Serendipitous Scuttler saying ‘Hey Now!’
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part five:
I mention my concept of ‘serendipity’ a whole lot.
The pinion which my intended usage of that term revolves around is ‘Mitch showed up with a camera, and then cool stuff started to happen.’
A different Towboat, which was heading westerly on the Ohio River, was observed from up here on the pedestrian lanes of the gargantua McKees Rocks Bridge. Serendipity.
About to move on, one decided to hang around instead, and that’s when I noticed another Towboat heading in an easterly direction along the Ohio River, towards the confluence point at the center of Pittsburgh where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers form up into the Ohio.
This Towboat is called the Gale R. Rhodes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Serendipity roared again here. Notice that Norfolk Southern rail unit navigating onto the Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge? Squeal!
I sure noticed it. Hey Now!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I tracked the locomotive across the river, and cracked this one out when both the train and that distant Towboat – doing its duty between Pittsburgh’s Ohio River shoreline and Brunot’s Island – were in frame together.
One was obliged to hang about, thereby, until everything fell into place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I love it when a plan comes together.
Wish that the locomotive engine was mid span on the bridge for this one, but I’ll take what I can get.
Back to scuttling!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I still had a decent amount of bridge left to cross.
After overflying the river, the McKees Rocks Bridges continues inland for a bit. Part of this is to handle the fairly startling difference in altitude between the bridge’s two sides, the other is to not compromise a rail yard and a down on its luck industrial zone below.
Once down on the ground in the McKees Rocks ‘Bottoms’ section, the timer start running out for this walk, but there was still some fairly interesting stuff I wanted to see down there. There was also that rail shot I was desirous of.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
McKees Rocks, and specifically the ‘bottoms’ residential side of the neighborhood is pictured above. I’ve been here before, during the first walk that I experienced over this amazing bridge.
Back next week with a couple more posts from this walk and then… man, oh man, the things I’ve seen and the places I’ve been…
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Rolling and Rocksing, the Ohio River
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part five:
Still onboard the McKees Rocks Bridge for this one, but a lot closer to the southern shoreline. Yesterday, I mentioned that I was purposely ‘drag assing’ a bit up here, lingering and loitering in the hope that the Ohio River might put on a show for me.
Lucky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While waiting for ‘something to happen’ I waved the camera about a bit. I was trying to ‘box in’ a set of exposures for the three cardinal directions that are visible from this position, and also figure out how to expose for the water below. I was hoping for a train, or maritime activity. Something.
Lucky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the tippy tip of McKees Rocks sticking out into the water. My next forays in this ‘zone’ are going to involve trying to get close to that shoreline. Don’t know if there’s any access at all, but you don’t know till you try.
Lucky.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, the curtains opened, the band played, and the show I was hoping for started. I do miss my NY Harbor tugboats, yo, but I’ll happily take this.
Of course, this is a ‘Towboat’ on this inland waterway, not a Tug.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It passed under the McKees Rocks Bridge, the Megan Ames did.
The boat was towing four barges of a black mineral that was likely coal. Might have been coke, as well, but the one thing which I can say for certain is that the material was colored dark/black.
Also previously mentioned, a temperature inversion overnight had created somewhat random misty conditions popping up out of isolated and wooded spots. The light was changing several times a minute.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Off in the distance, another Towboat was observed, this one handling the back and forth of vehicles and crew to Brunot’s Island, where a ‘peaker’ electrical plant is maintained by the local electric utility.
That bridge is a railroad crossing for the Norfolk Southern railroading outfit, and is dubbed as the ‘Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge.’
Back tomorrow with the payoff for being patient.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Scuttling onto the McKees Rocks Bridge
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part four:
One managed to safely cross that gnarly intersection mentioned yesterday, an act whose execution caused me no end of existential anxiety, and soon the camera was positioned onto the McKees Rocks Bridge.
I’ve only walked this bridge a single time, and have been desirous of a return, as I think it’s fantastic.
This particular scuttle, which ended up being just a bit under ten miles horizontally, also saw me descending better than a thousand feet in elevation from ‘Observatory Hill’ in the Perry South area, nearby the Davis Avenue Pedestrian Bridge, moved through the neighborhoods of Brighton Heights and then Marshall Shadeland, crossing this bridge, and then heading down to the flood plains of the Ohio River in ‘McKees Rocks’s ‘Bottoms’ section on the other side of this bridge.
