Posts Tagged ‘Allegheny River’
Operation Liukastelu ja liukuminen
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The whole ‘snow and ice thing’ had really been ‘harshing my buzz’ during the month of February. Annoying. Why can’t it just be 65 degrees with no humidity and a stiff breeze for a spell?
Pittsburgh and its municipal neighbors did a piss poor job of handling the snow and ice, and it was EXTREMELY difficult to move about on foot during this interval due to plowed up ice walls encountered at cross walks.
My last few scuttles, since that long East Liberty one, have been quite truncated due to conditions. I personally observed people in wheelchairs having to negotiate through these slush lagoons and plowed ice walls.
Yeah, I helped out when I could, after asking if they needed assistance. You need to ask, don’t just lurch forward.
I was sticking to certain ‘urban core’ routes thereby, where – presumptively – at least some small effort might have gone into clearing the pedestrian space. Ambition wanted me to visit ‘here’ or ‘there,’ but as I worked out those paths in my mind, realization that certain areas were going to still be largely impassable guided my path to here and there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m dying to get back up on both the West End Bridge and the McKees Rocks Bridge to shoot some rail action, but that path leads to a long stretch of sidewalk which doesn’t seem to have received any attention from plows or shovels at all. It also leads past several abandoned or empty properties which still sit in knee deep snow. I’m also ‘hep’ to revisit Skunk Hollow, but again…
To answer the graffiti’d query pictured above: yes, I do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the Allegheny River, and the Rachel Carson Bridge. One of the ‘Three Sisters,’ it carries Ninth Street twixt the golden triangle of ‘Downtown’ and the slightly less golden ‘North Shore.’
The river was still completely frozen over. Allegheny flows south from more or less the border of Canada and NYS, and the ice slithers down from the frozen north. The Monongahela River, alternately, flows sort of northwesterly out of West Virginia, and it’s far less common for those warmer waters to freeze or plate over.
They both did during this cold snap, but that’s a different post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I underexposed this shot by a stop or two to try and capture some of the texture of that ice, which was glowing white in the sun otherwise.
The amount of light bouncing around was actually sort of a problem for me at this interval. My sunglasses, which are prescription spectacles with corrective lenses, are outfitted with the sort of reactive coating that darkens in response to sunlight. They had gone full black, like welders goggles, due to all the UV light bouncing around.
The reflection of my eyes floating against that blackness began to annoy me, and get in the way. It became quite difficult to operate the camera’s controls during this interval, I’d mention. Had to overly rely on the exposure meter. No bueno. I considered plucking the offending organs out, as they offended me, but that’s short term thinking.
I need to be able to see what I’m doing, as photography is a visual medium.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Graffiti is something which I mostly ignore. Usually, it’s crap. Some kid tagging a graphic handle on something with nothing else to say.
Stating that, I often encounter poetic or philosophical meanderings which have been scrawled along the public way, here in Pittsburgh. Some of them are quite intriguing. Street literature?
The next problem I needed to solve for myself involved getting through the everdark streets of Downtown Pittsburgh as quickly as possible. I had little interest in architecture this time around, although there were a couple of things which ended up catching my eye along the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Rachel Carson Ninth Street Bridge deposited me about a block away from the David L. Lawrence convention center on Fort Duquesne Blvd.
Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle.
Back next week with more from the Pittsburgh ‘frozezone’ at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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Flumen frigus Friday
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things that drew me out of HQ and to Downtown Pittsburgh on this wintry day involved gathering a few shots of the frozen over rivers from those pedestrian paths offered by this city’s many bridges. After wandering about in the Viking apocalypse for a bit, I set about doing just that thing.
I had a few blocks to cross, though, and the going was difficult due to the amount of ice and snow clinging to the pavement. It’s been so cold here that any water which might hit the concretized ground instantly freezes into a plate of mirror ice.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is a big part of why I haven’t been driving around, unless absolutely necessary, for the last few weeks.
Hell… we just paid off the loan on the car. Last thing I want to risk is the single largest investment in ‘tech’ that I’ve ever made. I’ve had lots of expensive computers and cameras and gadgets over the years, but buying a new car in 2022… luckily, I made the purchase before interest rates exploded and I was locked in at 2.9%.
