South Side part 2
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, one decided to take a Sunday afternoon long walk around Pittsburgh’s South Side section waterfront. As also described, my newness and naïveté about Pittsburgh’s environs demands that I offer a preemptive “mea culpa” if I get something wrong. My ignorance is epic at this point in time.
There’s a waterfront trail here along the Monongahela River which shadows the shoreline, and I think it’s one of the former railroad right of ways which has been converted over to a bike and pedestrian path.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You can’t help but notice the Frank Bryan Concrete Factory when you’re in this area, with its sweeping conveyor belts flying about. The vehicle bridge in the background of many of these shots is called the Liberty Bridge, which serves a primary arterial purpose in terms of allowing vehicles access from Downtown Pittsburgh across the river and leads first to the Liberty Tunnel and then the South Hills section on the other side of the prominence of Mount Washington.
This is one of those spots you encounter in American cities where a whole lot of infrastructural elements come together.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Those concrete conveyors I mentioned earlier overfly the Pittsburgh Subdivision of CSX’s freight rail tracks, as well as the bike/ped trail. This offers pretty fantastic points of view for the wandering mendicant.
It also offers very nice POV’s if you’re into trains, but that’s a different post for a later date. In the meantime, neat triangular compositions abound.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The concrete factory seemed to be a wonderland of big machines and heavy equipment. This shot looks through a hole in their fence. I never trespass if I can help it, as I’m like a vampire who needs to be invited into a space to do my work.
It’s been a fantastic experience, incidentally, discovering things new and novel. My long residency along Newtown Creek back in NYC allows me certain insights into what I’m seeing and definitively guides where I’m pointing my toes, but it’s been fantastic to be surprised, awed, and mystified again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just beyond the Liberty Bridge is the Panhandle Bridge, a former heavy rail span which now carries the T light rail service over the river. I’m going to have to come back here at dawn and then dusk to see what those shots would look like.
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was traveling light for this walk. I left most of my gear back at HQ and was rolling about with a minimal photo kit in my bag.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Essentially, I’m still deep in scouting mode these days. Figuring out where neat images can be gathered in the future. I’ve begun to grasp what times of day I’m likely to see a train on the ground level tracks (2:30 on a Sunday, as in the shot above, not so much) in some future walk. I was absolutely magnetized to this particular location, but forced my feet to start kicking about again and move on.
More tomorrow.
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South Side part 1
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To start – this and the posts following it reflect the first time that I’ve taken a long scuttle around the South Side section of Pittsburgh. There’s been a few ‘drive by’s’ and one or two ‘drive to’s’ in the recent past, but these shots were from my first longish walk around the zone. Anything I say in these posts reflects an extremely ephemeral level of experience, and if there’s something stated which I’m wrong about – please speak up and share your knowledge with the rest of the class.
This section of the City was founded as the village of Birmingham and annexed in 1872 by Pittsburgh. The South Side is more or less the part of Pittsburgh found between the Birmingham and Liberty Bridges, along the Monongahela River. The South Side Flats neighborhood is right next door, but I couldn’t tell you where the line of demarcation between them is to save my life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The section further east of here, closer to the Birmingham Bridge, hosted a steel mill until the 1980’s, called the Jones and Laughlin Mill. The section pictured today was a warehousing and heavy manufacturing district that was directly connected to the rail yards and tracks of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Rail Road.
Pictured above are the Liberty Bridge on the left, and on the right is the truss bridge which allows the T light rail to access its crossing of the Monongahela at the Panhandle Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The town father of Birmingham/South Side area was apparently a fellow named Dr. Nathaniel Bedford. He laid out the streets, and when industry began setting itself up here, huge numbers of German and other Eastern European immigrants showed up. There’s a lot of very, very old buildings on display here. By Pittsburgh standard, these streets are practically flat, I would mention.
