Posts Tagged ‘Armstrong Tunnel’
Pittsburgh Scuttle, ignoring the phone
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a warm but comfortable day in Pittsburgh, and your humble narrator was scuttling along all peaceful and calm. I had my headphones with me, but wasn’t listening to anything on this walk. Phone was in my pocket, and I don’t ‘check it’ on any sort of regular basis.
I like to maintain situational awareness when out and about in populated areas. Wasn’t worrying about getting ‘jumped’ or anything like that, instead I just enjoy hearing the staccato song of a city. The sound of people joking around, or telling workplace horror stories, just… talking to each other…
Dozens of people were milling about, and all of them had a smart phone held directly in front of them in the manner of a small shield, which held their gaze. Everybody had headphones going, too. Nobody talked to each other, or formed into friendly conversational groups.
The office working smokers, on their smoke breaks, were all smoking solo, while staring at their phones, as they silently smoked.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One picked his way through the streets, with the fairly inhuman architectural plans of these curbside monoliths positively looming.
My toes began to point towards the Monongahela River shoreline.
There’s a few routes to that waterfront which are possible, on foot, from the position pictured above. Two of them would see me scuttling past a homeless shelter and the city jail, a section where there’s always a large and boisterous crowd on the sidewalks, whereas a different and familiar route could provide me with the desired egress and maintain solitude.
Off I went.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Regular readers of Newtown Pentacle might recall a post, describing a walk around Duquesne University which had published back in July, wherein an antipodal view of the corner above was discussed.
I should mention, again, that the Newtown Pentacle time warp effect has deepened. These photos were captured at the end of June! The words are being typed into existence at the end of the second week of July! If my scheduling is correct, you’re seeing this in early September.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I found myself back at the portal to the Armstrong Tunnel, which was utilized to get to the other side of the Bluff.
One is incredulous at the manner in which the smartphone has completely altered human social interactivity in just under twenty years. Fascinating to me as well that people don’t talk to each other casually anymore, for fear of getting into a conflict about ideological interpretations of the news of the day, and that’s likely what’s wrong with our ‘body politic’ these days.
Luckily, I don’t feel bound by this new etiquette. Old one either.
A good friend of mine once said, before I moved out here to Pittsburgh from Queens, that ‘you don’t have to talk to everyone you see, y’know,’ to which I replied ‘what?… but… yes… yes, I do.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Truth be told, I’m absolutely busting with stuff to talk about at all times. It’s always been kind of a problem for me. Always got in trouble in school for talking out of turn. Hell… I started a blog to get some of it out.
The cell phone thing is weird to me. Sometimes I’ll be out, at a bar or restaurant or something, and there’ll be a table of younger people who are apparently all friends but not talking to each other. Instead, they’ve all been focused in on whatever their individual scrolls are feeding them. Sometimes they’ll show each other the screens, and laugh or scowl.
Your humble narrator has long treated online folderol in the same manner that I do television watching. Something to do while you’re bored and ‘alone’ at home, and not appropriate activity when in a social setting. The whole point of going out is to interact in ‘meatspace,’ where there are consequences for your iniquity or rewards for your glamour.
Yeah, I do understand that it’s ‘work’ you’re checking in to on your phone, at 8:50 p.m. on a Saturday night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The humans are a curious lot.
I’ve witnessed multiple people just striding blindly off the curb and onto busy streets while paying 100% of their attention to that little screen on their phone, ignoring the multi ton vehicles which are whizzing about them. Not even a glance.
For one such as myself, this is astounding.
It’s everything I can do to try and not pay as much attention as possible to every single tiny or semi-hidden detail of a landscape which I’m temporarily inhabiting… as ultimately – you really, really have to watch out for incoming zombies, at the very least.
Only chance you’ve got with a horde of zombies is that you can see them coming, but you’d probably smell them before you saw them, so… Pay attention and be prepared to evacuate. A ‘shelter in place’ during a zombie outbreak is a death sentence.
People are strange, but I’m somehow always stranger.
Back tomorrow.
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Under bluffed
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey, that’s where we left off last week – with your humble narrator about to scuttle into the Armstrong Tunnel in Pittsburgh’s pedestrian and bike path. Fun!
Said tunnel pierces a land form dubbed ‘The Bluff,’ connecting Forbes Avenue to Second Avenue, along the Monongahela River waterfront nearby the South 10th street bridge. Whew… all caught up.
This would be a two part scuttle, with an intermission in the middle. Your humble narrator had signed up to attend a lecture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the cool things which I’ve found to do here in Pittsburgh revolves around the availability of a vast numbers of academic presentations, historical talks, and live lectures that are offered at the City’s many libraries, historical societies, and cultural institutions – mostly for free.
Going back to a recent question of ‘is walking around all that I do,’ learning new things is also something I enjoy doing.
One entered the Armstrong Tunnel, secure in the knowledge that I would not bump my head on the ceiling, as I would enjoy some 7 feet and 11 inches of headroom and approximate leeway, therein.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s fairly grim within, and kind of loud. Saying that, pedestrian path!
The lecture I was heading to was being offered at a library, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and presented by a historian from the Heinz Museum who held a PHD in Jewish History.
One of the Pittsburgh neighborhoods which was historically considered ‘Jewish’ back in the day, was the same area I had been walking around for the last couple of hours – ‘Uptown’ on the Bluff.
