Thwarted
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weather was just awful, here in Pittsburgh, during the month of January. The conditions seriously impacted my whole ‘walk around and take pictures’ dealie. After what seemed like weeks of snow then rain then snow then sun arctic then rain again, the weather forecast seemed to be on a humble narrators side and that’s how I ended up trudging up the hill and boarding a Pittsburgh bound T light rail train set.
The forecast called for – perhaps – a light drizzle. What I got, roughly an hour into the walk, was teeming rain with sleet. It was the sort of sleet, mind you, that you actually feel pain as it’s hitting you in the face. Little cones of ice that had fallen thousands of feet, surprisingly hurt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the time I had scuttled south to the Monongahela River coast of Downtown Pittsburgh, it was seriously coming down. Luckily, I had worn my ‘Pittsburgh winter coat’ which is impressively water resistant, but my pants and shoes were pretty wet. I was using an umbrella of course, but that was mainly to protect the camera as I scuttled along my way. I heal, the camera doesn’t. I set out and across the Smithfield Street Bridge.
I occasionally had to deal with this in NYC, of course, but a lifetime of habitation there meant that I knew how to walk around raindrops and use buildings’ ‘rain shadows’ to my advantage. Overbuilt environments like Manhattan don’t really exist here, and certainly not so once you exit the ‘Downtown’ area.
Pictured are some of the interchanges between US HWY 22/30 and I-376, which run along the southern coast of the peninsular Downtown section.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The walk had to be aborted, but an evening assignation with Our Lady of the Pentacle was still a couple of hours ahead of me. I opted for ‘option B’ with the ‘B’ standing in for ‘Beer’ just to get out of the rain. I popped into a tap room and watched a group of televisions tuned to sportsball programming for an hour or so and then hailed a cab to take me the rest of the way towards our end of the week ‘night out’ dinner date.
Back tomorrow with a considerably less soggy experience, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
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Ten Mile Scuttle, part six
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I punked out on the last section of my walk, and headed over to the T Light Rail Station on Pittsburgh’s First Avenue to catch a ride back home. Of all the T stations I’ve visited, the one that looks the most ‘right’ to me is First Avenue.
On your way out of Pittsburgh, you either pay when exiting the T or at the Station you’re getting out at. It’s all very confusing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in Dormont, after debarking the T and getting a Gatorade at the gas station across the street, I stopped off for a quick shot of a Pittsburgh bound train set picking up passengers.
I began my scuttle down the hills towards HQ, with a genuinely weary gait. I had walked somewhere just over ten miles in about three hours.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I faced down the ice on the steep hill of the block that HQ is found at the bottom of, I cracked out one last shot of a lovely little house that has just changed hands at the top of the hill. I know the place is vacant, and thereby positive that nobody’s privacy was going to be pierced by clicking the shutter and sharing the photo here.
According to Zillow, this 1,104 square foot, three bedroom and two bathroom house just got sold for $319,000. There’s a driveway, and a pretty big yard, too. Sweet.
Back next week.
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Ten mile scuttle, part five
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lifetime habit of mine was to use a combination viewing of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings to orient myself whenever I was climbing out of a Subway in Manhattan, to help me navigate and let me know where I was and what direction I needed to go. Here in Pittsburgh, a similar thing is accomplished using the U.S. Steel Tower.
Don’t let the non profit health outfit’s ‘UPMC’ logo fool you, that’s the U.S. Steel Tower pictured above. UPMC is United Pittsburgh Medical Center, a non profit dealie that seems to own a lot of land in Pittsburgh and its extended metroplex.
The steel guys are still in the building, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Feds have a bunch of agencies housed in the corridor pictured above, here in Pittsburgh. The ‘Feebs’ are here, as are Fed level courts and the ‘big post office’ and the passport people, and I’m sure DEA is lurking around somewhere nearby too. A few blocks away is Pittsburgh’s City Hall and a local level court complex. This street is called ‘Liberty Avenue.’ You see a lot of uniforms and badges walking around eating hot dogs in this section.
I was heading roughly southwards at this point, on a long walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
UPMC is one of the ‘800 pound gorillas’ in Pittsburgh, a non profit corporation which owns a lot of the region’s hospitals and clinics and nursing homes, and employs a LOT of people. There’s controversy at the moment between the politicians and this non profit, since the behemoth medical entity doesn’t pay any property taxes… and since politicians like to spend tax money on new things they’ve recently dreamed up… the two ‘estates’ are at odds with each other.
