The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As described yesterday, Out Lady of the Pentacle and myself had enjoyed some out of town company recently and we decided to book a ride on a double decker ‘London style’ tourist bus, to facilitate our guests getting a good look at the city of Pittsburgh. We were downtown, or ‘Dahntahn’ as the locals would call it.

The Pittsburgh accent gets a lot of crap from the rest of the country, but I find it fascinating. There’s word substitution, sure, but the accent itself is just interesting to experience in person. Linguistically speaking, it ain’t all that far from the proper way of talking you experience in Brooklyn.

Leans a little more towards the Slavic and German roots than the proper Brooklyn accent does, but it’s quite similar really.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

You may notice that these shots are cropped differently than my offerings usually are. I originally intended to embed all of these in a video, but got lazy instead. Video editing makes my neck hurt.

Also as mentioned in yesterday’s post, your humble narrator is chronologically disconnected from you at this interval. I’m somehow way ahead of publication date as related to the pics and words, so if there’s some catastrophe going on, or Trump decided we all have to wear bow ties, while you’re reading this… it’s all in the future for me.

How exciting.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Pittsburgh’s office buildings seem to cling to each other. The downtown streets are very much relicts from the 19th century – narrow and shadowed with lots of dark alleys. The buildings are all built ‘on top of each other’ and modern planning concepts like ‘set backs’ don’t seem to have been considered in their design at all. The buildings rise up from their property lines, soaring into a straight ascent to capture the sky.

There’s something interesting to be said about each one of the more modern towers, but collectively they could also be found in Connecticut or Delaware or… Ohio.

They really need an Empire State Building here, Y’know?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The tallest of the bunch is the 64 story U.S. Steel building, which currently wears a crown logo for the ‘UPMC’ outfit. UPMC stands for ‘University of Pittsburgh Medical Care.’ They’re the 800 pound corporate gorilla here in Pittsburgh, and are actually bigger than the local government. UPMC is a non-profit, one that owns a LOT of medical related real estate in multiple states and employs tens of thousands of doctors and nurses as well as all the professions that support them.

Like the Empire State Building back in NYC, you CAN use the U.S. Steel building as a navigational aid, but unlike NYC there’s no grid system for the streets here so…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The tourist bus proceeded through downtown Pittsburgh, rolling past the storied William Penn Hotel, and towards a court house. That steeple on the court house, seen above, is part of a convective ventilation system for the building – or so I’m told.

Honestly, I had gotten pretty bored by this section of the ride. I just wanted to jump off the bus and walk around with the camera.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

On its way back to base, we were treated to this view of the Birmingham Bridge over the Monongahela River, and the South Side Marina, as seen from the Hot Metal Bridge. Our evening was planned, and we visited a lovely bar called ‘Pins Mechanical’ which offered video games and pinball setups as well as a series of carnival style games. Fun.

Back tomorrow with something different.

“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.

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Happy Monday, lords and ladies. As mentioned in prior posts, your humble narrator is chronologically unmoored from the day you’re reading this.

In terms of ‘lead time’ this post is – for once – way ahead of the publishing schedule, and my ‘tyranny of the now.’ In short, I’m writing this post on the morning of September 2nd, whereas you’re receiving it at the end of the same month, right about when everyone starts pushing that freaking pumpkin spice… bah!

At the end of August, Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself were entertaining out of town guests. It was decided that one of the things we’d do with them, as they’d never been to Pittsburgh, would be to ride on ‘the tourist bus’ which operates of the South Side Works area. The vehicle itself is a double decker ‘London style’ bus.

Pictured above is the Birmingham Bridge over the Monongahela River.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The ‘point of view’ location offered by the bus is pretty cool, as you’re sitting fairly high up over the street. So much so that the guide, on the microphone, was constantly adjuring and warning the crowd about ‘low ceiling’ overpasses and other obstacles we were passing under or through along the route. I got smacked by tree branches a couple of times.

It was a warm day in Pittsburgh, with atmospheric temperatures in the high 80’s. It was not terribly humid, and a mild breeze was blowing.

Pictured above is the Smithfield Street Bridge.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A section of the tour was omitted, with the acquiescence of both ourselves and the bus’s other guests, due to a traffic condition in the Oakland section where CMU and Pitt’s campuses splay. It seems that we were riding the tourist bus on both university’s ‘move in weekend’ for the fall semester, and that the narrow streets of this very urban section of Pittsburgh were choked with moving trucks and personal vehicles being unloaded.

Pictured above is an approach to the West End Bridge, and visible in the shot are that set of stairs which cause me so much worry everytime I try to march my PTSD laden ass down them.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The tourist bus operates as a ‘hop on/hop off’ service, although we weren’t taking advantage of that on this particular trip. The Ohio River was crossed via the West End Bridge, and soon we were on Pittsburgh’s north side, heading southwards towards Downtown.

I’m officially fascinated by the architectural design of these highway ramps, which snake past and through the parking complexes for the stadiums, connecting the I-79 north/south road with the Fort Duquesne Bridge spanning the Allegheny River and leading to points south – including the Fort Pitt Bridge and Tunnel. Parabolas are boss.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Crossing the Allegheny on the Andy Warhol Bridge, and the Roberto Clemente bridge – another member of the ‘Three Sisters’ Bridges – was in frame. This sort of shooting is what I call ‘spray and pray,’ as in you overshoot – a lot – knowing that a a high failure rate is inherent.

I had the camera aperture set to f11, the ISO setting was high enough to merit calling these shots ‘low light,’ and the shutter speed was measurable in thousandths of a second to cancel out motion blur.

Pictured is the Allegheny River, with the aforementioned Roberto Clemente or Sixth Street Bridge in the foreground.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

After gaining purchase on the so called ‘Golden Triangle’ of Downtown, the bus continued on towards the business focused district of the city of Pittsburgh. That large black building is the 1970 vintage U.S. Steel tower, and it’s the tallest building in Pittsburgh at some 64 stories.

They pronounce the word ‘downtown’ as ‘Dahntahn’ hereabouts.

Back tomorrow with more.

“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.