The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part three:

After visiting the Davis Avenue Bridge, accessed via the Perry Hilltop ‘zone,’ your humble narrator began loathsomely forcing the rotting pre-corpse through and along the hazy borders of the Marshall Shadeland and Brighton Heights neighborhoods.

Man, what a ‘zone’! The housing stock here is exquisite.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This church seemed to have constructed atop a giant outcropping of rock, and I couldn’t stop myself from getting a photo of it.

This section of my day is best analogized by an old aphorism of mine from Queens, which is that ‘you pretty much have to walk through Sunnsyide to get to Newtown Creek from Astoria, so just get used to it.’ Also, Queens’ 43rd street used to be ‘the Shell Road,’ so you’re walking through Dutch colonial era NYC history by going that way. Connected the Rycken (Rikers) properties on the north all the way to Newtown Creek on the south. Just saying.

To get where I was going, I needed to scuttle through a couple of residential neighborhoods.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Disturbingly heterogenous, that’s how I’d describe the residential architecture encountered along this route. There were a few row houses, and many examples of ‘Pittsburgh style’ brick home, which features an enormous front porch.

While scuttling along, I saw a curtain drawn back as a shadowy figure observed my passage. I hissed in that direction, in the manner of a stray cat. The curtain fell back to a resting position.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Finally, the end of the world was reached.

At least, it’s the end of this part of the world. It put me right where I hoped to be, but there was a decidedly dodgy street crossing ahead. I was actually a bit anxious about this crossing, which can be difficult to navigate – in a car.

Fear… Fear is the mind killer.

Loping along like some crippled chimpanzee, with my stiffened shoulder and neck due to that slip and fall annoying me, and a perfect mud tattoo of the butt on the back of his filthy black raincoat, your humble narrator nevertheless strove on… and on…

Really, what choice did I have? If you stop moving, you stop moving.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The world – or at least the legal borders of ‘Pittsburgh’ – more or less ends at that fence, which then leads you down to a short set of stairs. Those stairs place pedestrians at a spot never meant for them, despite there being crosswalks and walk/don’t walk signals which were an obvious ‘add-on.’

On the other side of that fence is found Ohio River Blvd./Route 65, a de facto four lane highway masquerading as a local street. Historically speaking, it’s meant to be the deadliest of Pittsburgh’s high speed roads, due to its conditions in the 1960’s and 70’s.

Sounds nice, no?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the intersection which I was worried about, which theoretically allows pedestrians to cross Ohio River Blvd. and access the walkway to the McKees Rocks Bridge.

You see Junkies with signs here begging for handouts, but this ain’t exactly a safe spot – street crossing wise. Heavy traffic flow from three sides, lots of big trucks, angry pickup truck drivers who had to endure an entire two or three minutes of traffic congestion… brrr…

One survived the crossing, obviously, as these shots were captured at the end of March and here I am still rattling on about them in May. Besides, as I had already hurt myself during that fall, the safety odds were now on my side.

Right? Right? That’s the way the world works, right?

Back tomorrow.

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