South Side Hollow? and Hey Now!
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has been working his way along the Monongahela River facing ridge line of Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington for quite a bit now. City Steps, weird undulating roadways, all that are on offer to the curious in this ‘zone.’ I’ve been boxing off and trying to experience all the pathways up here. I’m told there’s lots of unofficial pathways too, which are known to kids from the neighborhood and dearly held.
Basically, my usual plan is to get to a high point and then find a path from the ‘South Side Slopes,’ or Mount Washington, which leads down to the ‘South Side Flats.’ This particular scuttle did begin in the South Side Slopes section, but a bit further east from where I normally walk.
I got started at the intersection of Arlington Avenue and Josephine Street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit, a fairly thorough bit of virtual ‘routing and scouting’ had occurred the night before, in the Google Maps app. My compass would be fairly useless in this area, so I had to rely on a list of ‘make a left’ and ‘turn right at’ directions for this leg of things.
There was a particular set of City Steps which I didn’t want to miss. I made it a point of recording the address of a home right next door to them so as not to walk right past them without noticing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The South 30th street steps!
What drew me out in this direction was a video which my failing memory originally thought was from the excellent ‘Time Travel with Tim’ channel on YouTube, but instead it’s a similarly great ‘Cruising Pittsburgh’ production. Check out their video here. I was intrigued by the author’s introduced concept of a ‘South Side Hollow.’
One set his toes firmly in the direction of the steps.
Y’know what happened? I didn’t experience the stairs based PTSD this time around when walking down them. Progress!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the bottom of those steps you find yourself on a patch of solid ground, which the kids might call ‘Jane Street.’ There’s a lot of electrical infrastructure at the far end of Jane Street, which I imagine was once used to power up the nearby J&L steel mill, located along the riverfront.
Guessing, there.
This is more or less where the elevation of the Norfolk Southern trackage on this side of the river becomes ‘flush’ with the ground level.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pure serendipity here, as I had just planned on scouting this area for future photo exploration, and then along comes Norfolk Southern #1225.
Hey Now!
This shot was dramatically overexposed, incidentally, but I ‘needed it’ to tell my story. Luckily, I shoot in RAW format, so there’s always a stop or two of ‘wiggle room’ for an exposure. Weird color in the sky, though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Got this one right. Hey Now!
Back tomorrow with something different.
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