End of week, odds and ends
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few odds and ends photos from my recent exploratory visit to Pittsburgh’s Oakland. Popped this one out from behind the wheel of the Mobile Oppression Platform on my way home while stuck at a light.
The bridge in the distance is called the 30th street Bridge over the Monongahela River, but truth be told, I was pulled in by the painted “B&O” Railroad logo on the overpass. If that’s original… it has to date back to when I was in high school and that was before Metallica.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See that shot above? Panther Hollow, that’s all I’m going to say. I know what time to be here, and now I know where it is. At the right time, and this is the right place, there’s going to be a train in future iterations of his shot.
I’ve now got two locations scouted for the “money” rail shots. Right place, not the right time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back home in Dormont, and Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself successfully went out for drinks and dinner and then took mass transit back home. That’s the T street car leaving the Potomac station at beer o’clock.
Back next week with more from Pittsburgh, lords and ladies.
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God almighty
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scuttling about in Pittsburgh’s Oakland, along a fairly random path, one encountered several amazing religious buildings. Pictured above is a Jewish Synagogue, dubbed “Rodef Shalom,” which was designed by Henry Hornbostel – who is better known back in NYC as the designer behind the Manhattan Bridge’s accoutrements. Hornbostel also worked on Queensboro, Hell Gate, and Pelham Park Bridges for NYC. The congregation’s website can be accessed here.
One intends on finding a way to get invited into this building with the camera sometime in the future. The sheer scope of this building is colossal, and it promises to be something far more grandiose within than the Eldridge Street Synagogue in Manhattan.
That’s the purpose of scouting, incidentally. Didn’t even know this was here before I was walking past it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A couple of blocks away, these amazing mosaics were adorning a Byzantine Catholic Church. This particular church is dubbed the “Holy Spirit Byzantine Catholic Church.” Everybody knows that I’m a fan of photographing the ritual life of the Catholic Church in particular, and that I’m absolutely floored by Orthodox or Greek Churches. There’s a combination? Another institution that I’ve got to find some social engineering solution for getting the camera into.
Scuttling, always scuttling. One thing about Oakland, unlike the rest of Pittsburgh, is that there didn’t seem to be many opportunities to use a public bathroom. Most of the “street life” in this zone was focused on the campus of the university, with an absolute dearth of shops and restaurants, at least in the section that I was in. I did tug on the entrance doors of both the synagogue and church, but they were locked. This wasn’t exactly the sort of place where “watering the bushes” would be embraced by the local Gendarmerie either, so a certain sense of uneasiness set in.
This sort of created a time limit for me. Tick tock.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fortress like building above caught my eye, and it turns out that it’s the “Central District Catholic High School.” Amongst its many, many famous alumni is Horror Movie legend and Monessan native Tom Savini.
One negotiated his way back to the parking lot where the Mobile Oppression Platform was waiting. It was just about “rush hour” in Pittsburgh and Our Lady of the Pentacle was cooking dinner back at home.
On a side note, strictly from the transplanted New Yorker’s POV –
Pfah, they call this traffic? You want traffic, try the BQE at 8 in the morning. Traffic… traffic doesn’t move at 30 mph, or even 15 mph. Traffic is when you turn off the car on the LIE in Maspeth and get out of the thing to stand on the highway and have a quick stretch. Traffic is three hours to get from Queens to Staten Island, or an hour and a half from Astoria to Flushing because Biden’s in town… traffic…
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Walking in Oakland
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The section of Pittsburgh where you’ll find the campuses of major universities – notably University of Pittsburgh or UPITT and Carnegie Mellon (as well as hospitals and medical centers, several museums, and a gaggle of religious buildings) – is called Oakland. Oakland is divided up into distinct sections, but I’d be lying if I could tell you anything about them yet. The shots in todays post are from my literal third visit to the area since moving here, and the last time I was here it was all indoors at a museum.
The enormous 42 story building prominently occupying the shots in todays post is the UPITT campus’ Cathedral of Learning.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I really hadn’t planned a route for this exploratory scuttle, and instead used the Cathedral as a waypoint for navigation purposes. The Mobile Oppression Platform was stowed away on the roof of a for-pay parking garage, where I paid the highest fee I’ve encountered so far in Pittsburgh for parking – $15 for about three hours. The parking garage was part of the Carnegie Mellon campus, and on the exit stairs taken back down to the street there were a set of doors that led to a set of bleachers on the Carnegie Mellon campus overlooking some sort of sports ball field which also had a running track around it.
