Archive for June 2026
Sycamore Street
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Grandview Avenue is a street which rides along the ridge line of Mount Washington here in Pittsburgh, offering visitors paramount points of view over the City. At either end of the landform, tertiary local streets drip down and away from Grandview, providing access to the surrounding hills, flood plains, bridges, tunnels, and the rivers.
This time around, my walk got started about a block back from Grandview Avenue, at one of the local roads ‘up there,’ which is called Shiloh Street. Shiloh, where a BID promotes several tourism focused businesses, leads down to Sycamore Street – which is a very interesting sort of pathway to one such as myself. Gotta stop saying that, as there really isn’t anyone else who is like myself. It’s a curse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sycamore Street is pretty steep in this section, and as soon as you leave Shiloh Street it transmogrifies from commercial to residential zoning.
Space is tight up here on Mount Washington, and the multi story buildings are practically built on top of each other, with only narrow alleys or driveways between them.
Behind me is a long residential section of Sycamore Street, but the section I was walking on this particular day is the fun part. To me, at least.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At Sycamore’s intersection with Wyoming Street, there’s a large undeveloped lot. I’ve driven by this lot several times and have always wondered what was going on there. As it turns out, not too much.
I’m unclear as to what’s going on here. I’ve seen online speculation that some big real estate development deal fell through, or something like that. It doesn’t seem abandoned, this property. Somebody mows the grass here, I’d point out. There aren’t middens of garbage, or illegal dumping.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s the remains of a public street there, pictured above, dubbed Vinecliffe Street. Notice the strip of sidewalk pavement, and the metal bannisters, on the right. One kicked his feet about, looking to see if there might be an interesting point of view, but when there was one it was largely obscured by the bush and I couldn’t justify getting closer due to my whole ‘I don’t want to fall off a cliff’ thing. That would be embarrassing.
Something used to be here, as there were large blocks of concrete and the remains of a few retaining walls spotted here and there. Additionally, there are the demapped streets like Vinecliffe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That was the best view I could find, above. The bridge at the bottom of the shot is the Smithfield Street Bridge, spanning the Monongahela River between the ‘South Side Flats’ and ‘Downtown Pittsburgh.’
Not that anyone would really care other than me, but I was likely trespassing, so a heel spin was executed and I headed back over to the particular pathway which was my day’s early focus.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Steep, it’s steep I tell you… steep.
Back tomorrow with more.
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Ramps, ramps, ramps
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oakland to South Side
After a particularly scary street crossing, at a highway off ramp, your humble narrator was soon as safe as he could be. A busted series of sidewalks and pathways guided one along his scuttle, and one was heading over to the Birmingham Bridge, which I’d be crossing the Monongahela River upon.
There you are, all caught up…
One was staring to ‘run out of gas’ at this particular moment. I had attended a walking tour of around two miles in length, then started my peregrinations to get back to mass transit for my ride back to HQ.
One of the absolutely deepest mysteries involving Pittsburgh I’ve encountered is why they didn’t extend the T Light Rail service out to the actual population center of the city (at least for nine months of the year) from Downtown, in the areas surrounding the universities in Oakland.
The fact that the service doesn’t go the airport either is a mystery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Inviting, no?
I took the opportunity hereabouts to have a quick sit down, and allow my batteries to recharge. As stated, my policy is to never stop moving for more than a minute or two, as it breaks momentum.
I did require, however, a couple of minutes without twenty pounds of camera crap hanging off of me. It wasn’t even my full kit, but on this particular day it felt like I had a cinder block in the bag.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few quick steps found me angling towards the Birmingham Bridge, leading to the ‘South Side’ section. Part of me wanted to continue on, and on, but a louder internal voice cried ‘nay.’ As it turned out, I was spent.
A change of plan occurred. I desperately needed a beverage, and there’s a great bar right at the other side of the bridge where they habitually have Guinness Stout on tap.