These shots were gathered on a Sunday afternoon, so the streets seemed particularly deserted except for joggers, bike riders, and me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a pretty large scale development project which I encountered that dubs itself “The Highline.” The showrunners where consciously connect the project to NYC’s Highline, even going so far as to use a silhouette of the Manhattan Skyline on logo bearing signage.
This complex used to be called the Pittsburgh Terminal and it dates back to 1906, when it was one of the largest warehouses on the planet. The 6 story and 868,000 square foot property was sold to an outfit called McKnight Realty Partners in 2016.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are flights of stairs everywhere you look in Pittsburgh. I climbed up this set, which had a quite pleasing combination of solidity with an easy rise and run, and I soon found myself up top.
Altitude always benefits the wandering mendicant with a camera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was fairly sterile up there, I must say. There were cool points of view on offer, and I’ll definitely be back to take advantage of them in the future. This project reminded me a lot of the Bush Terminal redevelopments which the NYC EDC operates in South Brooklyn. Apparently, the real estate people here came to a similar conclusion as to profitable usage of the space as the EDC has, and have converted the former warehouse terminal space over to offices and for street level commercial usage.
More tomorrow, from Pittsburgh’s South Side, at your Newtown Pentacle.
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Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A visit to the Heinz History Center in Downtown Pittsburgh had been undertaken by Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself recently. That’s “Heinz” as in the Ketchup people with the 57 varieties, and one of the displays at this Smithsonian affiliated museum is centered around the iconic streetcars of Pittsburgh. The unit above went out of service in 1988, and it’s designated ‘Pittsburgh Streetcar #1724.’ I’ve come to understand that the high water mark for Pittsburgh’s streetcar system was in the middle 1950’s, when there were about 600 of the sort of vehicle pictured above roaming about.
historicpittsburgh.org has a succinct description of this class of streetcar, once so ubiquitous in Pittsburgh, which can be accessed here. There used to be a serious network of public transit in these parts, in addition to the surviving inclines which get most of the modern attention. For a history of how mass transit rose and fell in Pittsburgh, check this out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the modern day equivalent of the historic streetcar display at the Heinz Center, which is dubbed the ‘T.’ When Our Lady and I were planning the great escape from New York, transit was definitively a part of the decision matrix, so we moved into an area which the T serves. I end up driving a lot here, but there’s days when I just want to scuttle about and not be tied down to wherever I parked the car. It was on just such a day that the shot above was gathered, after having ridden the Red Line service from HQ in Dormont here to the Station Square stop nearby the Monongahela River. Pictured is a Silver Line light rail T set, which is headed the other way and out of the downtown area.
The postindustrial gentrification forge has definitively been stoked here in Pittsburgh, and a lot of real estate in the urban core is being converted to or entirely replaced by residential buildings. Saying that, it doesn’t burn as brightly or rapaciously as it does back in NYC.
The mental map which I had made for the day involved skirting along railroad tracks and some of the still industrial blocks in the Southside Flats area. After debarking the T streetcar, one began kicking the dirt while depressing the shutter button and trying to notice everything.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This area is my sort of thing, incidentally, with a web of elevated ramps for the T and vehicle traffic which lead to bridges. Huge post industrial and still industrial buildings, broken and lonely streets with a hint of danger… there’s even a set of quite busy freight rail tracks woven into the tapestry down here. Additionally, there’s many interesting points of view from which to wave the camera about.
It was a perfect day for a photowalk, with temperatures in the middle 60’s – sweatshirt weather. I left most of the gear at home, and brought a handheld camera kit with me.
More tomorrow.
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Don’t go chasing waterfalls
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Project flowing water” is starting to shape up a bit, as far as the camera settings thing which I’ve been talking about for a while. I won’t bore you, but I think that I’ve just about figured out to get water shots looking the way I want them to.
Obviously, there’s a whole set of approaches to the oceanic and harbor conditions of NYC that were developed over a long period of time. That’s a different kind of flowing water, though. Tidal is a lot different than running, as I’ve found out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The same set of rock steps are in the shot above and below, which are the first ones that I’ve really been able to produce what I have in mind.
