Posts Tagged ‘Fort Pitt Bridge’
Pinion point, Pittsburgh
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the south shore of the Monongahela River, beneath Pittsburgh’s ‘Fort Pitt Bridge,’ you’ll notice two locomotives transiting through the shot above, in the lower section of the photo above.
A CSX unit is moving eastwards directly on the shoreline, and up on a raised berm on the hill, a Norfolk Southern unit was heading west. Neat, and this one got a ‘hey now.’
This is the latest in a series of astoundingly short walks which endemic ice and snow conditions have boxed me into. Essentially, all within reach of mass transit, so I didn’t have to dig the car out of the driveway again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’d be heading along one of the waterfront trails for the remainder of this walk, through an area referred to colloquially as ‘the bath tub.’ It got that nickname due to its certain tendency to flood during the spring melts, which raises the water level of the Monongahela.
I’ve got a weird relationship with driving, I’d mention. Love having the freedom it offers, but hate having to ‘mind the car’ and detest having to loop back to wherever I parked it on a walk.
Serendipity is mentioned a lot around here, as a descriptor for those random concurrencies which sometimes assemble before the camera while scuttling. Having the car along with me tends to cancel out any chance of such random events occurring, as I have to mind the vehicle rather than my surroundings. Also, you can’t ‘see’ anything from a car as you’re moving too quickly.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve got a lot of rules. No conscious trespass for instance. I operate within the sure knowledge (and experience) that eventually I’ll be invited in, and like a vampire, I need that invite to properly ‘do my thing.’
This part of the waterfront trail has recently undergone a cycle of repairs, and it was blocked off by construction equipment for most of the first year I’ve was out here in Pittsburgh, and just as it opened to the public – that’s when I shattered my ankle.
Back on all of my feet now, and I’m glad to have this pathway available, especially so on rainy days when you’re pretty much walking under the elevated ramps of an interstate and using it as a concrete umbrella..
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in the first post of this series, this was during the initial ‘melt days’ after several weeks of sub freezing temperatures. Everything was dripping and oozing with some sort of latent horror. I had worn the leather fedora as a prophylactic for this day, anticipating that ice and snow might be crashing down on me from on high. It ain’t a hard hat, but it does offer a half inch of thick cow hide as a buffer twixt the outside world and ‘me gulliver.’
Yes, ‘A Clockwork Orange’s’ made up ‘future slang’ is a core part of my brain. Hear me, my dear droogie?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A series of interesting compositions are available under the on-ramp of the Fort Pitt bridge, for the itineraries of visiting photographers to the Paris of Appalachia. Lots of interesting massing shapes, all crushing up against other, while transferring massive amounts of weight and ‘load’ just all over the place. I spent a little time down here, and resolved to add this spot to my growing list of ‘come back with a tripod’ for night time or low light shots in the future.
There’s multiple ‘to-do’ lists at this stage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wasn’t walking on the highway, despite appearances. The trail threads along in parallel to the ‘parkway east,’ aka I-376.
Back tomorrow with boids.
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Hungry Frustrarian Empire
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once again, your humble narrator finds himself locked firmly in your past, as the very moment these words are being typed it is currently the 24th of February as far as these words go, but the photos were shot back on Friday the 13th of the same month.
You’re seeing this mid March, if I’ve got my scheduling correct. These shots represent the part of February when you wondered if it would ever stop snowing, and pondered if the Fimbulvetr was finally underway. The cool thing is that as you’re reading this, we both know how things turned out.
It’s been really, really difficult to find a walking path not blocked by ice and snow. Mentioned many times, Pittsburgh ‘shit the bed’ on snow removal. Not just the city, but the private entities hereabouts too.
Disappointing. Fixable, but I don’t want to fix things anymore.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The original plan was to ride the T light rail to the very ‘developed’ Monongahela Waterfront nearby the Station Square Stop. I’d ride the incline up to the top of Mt. Washington, I thought, but the Incline was out of service.
Ok! ‘Plan B’ took the form of me walking in the street, along a de facto highway, because some bunch of goofballs decided to pile snow on the sidewalks, forming eight foot high mounds. This pathway delivered me to a parking lot, which was expertly plowed, shoveled, and treated for ice. The parking lot leads to an entrance to one of the river trails.
It just ‘has to’ have a path, I thought, given that the trail abuts one of the Crown Jewels hereabouts – Riverhounds Soccer Stadium. I mean…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The good news is that I saw a Towboat towing something. It was navigating easterly along the Monongahela River. Yay!
I cannot express how bored I’ve recently been. As mentioned above, we’re still deep in the wintertime here in Pittsburgh, at the time of this writing at the end of February. No Bueno, indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was the condition of the trail, the one I was hoping would be cleared, incidentally.
These shots were gathered on the first actual ‘melt’ day, with temperatures above freezing, that had occurred in about a two to three week interval, since a big snow maker had dumped 18 or so inches across the region. It shut down a lot of options for me.
