Posts Tagged ‘Dormont’
Tripling down
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a short post today, carrying a trio of somewhat random photos captured during my various and quite ultramundane travels through the Pittsburgh metro area.
The one above depicts a street level view of the Wheeling & Lake Erie RR outfit’s ‘Rook Yard’ at the border of Carnegie and Green Tree. It was a Sunday, and nothing profound was happening there. Cracked out a shot as I had made a special trip to spy upon them.
The photos in today’s post were largely gathered while operating the Mobile Oppression Platform, a Toyota.
Needless to say, but the car’s transmission was in park mode as the shutter was depressed – before anyone asks or shouts ‘j’accuse.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one is from the evening of Halloween, and was captured in Dormont, where Newtown Pentacle HQ is located, while on foot. It didn’t rain, believe it or not, despite the warnings of the meteorological crew.
Your humble narrator has been feeling pent up, boxed in, and the old wanderlust has recently reignited. Physical limitations due to the ankle dealie have been lessening, and it’s time to bust out of my rusty cage and roam again.
As far as the limitations go… they just set parameters for me to work within at this point, and I’ve also grown quite tired of such matters getting in my way. The ‘will to power’ urge grows within, like a cancer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another ‘behind the wheel’ shot, this time from one of Dormont’s neighboring communities, in Mount Oliver. Something about that converted garage apartment just grabbed me. Very, very, Greg Brady, but with a dystopian air which satisfied me.
Back tomorrow with something a bit more substantial.
“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.
Low energy adventuring
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit, after leaving HQ, a quick shot from the front yard to figure out a median exposure setting for the camera, and gauge average lighting conditions as a staring point for the day’s subsequence. This shot is looking up the fairly steep hill that I often mention. Shlep, shlep, scuttle, scuttle.
The plan for this walk was fairly wide open, and involved using the T light rail to deposit your humble narrator in an interesting area. I was hoping for serendipity, Y’see.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
HQ is located in Pittsburgh’s Borough of Dormont, and the neighbors really embrace Halloween around these parts. One of them set up a ‘Yinzer Cemetery’ in their front yard. It actually made the TV news.
The T Light Rail station is about a half mile, at most, from my front door. It’s just a bit of effort to drag my butt up the hills and get over there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another Dormont porch display of Halloween paraphernalia was encountered along the path. We get actual trick or treaters in Dormont, which is cool as heck, and the way things are supposed to be.
One leaned into it, and boarded a T light rail unit heading into the city.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This time around, the service was used all the way to its terminal stop on Pittsburgh’s north side, nearby the stadium wherein the Steelers dwell. Your humble narrator vomited forth from the light rail car and onto the platform, a swirling contradiction of black sackcloth and camera gear. The filthy black raincoat, or as I call it – the street cassock – was covering my accursed back. I started moving, which began as a shamble but then sped up into a scuttle.
I was relistening to an old favorite amongst my HP Lovecraft audiobook collection on this walk – ‘The Shadow Out of Time.’ There were a few places on this scuttle where I popped the headphones out of my ear holes, wanting to remain ‘situationally aware.’
In other words, while moving through places where it makes a lot of sense to pay close attention to your surroundings, you should.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A web of high speed roadways, on-ramps and off-ramps and such, are found in this area. There’s also the elevated trackway of the T up there in the vault. There’s a rail shot which I was ‘hep’ on trying to capture this day, but that ended up being a fruitless pursuit.
North, ever northwards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On game days, tens of thousands of people – all adorned in black and gold – can be observed using these sidewalk paths to get to the football stadium. The cops deploy dozens of officers to handle traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. It’s really something to see.
Of course, wherever your humble narrator goes, it’s all just loneliness, rejection, and isolation. Crowds of children throw rotten fruit and vegetables, their parents light torches and form mobs. The cats hiss.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Always heading nowhere
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Aimlessly wandering down Pittsburgh’s East Carson street with Our Lady of the Pentacle, in the south side flats area of Pittsburgh, where the ghostly outline of a former structure was spotted on the wall of an 1888 vintage merchant’s building. It made me want to deep dive a bit into the history thereof, but I stopped myself.