There! Motivation! Onwards!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I wasn’t scuttling, so much as I was ‘drag assing’ when this shot was captured. One was musing, after seeing the bicycle infrastructure of Squirrel Hill on the morning walking tour, about just how ‘effed up this section of the city is in comparison. There’s a reason, of course.
Wealthy and politically relevant people live in Squirrel Hill, so you do your ‘safe streets’ stuff there. For them. Poorer and less relevant people live in the direction I was heading, so…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is impossible for me to walk over this bridge and not take a photo of those mounds of raw materials, piled on the piers of a concrete company below. It just cannot happen.
My back was really starting to ache right about here, but I won’t mention what was happening to my front. Brrr.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was the last shot from this walk. I stopped off at that local bar and had a pint of Guinness, which was refreshing and offered me a bit of carbohydrate based energy to walk the next mile or so to get to the light rail, and then back to HQ. Moe the dog seemed happy to see me.
He might have been faking it though.
Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Bobbing, weaving, all that
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oakland to the Monongahela River
Hey, that’s PITT’s Cathedral of Learning pictured above. Lookit that.
As described in a prior post, your humble narrator attended a walking tour of Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, conducted by the ‘bikePGH’ outfit – who are the local incarnation of the ‘bicycle people.’
In general, they’re a lot nicer in person than the analogue group you’ll encounter in NYC, the ones who styled themselves as ‘Transportation Alternatives.’ With a few exceptions, I always found the TA people to be blowhard keyboard warriors, and ideologues. They would show up looking for a fight, and would start one if they didn’t encounter opposition towards their goals. They fund raise on hostility.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying that, one of the TA ideologues in Queens is who the inspiration for my Toyota’s name comes from – the ‘Mobile Oppression Platform.’ Same person once described a driver sticking a key in the ignition of a motor vehicle as then ‘existing in a state of pre-murder.’
Honestly, they’re so good at this sort of deceptive and inflammatory political language that they should consider joining the Republican Party. Bah!
While heading for the river via Forbes Avenue, and ruminating, an unnecessarily Brutalist academic building was encountered. Whenever I see this sort of architecture, my first thought goes to ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’ for some reason. Yuck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are quite a few places in Pittsburgh where taking a walk can mean a street crossing can likely end your life. To wit, this is the ‘ass end’ of Forbes Avenue, where it just sort of terminates at a highway off ramp.
Another one of the routes that I commonly drive through, that’s I-376 down there, an east/west high speed road which leads to the Squirrel Hill Tunnel on one side (it continues on, and on, after the tunnel) and to the Fort Pitt Tunnel on the other.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, the TA people back home are – in fact – right about certain things. So are their analogues here in Pittsburgh.
I’ve mentioned a few times that driving the roads out here in Pittsburgh are kind of like the Wild West, with little, or no enforcement of traffic law by the local gendarmerie. It’s common for people to travel along at 80 mph, on a highway with a posted limit of 40, thereby. When drivers come to an off ramp/exit, and enter the local streets, their vehicles are often doing so at highway speeds. It’s madness.
So… notice the cross walk paint on that off ramp? Yup.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I still can’t run for any protracted distance, but I do have my ‘burst’ speed back, post ‘orthopedic incident.’ See? Haven’t mentioned it in weeks.
The ankle still hurts, all the time. It’s a dull ache sort of thing, and while out for long walks a few distinct annoyances pop up. A cramp, or some part of the affected foot will start announcing itself to my nervous system, soreness, and every now and then a clicking sensation as a tendon pulls itself over the surgically inserted metallic hardware I now own down there. When I get back to HQ and doff my shoes, that’s when it gets fun.
Saying all that, I can walk pretty long distances again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Man… me and mine always railed on about the way that the FDR drive cut New Yorkers off from their waterfront back home. Look at this… these highways and their ramps are the Theodosian Walls of cutting off any sort of access to the river. Sheesh.
Saying that, love taking pics of this sort of thing. Massing shapes and geometries…
Back next week with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Veiled scuttling
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Squirrel Hill to Oakland…
Locally, the ‘bicycle people’ in Pittsburgh style themselves as ‘bikePGH.’
