Posts Tagged ‘Downtown Pittsburgh’
Suit and a tie zoning
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself in Downtown Pittsburgh, awaiting the commencement of a tour which promised access to the roofs of ‘Four Antique Skyscrapers.’ We were a bit early, as is my habit, and were cooling our heels while taking advantage of a puddle of shade in a plaza space which adjoins the 64 story U.S. Steel building.
The U.S. Steel building was constructed using a novel formula for its exposed structural steel – dubbed ‘Cor-ten’ – which forms a protective layer of oxidation, sealing the metal away from atmospheric corrosion, although that self forming prophylactic layer is itself rust.
The company which built the tower is a shadow of its former self and I’m told that they only maintain a couple of floors worth of occupancy within. The illuminated logo which adorns its crown nowadays belongs to the ‘UPMC’ outfit, a healthcare behemoth in the greater Pittsburgh region that operates hundreds of regional hospitals, medical buildings, and clinics – not just in the city but across multiple states – and it employs at least 100,000 medical professionals directly.
UPMC stands for ‘University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’ and they’re one of the local ‘800 pound gorillas’ here in the Paris of Appalachia.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
UPMC is a non profit, but at the same time it’s a major land owner that doesn’t pay taxes, so it often finds itself at odds with local politicians who are desperate to find new funds to spend on this or that ‘issue of the day.’ Regardless – 800 pound gorillas get to do what they want, whenever they want.
It was a very warm afternoon as the day led into evening. Downtown Pittsburgh has not recovered from the shock of COVID, I’d mention, which kicked off several real estate crises for the owners of now vacant buildings. Street level retail is largely annihilated hereabouts, due to lack of foot traffic and higher than average rents, and the area has developed a largely undesirable reputation in the last few years due to the presence of a homeless population – and the low level criminals who prey upon them – who have taken up occupancy in the area.
Personally, I find the street level threat fairly low. Aggressive panhandling, amalgamations of ‘scary’ people, and along the edges of the downtown section you’ll find their encampments. By NYC standards, not too much to worry about, but it seems to scare the hell out of the locals. There’s a lot of drug addiction hereabouts – opioids, heroin – that sort of thing. Most of the addicts fall into what I’d describe as the ‘sick dog’ type – and it’s hard not to feel some basic empathy for them until they try to pick your pockets.
Of course, they’re junkies, which means they’d boil you down and sell the elements left over for $5 if it led to their next fix. Never delude yourself about who and what a junkie is and what they’re capable of. Logic doesn’t apply with them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our skyscraper tour was about to begin, so we made our way over to the meetup point, in a nearby office tower. I had affixed the new telephoto lens to the camera, and was playing around with it as we walked. There’s alleys here in Pittsburgh, narrow paths just wide enough for the garbage trucks and emergency vehicles to use. They don’t call them alleys, I should mention, but when you encounter a street that has the word ‘way’ attached to it – that’s an alley.
Pictured above, and zoomed in on, is ‘Strawberry Way,’ which has been converted over to pedestrian and bike only access. The pavement is decoratively painted, with some attention to whimsy.
Back tomorrow with shots from up high, 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.
Light Rail Hullabaloo
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Transit was one of the deciding factors behind where Our Lady of the Pentacle and I decided to put down roots here in the Pittsburgh metroplex. Yes, we’ve got a car and use the thing frequently, but one such as myself has a distinct preference for being able to leave the automobile in the driveway occasionally.
The Pittsburgh Regional Transit people, aka the ‘PRT,’ operate a light rail service – called ‘The T’ – on the skeletal remains of Pittsburgh’s once far flung trolley system. The residential section we settled in enjoys this service and I ride it often, especially so on days when I’m taking the camera out for a walk. It frees me up to partake in a pint of beer or two after the walk is over, and allows egress to the core of the city without having to worry about parking or getting back to where I parked after scuttling about for miles and miles. I like it, and think it’s neat.
As mentioned a month or two ago, there’s a series of maintenance projects that PRT is performing this summer on the T service which has introduced a fairly random series of steps into riding the thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Under normal circumstance, one boards the service at a dedicated stop in my town (Dormont, which is technically a ‘Borough’). The light rail unit moves along a set of tracks with a variety of conditions – street running, dedicated and separated from vehicle traffic rights of way, underground subway style tunnels, and then back to an elevated right of way track at the terminal end nearby the stadiums on Pittsburgh’s north side. This trip is normally about 25-30 minutes long.
The phase of work that PRT has begun involves the subway section of the service, which lurks beneath the office buildings and towers of the downtown section. The light rail thereby diverts to a normally shuttered facility in the downtown area called ‘Penn Station.’
Said facility is across the street from the former HQ of the actual Pennsylvania Rail Road, a magnificent building which has been converted over to luxury residential usage. At Penn Station, T riders are encouraged to debark the rail units.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The street which Penn Station is found on is the approach to one of several ‘Busway’ corridors that snake through the Pittsburgh metro, and there’s a series of switches and tracks back there where the T can ‘turn around.’ There’s also what seems like a bus depot, but this isn’t a public byway so I can’t really say. They don’t actually turn around the T’s, I’d mention, the operator simply switches from the controls at one side of the unit to the other for the reverse trip.
