The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Mid scuttle begins today’s post, between my starting point up on Troy Hill and what could be called a middle point here on the 16th street bridge.

As mentioned previously, this was the first set of clear skies that Pittsburgh had offered in a couple of weeks, and the cloudless situation was causing no end of trouble for the camera, regarding the unoccluded burning thermonuclear eye of god itself bobbing about in the sky.

All caught up.

Look at me, complaining about the sun after I decided to walk south west while facing into it in the middle of a clear afternoon. Schmuck.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Thing is, I really like inclement lighting conditions as they’re so difficult to capture. Strobing, hot spots, deep contrast – difficult. Nepenthe.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been carrying a ‘bare minimum’ kit in my camera bag. Haven’t been able to handle the thought of dragging the big knap sack around, so it’s been a sling bag with two prime lenses and a few necessities like extra batteries. The big 24-240mm zoom lens is installed on the camera for this sort of duty.

I like an ‘all in one’ for photowalks.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Exiting the 16th street bridge, discovery of where all of Pittsburgh’s pigeons like to hang out occurred. A gigantic flock of the rock doves were involved in a panicked murmuration, sparked off by the passing of a semi truck on the streets below.

This section of my scuttle was little more than an inconvenience, passing through the Downtown section, as I didn’t have anything to shoot in this zone which would draw me here or there.

The goal was to just push through the warren of ‘Dahntahn’ streets as quickly as possible, and emerge onto the Monongahela River’s shoreline to continue with my peregrinations in search of interesting things to point the lens at.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s a whole generation of urban planners from the 1960’s and 70’s whom I hope went straight to hell when they died. Shadowing the streets with massive bridges and buildings, eliminating any possibility of organic growth in pursuance of… ‘traffic flow’… bah! They do a lot better these days, but… hell… they rammed this monstrous thing right through middle of their downtown back in the 1980’s to complete an idea that Robert Moses gave them back during the Great Depression.

Pittsburgh didn’t have a Jane Jacobs to lead the charge, I guess.

One of the things that’s just maddening about ‘Dahntahn’ is that the office buildings were built without setbacks on the upper stories, creating monolithic shapes that form forever shadows on the streets below.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Not exactly an inviting pedestrian experience, downtown, nor one that draws me into it with the idea of spending some cash. The big draws in the particular direction pictured above are a series of high end and middle of the road hotels. A few blocks away from that there are dying shops, bars, restaurants which suffer from a lack of foot traffic. The owners of the buildings blame all on a hangover from Covid, work from home policies, and everything else they can think of.

It’s their high rents, in an area that’s not exactly ‘salubrious.’ Think Downtown Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue Corridor in the late 1980’s for what I mean by that.

Also, the downtown area is a bit ‘crimey.’ Literally the only place in Pittsburgh where I’m looking over my shoulder, and doing those little NYC style heel spins on the regular to see if anyone’s following me. A few times, somebody was – in fact – following me. Junkies.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Lighting. Lighting fixes a lot of a City’s problems. In areas of persistent shadow, like the ‘way’ alley pictured above, a 24/7 street lamp will solve whatever it is you’re worrying about. The trick with modernity is that junkies have cell phones, and I’ve developed a perception about this. You walk past one group of junkies and one of them starts texting. Guy coming has got a camera, that’s probably what the text says. By the next corner there’s somebody already waiting, and watching. Networked junkies.

Now, yeah – I’m a bit paranoid. Saying that, I also lived in NYC for half a century and I can literally sense ‘it’ coming, almost in the manner of extra sensory perception or ‘ESP.’ I can ‘feel it’ when I’m being watched by the creatures of the street. There was some character who was following me for a spell while I was shooting these, as a note. I did the ‘stand and stare’ move, which this fellow found disconcerting and he broke off.

Back tomorrow.

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