Above, and boy oh boy do I love a good ramp, that’s an entrance ramp from Route 28 onto the Fort Duquesne Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The path was followed to the Andy Warhol 7th street bridge. This is part of a trio of identical bridges referred to as ‘The Three Sisters.’ It was freaking cold, yo. The radiant cold of that frozen river’s ice, coupled with a steady wind… brrr.
Was almost as bad as that time at Dutch Kills when I caught some frostbite, but this time around I didn’t need to hang around waiting for the rising sun to shine on a certain spot.
I’ve just received word that my ‘tree of hope’ at Dutch Kills has been annihilated. Newtown Creek is death hungry, life cannot prevail against her.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Again, slightly underexposed to reveal the spectacular nature of the sky.
Saying that, it was mid afternoon and the light really wasn’t ‘on my side.’ This is the Allegheny River, looking more or less south. That bridge in the shot is one of the three sisters, the 6th street Roberto Clemente Bridge. It’s the one that had the Ferris wheel set up on it during the early autumn.
At any rate, I was here for the icy waters.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s been all over the TV news: ‘Don’t walk on the river ice, we won’t be able to save you,’ or so says Pittsburgh’s emergency response coordinator, as well as any paramedic or fireman you might ask. There were footprints – nevertheless – in the ice and snow on the river. Adult and child.
Somebody actually drove off the side of a highway and into a river recently, which resulted in their death. On the subject of the dangerous kind of road ragey driving behavior you’ll encounter here in Pittsburgh – this deadly 18 vehicle crash happened recently as well.
Tail gating is epidemic and endemic on Pittsburgh’s high speed roads. They don’t slow down for ice and snow, the Yinzers. I saw a debate on Reddit recently wherein a group of ‘lifelongs’ were arguing that you should – in fact – drive faster than normal in the snow as it’s safer that way.
And y’all wonder why I’ve been leaving the car back home in the driveway…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One continued on his lonely way. The toes were beginning to numb, whereas the fingers had long ago been rendered bloodless. I prefer not wearing gloves if I don’t really have to. My trusty go to sweatshirts have long cuffs on them with thumb holes cut out, so I can usually cover the top and palm of the hand that way. The gloves get in the way of operating the discrete controls of the camera.
Back next week with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Tria flumina gelida
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A two or three day interval in early February occurred in which Pittsburgh was still fiendishly cold, but no new bands of snow had appeared. The temperatures were far too brutal for a scuttle, but the roads were somewhat navigable, so I dug the car out of my snowed in driveway and headed over to the West End Elliot Overlook Park.
As you might discern, the three rivers of Pittsburgh were completely frozen over. Well, not completely…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Maritime traffic creates channels in the ice, of course, but the Monongahela River flows south to north so its waters are quite a bit warmer than the Allegheny’s, which flow southwards. I’m told that the Allegheny regularly displays river ice and even ice flows during the winter, but that it’s much rarer for the ‘Mon’ to freeze over.
That’s the West End Bridge, over the Ohio River, in the shot above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit, atmosphere wise, and your humble narrator had – despite using the car – dressed in multiple layers of insulating garments to combat entropy.
I was wearing my ‘Pennsylvania coat,’ a Carhartt branded winter coat that’s all puffy. It’s not feather down within the puffs, but the look is quite similar. I hate wearing the thing, as it seriously reminds me of uncomfortable winter gear I was forced to wear as a young child.
It’s also quite clumsy. Getting my camera strap over the coat’s hood is a pain in the butt, and the puffiness of the thing drives me nuts – especially when getting in and out of the car.
What can you do? The street cassock, as I call my filthy black raincoat, ceases to function properly when the air is under twenty or so degrees. Even with multiple layers underneath, it just ain’t warm enough.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking up the Allegheny River towards the Three Sisters Bridges.
A few posts away from this one, not really sure where it is in ‘the stack,’ you’ll see me walking over one of those bridges, and showing you some closer up views of all this frozen nightmare.