I’m still very much in scouting mode these days, and on this particular afternoon I wanted to travel light. Didn’t even bring a camera bag. Had a spare battery and a lens cloth in my sweatshirt pocket, the 85mm f2 was on the camera and a 35mm f1.8 lens was in the coat pocket of the filthy black raincoat which I call my “street cassock.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I spent a couple three hours wandering around and looking at what was on offer for perusal. This sort of area, given the high profile “Ivy League” nature of its institutions, is what an archaeologist would call a “ritual center.” People want their particular “deal” to be noticed and acknowledged by the up and coming generations of cultural and political leadership in such ritual centers, so they spend big when building monuments to a spiritual path or political ideation.
There were several grandiose and architecturally distinguished religious structures in the area, some of which will be discussed tomorrow. I found the Carnegie Mellon campus area to be a bit architecturally sterile, personally, but I didn’t venture too far into it from the street side and thereby I don’t really have a fully formed opinion to offer on the subject.
More tomorrow.
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Pittsburgh, 3 ways
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As opined yesterday, a humble narrator fell victim to biology over the weekend when a stomach bug announced its residency within. Labyrinthine gut notwithstanding, one normally enjoys a quite predictable schedule – alimentary speaking – so an interruption of the normal procedure for nutrient processing was quite a surprise. Coupled with a mild fever which brought waves of sweaty overheating followed by goose bumps and shivering chills, I’d be reluctant to recommend the experience to you, lords and ladies.
Due to being laid low, and my temporary residence in front of the porcelain pulpit in the bathroom, the normal schedule went down the drain along with everything else I was capable of expressing. Hence, archive shots greet you again today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The castellation adorned skyscraper is the PPG Tower, which seems to be the de facto center of the City, here in Pittsburgh. PPG Place is the complex which the tower, a 40 story building designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee, is found in. The PPG Industries outfit (1883 founded Pittsburgh Plate Glass) has its hands in several industrial sectors which include coatings, house paints, and glazes as well as the manufacture of architectural, automotive, and optical glass. If your eyeglasses use ‘Transitions’ lenses which darken into sunglasses when you walk out into sunlight, you’re a customer.
This shot is from one of the multi story parking lots found in the center of the City of Pittsburgh, which I’ve learned offer interesting points of view.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
PPG is one of the major corporate players here in Pittsburgh, as I’m finding out. On a “behind the lens” note, it’s also one of the set pieces in a shot which says “Pittsburgh.” Back in NYC, that role was played by Empire State and Chrysler buildings with newcomer One World Trade in terms of visually setting a “place.” The East River bridges also performed that function.
Back tomorrow with something new. I’m feeling back to about 80% today. Nothing survives in me for long, as my inner workings are incredibly toxic. Back in January, just after getting here, Covid appeared within and I managed to annihilate that microbial scourge in about 72 hours. Often, it feels as if my white blood cells respond to how angry I am about feeling sick, and the more pissed off I get about it the quicker that they go to work. Probably just hormones, but don’t mess with my personal mythologies – I’m special.
I credit my super charged immune system to the years spent along that ribbon of municipal neglect known as the sewage charged Newtown Creek.
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a day late and a dollar short
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was forced into reaching into the recent archives for today’s post, due to a recently suffered stomach bug which derailed a humble narrator. It was one of those fever and chills with vomit and diarrhea ones, which is ever so pleasant to live through but reminds one of the larger human experience. Saying all that, I don’t have anything new to show you in today’s post, so I looked around for a few shots which I don’t think have made it into other posts.
The one above is from a neighborhood called Polish Hill, here in Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
McKeesport is a community due east of Pittsburgh, and that’s where I was when a CSX freight train suddenly appeared.
Right now, I’m really missing the cushion of images which I’d built in NYC. When I had ‘nothing,’ there was always a subway post or some yada yada about Sunnyside Yards that a narrative could be conjured out of, but that was then and this is now. I’m just getting started here in Pittsburgh, and my resources are thin.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m feeling a whole lot better at the time of this writing, what I’d describe as 50%. That’s a major improvement over the day before, which saw me regularly disappearing into the bedroom for three hour long naps during the daylight hours. I slept so much yesterday that my fingernails had visibly lengthened and needed a trim.
Back tomorrow with – probably- another archive post.
“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 