Nobody seems overly concerned about spending money on fixing potholes, here in Pittsburgh, I’d mention.
I’ve always wondered why our society doesn’t try to get things right, improving insufficient or badly designed existant systems, before installing new and expensive ones.
Personally, I’ve been working on a recipe for meatloaf that I’m pretty close to perfecting (recipe version 7), but have resisted the urge to start roasting chickens, before I get the meatloaf formula just right. That’s how I roll, call me crazy.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Ten mile scuttle, part four
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a humble narrator was in the process of debarking the 31st street bridge over the Allegheny River, one couldn’t help but admire the terraced setup of a section called Polish Hill. That’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary RC Church, which is in an area that I’d paid a brief visit to last year. Even after a year, I still find Pittsburgh’s verticality remarkable.
My next set of moves involved hanging a right at the foot of the bridge and to start walking downtown. Rush Hour, as it is humorously referred to here, was just starting up. Seriously, what the locals refer to as ‘heavy traffic’ just makes this ex New Yorker giggle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As stated in earlier posts from this walk, the plan was to walk back along the Allegheny River on this side of the water, and then cross the Monongahela River to access the T Light Rail, and get back to HQ. I punked out on that as it was starting to snow/rain again. At this stage, it was just starting up, and little piles of water were slowly appearing on my eyeglasses. Nothing major yet, I still had a good hour to go before it really started up, but wet and cold aren’t amongst my favorite combos.
More on all that later in the week, for now I was walking past the Amtrak Station and trying to imagine what it must have looked like back in the ‘good old days.’ I’ve taken Amtrak to and from Pittsburgh, and I believe that my description of the modern station as looking and feeling like a Soviet Orthodontist’s office is still apt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This isn’t exactly the nicest street for a pedestrian in Pittsburgh, I’d offer. The left side of the shot offers the ruined former entrance of the train station which is fenced off and gross. The right side of the shot is the City’s morgue and medical examiner’s offices. The liminal space of the highway ramps above are where most of the occupants are. Awful and barren street scape, this, with sidewalks that just end leaving pedestrians stranded and walking on a busy road. Uggh.
They do a lot of things right here in Pittsburgh, this ain’t one of them.
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.
Ten mile scuttle, three
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, one of my goals for the long walk I was undertaking was scouting for POV locations to exploit once the weather turns kinder in the spring. The setup above is going to make for a lovely shot when a few things align – sunrise, the lights still on in those buildings in the horizon, a train on those tracks, and me standing there with the camera mounted up on a tripod.
An interesting bit of Pittsburgh Trivia which literally everybody I talk to tells me about revolves around this spot. Nearby is found a particularly steep road called Rialto Street, leading up to a section called Troy Hill. Behind me is a landform called Herr’s Island, which used to host the city’s stockyards and abattoirs. It seems that ‘back in the day’ they used to just roll pigs down Rialto Street, on their way to the slaughterhouse on the island.
Seriously, how cruel is that story? Reminds me of the pig wheel at Armour in Chicago. I mean, kill the damn thing and eat it, but don’t terrify it first.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One proceeded to cross the Allegheny River, from the North Side to the peninsular center section of Pittsburgh, via the 31st street bridge.
Technically speaking there is a way to walk over that hill you see in the background of the shot above, using municipal or ‘City Steps,’ but I prefer to just walk around the landform. There’s getting some exercise, and then there’s a forced march.
I opted for circumnavigating the hill, sticking to the relatively level ground instead. That’s where all the interesting stuff which I like to point a camera at is found, anyway. Up top, it’s mainly houses.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular bridge, called ‘31st street Bridge,’ is fairly high in elevation. It has to conquer a severe change in altitude from one bank of the river to the other. The peninsula side is flat and relatively close to the waterline, whereas the other side connects to that steep hill which they used to terrify the doomed pigs upon.
The left side of the shot visually signals my next steps into the ‘Strip District,’ and the navigational point of destination was the U.S. Steel building, which is the tallest building protruding from the downtown skyline on the left side.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 