The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Yessir, here we are back on Polish Hill in Pittsburgh, continuing with the longest walk undertaken since the ‘orthopedic incident’ that shattered my left ankle. This one started in the East Liberty section, proceeded across Bloomfield’s Baum Blvd., through Skunk Hollow, and now – so did your humble narrator march on.

There’s a section of the city which is called ‘The Hill District.’ The terminology is usually used, by the TV news and local Government, to refer to a majority African American neighborhood more specifically referred to as ‘the middle hill,’ which mirrors this landform on the other side of Bigelow Blvd. – and this particular prominence i was walking upon is called Polish Hill. I’m ignorant of specifics.

My initial understanding was that – technically – the entire section between downtown and Bloomfield is ‘the Hill District,’ including Polish Hill. It seems my presumption was incorrect, but as I’m still new to Pittsburgh… Saying all that… Polish Hill.

Go ahead, guess… why do you think they call it Polish Hill (Wzgórze)?

Yes, it’s a pickle soup and pierogi zone up here. Na zdrowie!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It is quite steep up here, and the roads are narrow. One became fascinated watching vehicle traffic as it snaked along one of the switch back roads leading down off the hill, in the manner of an inhuman thing.

The housing stock here is disturbingly heterogeneous, as a note.

Must really suck to live up here during snow and winter storm events. This post is being written on January 24th, incidentally, the morning before the ‘Snowpocalypse’ that’s meant to set the country into a deep freeze. Wonder what happened?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This is a bus route, it should be mentioned.

Everywhere you look, there’s infrastructure accommodations for the terrain that are built into this neighborhood. Retaining walls, city steps, concrete safety barriers around the sidewalks, fencing. Lots of underground structures as well, I’d imagine.

This place is, in a single word, incredible.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

These downward paths make for great exercise, I should mention.

All of your body weight is being carried in the front of the thighs and calves, and the belly. Several hard to access muscle groups receive a sound flexing. The trick is to not allow yourself to speed up as you’re heading downhill, which requires a bit of conscious muscularity.

My head was swiveling. The brain was categorizing. The camera was whirring. If a creature like myself is capable of joy, I was feeling that.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Long flights of City Steps were observed, but not explored. That’ll be for subsequent visits.

The entire point of this exercise, beyond these photowalks being good cardio, is to continue building my familiarity with the various avenues and byways of Pittsburgh. I drive around a pretty fair amount. It’s an automobile based city, after all. As is often repeated, however: you can’t really ‘see’ or ‘notice’ anything from a car, or even a bike, because you’re moving too fast. Walking speed or even strolling speed, that’s how you want to experience an urban space, or at least I do.

Saying that, as usual, I was literally the only pedestrian in sight for miles at a pop. This is a marked difference from NYC where, even at Newtown Creek, you’d always see people walking to and fro.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My next cross street turn would occur at the bottom of this hill, which would then lead onto a street carried by a bridge overflying one of the busways, and the RR tracks leading to the Amtrak station, and the Fort Wayne Rail Bridge. Exciting stuff, for me at least.

Back tomorrow.

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