There seems to be an intellectual tug of war going on with the people who care about public transit here in southwestern PA, between investing in and expanding the bus system or doubling down on the T. Advocacy arguments in favor of one or the other both have validity and solid reasoning, to my ear. There’s also a social justice factor which has to be added to the argument, as Pittsburgh’s ‘communities of color’ are largely supported by the bus network, rather than the limited corridors of the T which run through mostly suburban areas.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, I think rail is the cooler choice (especially so if you’re suffering from a disability), but it doesn’t mean that it’s the best fiscal or political decision for municipal investment. The buses offer a much greater range and versatility as far as servicing the more far flung sections of Pittsburgh, for instance, and provide reach into communities which are experiencing economic hard times and providing a pipeline of access to the employment possibilities of downtown, and the stadium area with all of its service sector jobs. It’s also fairly easy and relatively cheap to increase bus saturation, as opposed to rail.
The light rail, on the other hand, is far more reliable than the buses – but the upfront costs of acquiring land, building the tracks, and populating the rails with passenger units is frightening. Saying that, there’s parts of Pittsburgh that the T doesn’t touch by design, which is somewhat baffling. The Oakland section with its multitudes of college students, for instance, would benefit massively from T service. So too would areas with functional but unused tracks like Allentown and the South Side Slopes.
There’s also ‘hot’ real estate zones like Lawrenceville which are entirely dependent on buses instead of rail, which is goofy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At any rate… my drill right now involves riding the T from home to Penn Station, debarking the train and crossing a street to catch a rail shuttle bus. The shuttle bus subsequently stops at the two stations which have been isolated due to the reconstruction work (they’re replacing the concrete plinths which the actual rails are anchored into) that is underway.
The bus snakes through downtown Pittsburgh, whereupon it drops you off at another rail station at the end of the T’s Subway section, and then you board another T unit to complete the journey. I didn’t ’stopwatch’ the trip, but in estimation it took about 25 minutes longer for me to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ than it normally had.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shuttle bus carries you to another station, whereupon you ride an escalator down to the platform level and board another train set. This unit accomplishes the final two stops on the service, including the terminal stop on the north shore of the Allegheny River nearby Acrisure Stadium. Personally, I found the entire thing quite interesting, but I’m a known transit nerd, ‘out and proud.’
Things are about to get even more interesting for me at the end of May, when the concrete plinth replacement project rises up out of the tunnels beneath downtown and begins nibbling up the dedicated right of way and street running sections of the service closer to home. That’s meant to take about three months, according to the PRT, which will be followed by a long timeline project that’s meant to rehabilitate the bridge which the T uses to cross the Monongahela River. That should be a pretty interesting situation to take shots of.
The PRT’s plan is to run buses on the route during the construction, which lends some weight to the argument offered by proponents of doubling down on road vehicle oriented transit in the area. This, of course, risks increasing vehicle congestion and air pollution.
It’s going to be interesting to see which side wins out, in the end.
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.
Engage
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, a day arrived here in Pittsburgh when it wasn’t; a) raining, b) snowing, c) under 20 degrees fahrenheit. One packed up the camera bag, donned that filthy black raincoat which I refer to as my ‘Street Cassock,’ and set forth to scuttle up the hill to The T light rail station.
I have a real preference for leaving the car at home unless I absolutely have no other choice to do so. This is odd for the region I now live in, which very much ‘car country.’ Personally, I don’t want to be bothered with parking and then getting back to the thing when I’ve got a mass transit option. The car cuts into the often serendipitous decisions which occur when I’m walking about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the solution that they came up with here in Downtown Pittsburgh to solve the ‘Homeless people pissing on the streets’ problem. Imagine that, not having to chance a ticket to do what comes naturally, and a large municipality which acknowledges human biology.
NYC’s response to a lack of such accommodation for the downtrodden has always been to send in the “Reverend in Blue” to write them a fine for pissing in public. I tell people about this here in Pittsburgh, NYC’s total lack of public bathrooms, a problem that only got worse after COVID.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Going back to the reasoning behind why I left the car at home, a random decision to walk over the Fort Pitt Bridge occurred to me and I was soon navigating my way over the Monongahela River, on the span’s bike and pedestrian path.
This was a medium long walk, incidentally, and over the course of the afternoon I probably scuttled out about 6-7 miles. It was also one of those walks where I was just making up my path and I didn’t have any sort of predefined destination or route. Just walking here, me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve been hitting this ‘inner circle’ of Pittsburgh where the 3 Rivers meet for a couple of months now – for fairly prosaic reasons – it’s easy for me to get to, and it’s where the waterfront trails are the most developed. Additionally: tugboats and trains and bridges…
As soon as the weather becomes reliable (as in not freezing or snowing) in the early Spring, I’m planning on visiting a couple of other places in Pittsburgh’s ‘neighborhood,’ notably Cleveland. I’m going to overnight that one, as it’s a bit of a drive at about two and a half hours.