I get ahead of myself, however, and we are at the ‘crossing the bridge’ part of all that.
Just in case you’ve been wondering what the ‘Topsburgh and Bottomsburgh’ thing is about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
McKees Rocks bridge is the longest span in Allegheny County, and it overlooks the massive Alcosan wastewater treatment plant found on the Ohio River on its northern approaches.
Pictured are – what looks to me – like aeration tanks, which wastewater professionals use to separate solid materials out of the ‘flow.’ Basically, the aeration causes solids to drop to the bottom for later collection. Solids can be anything from a matchbox car that some kid flushed down the toilet, to the rocks and stones and other detritus carried into the sewer grates during rainstorms.
My pals at the Sewer Plant in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint once told me that they had a bowling ball shoot out of one of the incoming pipes during a storm, which entered the plant in the manner of a cannonball. It caused all sorts of damage. The question of how a bowling ball ended up in NYC’s sewer system remains unanswered.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking across the Ohio River in a more or less southern direction for this one. I enjoy this bridge for a number of reasons, but primarily it’s an absolute ‘cat seat’ in terms of altitude and POV over the waterway, and the views are just fantastic.
Also, I like pointing the camera at industrial stuff, and there’s plenty of that visible from up here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying that, I ended up spending close to an hour moving over the bridge as everytime I started walking, something caught my eye and I had to stop to get a shot. That’s the Fort Pitt Bridge in the far distance, catching a bit of light while standing in a cloud of rising mists.
As mentioned in my recent telling of the ‘slipped on ice and fell flat on my ass’ story, it had been fiendishly cold the night before, and the weather on this particular day saw temperatures in the high 50’s and low 60’s. That meant that a whole lot of misty weirdness was rising out of the hollows, crevasses, and ravines of Pittsburgh.
Lighting conditions were changing several times a minute, and things got photographically complex.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Me? I had a literal mile and a half of bridge to walk.
Pretty much loitering at this point. Waiting for a subject to pop into view, and scanning around for activity worth taking a picture of.
These moments are great tests for me, as a man who exhibits zero evidence of patience, and believes that the universe only shows him things that ‘need seeing’ when he randomly walks by them and that ‘you can’t force something to happen.’ One must compel himself to linger.
I remind myself of another personal aphorism – ‘it’s like fishing’ – and that you need to wait for a bite as you can’t order the fish onto your hook.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You may notice how these shots continually look back towards that set of railroad tracks. One of the things I was looking for was rail activity.
I stuck the headphones into the ear holes, and started listening to that good old ‘History of Rome’ podcast again. I think I was on an episode numbered somewhere in the high 90’s, around the time of the Tetrarchy, but this walk was perpetrated on the 24th of March and today is the sixth of May, so… late in the game Italy based Rome, basically.
I find that ‘spoken word,’ as in podcast or audiobook, doesn’t lodge into my brain the way that the written word does. I need to listen to an audiobook at least a couple of times for it to ‘stick’ into my brain, whereas I can usually read a printed book, and then be able to quote it directly for a long bit afterwards.
Different parts of the language center in the brain, I guess.
Back tomorrow.
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Scuttling in Shadeland
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part three:
After visiting the Davis Avenue Bridge, accessed via the Perry Hilltop ‘zone,’ your humble narrator began loathsomely forcing the rotting pre-corpse through and along the hazy borders of the Marshall Shadeland and Brighton Heights neighborhoods.
Man, what a ‘zone’! The housing stock here is exquisite.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This church seemed to have constructed atop a giant outcropping of rock, and I couldn’t stop myself from getting a photo of it.
This section of my day is best analogized by an old aphorism of mine from Queens, which is that ‘you pretty much have to walk through Sunnsyide to get to Newtown Creek from Astoria, so just get used to it.’ Also, Queens’ 43rd street used to be ‘the Shell Road,’ so you’re walking through Dutch colonial era NYC history by going that way. Connected the Rycken (Rikers) properties on the north all the way to Newtown Creek on the south. Just saying.
To get where I was going, I needed to scuttle through a couple of residential neighborhoods.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Disturbingly heterogenous, that’s how I’d describe the residential architecture encountered along this route. There were a few row houses, and many examples of ‘Pittsburgh style’ brick home, which features an enormous front porch.