Sometime in the future, I’ll use my magnifying glass to study the historic building stock found along this corridor, its story, and learn about all the ‘once, long ago, used to be…’ but that’s not today.
The rest of the walk was uneventful, and then we headed back to HQ, where Moe the Dog awaited.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Separately, we were wandering around Pittsburgh’s Dormont during the evening of a different day, Dormont being where Newtown Pentacle HQ is currently found, and the T light rail suddenly exploded into view.
I cannot stop myself, so… HEY NOW!
Our Lady and myself were going out for dinner at a local burger joint, one which offers a fantastic happy hour menu if you sit at their bar. I had a bourbon/apple cider cocktail that ‘rocked the bells,’ alongside a double smash burger. Yum.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot, depicting the Sterling Street steps, which I returned to with Our Lady in tow (she’s caught the bug for exploring the steps), was shot in a manner that attempts to visually describe the PTSD symptoms I’ve been experiencing when traversing stairs, since breaking my ankle on a set of steps at home last year. It kind of looks like this to me, that moment when the blossom of terror opens.
Enough of all that personal terror and weakness, though, it was a beautiful day and that was the focal point.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One truly odd holdover from that experience is that due to all of the opioid pain killers that the Docs were feeding me after the surgery, my memory of this exact period (approx. September to November) from last year is extremely fragmented, or nonexistent. I’m missing about 5-6 weeks of time.
Constant agony, yes. That I remember.
I promise I’ll eventually stop talking about this. Don’t worry, something else that’s horrible or profound will happen to me and then that’ll be my new ‘thing’ to worry about. Sigh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our final set of stairs for the day were attained, and we returned to more or less flat ground at the bottom of the hill. The rest of our walk would be mundane, visiting shops and eating lunch, along the commercial corridor of East Carson Street in the South Side Flats section of Pittsburgh, which brings you back to the first photo and the end of the the last steps story.
It was nice having company for a scuttle, must say. I used to sell tickets in NYC to groups of people who wanted to walk around with me. Narrators need to narrate, occasionally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Eventually, we found ourselves at the shoreline of the Monongahela River, nearby the Birmingham Bridge. It was time to head back to HQ again, and Moe the Dog. He’s sort of our constant, Moe.
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.
Rise, run, rise, ride
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had been positively cooped up for several days while handling the ultramundane – obligation, duty, ‘have to’s.’ Finally, a day I could call my own arrived and it was decided to ‘really hit it.’
By the time this particular scuttle ended, my legs and particularly the knees would be sore for days.
Just a couple of blocks from HQ, a street called ‘Louisiana Avenue’ terminates at a pedestrian bridge that leads to a set of City Steps. On this path, you quietly pass through a municipal border – from the Borough of Dormont to the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Beechview.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Beechview’s terrain is severe. Canton Avenue, the steepest street in North America and possibly the world, is found within its confines. These steps, which don’t have a name (apparently) allow pedestrian egress from the low point of Louisiana Avenue all the way up to Neeld Avenue in Beechview, which is a few footfalls away from Broadway Avenue, which is the street that the T light rail runs on. Street level tracks, they are, and this is one of the sections of the service where the T runs as a streetcar/trolley.
I had to climb up those City Steps first.
Must have been about 2-300 feet of them. It’s actually a good thing, to get your heart racing at the start of a walk. My practice has always been to start off at a bit of sprint and warm up the internally lubricated parts before setting off on a full scale ‘wander.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Good cardio, this.
It’s also obeying my self imposed form of exposure therapy to stairs, shaking the PTSD cobwebs out of the brain which have haunted me since the busted ankle incident last year. The psychological after effects of that experience have been with me on every walk since, and every single time that I walk up or down the stairs at home where my accident occurred.
If you’re curious, I was listening to a favorite audiobook: an unabridged reading of Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle.’
