Archive for the ‘Pennsylvania’ Category
Fifth Avenue, Uptown
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has seldom even driven through this part of Pittsburgh, possibly twice in my recollection, but a humble narrator had never taken a look at the ‘Uptown’ section while on foot.
Uptown sits on a high bluff overlooking the Monongahela River, on the southern side of Pittsburgh’s so called ‘Golden Triangle.’ Uptown is neighbored by a corporate tower dominated zone called ‘Downtown’ to the west, ‘Oakland’ with its universities and cultural institutions, and an affluent residential neighborhood called Squirrel Hill to the east. To the north is the ‘Hill District.’
There’s a gaggle of ‘Second Empire’ style buildings found in Uptown, with their mansard roofs and terracotta finishes. Many of them are abandoned, or have been burnt out by fires and are being used as squats, or they’re tightly boarded up.
One was walking up Pittsburgh’s Fifth Avenue on this particular Sunday afternoon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The abandoned buildings ‘thing’ here is really startling.
When you saw something like this back in Brooklyn or Queens, it was generally because a real estate developer had bought the property, and was intentionally allowing it to rot away and become a nuisance, so as to avoid any sort of interference from historic preservationists or community groups getting in the way of their dreams of avarice plans. A friend of mine back in Greenpoint coined the term ‘Bloomblight’ for the practice of the Real Estate Industrial Complex.
Pittsburgh, on the other hand, has an abundance of abandoned homes within its borders. I’ve read estimates suggesting there are more than 50,000 buildings of all types within the municipality which have simply been abandoned by their owners. When you start looking at the larger region, the abandonment and concurrent blight conditions are hard to ignore.
‘Blight Clearance’ is a budget item in Pittsburgh’s annual spending, as it is for many municipalities in the region.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I saw signage promising this area was an ‘opportunity zone,’ which means that if you show up with financing and a plan, the City will likely approve it and give you tax breaks and the land will almost be free to do nearly whatever you want to do with it. I asked a local friend who recently retired from the local Real Estate Industrial Complex about Uptown, and he told me that Uptown has been the ‘next big thing’ here for about 40 years.
Compared to surrounding areas, the City of Pittsburgh has relatively high taxes and a political estate which will insist on all sorts of requirements – affordability, access, inclusion – which drive up the cost of building anything. Just across the county line, however, are lower tax suburbs which will bend over backwards to get you to build something there instead of here.
There’s ‘the City of’ and ‘the county of’ and then there’s ‘the metro area.’ Each zone has advantages and disadvantages, from a business or development POV.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Check out that old apartment house!
I see this particular ‘style’ quite a bit here in Pittsburgh’s urban neighborhoods. Lots of windows and terraced spaces. This sort of inventory dates back to before air conditioning, when ventilation in Pittsburgh’s famously humid climate demanded lots and lots of windows. Every other building on that side of the block I was walking down had stout plywood covering the windows.
To be fair, Uptown is a neighbored by a couple of troubled and ‘crimey’ areas to the north, and is set along a steep bluff hemmed in by highways and bridges. A couple of high speed roads and interstates form its southern border and subject the neighborhood (as it were) to 24/7 traffic noise and pollution.
This is another one of the places which the native “Yinzers” have advised me to avoid at night, due to crime and other insalubrious activities.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The next big thing? It’s hard not to imagine some of these empty lots and historic homes housing some of the overflow population from the universities in nearby Oakland. Saying that – If I were in my early thirties and blessed with a large bank account, and looking to build my ‘compound,’ I’d probably be establishing ‘Waxman Manor’ somewhere else. Up in the hills, with a private stream for water.
I’ve long dreamt of building into a hillside, like a Hobbit, and surrounding my domicile with a murder fence and kill zones, which I’d hire a certain group of ‘Boomers’ to design – ones who had served in the Viet Cong.
Nobody but nobody knows how to keep the Americans out of your hair like the Viet Cong do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The gentrification hammers seemed to be hard at work at a couple of spots here in Uptown. Mostly what I observed on this stretch were rotting old buildings, open brick lots, and a lot of people who definitely seemed to be living on an edge of some kind.