I’ll be passing through East Palestine – where that train blew up last year – on that one, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Fort Pitt Bridge connects to the Fort Pitt Tunnel, and is punched through Mount Washington. It spans the very end of the Monongahela River, and is close to the Ohio River. That bridge in the distance is the West End Bridge, and it stretches over the Ohio, just for reference on the geography.
I didn’t catch the name of that Tug with those minerals barges, despite it being the protagonist of the photo (meaning that it was what the lens was focused on).
The path on the bridge for pedestrians like myself doesn’t go into the tunnel, instead it turns west and takes you – ultimately – towards the West End Bridge pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s kind of getting personal now, not getting the composition above with a train on those tracks. Beyond personal, it’s annoying already. I’m going to get it, have no doubt. I think I’m going to have to set up the camera and just sit there waiting for something to happen. Photography is often a lot like fishing, you prepare your gear and go to where you need to, but if they ain’t biting…
Bah! One continued along his way, walking the pedestrian path’s ramp back down to ground level on the south side of the Monongahela River.
Having ridden the T into town from HQ, a free transfer to one of the inclines was in the offing, and since I was heading in that direction anyway…
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.
Ten mile scuttle, part five
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lifetime habit of mine was to use a combination viewing of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings to orient myself whenever I was climbing out of a Subway in Manhattan, to help me navigate and let me know where I was and what direction I needed to go. Here in Pittsburgh, a similar thing is accomplished using the U.S. Steel Tower.
Don’t let the non profit health outfit’s ‘UPMC’ logo fool you, that’s the U.S. Steel Tower pictured above. UPMC is United Pittsburgh Medical Center, a non profit dealie that seems to own a lot of land in Pittsburgh and its extended metroplex.
The steel guys are still in the building, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Feds have a bunch of agencies housed in the corridor pictured above, here in Pittsburgh. The ‘Feebs’ are here, as are Fed level courts and the ‘big post office’ and the passport people, and I’m sure DEA is lurking around somewhere nearby too. A few blocks away is Pittsburgh’s City Hall and a local level court complex. This street is called ‘Liberty Avenue.’ You see a lot of uniforms and badges walking around eating hot dogs in this section.
I was heading roughly southwards at this point, on a long walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
UPMC is one of the ‘800 pound gorillas’ in Pittsburgh, a non profit corporation which owns a lot of the region’s hospitals and clinics and nursing homes, and employs a LOT of people. There’s controversy at the moment between the politicians and this non profit, since the behemoth medical entity doesn’t pay any property taxes… and since politicians like to spend tax money on new things they’ve recently dreamed up… the two ‘estates’ are at odds with each other.
Nobody seems overly concerned about spending money on fixing potholes, here in Pittsburgh, I’d mention.
I’ve always wondered why our society doesn’t try to get things right, improving insufficient or badly designed existant systems, before installing new and expensive ones.
Personally, I’ve been working on a recipe for meatloaf that I’m pretty close to perfecting (recipe version 7), but have resisted the urge to start roasting chickens, before I get the meatloaf formula just right. That’s how I roll, call me crazy.
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.
Ten mile scuttle, part four
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a humble narrator was in the process of debarking the 31st street bridge over the Allegheny River, one couldn’t help but admire the terraced setup of a section called Polish Hill. That’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary RC Church, which is in an area that I’d paid a brief visit to last year. Even after a year, I still find Pittsburgh’s verticality remarkable.
My next set of moves involved hanging a right at the foot of the bridge and to start walking downtown. Rush Hour, as it is humorously referred to here, was just starting up. Seriously, what the locals refer to as ‘heavy traffic’ just makes this ex New Yorker giggle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As stated in earlier posts from this walk, the plan was to walk back along the Allegheny River on this side of the water, and then cross the Monongahela River to access the T Light Rail, and get back to HQ. I punked out on that as it was starting to snow/rain again. At this stage, it was just starting up, and little piles of water were slowly appearing on my eyeglasses. Nothing major yet, I still had a good hour to go before it really started up, but wet and cold aren’t amongst my favorite combos.
More on all that later in the week, for now I was walking past the Amtrak Station and trying to imagine what it must have looked like back in the ‘good old days.’ I’ve taken Amtrak to and from Pittsburgh, and I believe that my description of the modern station as looking and feeling like a Soviet Orthodontist’s office is still apt.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This isn’t exactly the nicest street for a pedestrian in Pittsburgh, I’d offer. The left side of the shot offers the ruined former entrance of the train station which is fenced off and gross. The right side of the shot is the City’s morgue and medical examiner’s offices. The liminal space of the highway ramps above are where most of the occupants are. Awful and barren street scape, this, with sidewalks that just end leaving pedestrians stranded and walking on a busy road. Uggh.
They do a lot of things right here in Pittsburgh, this ain’t one of them.
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 