Posts Tagged ‘Birmingham Bridge’
Looking totally ‘Sus’
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ask anyone who knows me, your humble narrator always leans a bit paranoid. Part of it is that even as a child, old ladies would clutch their purses when I walked by. It’s all ‘vibe,’ I guess. If you saw me walking towards you the first thing you’d think is ‘wtf’? Accordingly, one is always quite aware of the fact that I’m being watched by suspicious eyes and acknowledgment of that fact is an admission of how ‘sus’ it must look when I stride or drive up somewhere and then whip out a camera with a huge telephoto lens. Ain’t normal. I’ve got rules, thereby, to govern my actions.
The shot above is an exception to one of these rules, and there are many rules, as it depicts a private home. The only reason it caught my interest is that it’s at the dead end of two streets, and its back yard fencing separates the property from a rail yard and the river.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I prefer large and somewhat anonymous chunks of infrastructure as a subject, as in the case of the Birmingham Bridge over the Monongahela River – pictured above. Nobody is going to emerge from the bridge with a shot gun to keep me from cracking out a shot or two. Ok, maybe the cops, but they mainly use pistols and assault rifles these days.
After a bit of exploring in Hazelwood, I had driven across the river on a different bridge and was picking my way along the south side of the river in a generally homeward direction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For all of the posts you saw this last summer and spring that involved Pittsburgh’s ‘City Steps,’ that’s the landform which the steps that I’ve so far focused in on are set into. Won’t be chancing any journeys of that type for a while, as the broken ankle continues to heal.
As far as that drama goes: the Surgeon is happy with the X-Ray, the Physical Therapist is happy with my progress, and it looks like the whole “PT” experience will be wrapping up at the end of January – barring any mishaps. I’m able to walk again, although with a bit of a limp.
Saying all that – the car will be coming with me for photowalking duties, and for a while.
Back tomorrow with something different.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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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.
Temere trio
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s been an entirely odd last few weeks for a humble narrator, and my daily round keeps finding me inhabiting odd corners of Pittsburgh. Hence, three utterly unconnected images greet you today. Pictured above is the milieu as observed from the South Side Flats region, looking towards the Monongahela River and the Birmingham Bridge spanning it.
This area is a former industrial zone, as is most of Pittsburgh, one which has converted over (mostly) to residential and commercial usages. Old factory and warehouse buildings become condos and lofts, hardware stores become restaurants and remaining legacy businesses try to hold on as the tides flow through.
Sounds familiar, no? Et tu, Long Island City?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the foot of the Hill District on the ‘golden triangle,’ the St. Benedict the Moor church is hard to miss. This one looks (theoretically) southwards towards the Monongahela River.
I was practically standing on a ‘red line’ right here, wherein racial segregation occurred and a majority black neighborhood was destroyed in the name of building a hockey stadium and a highway interchange, several decades ago. Sometimes, knowing historical facts just makes you angrier and angrier.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one was closer to HQ, and shot from the back seat of a cab which I was using to get to an event where there would be alcoholic beverages served. I’ve been pretty hardcore about the not ‘drinking and driving’ thing, and sound almost like a Protestant missionary on the subject. It’s pretty common for people to throw back a few belts and get behind the wheel here, which is a scary situation to me, but then again I’m still new here.
Back tomorrow with something else – at 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.
Perdidit in civitate aliena
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, an attempt at a long walk, on a very hot day, saw me circumcising the effort down to a short walk. You’ve got to acknowledge and respect the environmental conditions.
These shots are from where Pittsburgh’s Birmingham Bridge meets the ‘Uptown’ section of the city. There’s an emergency bridge reconstruction project underway hereabouts, a project which was spurred on by the collapse of the nearby Fern Hollow Bridge in 2022 and a raft of Federal funding.
I love this sort of chaotic place. The construction guys and gals are artists and they don’t even realize it, with all of the signs, and the high visibility gear, and the tarps cladding the job sites.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking through the bridge’s ramps, that curving roadway leads towards the Oakland neighborhood with its universities, museums, churches, and other cultural centers. The lower ramp carries I-279 out toward the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, and then continues to points east. The bridge receiving the emergency repairs is the one with the tarps on it, quite obviously.
Infrastructure, amirite?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Right after this shot was gathered, my phone came out of the pocket and the planned route went out the window. I figured out a more wholesome pathway which wouldn’t put me at risk of heat stroke, but there was no way that I wasn’t going to be cooking in the sun for a bit.
A humble narrator was screwed in terms of shade, given where I was, and I’d just have to suck it up and walk in the direct sunlight for at least a mile. Thing about ‘back home’ was that – with very few exceptions – multi story buildings cast broad shadows that you can use that to your advantage on hot days. Large structures also cast ‘rain shadows,’ but I digress…
I pulled the brim of that Costco brand $15 bucket style hat I’ve been wearing low down over my face, and then just leaned into it.
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.