I was stuck sloshing through this, which kind of ‘pissed off’ my bad ankle a bit. Wasn’t awful, but the organelle definitely made its displeasures known.
Fixable. This snow business is fixable. Easily so, and everybody who participated in fixing the problem would get to see themselves on the tv.
Fixable…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oddly, given the condition of the trail, an enormous multi acre for pay parking lot was neatly cleared of snow and ice. I walked around there for a bit, and luckily spotted CSX #3155 as it tried to sneak past me while passing under the Fort Pitt Bridge. Imagine…
The trail on the other side of the parking lot was clad in deep snow similarly to the section detailed in the previous shot. Flarn!
Hands were thrown up in disgust, I fell to my knees and decried cruel fate. Imagine that… it was cold and snowy out in early February… and since I was largely unlucky in my pursuits – no incline, no sidewalk, no access – I could blame it on… Friday the 13th!
Dun dun dunnnnn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I back tracked through the well shoveled parking lot, walked across the blocked sidewalk street, and then just boarded a T back to Dormont. Real short walk, this one, maybe three miles all told. At least the camera got up off its butt, and did something. Hmmphf.
Back tomorrow.
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Remains of a scuttle
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After traipsing all over Pittsburgh during a longish scuttle, your humble narrator found himself heading into more familiar territory along the Monongahela River. Another not so friendly to pedestrians route was chosen, this one paralleling a series of high speed roads which operate in a trench. Pictured above, in the distance, is a traffic machine called the ‘Fort Pitt Bridge.’
Every GPS navigation package you can think of directs all the traffic in Pittsburgh going to and from the South Hills region onto the Fort Pitt Bridge and tunnel. There are two other perfectly acceptable highway paths you can take out of the central section of Pittsburgh towards the South Hills, which deposit you in more or less the same area on the other side of Mount Washington, I’d mention. Saying that, all of the ‘maps’ apps just love sending traffic to that very congested bridge and tunnel.
The Fort Pitt bridge offers what I consider to be one of the worst traffic interchanges in the entire country. It’s an ‘X,’ and the thousands of cars and trucks an hour which cross it and enter that tunnel having to negotiate a diagonal merge in a surprisingly short interval.
As I’ve intoned earlier, the driving culture of Pittsburgh is absolute brutality, so this ain’t pretty.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moving easterly, the mirror face of the PPG Plaza building caught my eye as it threw reflection of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself around. Disdain for the memory of architect Philip Johnson blossomed in my mind.
The plan for the rest of the day involved heading over to familiar territory at the Sly Fox Brewery where I’d hopefully get to see a train go by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Smithfield Street Bridge is a wonderful touchstone. The original bridge here was designed by John Roebling, and when it needed an upgrade they hired Gustav Lindenthal to do it. The bridge’s piers are original to the Roebling version, and the tension spring upper steel is Lindenthal’s.
Roebling, of course, designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge. Lindenthal is the mastermind behind the Queensboro Bridge. I quickened my stride.
I was heading for the brewery, after all, and was fairly thirsty by this point. I also needed to make ‘wee-wee.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A pint of lager in hand, and after a trip to the loo, one settled in and waited for the signal chimes to start ringing at Sly Fox Brewery. It took maybe twenty minutes of waiting before CSX #4749 exploded into view.
HEY NOW!
It’s a 2003 vintage ‘EMD SD70MAC.’ A 16 cylinder engine in the locomotive produces some 4,000 HP of thrust, and it is said to offer a top speed of 70 mph.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It had been a nice, long walk. Lots of ups and downs, long distances, and mostly flat. What was desired was attained, which was to do some shooting while subjecting my gamey ankle to a longish walk.
As you’re reading this, remember that exactly one year ago today I was still confined to a wheelchair, and experiencing ghastly amounts of pain. The injury was more than just orthopedic, as lots of soft tissue damage had occurred too. Suffice to say that I learned about a new one during this experience – pressure blisters. Felt like a burn, but under the cast.
I just can’t stop remembering that right about now. Trauma, yo.
Adding in that I was all doped up on opioid pain killers, this situation wasn’t at all pretty. All I could do, besides watching a Turk soap opera about the Ottomans, was dream about recovery, and getting back to doing…
…This…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the saying goes: Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans, right?
Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Vouchsafing against Diurnal Nosferatu’s
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, there’s no way you’re going to get me to believe that the sub specie of Vampires hasn’t figured out a workaround for their sunlight problem here in the 21st century. Sunscreen? Hats? Something?
I figure that their ‘not crossing flowing water’ prohibition is a little harder for the armies of the night to conquer. Just in case a diurnal vampire has locked onto me, I’ll often take a quick hike across any available bridge as a vouchsafe. In this case, it was the Fort Duquesne bridge over the Allegheny River, here in Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fort Duquesne leads into Point State Park, and offers sweet views of its sister bridge – the Fort Pitt. The path off the bridge is wooded on both sides, so… excellent perching spots for day vampires to grab a snack off the path and chow down in the sylvan shadows. I stayed directly in the middle of the road, which I’ve actually never understood as being the metaphor for ‘safe.’
