Posts Tagged ‘Fort Duquesne Bridge’
Pontem nusquam
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
NOTE: As you’re reading this, a humble narrator is likely under a surgeon’s knife. Last night, I broke my left ankle, and then got taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Back to your normally scheduled folderol.
One usually has a half baked plan for a walk, or at least a thought out route, before leaving the house. Instead of observing this habit, I decided to just see decide my feet were pointing and go that way this time around.
That’s how I ended up nearby PNC Park, where the Pirates sportsball outfit is housed, and staring up a flight of steps leading to the famous ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ – which the kids call the Fort Duquesne Bridge. Said span overflies the Allegheny River and connects Pittsburgh’s North Shore to the ‘Golden Triangle’ downtown section.
I like including steps on certain days, as they’re ‘good cardio.’ By this point in the scuttle, one had already decided that the penultimate destination for the evening (I had to get back to Dormont for the ‘ghost tour’ mentioned yesterday) was going to involve that brewery I like, found alongside the CSX Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks, way on the other side of the Monongahela River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Firstly, I needed to cross the Allegheny River. Fort Duquesne offers a fantastic shared bike and pedestrian path over the river although it’s a crossing which I seldom use. Usually, I cross at the Fort Pitt Bridge or at the West End Bridge. Both of those crossings are a bit more ‘photogenic’ and offer visual access to interesting sections of the waterfront peppered with towboats and trains, but I’d walked over each one quite recently and desired novelty.
As mentioned above, Fort Duquesne hovers above the Allegheny River on the North Side of Pittsburgh. Once the crossing was complete, I’d be deposited in Point State Park, and would need to negotiate a path to the Monongahela River to get to where I wanted to be.
Mundane, no?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A path was picked, and I leaned into it. That’s the aforementioned Fort Pitt Bridge in the shot above, whose crossing I rejected as I had just shlepped over it last week.
Also, this is what rush hour traffic looks like here in Pittsburgh.
Back tomorrow – theoretically.
Have no idea what’s happened to me, and this post was largely written while an ER bed at 4:30 a.m., and quite high on pain killers. What? How do pass the time?
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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.
Inlaetabilis vita
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After attending a Sportsball tournee at PNC Park, wherein the Pittsburgh Pirates contended with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the path back to where the car was parked luckily involved a quick ride on the Gateway Clipper, which was operating as a game day ferry (this is a regular line of business for this tourist boat outfit). It’s been a while since I did any low light/night time shooting, so a humble narrator was stoked.
I affixed the best ‘night lens’ I own to the camera, a stabilized f1.8 35mm, and got busy on the ride. Between the stabilization and the wide aperture, as well as my camera’s fairly spectacular high ISO capabilities, shutter speeds in the hundredths of a second were achieved.
Pictured above is the Fort Duquesne Bridge over the Allegheny River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the fountain at Point State Park, which is the theoretical center of Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and Monongahela River’s combine to form the headwaters of the Ohio River. Gateway to the west… all that.
It was a lovely evening, and Our Lady of the Pentacle seemed quite pleased with her circumstance, at least. We needed to get home to Moe the Dog, as thunderstorms were roiling about, and he’s not a huge fan of thunder and we like keeping our furniture intact.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The boat passed under the Fort Pitt Bridge, and just a few minutes later we were debarking from the boat and walking back to the Mobile Oppression Platform, which I piloted on the fifteen minute or so drive back to HQ.
Back tomorrow with something different, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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River, & Towboat, Allegheny
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was at the start of one of his long constitutional scuttles recently, here in Pittsburgh, and my route for the day involved walking on the Allegheny River’s shoreline and the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. That’s the Fort Duquesne Bridge pictured above.
The light was fairly extraordinary, with the atmospherics involving temperatures of about 75 degrees (and rising), coupled with a fairly high dew point and concurrent level of humidity. A strong storm was brewing to the west, but at this moment in time it was Ohio which was bedeviled by it and Pittsburgh wasn’t going to get walloped by it anytime before midnight.
Speaking of bedeviled, a long interval of inactivity – lasting about two weeks – was being punctured by this walk, and your humble narrator was suffering from stiffened muscles in the back and legs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Towboat activity on the Ohio and Monongahela Rivers is a common sight, but less so on the Allegheny. A Towboat, named for the river, suddenly appeared navigating towards the confluence of the three rivers and was towing a fuel barge. As mentioned last week, I had decided to constrain my photographic pursuits by bringing a series of fixed focal length prime lenses with me instead of zoom lenses. I affixed my 85mm lens to the camera.
Why?
Intentionality, that’s why. This may sound like wanker talk here, but there’s a different ‘process’ at work in the way that you perceive the environment when you spot something interesting and you have to quickly ‘do the math’ on which lens to use, as opposed to the ability to dial a zoom lens up and down its range. Additionally, the primes are considerably less of a carry than the larger and heavier zooms. As mentioned above, I was feeling stiff and didn’t want to carry a series of three pound glass and metal bricks with me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Towboat Allegheny navigated into the navigational channel under the Fort Duquesne Bridge. I couldn’t find a reliable history for this boat, as there seems to have been several towing vessels with the call sign ‘Allegheny’ launched over the centuries, including a U.S. Navy one.
The Port of Pittsburgh is actually quite an important inland port, as it turns out, a statement which will probably make all my ‘blue water’ sailor friends back in NYC laugh out loud. From here at the ‘Pittsburgh Pool,’ the United States Army Corps of Engineers maintains lock and dam maritime connections which lead to the Great Lakes, the Ohio River, and eventually you can even make it all the way to the Mississippi River.
Who knew?
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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.
