The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Leading out of Skunk Hollow, one follows the curving route of Sassafras Street. Everytime I think the words ‘Sassafras Street,’ the voice of actress Holly Hunter enters my brain and pronounces it at ‘Shashafrash Shtreet.’

Don’t know why, I’m all ‘effed up.

I also very well might be a phantom, floating along like some sort of localized psychic phenomenon or even a single red balloon (where are my 99 friends then?), while haunting a filthy black raincoat and operating a camera. Is it so bad to be translucent? Racist.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The street itself is defined by the presence of the former Iron City Brewery. Huge industrial walls dominate, and I could definitely ‘feel eyes’ on me staring down from within.

A few open windows suggested some sort of morbid habitation. Probably junkies, but it could also be the black eyed ‘children’ who dwell in the mines, who are greatly dreaded in the folklore of the Appalachian mythos.

Let’s go with the latter, since it’s spookier, and since I might be a floating phantasm, they’d be my ‘peeps.’ Also, if you hear somebody calling your name from the woods in Appalachia during the night, no you didn’t.

Do not whistle at night, ever.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Sassafras Street grades up to the local ‘grid’ at its apex, where the vehicle entry to the brewery used to be. It’s all ruins.

If this was back at Newtown Creek, my guess would be that some ugly chemical had been discovered on the site and that the developers were ‘air-sparging’ it away, but this ain’t Brooklyn or Queens.

Air-SPARGing is when you dig away all the concrete on a development site, and hope that precipitation will either dilute the contaminant, or that weather and subsidence on the affected plot will migrate the objectionable chemical downwards into the mud and beyond a point where the environmental legislation governing your brownfield/post industrial property won’t describe it as ‘dangerous,’ due to a lack of human exposure pathways. Still there, mind you.

The alternative would be a long and costly process which involves the installation of ‘recovery wells.’ Real estate people don’t like ‘long and costly.’ They’d actually prefer it if you just threw your money into their car windows when they drive up, so they don’t have to get out of the car at all.

Regarding ‘air-SPARGing’ if you live in Long Island City, or on the east river coast of Greenpoint, guess what?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I know too many things to ever be happy, even as a phantom.

One last look toward the Iron City Brewery site, and off I went towards the dwelling places of the humans. The rest of this scuttle was pretty ‘low core’ but I was still ‘ready to rock.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A quick street crossing, and I was entering the zone known as ‘Lawrenceville.’ This is a fairly well populated area which has actually been enjoying a population expansion in recent years. It seems that this is a preferred dwelling area for the ‘tech bros.’ Pittsburgh has several outfits involved in ‘bleeding edge’ technologies like AI and robotics. Self driving vehicles have also been in testing/production here for a decade.

There’s money down there, yo.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The plan for the rest of the day involved me following a set of rail tracks, in pursuance of solving a personal mystery, but that’s for tomorrow.

Boo! I’m a ghost! Scared ya? April Fools, kid!

Back with more, then.

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