Worst place to be, middle of the road… that’s where the double yellow line is. Even worse are the other sides of the travel lane, at the extreme edges of the pavement, along the white lines.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The guy dressed up like a British soldier was likely a historical reenactment actor, but he could have been a ‘day vampire’ that has been dressing like that for hundreds of years. Anything is possible these days, as objective truth has become plastic, moldable, and pliant.
Hope that guy in the blue modern clothes made it home to his family.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I continued on, scuttle scuttle scuttle.
If I was a vampire, I think that I’d run for political office.
Mesmerize the crowd, tell them ‘those people over there whom you don’t like are taking something away from you, and giving it to somebody else far away that you like even less.’ I’d pontificate that garlic didn’t exist before 1957, that it’s an invasive specie sent to America by International Communists in order to traffick children in exchange for Fentanyl. Holy water would need to be banned by my edict, and then scheduled as a Class One controlled substance with the DEA.
I’d advocate for smog, and promise that the overcast conditions offer ‘freedom from sun burns and skin cancer’ for the span of my reign term.
My supporters would be called ‘freedom children, of the night,’ and they’d be required to wear red clothing so as to hide the leftovers from luncheon feedings, and I’d exclusively staff my inner office with loyal cohorts sent to me from amongst the Romani’s Rudar clan in Romania (or just reach out to Sunnyside in Queens, where the former ‘Maspeth Romani’ live).
Boxes of native soils from Brooklyn’s Canarsie would be stored around my district, and in Washington. You gotta sleep sometimes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For crossing the Monongahela River, I avoided the obvious path of walking the Fort Pitt Bridge. Kind of out of the way for where I wanted to get to, and I was interested mainly in shaking off any potential day vampires who might be following me. ‘Day Vampire’ isn’t a metaphor for something ugly, by the way, I literally mean ‘day vampire.’
A counter narrative to my vampiric musings was playing through my headphones, incidentally, with Dragnet’s Joe Friday interrogating a bombing suspect, whose house hosted a bunch of Nazi stuff – flags, uniforms, etc. This script was also turned into a teleplay during the ‘Dragnet 67’ television version of the show, if it sounds familiar.
Friday gave one of his speeches about American values – free speech, freedom of conscience, the role which science and vaccines had played in freeing the WW2 generation and their descendants from avoidable disease and disfigurement. Friday put this speech forward as a rebuke to the suspect, who just wanted to tear the entire edifice down.
Joe Friday versus Vampires… now, that would have been something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Smithfield Street Bridge carried me across the Monongahela River, which made two flowing water barriers crossed. It did occur to me that Vampires probably use cell phones these days, and distinct populations of them might be communicating with each other remotely.
‘Hey, check out the old guy with the camera, he looks juicy. Lol’
Back next week 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 Coke Express
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The track signals told me something was heading my way, along the Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks of CSX, so a position under the Fort Pitt Bridge was taken up, and I figured out my exposure settings in advance of the subject barging through the scene..
HEY NOW, that’s CSX #3297 passing by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Normally, it’s fairly impossible to guess where one of these trains is coming from, but given the direction it’s coming from and what it was hauling – it was either PA’s Clairton or Irvine.
That’s where you’ll find two of the three huge US Steel plants which remain in the Pittsburgh area. One is designed to manufacture coke from coal, the other to harvest the gas from the process. If I had to bet, this train is coming from the first one in Clairton.
This ended up being a great day for trains. Go, Monday!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The CSX train was heading westwards, towards… Ohio.
Funny to me is how the Pittsburgh people react when you mention Ohio, offering the same sort of reaction that a Brooklynite displays at the mention of …Staten Island… or ‘Joisey.”
That’s the West End Bridge in the distance, which I had walked over and described in posts last week. Scroll down if interested.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My audiobook listening had continued after completing “The Lurking Fear,” and I was now knee deep into “The Thing on the Doorstep,” both audiobooks based on stories by H.P. Lovecraft and read by Wayne June.
Y’know, I wonder if there’s any interest in a list of all of my fave audio books? Let me know in the comments, and if so, I’ll build a list with links to where you can find them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An almost imperceptible glimmer of black vapor was trailing out of the coke express cars. It was moving too fast for the smell of coal to permeate out, but there was still a vague petrochemical ‘taste’ in the air.
There you are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Towboat Vulcan was spotted, heading back the other way from the direction it was traveling in when shown in an earlier post. They were also ‘sans barge’ so it must have been delivered to a nearby customer. My guess would be one of the two concrete plants on the western side of the Birmingham Bridge.
Back tomorrow, with even more trains. I know…
“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 