The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Continuing with a scuttle along the Allegheny River, here in Pittsburgh, in today’s post.

As mentioned last week, this walk occurred on a fairly chilly day. I was double insulated, with a layer of ‘long john’ thermal underwear under my black sackcloth outer shell. When all done up like this, I actually have to ensure that my body has a place to dump the excess heat generated while walking. To that point, my fingers and hands were toasty warm, even without gloves on. Gotta get that blood pumping, bro.

To my left was the HQ building of ALCOA, or whatever that aluminum giant and market dominar calls itself this week.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The last time that I undertook this particular walk in 2024, it was quite a hot day for early summer and I ended up feeling overheated and weird. Your humble narrator was still operating under his NYC rules, which state that you’re never more than a twenty minute walk from a Bodega where you can buy a Gatorade, so why carry liquids with you?

I was plotzing, and getting light headed. No good. Luckily, I found an open cafe that served me up a glass of Orange Juice and a few glasses of water.

Well, since that incident, my NYC rules have been thrown away and warm weather walks now include a water flask attached to the camera bag when I leave HQ. Lesson learned.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Saying all that, on this day it was under 40 degrees outside, so getting dehydrated wasn’t something I worried about this time around. Usually, if my mouth is feeling dry (if you want to determine if you’re dehydrated or not, force a smile. If your lips drag over the teeth in a sticky fashion, you are. Not medical advice, this, just colloquial experience) a piece of gum is usually all that’s required to get my saliva flowing again. Dentyne Ice peppermint, that’s me.

This shot looks across the river towards the Convention Center in the downtown section of Pittsburgh.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The trail crosses under the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge, which normally serves Norfolk Southern’s locomotives, but this time around it was the white whale – Allegheny Valley RR. These tracks lead directly into the old PA RR Station, the former home base for the entire Pennsylvania Rail Road empire, and flow past the current home of Amtrak in Pittsburgh.

It’s absolutely ‘gob smacking’ that there’s only one place in Pittsburgh to catch a ride for interstate passenger rail. Pittsburgh… seat of the Pennsy Empire…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One of these days, I’ll drag my butt out of bed early and get over to one of those pedestrian bridges which overfly the rail tracks beyond the Amtrak Station. There’s basically two passenger trains a day to expect, one east bound from Chicago and one west bound from NYC. Both arrive and depart in the dead of night. Again, this city used to be the absolute locus point of railroading in the United States. Bah!

On did I scuttle. Forward, ever forward…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The former Heinz factory, converted to luxury lofts and condos in modernity, appeared before me. There’s a couple of ‘new construction’ office type buildings which adjoin the lofts, which must have been built during the Heinz property’s residential conversion. These structures seem abandoned, which is kind of an odd thing for this ‘zone.’

Back tomorrow.

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