A non-profit, the group is focusing some of its city-wide efforts on pedestrian concerns this year, and offering walking tours through the various neighborhoods which discuss traffic, safety, and transit issues. A recent excursion occurred in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and your humble narrator was in attendance. Nice people, fairly short walk.
After the tour, though, I got all concerned with pedestrian concerns of my own. Getting back to HQ in Dormont!
I leaned into a five mile(ish) scuttle, during which I feared that my life would be snuffed out by some speeding car or random pickup truck no more than three times. Pretty good for Pittsburgh, that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One cut through a park, which was horrifically nice and terribly well maintained. The burning thermonuclear eye of god itself stared down at me balefully, hurling electromagnetic radiates with hateful intent. The breeze carried waveforms of airborne micro-ballista at me, in the form of needle nosed pollen missiles. My skin hurt for some other reason, maybe it was the pollen, but… For once, I didn’t urgently need to pee. My left eyebrow also hurt for some reason. The ankle was… ahhh feck… I’m all ‘effed up.
The plan was – and I did check the direction on my little compass – to head towards the Monongahela River from the central triangular peninsula of Pittsburgh, but where I was poised is pretty close to the hypotenuse. One had pondered this route the night before, and ‘step one’ would involve heading towards the big colleges, from Squirrel Hill. Specifically I was heading towards the ‘Pitt’ (University of Pittsburgh) and ‘CMU’ (Carnegie Mellon University) zone of the Oakland neighborhood.
Tall buildings that stick up over the tree line, which you can use as navigational landmarks, are indeed a plus. I used to navigate all around NYC by triangulating the World Trade Center, Empire State, and Chrysler buildings.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a series of ornate bridges, found where the campuses bump up against the park. This particular bridge was closed for construction, but the bike lane remained open and I followed that course.
Can’t close a bike lane, it’s all that truly matters, the bike lane.
One feels very much out of place in this area, as a note. I’m a thousand years old, and horrible to behold in my state of decay. There I walked, scuttling past impossibly young people at the very beginning of their journey.
One must have looked like some sort of ancient mariner, trapped in his endless existential loop, marching around with a camera in a strange city.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Down below, in the park, there’s a set of rail tracks. I did spot a train going through, but couldn’t get a decent shot of it. Fail.
It was right around this point that I realized a new pair of shoes will be needed pretty soon, as too little of the treads on the soles of the ones I’ve been wearing are still extant. There has to be at least 500 to 1,000 miles of wear on the ones I’ve been wearing since last summer.
All this scuttling adds up, Y’know…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the bridge over the park closest to Pitt’s campus, hundreds of padlocks are on display along the fenceline.
I’m told this is a modern custom for young lovers to engage in, with the symbolism being that they are locked together. I see these all over the place on bridges, and it’s adorable, but apparently also a source of great angst for the engineers who maintain these bridges. Literally hundreds to thousands of pounds of ‘load’ are being inserted into their bridge equations due to this social media trend. Also, that chain link ain’t structural.
People, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were still miles and miles, and a river, to cross.
One leaned into it, pushed forward, adjusting the various camera and bag straps affixed to my torso as I did. A good moment to check all of my pockets, and confirm that all the small things which are secreted about my person were still there. Wallet, keys, Leatherman, cash, headphones, all the camera stuff, etc.
‘Personal Area Network’ is the underlying concept that guides me when I’m dressing to leave the house. Everything has a function, and a place.
I’ve had to expand that list since living in Pittsburgh, to include a water bottle, and a few other objects which weren’t part of the NYC version of my ‘everyday carry.’ I’m very, very embedded into the ‘EDC’ concept.
Back tomorrow with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
A blind man describing what parrots look like
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with an exploratory scuttle along McNeilly Road in the Pittsburgh area, during which I was avoiding any contact whatsoever with the NFL Draft event happening elsewhere in Pittsburgh.
The Newtown Pentacle time warp is still in effect, btw, as I’ve somehow managed to get way ahead of schedule. These photos are from the 22nd of April, the words you’re reading were written in mid May, and you should be receiving this in late June, if I’ve got my scheduling correct.
