Flats scuttle
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After worrying about hidden subterranean tunnels housing armies of atavist cannibals, Day Walking Vampires, and all the other usual stuff I think about while walking down the Sterling Street Steps here in Pittsburgh, your humble narrator had arrived in the South Side Flats neighborhood.
The end goal at this point involved grabbing a beer at a favorite spot, and waiting around with the hope of photographing a few trains.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the PJ McArdle Roadway, which I’ve mentioned (and walked down) several times. There’s a sizable homeless colony which exists below it, along the Norfolk Southern trackage. A recent Mayoral election here in Pittsburgh, and a concurrent ‘cleanup’ order issued by the incumbent, saw several of the large encampments in this very public area disassembled by Police and Sanitation departments. ‘Squeezing the zit,’ as it were. The incumbent lost anyway.
If a Vampire feeds on heroin or opiate enthusiasts, can they catch an addiction sympathetically? Do drugs work on the armies of the night?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yeah, I made a couple of turns I shouldn’t have while walking, and had to consult Google Maps when I went the wrong way. Signage told me that I had.
You have to figure that Vampires are absolute reservoirs for all sorts of blood based diseases. Hep C comes to mind. I’d also imagine that the Nosferatu must have food prejudices and preferences. ‘I only feed off Vegans’ or ‘Nope, he’s been eating Cod.’ Maybe ‘I’m in the mood for a nice juicy Christian’ or ‘I feel like Chinese tonight.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, I’ve established that you can’t trust the ground, or any people that you might meet as they might be Day-Vampires. What about the air itself? Think there’s miasmas or floating jellies up there in the vault, just waiting for a chance to eat you up? Can you rule that one out? Everything is possible, now, after all.
I’ve advised against swimming in the ocean my entire life. The seas are giant open stomachs and everything in there wants to digest you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nowhere is safe, everything and everyone is a threat. If not to your person, than to your sense of reality and self. Best thing to do, thereby, is barricade yourself up within a personal castle and hide away with your guns and your god. It’s only going to get worse, chaos rules.
Really… I cannot tell you how many people tell me stuff like that these days. The world is the world and always has been, bad things abound, but something like 5,000 puppies are being born every minute of the day, globally speaking. Get a grip, people’s.
Sure, there’s Vampires. Why not act like a Van Helsing then? It would be hard to explain to a judge, I admit, burning down Carfax Abbey.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, I arrived in the ‘zone’ which I had been ultimately been walking to for a couple of hours, nearby the ‘Colors Park’ and the brewery where I planned on spending the next hour of my life photographing trains.
Something to do.
More on that next week.
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