There were sparse examples of junkies and possibly a prostitute or two milling about, but otherwise there was very little in the way of street life. The occupied buildings I observed had the appearance of fortresses, which reminded me of the late 1970’s and 1980’s back in Brooklyn’s Flatbush and Canarsie. Bars on all the first floor windows, driveways adorned with barb wire fencing – that sort of thing.
Back tomorrow.
“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.
Heading to Uptown
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a ‘long walk’ kind of day for a humble narrator, and one trudged up the hill to the “T” streetcar line station from HQ, where a ride into the ‘Downtown’ section of Pittsburgh was actuated. My path for the afternoon walk wasn’t in Downtown, rather I was heading ‘Uptown.’
I’ve walked through a tiny slice of ‘Uptown’ before, when I was drawn to visit and walk down a ridiculous set of Municipal Steps along the Monongahela River, nearby the bluff that Duquesne University occupies, back in May.
I’ve been using my headphones again while scuttling about, and listening to audiobooks and ‘old time’ radio. This time around, it was a BBC radio production from 1949 – a dramatization of ‘George Orwell’s 1984’ starring David Niven. Good stuff, and something that I downloaded years ago. You can listen to it at this link,
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One rode the T streetcar to the Steel Tower stop, which – as you’d imagine – is nearby the U.S. Steel tower here in the Downtown section (native Pittsburghers would pronounce that as ‘Dahntahn’). This section is where Pittsburgh keeps its office buildings, Governmental Agencies, and corporate assets. It’s an interesting area, Pittsburgh’s business district, one which I haven’t fully built a mental map of yet.
After assessing my positioning, I set out for the scuttle along a route that I had crafted before leaving HQ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s fascinating how utterly embraced the automobile is in Pittsburgh, with literal eight lane highways just rammed right into the densest section of the metro area. There’s a fairly terrific amount of parking available downtown, with metered spots on the street and massive multi story parking garages that are fairly affordable. I guess it’s the way things are, but it’s odd for this ex-New Yorker to see a city center built around automobiles rather than mass transit.
What was especially odd was how deserted this section of the City was.
Admittedly, this walk occurred on a Sunday afternoon, but it was notable to me how few people there were on the sidewalks. No doubt due to the low foot traffic and all that, nearly every retail establishment was closed with a ‘for rent’ sign in the window. Ghost town.
More tomorrow.
“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.
Steps, steps, vertigo, steps
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On a recent evening’s ‘short walk,’ here in Pittsburgh, I was trying to incorporate all sorts of verticality into my scuttle. Up a set of municipal stairs, and then down another on the other side of the hill. Particular attention is being paid to the joints in the legs, or as I call them – my roadway interface – at the moment.
I regard most of the body as being a meat carriage for carrying around the sensory stalk and central processing unit found dangling off and above my neck, it should be mentioned. The entire apparatus below just supports the brain and handles interaction with the local vicinity. Consciousness, as in what I’d describe as ‘me,’ is found about two and a half inches behind the eyes and betwixt the ears.
More often than not, this roadway interface of mine is more trouble than it’s worth, but there you are. I’d likely be quite happy as a brain in a jar, attached to a networked computer, but that existential horror would definitely prey upon me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This crazy set of steps actually caused me to experience a bit of vertigo while moving downwards, along the rises and runs of the stairs. Vertigo is another one of those bits of vestigial programming we’ve inherited out of ancestral experience, as the proto humans who didn’t have a healthy fear of heights didn’t live long enough to reproduce and pass that trait along to the future. It’s good to be a bit paranoid, as well.
What actually got me ‘razzed up’ was that these otherwise quite sturdy steel steps had gratings, on the ‘run’ or flat section of the steps,’ and you could see right through them to the sidewalk and street below. I get a tingling sensation in my fingertips and the palms of my hand when confronted with great heights. How about y’all?
One grasped those bannisters pretty tightly, I tell’s ya.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot is actually from a walk that I took a few nights later, which gives a bit better POV on the steps. The second shot was captured while standing right at the angled ‘join’ at center left. Brrr.