Hills/dale
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Constitutional in motivation, I’m nevertheless always carrying a camera kit with me on the long walks that I’m forced to endure – as long time readers will attest. Endure has been a proper adjective in recent years, as a paucity of any remaining youthfulness left in me is draining away, leaving behind only a gray and wrinkled husk. I once was pretty, and not the monster you now see. What I see in the bathroom mirror looks like a dehydrated sweet potato with a gray beard.
Also, in those cheeky years of blessed memory when your narrator was young but already humble, standing up after sitting in a chair wasn’t accompanied by any popping or cracking noises, nor did I often wonder about how I hurt myself while asleep.
Soldier on, and steady, old man…
I was crossing the Allegheny River on the Fort Duquesne Bridge, and my short term goal was to get to the neighboring Fort Pitt Bridge so as to cross the Monongahela River.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Fort Duquesne Bridge (the fort thing here dates back to the French and Indian War and George Washington – all that jazz) overflies Point State Park, which is a well used peninsular public space and the titular center of Pittsburgh. At this park, you can pick up the pedestrian/bike path for the Fort Pitt Bridge, which I was heading for next.
Often, I like to ponder about the cloud of epithelial dust that peels off of my withering body while moving about. Pain is my oldest and most loyal friend, after all, but continual decay is still somewhat novel. No matter what happens, pain is always there, and part of the journey. Leaving behind a cloud of skin cells in my wake is just a plus, and novel.
When I had my initial appointment with a new Doctor here in Pittsburgh just last year, I drew a chart of all my physical complaints. The cartoon depicted a humble narrator in a style not unlike the patient from the board game ‘Operation.’ It had call outs to specific maladies, and I used lightning bolt iconography to indicate areas of mystery pain. The Doc was amused, and told me that this was a first for him, in his thirty years of practice. What can I say? I communicate most effectively in graphic narrative.
I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, I surmounted the ramp leading to the Fort Pitt Bridge and began my crossing of the thing, which spans the Monongahela River. This is a fairly muddy river – I’d mention – hence the tan coloration encountered.
Because of the Hudson and Mississippi, I have a mental block and prejudice towards the idea that rivers don’t just run south, but there we iconoclastically are. The ‘Mon’ ends up in Pittsburgh after a long 130 mile northeasterly journey out of West Virginia, and along its run it picks up a lot of soils. This is just about the end of its trip, where it joins with the Allegheny to form the Ohio River.
This whole ‘getting old’ thing is kind of a drag, but I’m enjoying the challenge of not just keeling over and dying so there’s that. Wait, my left ear just fell off, and I’m out of superglue. Dag.
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.
Vampire barriers
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It must suck to be a Vampire in Pittsburgh because you’ve got all this running water which needs to be navigated around, and all of the bridges that you can’t cross similarly because of ‘running water.’ On the plus side for the Nosferatu-Americans, it’s cloudy or overcast about 2/3 of the year – which occludes the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself’s radiate gaze – so you’d have that going for you. More good news is that the people of Pittsburgh seem pretty well fed, and many of them look like they’re really full of tasty blood.
I was heading towards a pedestrian/bicycle approach to the Fort Duquesne Bridge, which is nearby the sportsball stadium that the Pittsburgh Pirates outfit operate out of. As mentioned yesterday, one of the goals on this warm and sunny afternoon was to get some verticality going on during this walk, and find some steps or ramps to climb onto.
Cardio, yo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There don’t seem to be many folktales involving Vampires here in Pittsburgh, but there’s all sorts of ‘hooey’ which involves cults, killers, monsters, unknown beasts which lurk at the edge of the woods, and witches. Lots of witches. There’s a mass of Appalachian ‘Hill Billy’ mythos as well, and while trying to absorb some of that knowledge, I found an amazing YouTube channel called ‘The Appalachian Storyteller,’ which I can heartily recommend.
While looking for these sorts of stories to educate myself on the local psychic firmament, and mythological milieu, one encountered a subgenre of YouTube videos – called Hobo YouTube – which is best represented by a fellow who calls his channel ‘Hobo Shoestring.’ Really, you search for railroad stuff, it inevitably leads to ‘Hobo YouTube.’
There’s a bunch of interesting genres and quite professional creators on that platform these days. Here’s a few examples of – camera YouTube, cooking YouTube, camping YouTube, EDC YouTube, etc. YouTube’s algorithm will see what you’re watching and thereby open up these various genre offerings to you in its suggestions based on ‘clicks.’ It’s really interesting to see how the future works, if you ask me.
Careful what you watch though, as there’s a ‘pimple popping YouTube’ which is downright grotesque. Anyway, back to the Vampires.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve never dwelt in the ‘Vampires look like Catherine Deneuve or Frank Langella’ camp. Always have I ascribed to the pre Stokerite descriptions of the undead things: a shambling pile of rotting meat, complete with ‘death stink,’ who is nevertheless quite nimble in its nightly locutions. Horrible ghasts, without the tiniest shred of romantic appeal, that’s a Vampire. Something that takes and takes but never gives, is ignorant of the rule of natural law, and intolerant to all but its own need.
After a brief effort, a humble narrator had surmounted the stairs leading up to the Fort Duquesne Bridge over the Allegheny River and commenced with a southwards lurch forward. I was as secure as I’ll ever be in terms of battling the vampiric – direct sunlight above and running water below. Sun Tzu always spoke of choosing favorable locations for battle, and if the enemy is composed of blood thirsty revenants – this is a great spot for you to reenact the heroism of Horatius Cocles, Spurius Larcius, and Titus Herminius Aquilinus at Rome’s Pons Sublicius, way back in the 6th century B.C.E.
What? I’ve been listening to that History of Rome podcast again.
“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 