While scuttling along, I saw a curtain drawn back as a shadowy figure observed my passage. I hissed in that direction, in the manner of a stray cat. The curtain fell back to a resting position.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, the end of the world was reached.
At least, it’s the end of this part of the world. It put me right where I hoped to be, but there was a decidedly dodgy street crossing ahead. I was actually a bit anxious about this crossing, which can be difficult to navigate – in a car.
Fear… Fear is the mind killer.
Loping along like some crippled chimpanzee, with my stiffened shoulder and neck due to that slip and fall annoying me, and a perfect mud tattoo of the butt on the back of his filthy black raincoat, your humble narrator nevertheless strove on… and on…
Really, what choice did I have? If you stop moving, you stop moving.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The world – or at least the legal borders of ‘Pittsburgh’ – more or less ends at that fence, which then leads you down to a short set of stairs. Those stairs place pedestrians at a spot never meant for them, despite there being crosswalks and walk/don’t walk signals which were an obvious ‘add-on.’
On the other side of that fence is found Ohio River Blvd./Route 65, a de facto four lane highway masquerading as a local street. Historically speaking, it’s meant to be the deadliest of Pittsburgh’s high speed roads, due to its conditions in the 1960’s and 70’s.
Sounds nice, no?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the intersection which I was worried about, which theoretically allows pedestrians to cross Ohio River Blvd. and access the walkway to the McKees Rocks Bridge.
You see Junkies with signs here begging for handouts, but this ain’t exactly a safe spot – street crossing wise. Heavy traffic flow from three sides, lots of big trucks, angry pickup truck drivers who had to endure an entire two or three minutes of traffic congestion… brrr…
One survived the crossing, obviously, as these shots were captured at the end of March and here I am still rattling on about them in May. Besides, as I had already hurt myself during that fall, the safety odds were now on my side.
Right? Right? That’s the way the world works, right?
Back tomorrow.
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Deer Davis
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part two:
As one may recall, last week your humble narrator had pulsed out the door of HQ and set out upon one of his longish scuttles through Pittsburgh. In accordance with recent interests – the Steel City’s North Side, and in particular – the ‘Perry Hilltop’ neighborhood is where this one started.
A construction project forced me to reroute my steps to get the newest bridge (2025) in Pittsburgh, a pedestrian and bike connector called ‘The Davis Avenue Bridge.’ Along the way, I slipped on a patch of ice and came pretty close to an injury, but managed to walk away just a little stiff.
The reroute put me in front of that baby deer pictured above, so I guess everything was meant to be.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One broke off of the original path at a narrow and steep road called ‘Rodney,’ which carried me away from the descending road to an ascending one. Really narrow road, with no sidewalks. No bueno. Very Pittsburgh.
Saying that, this was only the equivalent of a city block. When a vehicle did pass me by, I just stood to the side and let them transit through.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the top of Rodney Road is another abandoned home. This is a huge problem in Pittsburgh, and that’s something which always jumps out at me while moving around the area. So many.
The good news is that you can see the Davis Avenue Bridge directly behind the abandoned house, which means that I had gotten to the top of this particularly steep road and closer to ‘stop 1’ on my scuttle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Well, there you are.
Yep, I felt a little non-plussed, or ‘non-trussed’ if you would…
Saying all that, getting this bridge ‘modernized’ and replacing the earlier iteration of the span here, which was in danger of collapse, seems to have been a generational project for the folks in the neighborhood across it from the park – which is dubbed as ‘Brighton Heights.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One waved the camera around a bit up here, but the only POV’s on hand were looking back down at the same homes I had just walked past – and where that patch of ice lurked.
That slip and fall did have an effect on me, just not an orthopedic one.
I smacked down onto the pavement with a decent amount of energy, and accordingly my shoulders and neck were a bit sore afterwards.
Hilariously, the bad ankle was just fine even though it was directly involved in the slip and fall, due to my heel striking on that fairly invisible patch of ice.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Accomplished, and I can scratch another Pittsburgh bridge off the list.
Thing is, I wanted a ‘bridge,’ not some mere high flying truss.
Turning my heels and pointing the toes in a direction where more massive infrastructural interests lie, and then scuttling through another set of the neighborhoods which causes the Yinzer jaw to literally drop open when I say I’m ’going there for a walk.’ I’d be heading in a mostly westerly direction, thereby.
Seriously… Fear is the mind killer.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 