Regardless of lurking fears and ancestral phobias, one gingerly maneuvered the old meat carriage back down to the street level via the steps without overt incident. I walked away, proud as a pony, with a couple of OK photos and a story to tell, so ‘win.’
Back tomorrow.
“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.
An evening scuttle
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another short walk day was upon me, and honestly – one wasn’t ‘about’ shooting photos on this one. The weather had been fairly ghastly for several days, and according to the TV weather people, the sky was about to offer another multi day cycle of cold and wet in the coming week.
I took the T streetcar to the south side of the Monongahela River here in Pittsburgh, and stuck the headphones in my ears. This time around, it was music, in particular a playlist that features every Black Sabbath album which I own.
One hit ‘shuffle’ on the Ozzy and Dio rich playlist and started scuttling, following whatever direction my toes happened to be pointing towards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Pittsburgh’s Smithfield Street Bridge pictured above. While walking, I was thinking. A lot. It ranged from when I would next be doing the laundry all the way into springtime, and which part of the region I was planning to explore next was ruminated upon. Eastern Ohio is being considered, as is a day trip down to West Virginia.
It was late in the day, about an hour before the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was going to dip below the horizon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While walking along, I became the focus of attention for a junkie whom (I’m pretty sure) was being employed to deliver ‘bindles’ of narcotic powder to various customers by some dealer. Dealers will often use the street people for delivery duty, letting them catch the jail time should the cops clip them. A bindle of the powder is thereby won for their efforts, as a salary. It’s a living, I guess.
One probably would have been in trouble, if I hadn’t clued in to his particular vibe. Junkies and street people always talk to me, and sing their songs. I once talked a Jehovah’s Witness into dropping his Watchtower magazine stock in a garbage pail and drinking whiskey with me at a dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen, as amicable and convincing conversation is one of my super powers.
I think this young narcotics enthusiast was trying to figure out if I was a cop, and also likely fixing to take the camera from me if opportunity arose. Always keep moving, I always say, and if they want to talk to me…
My narrative stylings went ‘hard Brooklyn,’ and we chatted about gangs, and turf, in Pittsburgh. I regaled the kid with tales of all my loser friends in NYC, all the times they went to jail, and that led to conversation about doctrinal differences, here in Pittsburgh, between people who wear red, or blue, or leather, or just ball caps with denim jackets.
The pale enthusiast soon broke away from me to ‘go say hello to that guy,’ and I subsequently disappeared into the street grid using a reversed variation of a sector search pattern that the Coast Guard utilizes during searches for missing mariners. It’s handy knowing things like this, I say.
More tomorrow.
“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.
Rain and night in Pittsburgh
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They kind of roll the sidewalks up pretty early here in Pittsburgh, at least by NYC standards. Lifestyle wise, Our Lady of the Pentacle and I don’t go ‘out’ all that much here, and certainly nowhere near as often as used to back in NYC. A recent exception to our rule included a visit to a British style pub and ‘chip shop’ located in the South Side Flats area.
This zone is known for its nightlife, and has a ferocious reputation due the often deadly hijinx of raucous youths on the weekends. Fights, the occasional use of pistols, all that stuff.
There’s a dizzying array of restaurants and bars in this area, including the pub which we were visiting. We had left the car back at home and used a Lyft rideshare to get here. I was planning on having a few pints of draft Guinness, which is a bit harder to find on tap hereabouts than you’d imagine.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cities look best when it’s raining, I always say. We had dinner at the chip shot, and my English bride was happy with the menu’s offerings, as it was based on several comfort food dishes from her faraway homeland. Mushy Peas, Scotch Eggs, all that.
Pictured above is East Carson Street, which is the ‘Main Street’ of this section of the Pittsburgh metro, dubbed the South Side Flats.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few nights later, a humble narrator found himself wandering on the same street, and encountered this wonderful neon display in the front window of a tattoo shop. Everybody I encounter here, seemingly, has ‘ink’ and there are many tattoo shops to choose from.
Retail space is comparatively cheap to lease here, meaning that you see a lot of local entrepreneurial energy expressed in the store fronts, rather than the sort of bank machine/big box/franchise activity which dominates the modern retail spaces back in NYC.
Back next week with more from the Paris of Appalachia, 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.
