Quid habeo
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After a short walk on a very warm and humid afternoon your Humble Narrator settled into a pint of Cream Ale at the Sly Fox Brewery, in Pittsburgh’s South Side Flats. Eagerly, I awaited the chiming of railroad signal arms at the grade crossing of the CSX tracks found alongside the business.
There are outside tables here, in an urban park setting alongside the Great Allegheny Passage trail and the Colors Park. I didn’t have to suffer inactivity long before I heard the bells and horns, and those signal arms started to move.
First up was CSX #4736, an EMD SD70MAC model locomotive which was built in 2003.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the opposite direction, CSX #4050 soon thundered into view. A rebuilt EMD SD40-3 model engine, it was built in 1981.
As a note, I was using that new superzoom lens, mentioned last week, to shoot these photos. Thereby, these qualify as ‘test images’ wherein I was pushing the thing’s cooperation with my camera’s autofocus systems and try to see where the thing fails.
It performed like a champ, I’d mention.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also from the same direction, CSX #3312 next appeared. It’s a GE ET44AH model train engine, one of General Electric’s ‘Evolution Series’ locomotives which have been in production since 2003.
All told, I drank two of those Cream Ales and then began my journey back to HQ.
Back tomorrow with something very different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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Vagantur
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After walking down a set of steps leading away from the South Side Slopes, and encountering a Smash Truck, the next thing which caught my eye on this increasingly random pathway was Pittsburgh’s South Side Market House. Pictured is the 1915 replacement for an 1893 version that burned down, but sits in the same footprint, and it’s a protected historical building according to the National Register of Historic Places.
Neat.
My scuttle, which was being perpetrated on a very warm afternoon, began growing uncomfortable due to a humble narrator becoming quite ‘shvitzy.’ As is my usual habit when in this neighborhood – I was heading towards that nearby brewery I like, the one with the train tracks alongside it.
Hydration… yeah, that’s it… hydration.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Street furniture was encountered along the way.
The route I used to take through this ‘zone’ involved accessing the waterfront trail, but in recent months a huge homeless encampment has sprung up along that section of the trail. I’m not overly worried about personal safety, but this particular encampment also hosts a pack of not so friendly dogs which are running around off leash. Factor in the dogs, an abundance of used drug needles, and the bags of human poop now littering the trail’s sides…
No thanks. It’s best to just walk around potential trouble.
‘That’s none of my business’ is something I’m trying to use as a mantra these days. ‘Nothing matters and nobody cares’ is the lesson I learned during the Covid seasons back in NYC, after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Eventually, my scuttle led to that brewery which has become a part of this particular walk. I ordered some kind of micro batch Cream Ale, which was icy cold and yummy. I settled in at one of the ‘sit outside’ tables and set my camera up for the somewhat inevitable appearance of CSX branded freight trains.
I’ll show you all that next week. Choo-Choo!
Back Monday.
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Monstrum has
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So… I’m scuttling along in the South Side Flats section of Pittsburgh when I happened across this fantastic vehicle, whose driver was executing its function – which is to smash things.
A friend had mentioned this service to me in the past, but it’s best described by the ‘horse’s mouth’ at the company website: monstersmash.com. There’s video.
In a nutshell, they’ve got a giant spiked roller mounted on the end of a hydraulic arm, and said setup is used to compact materials which are already in a dumpster at a job site. Awesome sauce.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Beyond their absolutely fantastic cartoony style branding, the service is meant to save some space within the dumpster by compacting boxes, boards etc. Pretty clever, if you ask this humble narrator.
Also: Who doesn’t like to see a giant spiked cylinder tearing stuff up?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I didn’t interact with the driver, other than shouting ‘awesome’ and ‘yeahhh!’ at him while popping off a few photos of the action. The only thing that would make this better would be they also had a big mallet that beat the stuff in the dumpster down into dust.
COOL!
Back tomorrow with something different 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.
Fastigio ad plana
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One made his way over to the South Side Slopes section of Pittsburgh, and decided to visit a set of interesting city steps, called the ‘Church Route,’ recently. Exercise day was upon me, once again, and whereas it was quite warm out – the atmosphere was nearly tolerable. It’s been quite and uncomfortably humid here.
This section of Pittsburgh currently fascinates, and perplexes, me. It’s incongruous, chaotic, and yet makes absolutely perfect sense at the same time. It reminds me of the landscapes in Crete, and Thera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator started down the Church Route steps (I’ve been down this route before, back in June – see here and here), hopeful that a quirk of lucky timing might result in the appearance of trains on the Norfolk Southern tracks below. No good fortune resulted, but I was out for a walk and not a ‘stand around,’ so the scuttling continued downward and onto the South Side Flats below.
No real destination had been predetermined, except that I would end up being that brewery next door to the train tracks which I’ve been very lucky with getting CSX locomotive photos at. More on that in a future post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was still had a bit of distance to cover, however, and one had resolved in advance to only inhabit spaces alien to experience.
In other words, streets I hadn’t walked down before. I’ve got a lot of that sort of thing going on at the moment. Regardless… it was exercise day, gotta keep moving. Man, it was humid…
Gotta see if I can get inside that church one of these days…
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“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.
From Frank Curto Park
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the routes that I often finding myself driving, here in Pittsburgh, is called ‘Bigelow Boulevard,’ (to the right of the former Pennsylvania RR station in this Flickr shot, just for reference) which is a heavily traveled arterial road that climbs a steep hill, up and away from the downtown area, leading to several neighborhoods found upon the hill’s prominence.
A seemingly seldom used park is set along this road, called Frank Curto park. It’s a fairly high speed road, Bigelow is, and the entrance to the park (which is reasonably reachable by vehicle only) requires one to come to a nearly complete stop in order to execute a sharp right hand turn at low speed. Given the driving habits of the Yinzers, which involve them tailgating you within a yard or so of your bumper, it’s often impossible to slow down or make that turn without the risk of getting smashed into that speeding pickup truck just behind you.
Luckily, I managed to make that turn recently when the traffic behind me got stuck at a light. There’s a road through the park space, and you just sort of pull over onto the grass to park. As mentioned above, the hill here is pretty steep, and commanding views of the Allegheny River side of the Golden Triangle are available for inspection.
For reference, the Heinz Factory is in the fore, and the big white building is Allegheny General Hospital.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was just passing through, of course, but the opportunity to wave the camera around for a few minutes was taken. This one looks towards the 16th street bridge, and over a bunch of newly constructed housing units in Pittsburgh’s ‘Strip District.’ Beyond that, on the other side of the river is found the ‘North Side.’
Way in the distance, amongst those hills, is the West End Overlook park which I’ve visited repeatedly since moving to Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot looks directly down the Allegheny River’s ‘triangle side’ shoreline, towards the waterway’s admixture with the Monongahela River which in turn forms the Ohio River. The large bridge span seen at the ‘end of the line’ is the Fort Duquesne Bridge.
My time was limited on this ‘go,’ but I’m definitely going to try and visit this spot again, assuming I can make that sharp ninety degree turn off of Bigelow Boulevard without a tailgater smashing into my car.
Back tomorrow, with something different.
“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 