The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The whole ‘snow and ice thing’ had really been ‘harshing my buzz’ during the month of February. Annoying. Why can’t it just be 65 degrees with no humidity and a stiff breeze for a spell?

Pittsburgh and its municipal neighbors did a piss poor job of handling the snow and ice, and it was EXTREMELY difficult to move about on foot during this interval due to plowed up ice walls encountered at cross walks.

My last few scuttles, since that long East Liberty one, have been quite truncated due to conditions. I personally observed people in wheelchairs having to negotiate through these slush lagoons and plowed ice walls.

Yeah, I helped out when I could, after asking if they needed assistance. You need to ask, don’t just lurch forward.

I was sticking to certain ‘urban core’ routes thereby, where – presumptively – at least some small effort might have gone into clearing the pedestrian space. Ambition wanted me to visit ‘here’ or ‘there,’ but as I worked out those paths in my mind, realization that certain areas were going to still be largely impassable guided my path to here and there.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’m dying to get back up on both the West End Bridge and the McKees Rocks Bridge to shoot some rail action, but that path leads to a long stretch of sidewalk which doesn’t seem to have received any attention from plows or shovels at all. It also leads past several abandoned or empty properties which still sit in knee deep snow. I’m also ‘hep’ to revisit Skunk Hollow, but again…

To answer the graffiti’d query pictured above: yes, I do.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

At the Allegheny River, and the Rachel Carson Bridge. One of the ‘Three Sisters,’ it carries Ninth Street twixt the golden triangle of ‘Downtown’ and the slightly less golden ‘North Shore.’

The river was still completely frozen over. Allegheny flows south from more or less the border of Canada and NYS, and the ice slithers down from the frozen north. The Monongahela River, alternately, flows sort of northwesterly out of West Virginia, and it’s far less common for those warmer waters to freeze or plate over.

They both did during this cold snap, but that’s a different post.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I underexposed this shot by a stop or two to try and capture some of the texture of that ice, which was glowing white in the sun otherwise.

The amount of light bouncing around was actually sort of a problem for me at this interval. My sunglasses, which are prescription spectacles with corrective lenses, are outfitted with the sort of reactive coating that darkens in response to sunlight. They had gone full black, like welders goggles, due to all the UV light bouncing around.

The reflection of my eyes floating against that blackness began to annoy me, and get in the way. It became quite difficult to operate the camera’s controls during this interval, I’d mention. Had to overly rely on the exposure meter. No bueno. I considered plucking the offending organs out, as they offended me, but that’s short term thinking.

I need to be able to see what I’m doing, as photography is a visual medium.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Graffiti is something which I mostly ignore. Usually, it’s crap. Some kid tagging a graphic handle on something with nothing else to say.

Stating that, I often encounter poetic or philosophical meanderings which have been scrawled along the public way, here in Pittsburgh. Some of them are quite intriguing. Street literature?

The next problem I needed to solve for myself involved getting through the everdark streets of Downtown Pittsburgh as quickly as possible. I had little interest in architecture this time around, although there were a couple of things which ended up catching my eye along the way.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The Rachel Carson Ninth Street Bridge deposited me about a block away from the David L. Lawrence convention center on Fort Duquesne Blvd.

Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle.

Back next week with more from the Pittsburgh ‘frozezone’ at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

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