I wasn’t attending this lecture to find some lost relative or anything, instead it’s just another part of learning about this crazy place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve attended Hebraic oriented tours here in Pittsburgh, which included visits to the monumental Rodef Shalom Synagogue in Oakland, and Poale Zedeck in Squirrel Hill. Both made me think about Eldridge Street in Lower Manhattan.
I grew up Jewish. People ask me all the time if I still practice Judaism, and my answer is always ‘nope, I’m really good at it, no need to practice anymore.’
In case you’re wondering, the graffiti in the tunnel was likely eliminated in the run up to the NFL Draft at the end of April. Don’t worry, just a matter of time until it’s back.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Time was growing short, and as I’m notoriously early to everything, I began flying into a panic about that. I had 45 minutes to go about five miles… sigh…
The plan was simple, I’d emerge from the tunnel – like some sort of human turd hurtling out of a mountainous ass – and then walk across a bridge, and summon a ride share to carry my pre-corpse there.
I may write all fancy, but my internal dialogue is profane and common.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The bridge crossing in question would involve the South Tenth Street Bridge, pictured above.
It would be a bit easier to get a rideshare pickup on the south side of the river than it would be on the northern shore, which hosts a busy traffic interchange, as well as a jail and a large homeless shelter. I walked across and activated the app, summoning a ride.
When my Uber arrived, the guy was driving a pickup truck. That’s a new one.
Back tomorrow with more wanderings.
“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.
As one scuttles above, so too below
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Jesus Christ! Mary, Mother of God!
I was walking around the periphery of the campus enjoyed by Duquesne University, and this statuary is part of the Catholic University’s outdoor collection. It’s the centerpiece of a memorial for lost WW2 soldiers who were former Duquesne Students, that’s dubbed as ‘The Victory Garden.’
Here’s a shot of the signage, and here’s a page from American Legion about it. Couldn’t find the name of the sculptor, and I did look.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I negotiated my way from the statuary, and started heading back to the non-campus streets. They were fairly steep.
This section of my day was ‘phase one’ of a longer scuttle – which would play out all day and frankly – exhaust me. By the time I got back home, it was a quick dinner and then early to bed. I’ve mentioned that it’s gotten a bit warm around these parts, even so back in early May when these shots were gathered. It pretty much went directly from Spring to Summer in Pittsburgh, seemingly overnight.
Yes, the Newtown Pentacle time warp is indeed still in effect. Shots are from May 11, words are being typed on June 8. If my scheduling is correct, this post publishes on July 10, a Friday. From my current point of view, you’re ‘wizard’ as you know how the future comes out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One found himself at the edge of another high speed road that was busted through an urban landscape, in the name of progress and traffic flow. This is an older example of this sort of urban renewal, called the Crosstown Boulevard (and it’s one which Robert Moses had a hand in creating!).
Crosstown Boulevard is a road in a trench, which is connected to multiple enormous concrete and steel ramps. It leads into the center of the City, through an area where urban renewal went horribly wrong to the north, then goes through a different area destroyed by urban renewal in the center of the city (pictured today), then branches off in multiple directions towards more examples of the sort of blight which urban renewal projects often bring found to the east, south, and north.
Pennsylvania is actually still up to this sort of nonsense, and is building a brand new tolled highway not too far away from here, which is blighting its way through neighborhoods and businesses all in the name of the common good, and it is dubbed the ‘Mon Fayette Expressway.’
Wow. Learn from history. Please.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s a section of the Crosstown Boulevard complex pictured above.
It forms the western border of the Bluff/Uptown/Duquesne Campus.
According to Google’s AI, dubbed Gemini, there are approximately 45,000 to 52,000 vehicles trips through this corridor every day. Admittedly, I’m often driving one of those vehicles, as this is how I get ‘there’ from ‘here’ a bunch. Don’t want to stand on a soapbox about this subject without admitting that I’m a sinner too.
Thing is, this used to be a productive part of Pittsburgh with office buildings and homes. Instead of organic privately based capital growth, you’ve instead got a thoroughfare designed to have people drive their money quickly away from Downtown Pittsburgh towards a distant suburb, and they’re going to spend it there instead of where they earned it.
That economic dog don’t hunt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It legitimately sucks to be a pedestrian hereabouts, walking blocks and blocks just to get around all the highway ramps.
Funny thing is that Pittsburgh City Hall is only a few blocks away from this spot. All the politicians will tell you how ‘walkable’ Pittsburgh is. The surrounding architecture in this part of Pittsburgh is what I describe as ‘inhuman.’
Monolithic, building campuses are set back great distances from both the curb and sidewalk, with humanity incidental to and not welcomed into the designs. I’ve offered observations about the inhumanity of Philip Johnson’s PPG plaza before.
‘Opinions are just like ‘iceholes,’ everyone’s got one.’ My dad used to say that in a more colorful fashion, usually when I scolded him for driving too slow back in Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the bottom of the Bluff, pretty much directly beneath that crazy set of metal ‘City Steps’ I was standing on in yesterday’s post, some 10-12 stories above, is the Armstrong Tunnel.
This bit of infrastructure had been under construction for the first couple of the years I’ve spent here in Pittsburgh, but Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself actually had scuttled through it before, during an ‘Open Streets’ day in May of 2024.
This tunnel was going to be how this particular chicken got to the other side, I had decided, as it’s got a dedicated and protected bike and pedestrian lane with concrete separation from vehicle traffic. Win!
Back next week with more – 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 