As has been the case for the last few months, I’m a bit out of sync with when these posts publish from a chronological point of view. It’s currently the morning of Monday the ninth of February as I’m writing this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was no point in using filters or anything to ‘slow’ the shot down, as the weather had already done that for me. I waved the camera around for a bit, then headed back to the car lot. Driving on Pittsburgh’s steep streets during a season of ice and snow is an adventure in itself, I’d mention.
There were a few other familiar locations which I tried to gain access to, but unfortunately I kept on encountering zero amounts of snow clearance, even at municipal parks and at privately held properties. It had been about ten days since the ‘big snow’ and despite that…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One last shot of the ‘Golden Triangle’ before I departed.
The rest of my day could best be described as ‘thwarted.’ Couldn’t get near a few things I wanted, as mentioned above, whereas others offered no safe walking path (still have to worry about the ankle), or the conditions of the road leading to my destination were a non starter.
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.
Dark by design
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mid scuttle begins today’s post, between my starting point up on Troy Hill and what could be called a middle point here on the 16th street bridge.
As mentioned previously, this was the first set of clear skies that Pittsburgh had offered in a couple of weeks, and the cloudless situation was causing no end of trouble for the camera, regarding the unoccluded burning thermonuclear eye of god itself bobbing about in the sky.
All caught up.
Look at me, complaining about the sun after I decided to walk south west while facing into it in the middle of a clear afternoon. Schmuck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thing is, I really like inclement lighting conditions as they’re so difficult to capture. Strobing, hot spots, deep contrast – difficult. Nepenthe.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been carrying a ‘bare minimum’ kit in my camera bag. Haven’t been able to handle the thought of dragging the big knap sack around, so it’s been a sling bag with two prime lenses and a few necessities like extra batteries. The big 24-240mm zoom lens is installed on the camera for this sort of duty.
I like an ‘all in one’ for photowalks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Exiting the 16th street bridge, discovery of where all of Pittsburgh’s pigeons like to hang out occurred. A gigantic flock of the rock doves were involved in a panicked murmuration, sparked off by the passing of a semi truck on the streets below.
This section of my scuttle was little more than an inconvenience, passing through the Downtown section, as I didn’t have anything to shoot in this zone which would draw me here or there.
The goal was to just push through the warren of ‘Dahntahn’ streets as quickly as possible, and emerge onto the Monongahela River’s shoreline to continue with my peregrinations in search of interesting things to point the lens at.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a whole generation of urban planners from the 1960’s and 70’s whom I hope went straight to hell when they died. Shadowing the streets with massive bridges and buildings, eliminating any possibility of organic growth in pursuance of… ‘traffic flow’… bah! They do a lot better these days, but… hell… they rammed this monstrous thing right through middle of their downtown back in the 1980’s to complete an idea that Robert Moses gave them back during the Great Depression.
Pittsburgh didn’t have a Jane Jacobs to lead the charge, I guess.
One of the things that’s just maddening about ‘Dahntahn’ is that the office buildings were built without setbacks on the upper stories, creating monolithic shapes that form forever shadows on the streets below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not exactly an inviting pedestrian experience, downtown, nor one that draws me into it with the idea of spending some cash. The big draws in the particular direction pictured above are a series of high end and middle of the road hotels. A few blocks away from that there are dying shops, bars, restaurants which suffer from a lack of foot traffic. The owners of the buildings blame all on a hangover from Covid, work from home policies, and everything else they can think of.
It’s their high rents, in an area that’s not exactly ‘salubrious.’ Think Downtown Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue Corridor in the late 1980’s for what I mean by that.
Also, the downtown area is a bit ‘crimey.’ Literally the only place in Pittsburgh where I’m looking over my shoulder, and doing those little NYC style heel spins on the regular to see if anyone’s following me. A few times, somebody was – in fact – following me. Junkies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lighting. Lighting fixes a lot of a City’s problems. In areas of persistent shadow, like the ‘way’ alley pictured above, a 24/7 street lamp will solve whatever it is you’re worrying about. The trick with modernity is that junkies have cell phones, and I’ve developed a perception about this. You walk past one group of junkies and one of them starts texting. Guy coming has got a camera, that’s probably what the text says. By the next corner there’s somebody already waiting, and watching. Networked junkies.
