The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Our Lady of the Pentacle had a doctor’s appointment on Pittsburgh’s North Side, and thusly I had a couple of hours to kill while she was interacting with the white coat brigade. Her assignation was at that hospital building featured on that HBO show ‘The Pitt,’ as an aside.

What to do, what to do? Gotta stay busy and not be bored, for even a minute, me…

Allegheny General Hospital, as it’s known in the real world, is directly across the street from Allegheny Commons Park. Said park is the one which has that rail trench cut into it that I often visit, so…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Hey Now! That’s Norfolk Southern’s #3663 chugging along in that rail trench. I caught a bit of derision on one of the Facebook groups centered around Pittsburgh’s railroads, referring to this set of tracks as the ‘trench.’

Somebody on there said ‘I used to work for the RR, and nobody ever called it a trench.’ I asked ‘what is the proper name of this section of tracks then’? No answer.

Now, there’s around a dozen other photographers on that group who newly refer to this as ‘the trench.’

My phone chimed, a text had been received, and Our Lady was done with her business. I packed up the camera and picked her up, and we then headed back to Dormont for a fairly quiet afternoon.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The next day was an ‘exercise day,’ and this time around somebody else was driving. Specifically a ride share driver named Furkat. As soon as I heard the name, I asked if he was Uzbeki when I got in the car. There’s a sizable refugee population of Uzbekistani, Kazakh. and Afghans here in Pittsburgh who are also new arrivals to the area.

Furkat was taking me to Pittsburgh’s ‘Greenfield,’ where a medium long scuttle would begin. I took the opportunity to shoot out the window of his car, and try to get ‘the view’ from the city side of the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

For reference, yesterday’s post had me walking across the Fort Pitt Bridge, with the walkway found on the bridge’s lower deck. The POV above and below is one which has been heavily romanticized, and is directly above the shots from yesterday. The upper deck of Fort Pitt Bridge is also ‘fablungered,’ but it’s nowhere near as horribly designed as the lower deck and its approaches are.

This is a difficult exposure, btw, due to part of the shot offering bright daylight, and the rest of it being inside of a fairly dark tunnel.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Furkat seemed a little concerned about what I was doing, but didn’t object. As long as somebody else is driving, I love the challenge of these sorts of high speed captures. It’s a real test of how well you know what your camera can do.

This was a fairly nice July day, incidentally, with temperatures struggling to hit 80 and about 60% humidity. I’d be irradiated by the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself for the entire walk, mind you, as it bobbed horribly about in the sky – so this wasn’t ‘sweater weather’ or anything…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Someday, there’ll be a parade or some event which closes this bridge and allows pedestrian access for a spell. If that ever happens, I swear that I will be present somehow, camera in hand.

Back tomorrow with where I was heading to, and what was observed.

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