The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

So… as you might recall from last week, your humble narrator was involved in a long scuttle along the Allegheny River side of Pittsburgh’s central peninsula, one filled with lots of self-recrimination. Fun walk, lots to see and ponder. Everybody hates me. All caught up.

One had wandered into the Lawrenceville section, and encountered a passing freight train at street grade, and then…

I saw this street sign.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Now – for some ‘behind the curtains’ POV – I’ve started inserting shots of street signs into the flow of photos at my Flickr account, to act as visual bookmarks and to remind me of where I was when one photo or another was captured. At the end of the week, when you’re looking at a thousand raw captures, this practice aids in the organizing of things, from a cogently geographical and narrative sense.

Yes, that is a real Pittsburgh street sign, signifying the intersection of Willow Street with 43 1/2 street.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I stood there staring at this sign for a couple of minutes, in disbelief. Was it a fake? Something some real estate yahoo screwed onto a pole?

Nope.

From Google’s AI:

Origins and Naming Original Name: The lane was originally called Snowden Alley.

Landowner: It was named after H. Snowden, who owned property on both sides of the alley north of Butler Street around 1852.

Fractional Renaming: The city changed the name to 43rd ½ Street via a city ordinance in 1871. An 1881 ordinance accidentally listed it back as Snowden Alley, before it was officially updated again to “Forty-third and One-Half Street” in 1896.

Local Lore: Early Pittsburgh historian and columnist George T. Fleming joked in a 1915 Pittsburgh Gazette Times column that the quirky fractional name meant the street “surely has a name and a half”.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I have no information, regarding the artist or intention of that mural painted on the residential building pictured above, but I dig it.

As you can see in the shot’s background, this is right about where a bunch of the ‘new’ construction, found on the border between Pittsburgh’s ‘Lawrenceville’ and ‘Strip District,’ collides with older real estate schemes.

Were I as loquacious as I was back in Queens, I’d christen this as ‘an angle between’ those two neighborhoods. I’m not.

Neat.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

By this point, my walk through the ‘Butler Street Corridor’ had transmogrified into ‘the Willow Street Corridor is more interesting right about now,’ so I followed it under the 40th street Bridge where the roadway becomes a narrow pass for pedestrians and bike riders only.

The predominance of my scuttle having been accomplished, the route now became an expedient one, designed to angle my toes towards a T light rail station that was still at least a couple/three miles away in the ‘Downtown’ section.

Yep, could have always hopped on a bus, but that’s not the actual point of these endeavors. Got to keep moving or I’ll stop moving.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

At 33rd street, where a gargantuan railroad bridge is found right along the waterfront of the Allegheny River, that’s where I walked past next.

There’s all sorts of signage from the railroad people warning off trespass, camping, and other morbid occupations, but I continue to operate in compliance with the rules of 1980’s Brooklyn.

‘Things are only illegal if there are Cops around,’ or if you break into or graffiti onto something, and as there weren’t any Cops hanging around and I had no intention of painting my name here, there we are. I did find a private spot in the bushes for a piss.

There’s rail tracks on the ground, I’d mention, but they are clearly not active and are quite overgrown. I’ve seen videos of camera wielders getting hassled around here by the RR Cops, but have a feeling that those particular videographers made themselves ostentatious to the gendarmerie.

Back tomorrow.

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