Now, yeah – I’m a bit paranoid. Saying that, I also lived in NYC for half a century and I can literally sense ‘it’ coming, almost in the manner of extra sensory perception or ‘ESP.’ I can ‘feel it’ when I’m being watched by the creatures of the street. There was some character who was following me for a spell while I was shooting these, as a note. I did the ‘stand and stare’ move, which this fellow found disconcerting and he broke off.
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.
Kicking dirt, north shore style
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After a lovely walk down Troy Hill, where a cemetery was visited and the very steep Troy Hill Road walked upon, your humble narrator soon found himself crossing one of those pedestrian bridges which overfly a vast complex of high speed roads here in Pittsburgh.
The Fort Duquesne, Fort Pitt, Veterans, and West End Bridges are nearby, and the complex of interchanges between I-376/I-279/I-579/Route 28 and the primary and secondary local ‘arterial streets’ dominate this formerly industrial section of Pittsburgh.
As you’d deduce from the shot above, the former Heinz factory is found nearby. It’s been turned into residential lofts in the post industrial period.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These pedestrian ramps hide the presence of a fairly well established homeless encampment, one that can be observed below them. There’s a few holes cut into the fences here and there for egress. The encampment, seems to use a different spot, under and towards the end of the ramp as a latrine. It’s easy to find, if you follow your nose. Heroin is apparently one heck of a drug.
Other than leaving a bag of old clothes here and there for the unhoused, or passing off cans of dog food to a particular fellow that hangs around one of the tunnel exits whose pup I feel bad for, I try not to get involved in the lives of the street people. Trouble.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pittsburgh offers drivers a series of confusing choices which they need to make at the very last second. The city has odd road usage conventions that indicate needing to use this left lane – or the right one – to proceed. In some spots, you need to shift into the right lane for less than a block – before reaching a mandatory right turn – and then shift back into the original travel lane you were in to continue straight – merging right in the middle of the intersection after the lane you started in has to make a mandatory left turn. Confusing. This works out well once you can anticipate the situation, presuming you’re overly familiar with the place and its mores, but for a newcomer or visitor – it’s chaos. As I call it – Pittsburgh Vernacular – you just have to ‘know.’
Regardless, I was on foot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I passed through the campus of the former Heinz Factory. Spectacular terra cotta and industrial design here. Beautiful spot, in the middle of a not so beautiful spot. There’s a number of things which, as a former New Yorker, it’s hard to reconcile about this city. There are entire neighborhoods which should be ‘popping,’ but aren’t. This is one of them.
Bah! I really aspire to not care about anything anymore.
Google’s AI tells me that ‘A lack of emotion is often defined as apathy, meaning an absence of feeling, interest, or concern, leading to reduced motivation; it can also manifest as emotional numbness, detachment, or flat affect, a reduced expression of emotion, often seen in conditions like depression, PTSD, or neurological disorders, with specific terms like alexithymia describing difficulty identifying/describing feelings.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next on my list for a walk around is actually this section of the North Side. Looks seedy, but Andy Warhol’s family is still in the scrap metal business back there somewhere. Maybe there’s a giant soup can or something. I’ve wandered through here in the past, but not while consciously cataloging what I’m seeing. Most of the time in this zone, I’m walking on the waterfront trail when rolling through and heading somewhere else.
Maybe that’s the problem this section of the North Side has – it’s a liminal space that people pass through but seldom dwell in. I used to be familiar with a waterway in Brooklyn and Queens that had the same problem.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I crossed the Allegheny River on the 16th street David McCullough bridge. This brought me to Pittsburgh’s so called ‘golden triangle,’ which is the peninsular section where most of the corporate and governmental powers reside.
The orthopedic incident had seriously retarded my efforts in 2025. That’s more or less over now, and your humble narrator is enthusiastic about being back on the prowl in a free roaming manner.
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 