The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Preparing for an upcoming day trip of some personal interest, one nevertheless needed to get some exercise and felt a psychological need to wave the camera around a bit. On the ‘other side of the hill’ from HQ’s location, in the Pittsburgh suburb of Dormont, is found the town of Carnegie. There’s a waterway which runs through here called Chartiers Creek, pictured above. I had done a bit of advance scouting for this area, using Google maps, and figured out a few spots of interest to bring the camera to.

This area is what you’d call ‘Downtown Carnegie.’ There’s a few historic buildings, which have been beaten with the gentrification hammer in modernity, to be found here. The coda used for such projects hereabouts is ‘revitalization.’ Shops on Main Street have been converted to breweries, fancy pizza joints, taco shops, and in the case of the tall building on the right side of the shot – a home for the Carnegie Historical Society. There’s also art gallery, and craft shops, along this Main Street. Hey, you gotta do something if you don’t want to ‘rust belt.’

Me? I was there for the canal infrastructure which Chartiers Creek flows through.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s a set of rail tracks on the left side of the water pictured above. Said tracks are rusty with just the tiniest amount of ‘shiny,’ thus they’re barely being used by RR trains. This observation was confirmed when a passing local started up a conversation with me. It was the ‘I’ve got my dad’s old camera, think it’s worth anything’ followed by the ‘my kid had a drone’ random person chat. Nice enough guy, who told me he’s lived in Carnegie for 30 years and had only seen a train moving on those tracks about 4 times in that interval.

‘I still got it’ thought a humble narrator, after confirmation of his observation about the mundanity of the railroad tracks.

Based on olfactory evidence, Chartiers Creek receives a bit of the town’s residential sewerage and runoff. It had been raining for about an entire week prior to my visit, as a note. Yeah, I’ve still ‘got it.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’ve also got a few nearby spots in Carnegie which I’ve been wanting to check out, notably one spot where a smallish locomotive switching yard is found at the edge of the town. There’s “T” light rail tracks running through Carnegie, but they’re on a different line than the ‘Red Line’ service which services HQ in neighboring Dormont. Another winter project will involve riding these mysterious Blue and Silver lines, to see where they go. As of this post, I still haven’t taken a ride on a City Bus, nor personally observed the famous Pittsburgh Busways. Yeah, Infrastructure Nerd, I’ll admit it.

That bridge pictured above carries an arterial roadway called Mansfield Boulevard towards an interstate, called I-376, which carries vehicular traffic through and onto the Fort Pitt Tunnel and Bridge and into Downtown Pittsburgh or to points north of the city.

Chartiers Creek ultimately joins the Ohio River nearby the West End Bridge, something which I’ll be showing you a picture of sometime in the next few weeks. Sitting on the edge of your seat for that one, huh?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

In Carnegie, and it should be mentioned that this section of the country has a long – and terrible – history with flooding, Chartiers Creek and its tributaries are largely contained and controlled by a series of spillways and high walled canals. Saying that, when it rains enough or there’s an unusually large snowpack in the spring… this must become a torrent.

One wandered about for a bit, and then found my way over to one of those spillways.

I also found a village of homeless people, who are dwelling in tents and shanty dwellings, along Chartiers’s banks. As is my practice, I didn’t photograph any of that, (or at least they’re not the ‘subject’) as that’s kind of a dick move unless you’ve got a good reason to do so. You can just make out some of these shanties in the shot above, under the far side of the bridge carrying Mansfield Blvd.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The particular section of the water, pictured above, wasn’t the main course of Chartiers Creek – instead it was a stream that was pouring down off of a steep hill that seemed to be residential in character. The crazy verticality of the terrain around Pittsburgh allows flowing water to really speed up, and during spring thaws I’m sure this flow becomes massive, or you wouldn’t see a build out like this otherwise. When I was there just a few weeks ago, the water was maybe a foot or two in depth, but was still shooting along at a good clip.

After I was done, with these shots of Chartiers Creek here in Carnegie, one jumped behind the steering wheel of the Mobile Oppression Platform and drove around the vicinity for a bit, to see where else I mind find a way down to the shoreline. Scouting, essentially.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The rest of the day’s outing wasn’t terribly exciting, or very productive, but I did visit a few spots ‘right around the corner’ from HQ which I hadn’t seen up close yet, and prospected a couple of interesting points of view for future inspection. I managed to walk about four miles in total for the afternoon, an extremely short walk on a nice day.

One last shot of Chartiers Creek, and 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.