared with Amtrak by the Norfolk Southern freight outfit. Same set of tracks that lead off of the Fort Wayne Rail Bridge, and over the Allegheny River, which curl through the Amtrak/former Pennsylvania Rail Road station. Now I know where to stand at 5:30 in the morning, or 11:30 at night, while waiting to photograph one of the two Amtrak train sets which move through and past the former HQ of the Pennsylvania Rail Road.

Back tomorrow.

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“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.