The linked file isn’t the version I was listening to, as a note, but it’s at YouTube so that’s more accessible than something you’d have to sign up for to listen to it. The America which the Jungle describes wasn’t so ‘great’ back then – according to actual history – and it’s an era which so many people opine as having been a better time than our current day. Bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After reaching the end of the first set of steps, a hazardous road crossing leads to yet another set of steps, and these ones are solidly in the Beechview section. The plan for the day was loose. My intention involved using the T to get me to a certain midway point, but not to go all the way into town. From there, I’d improvise and follow my nose.
There’s been a construction project underway at the transit tunnel which the T normally routes through. The people who run the service have been routing the light rails instead up and over the landform which that tunnel is bored through, and the route has added an extra and temporary stop at the apex of the prominence, in the Allentown section.
That’s a great spring board, for one such as myself.
The T uses the tracks and wires of a no longer in service light rail line for this task. It adds about ten minutes onto the commute for riders.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back on regular pavement, but I still had hills to climb. After letting my heart rate drift back from rapid to elevated, I leaned into it. The plan was to walk over to one of the T stops and ride it up to Allentown and then… and then… and then…
That’s a little bridge which the T uses to surmount the valleys and hills. Really, the engineering challenges underlying this service are wild.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After arriving at the stop which I had climbed both stairs and hills to get to, my chariot arrived. I could have walked to a different station via a far less rigorous route, but the point of exercise is ‘exercise,’ not comfort or ease.
The light rail people are nearing the end of their constructive labors on the transit tunnel, and it’s likely been reopened by the time you’re reading this. I wanted to take advantage of the temporary stop at the top in Allentown.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Now more than ever, for always
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator recently found himself driving past the Wheeling & Lake Erie rail yard in Greentree, which neighbors Pittsburgh’s Dormont – where Newtown Pentacle HQ is found. They weren’t doing anything terribly exciting down there, mainly maneuvering the rolling stock around from one track to the other. I was just passing by, and then I parked the automobile, cracked out a few shots and then got back to my daily round.
The shots in today’s post are were captured mid October, incidentally. I’m still maintaining my advance ‘lead time’ here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Usually, some variation of this scene is the first shot I take when going out for a walk. It’s my front yard, and the corner at the bottom of the steep hill which I sometimes mention. Not a terribly exciting composition, admittedly, but the reason I pop out this shot is to figure out the ‘median’ exposure triangle which I’ll likely be using for the rest of the day’s effort.
It’s like a gray card for the photographic environment, this practice. lets me know that the ‘sun is dark today’ or that ‘there’s too much light.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady and myself attended another festival/town event here in Dormont, and the titular ‘main street’ of the Borough was closed to traffic while a music festival was underway.
Hundreds, I tell you, hundreds of people were there. There were vendors ‘tabling,’ which included the PA Constable’s Office doing recruiting, and the officer therein was a really nice guy who answered several of my rather specific questions about their patrol and responsibilities. I’m not looking to become a constable, but now I know what their enforcement duties are and what they do. Neat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The clarion call of lonely places was singing in my ears. Empty alleys where… but this was a ‘social’ day, however. Hanging out with and getting to know the neighbors. Music was playing from three stages, and a couple of the local breweries were set up nearby selling beers.
It was a warm day in Pittsburgh, middle 70’s and bright sunlight. Shirt sleeve weather, basically.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, I find this sort of thing somewhat emotionally draining. To start – afternoon alcohol drinks put me to sleep early these days, and there’s lots of potential hazards to pay attention to as the human still about. Increasingly, my ‘all too human’ need to be ‘amongst people’ is squashed by my ‘I hate everyone’ instincts. I’m really, really, struggling to try and ‘remain positive.’ Staying ‘chipper’ is a bit of a challenge.
I don’t belong in this sort of scene… happy people being nice, while the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself is bouncing around above… this sort of thing is more my speed.
Human… all too human… me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After the festival, our neighbors and Our Lady decided on one last beverage, which we obtained at the local dive bar. While staring out the window of this joint (which I’m not really a fan of), a passing ‘T’ Light Rail unit caught my attentions. I’d be riding one of these the next morning, when my next scuttle would occur.
Back tomorrow with something different, thereby – 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 