The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It was a Monday in January, and the start of a warming trend, climatologically speaking. An interval of winter weather had held Pittsburgh in its grip for a couple of weeks at the start of the new year.

The mission for the day revolved around the Mobile Oppression Platform, a Toyota. An annual State of PA. mandated car inspection, and changeover of the stickers indicating my compliance with the law (found on my windshield) needed to happen, and there also was a bit of scheduled work – revolving around a recall which the ‘stealership’ was obliged to handle. The recall is due to a class action lawsuit regarding a flawed bit of insulation on a cable found under the hood. The MOP hasn’t displayed any symptoms indicating it’s experiencing ‘cablegate,’ but there we are.

Long story short, had to drop the car off at 8:30 a.m. and didn’t expect it back until ‘end of day.’ One decided to take the opportunity to do something fairly unpleasant, which is always my favorite choice.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

West Liberty Avenue (a section of the larger U.S. Route 19 Truck) is a primary arterial street which your humble narrator finds himself driving down almost every single day. An analogy from back in Queens, for West Liberty, would be the eastern sections of Queens Boulevard or the section of Northern Boulevard in Woodside/Astoria/LIC which I used to call ‘the Carridor.’ It’s the ‘last mile’ that automobile commuters experience when driving into ‘the city’ from ‘the suburbs.’

I’ve driven it hundreds of times, but had never walked this section, so off I scuttled in the direction of the Liberty Tunnel after dropping off the car.

Nearby, the 1924 vintage Liberty Tunnel is 1.795 miles long, allowing vehicles on the Monongahela River shoreline to travel under Mount Washington. There’s two ‘tubes’ which offer double lane travel lanes.

Liberty Tunnel connects the peninsular section of downtown to and from the South Hills section of Pittsburgh, offering motorists egress to several primary and secondary arterial roads (‘stroads,’ as transportation geeks would name them) like Route 51 ‘Saw Mill Run,’ or this one – Route 19 ‘West Liberty Avenue.’. These arterials run out to the various boroughs of the larger metro, its extant towns, and other municipalities which populate Allegheny County in the ‘South Hills’ section. If you follow either path long enough, you’ll soon find yourself in Maryland or West Virginia.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Officially, this is a pedestrianized street.

Personally speaking, it was the second most terrifying pedestrian experience I’ve had here in Pittsburgh, and it’s overall in my top ten lifetime. Most of the businesses along this route are involved in the car business – fixing them, renting them, selling them. The sidewalks along West Liberty were barely treated for ice and snow, with a casual desire path formed by people’s feet that was loosely shoveled here and there. There’s quite a few commercial properties along this path which are ‘available’ and those locations receive zero attention regarding sidewalks.

The curb along West Liberty is seldom higher than an inch or two, and there’s heavy traffic blowing past you at double the posted speed limits.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

At one point, the sidewalk just ends. It continued on the other side of the street, so I crossed the five lanes of traffic at a red light. It was warming up in Pittsburgh, and luckily this was the first day in a couple of weeks that began with an air temperature above freezing. It was nice to be out and swinging my legs around. I was happy, or something like it.

As you can see from the shot above, I maintain a fairly low bar for my happiness threshold.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

On the more or less south east side of West Liberty is Beechview, famous for its steep hills. Opposite side is Brookline, which is also famous for its steep hills and sharply graded streets. West Liberty seems to run in what looks like an altered hydrological valley between the two.

The always excellent brooklineconnection.com offers this great page describing the construction of West Liberty Avenue at the start of the 20th century. Plummers Run Creek is the answer which I was looking for, regarding what body of water used to flow through what’s obviously a shallow valley carved by water.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One continued on his merry path, while observing everything. I used to say it all the time: you can’t actually ‘see’ anything when driving, or even riding a bike, as you’re moving too fast. Scuttling along at normal walking speed (and yeah, I’m back at normal speed again, post orthopedic incident) you can read the whole storybook of any city if you know what to look for.

Back tomorrow.

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