A relatively short course of just about two to three miles, found between Route 88/Library Road and Route 19 Truck West Liberty Avenue (with a one block insertion from a street called ‘Pioneer Avenue’), McNeilly is another one of the locales where people dug holes into the earth and then spent 12 hours a day down in the dark with torches on their hats, in the company of company owned donkeys which never saw the light of day.
At the lower right hand corner of the shot above, where all those tires are stacked up behind a fence, there’s a forgotten coal mine portal which was discovered during a 2008 renovation project at the T station.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the north(ish) side of the street, a series of steep hills lead up to a fairly modern real estate development of suburban style homes on a plateau. I noticed that non-stepped dirt path from ‘below to up’ there. Must be a real joy to walk during the winter, or when it’s raining.
Most of the commercial buildings found on the southerly side of the street are empty, with realtor signs displayed prominently.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I got into another argument with Google’s AI recently.
Gemini insists that this ‘clearly a tributary of Saw Mill Run’ stream is in fact part of the main body of the waterway, which in reality runs along Library Road, and then a section of a road called ‘Saw Mill Run Boulevard.’ Historically speaking, Pennsylvania has been occupied by European Busybodies for centuries, and it is culturally impossible that these tributaries haven’t been assigned individual names by either the Europeans, or the Natives before them. That’s information which likely hasn’t been digitized yet, meaning that to an AI’s POV the name doesn’t exist, and thereby it makes presumptions and pronouncements to try and please a user, even if it’s a bad or incorrect answer. Human children are told to ‘not just make something up if you don’t know an answer.’
No bueno.
I got started on this whole coal quest due to my curiosities about a stream across the street from HQ in Dormont, which seems to not have a name. Despite it being on maps, and being part of larger storm water drainage strategy here in Dormont and the surrounding communities, no name. It appears on maps as ‘a “UNT” or unnamed tributary of Saw Mill Run.’ I’ve been around a LOT of governmental conversations about water, and believe me when I tell you that the stream has a name or at least a number. Aquifers have names, even though they’re found deep in the ground, as an example.
The coal guys litigated mineral rights for every square inch of surface land around here, and then down a thousand feet. It’s IMPOSSIBLE that this water is ‘unnamed.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lot of the older residential buildings along McNeilly appear to be ‘Miner’s homes,’ a style of dwelling which I mentioned a few posts ago, when discussing Bethel Park. This is a pretty standard model of house, hereabouts, although in modernity additions and renovations have altered the homogeneity once on display. The presence of this model of house, in numbers, indicates that mining used to take place nearby during an era when people walked to work.
McNeilly Road begins angling upwards midway, forming into a fairly gentle but long upslope grade away from ‘down here.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
McNeilly Road continues past a couple of secondary schools, one religious and one public, and is lined with residences for the last mile of its regency.
Now… the plan for the rest of my day was to meet up with Our Lady of the Pentacle, and some friends, at a local brewery to have a drink and listen to a local band play some tunes.
One decided that it might be interesting to see what Google’s Gemini might offer to me as the shortest walking route between ‘here’ and ‘there.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the title offers, it was like asking a blind man to describe what a parrot looks like, as this was the route it suggested using.
GPS directions in Pittsburgh always require some interpretation because of the terrain, as that factor doesn’t seem to be something that AI’s ‘see.’ The path pictured above does, indeed, go directly to my destination in the shortest sense of ‘how the crow flies,’ but the orthographic overview of the street map doesn’t calculate the hills and valleys – at all.
The real world, and Pittsburgh in particular, is three dimensional.
Y’know how I always offer that I’m safeguarding myself against getting ‘cul-de-sac’d’ while walking about in Pittsburgh by figuring out a route before I take a walk? This is what I mean, and avoid.
I walked a couple of extra blocks, made a left, and followed a ridge line to get to where I was going rather than enduring those ups and downs. Bah!
Back tomorrow with something different.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 