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.

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