A Long Walk, part 2
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your narrator continued his shambling scuttle, humbly, along Pittsburgh’s Butler Street in a generally north-westwards direction that followed the serpentine southern shorelines of the Allegheny River.
Observationally, the Allegheny or ‘North Side’ of the peninsular landform which Pittsburgh occupies seems to be a lot more ‘post-industrial,’ and long term residential, than the southern side along the Monongahela River is. Just an observation from a newcomer, there.
Have I mentioned how much I’m enjoying not knowing everything about everything out here? Back home in NYC – and particularly so in North Brooklyn or Western Queens – if you picked up a random stone off the street, I could have probably told you a story about it.
Ice ages and boloids, mammoths and osage oranges… that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The cool thing about this route was that for much of it, I was scuttling along a protected bike and pedestrian space. There were a few street crossings in front of me which would be causes of concern and caution, but there are signal lights and crosswalks so it wasn’t anything crazy.
A former steel mill property on the flood plain has been redeveloped, and there were multiple corrugated steel buildings housing all sorts of light industrial outfits down below. An auto parts warehouse stood out, but amongst the many organizations found at this site is a cool non-profit outfit called Tree Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s what’s known as an ‘albino roof’ in environmentalist circles.
Passive cooling system, using a light colored paint on the roof which rejects a whole lot of solar radiation during the warm months. Kind of surprised it’s not all covered in solar panels, to be honest, as the redevelopment here was done under the auspices of the Governmental ‘URA’ or Urban Redevelopment Authority.
The ankle was holding up just fine, thanks for asking.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They are really, really big on renaming pre-existing bridges after their politicians in Pittsburgh, which is how the 62nd street bridge ended up being called the ‘Senator Robert D. Fleming’ bridge.
This is a modern trend, and NYC has suffered the same sort of thing with the ‘Ed Koch Queensboro,’ the ‘Robert F. Kennedy Triborough,’ and others.
Oh, the urbanity….
My answer to this urge amongst the electeds to rename bridges for their friends had always been: ‘hey, why dontcha rename the Brooklyn Bridge for Bloomberg? The kids can call it the ‘3B’ then.’
The fancy people were not amused, as Bloomberg wasn’t a member of ‘the club’ which gets preexisting bridges named after them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had scuttled out onto the 62nd street Bridge for this shot, and it looks back on where I had been walking in the first shot (above).
The weather was on my side for once, as it was lovely out. The temperature was struggling to get up to 70, there was a breeze, and zero chance of precipitants. For once, I didn’t need to urgently piss.
I was walking to the rythym of the song ‘Sweet Caroline.’ Step, step, drag left foot and bum ankle… pause, step, step, drag left foot and bum ankle, step… step, pause, step, drag left foot and bum ankle… and so on.
Just kidding there, I was walking in tune with the rhythms of the Gorilla Biscuits’ seminal ‘Start Today’ album.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An enormous fuel transfer facility was encountered, branded with the logos of the Sunoco corporation. I wanted to stand at the fence and photograph this operation in some detail, but my ‘spidey sense’ was alerting and intuiting that I’d certainly get to meet the Cops were I to start doing that.
It was gigantic, this facility, and when you got a bit closer to these tanks – tanker equipped semi-truck toys seemed to be arranged around their bases. These were, of course, not toys, but full sized fuel trucks.
I definitely would have gotten to meet the cops.
Back tomorrow.
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