Sine fine ambulant
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Alright… in retrospect… it was dumb of me to say ‘yeah, it’s hot out, but that’s no big deal.’ Regardless – it was exercise day, for both the hollowing meat puppet that supports my brain and the camera too, and despite climatological conditions which could be described as a ‘reverse blizzard,’ one set out for a long walk. Within a couple of hours, that was amended to a short walk instead.
Pittsburgh is famously humid. The CBS news station hereabouts has a humidity chart they show, when reporting the weather, which has a top range that is labeled as ‘ridiculous.’ Given the national heat wave’s eye watering temperatures out west, we were lucky that it was only in the middle 90’s here in the Paris of Appalachia, but factor in that ‘ridiculous humidity’ and my utterly fantastic decision to start this walk in the late afternoon… it was ‘shvitzy’ out there.
I’m a real complaint department these days, ain’t I?
Pictured above is the Birmingham Bridge, over the Monongahela River, which I was intent on walking across for some reason.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pure existential misery is what a humble narrator was experiencing. ‘Heat island effect’ was in full force, and the concrete that I was walking on was radiating a hundred and change degrees of heat straight up, while the warrior sun above beat down mercilessly on my $15 Costco brand bucket style fishing hat. The air quality and dew point level was such that if you were to wave your hand through the air, it would be wet by the end of the effort. Yuck.
Regardless, I couldn’t help but grab a shot or two of these blokes guiding their boats onto trailers. There are many, many spots close to the downtown area here in Pittsburgh where you can put a boat in the water.
The spot in the photo above, for instance, is in a public park. That’s kind of awesome, if you ask me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the other side of the river from where I started, and where that park is, there’s an enormous concrete plant which can observed from above. This plant sits in part of the footprint of a ‘used to be, once, long ago’ steel mill called the Eliza Furnace. I-279 is the highway riding on the cliff behind the plant.
These people seemed pretty busy, and there’s a bridge reconstruction project happening all around their operation.
It was a lot hotter out than I thought it would be, and by this point I was already thinking about where I wasn’t going to be walking to. My original plan was about twelve miles long and involved a wide ranging bit of scuttling about. In the end this was a just under five mile long walk.
More 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.
Hot Metal Night
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Hot Metal Bridge pictured above, and the pathway I was walking here in Pittsburgh was described in this post from February of last year. The burning thermonuclear eye of God itself had slid away from the vault of the sky, and since there really isn’t an extended period of ‘dusk’ in these parts – it gets dark fast. Snap your fingers and ‘boom’ it’s suddenly night time.
I’ve been hankering to do some ‘night work’ again, at any rate, which is something that’s not been on my menu for a while.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I didn’t have any of the equipment normally used for such pursuits along with me on this walk (tripod etc.), rather I was packing a kit of prime lenses so the captures had to be handheld.
No problem there. The prime lenses I had with me are all ‘bright’ with the capability of large apertures. The ‘darkest’ lens I had with me was f2.8 wide open, and the rest ranged from f2 to f1.8 with a couple of them also offering image stabilizer technology. My camera has a built in sensor stabilizer, so coupled with a stabilized lens, that gives me around 6-8 stops worth of wiggle room.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After having walked the Three Rivers Heritage trail from downtown Pittsburgh, alongside the north shore of the Monongahela River, my crossing back to the south side of the waterway was accomplished via the Hot Metal Bridge – a former rail bridge which once connected two sides of a steel mill and has been converted over to automobile/bike/pedestrian usage in modernity.
It got darker with every step I took, which sounds like a metaphor for my entire life, but there we are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the right side of the shot above is a high technology focused office park where several corporate entities are based. Carnegie Mellon has a building in there too. All sorts of robotics research, work on self driving cars, and other fairly terrifying advancements are being created and tested therein. The land used to be the property of that former steel mill which the Hot Metal Bridge was a part of.
To my eyes, Pittsburgh has done a lot better with its ‘post industrial landscape’ than NYC has. If this was Brooklyn, those buildings with their hundreds of high paying technology jobs would be empty condo buildings full of ‘pied a terre’ apartments that rich suburbanites use as crash pads when they’re in the City, and rent out as AirBNB’s when they’re not.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Birmingham Bridge at center of the shot above, a span which I recently walked over and offered a post about a few weeks ago, with Downtown Pittsburgh rising up behind it.
Luckily, I’d be taking a ride share home this particular evening, as I was heading towards a pub with a pretty excellent bar menu for a dinner date with Our Lady of the Pentacle. This was pretty exciting stuff for us, as we’ve become ‘dirty rotten stay at homes’ since moving out here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The lifestyle we’re experiencing here in Pittsburgh is domestically focused, and it’s rare that we even get takeout or go to a restaurant for a meal, or go to a bar when we want to have a drink. Generally, it’s meals at home and stocking up at a supermarket about once a week. The isolation is splendid, but every now and then – usually about once every week, or week and a half, we force ourselves out for some diversion.
This is, of course, a real departure from life in NYC with its tiny kitchens that lack automatic dishwashers or food preparation space, and a multitude of take out options.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 