It’s actually quite complicated, getting the motion blur in some areas and seeing streaks of texture in others. If you click through to the larger incarnation of this shot at Flickr, you’ll see what I mean. Especially if you read this on your phone.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s not just exposure triangle either. There’s a bunch of ‘machinations in the field’ during capture that have to be part of the plan. Ultimately, if you’re not willing to experiment a bit, you should stick to the rivers and lakes you’re used to instead of chasing waterfalls.
LOL.
Back next week with something different, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Unknown Country
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Nature wants to kill you.” You look tasty to all other creatures, and it’s probably in your best interest to just up and slaughter any animal, insect, or vegetable that you might meet – just in case, and in the name of self preservation. Additionally, there’s a reason our ancestors paved over everything. Further, who in their right mind would want to sleep in a tent – by choice when they don’t have to – in the middle of the woods where there’s bears and Sasquatchs and all kinds of crazy running around in the dark. There’s probably a cache of feral children on the loose out here, howling and scratching about amongst the trees.” That’s what I was thinking when visiting the Hollow Oaks nature trail recently.
As you may gather, a walk in a nature preserve was recently on the menu here in Pittsburgh. There were trees, and a couple of quick running streams of some sort – creeks, runs, something. My shoes became very dirty, and were soon covered in mud. The sun light… the sun light was dappled.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was on high alert as always in case I had to engage “maximum boogey” runaway mode, and I’ll admit to scanning the tree line for evidences of that monstrous pig/dog hybrid reported to inhabit the deeply forested valleys of Western Pennsylvania which is called the Squonk. The world is a terrifying place full of existential and unknown threats, especially so in areas where nature has not been conquered and reshaped with hammers and scythes. Walls, and doors that lock, keep the Elks out when you sleep.
Seriously though, this was a really nice and low intensity trail through a protected conservation area which winds around a patch of woods and several streams, ultimately joining up with the Montour Run waterway near Coraopolis. Really nice spot, but since I’m a City Boy and anything natural is unnatural and threatening to me… it’s threatening and weird.
What if some predatory bird was to attack and try to take the eyes? Snakes… there’s actual Rattlesnakes around here too. What if I drop my car keys, how would I ever find them? What if a Deer ate my keys? I can’t chase a Deer through the woods…
I once got into a fistfight with one of those dick Canada Geese at First Calvary Cemetery in LIC, have had to fight off a raccoon in the dead of night at the Maspeth Plank Road using the legs of my tripod to fend it off, and I grew up in a neighborhood known for having packs of wild dogs roaming about (1980’s Flatlands/Canarsie.) See? Proves the point. Nature wants to kill you, or at the very least – Me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All of the above is a composite of various statements transmitted to me by my parents whenever the subject of leaving Brooklyn for a day and going somewhere nice – “En Da Kuntree” as my Mom would screech – came up. The entire “country” storyline presented to a young but already Humble Narrator would inevitably lead to my hair getting wet causing a condition known as ‘wet head,’ resulting in me getting deathly ill as a result of the moistening, and subsequently being buried “In Dah Grownd.” The final salvo was “Is Dat Whatchu wants… yore a real icehole, don’t know who raised you but youse didn’t learn dis from me, go reads a book instead.” Before leaving the conversation about taking a walk in some sylvan glade, one would be commanded to fetch and prepare a “soda glass” filled with Diet Pepsi and 4, not 3 not 5, ice cubes.
Despite the programmed in script offered above, which is an embedded part of my source code, I actually quite enjoy a nice walk in the country these days. The ‘wet head’ threat is ameliorated through the simple prophylactic of wearing a cap. When I die, my wish is to be sealed up in a large glass ampule filled with preservatives and put on commercial display as a cautionary tale. A traveling freak show, perhaps. That is, if animals don’t get to my corpse first.
At least I’d be continuing to visit new places, in my glassy ampule.
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The Newtown Pentacle 