Posts Tagged ‘Monongahela River’
Maritime Monongahela
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily enough, while this wandering mendicant and humble narrator was crossing Pittsburgh’s Smithfield Street Bridge, spanning the Monongahela River, a towboat and barge setup suddenly appeared.
I’ve been missing the act of photographing maritime action lately, so… I got a-clickin with the camera.
That’s the Darlane B Towboat – you can read its ‘specs’ and history here – and she was navigating westerly under the Panhandle Rail Bridge. Joyously, there was also a T streetcar riding on the Panhandle as the boat moved under it. That T was, in turn, heading southwards out of the First Avenue Station and across the ‘Mon’ towards the Station Square stop at the foot of Mount Washington.
Ultimately, that’s where I was heading to, too.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was one of those days where I’m carrying only prime lenses rather than zooms and traveling light with a minimum ‘kit.’ For this one I used the 85mm lens, which was the closest thing to a telephoto that I had with me.
Sated by my peregrinations thereby, I crossed the Smithfield Street Bridge over to the south side of the river where the T Station is found, to catch my ride back to HQ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T streetcar was boarded, and one soon found himself back in the Borough of Dormont, some five or so miles away from the center of the city. While walking downhill and back to HQ, one soliloquized that an absolutely spectacular sunset had set itself up. Couldn’t resist cracking out a few shots, thereby, of this celestial display.
Back tomorrow with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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Sky walking, Birmingham Bridge
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the last post before my holiday break – during which Newtown Pentacle offered single image posts for the week twixt Christmas and the new year (Happy New Year, btw) – one was describing an interesting walk through Pittsburgh’s ‘Uptown’ neighborhood, and I was threatening to bring y’all along on a walk over the Birmingham Bridge spanning the Monongahela River here in Pittsburgh. I don’t make threats, instead they’re promises, so here we are.
To start: Birmingham Bridge is a positive infant compared to other Pittsburgh Bridges, having opened for business in 1977. Its function is to connect Uptown and the nearby Hill District (on the ‘Golden Triangle’ peninsula) with the South Side neighborhood (found on the south shore of the Monongahela River).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an enormous concrete outfit found on the peninsular side’s shoreline, which the Birmingham Bridge’s roughly seven stories of altitude offers a nice view of. There’s 64.8 feet of clearance below the span, and the bridge’s length is some 1,662 feet end to end.
It’s a ‘steel bowstring arch bridge,’ and Birmingham replaced an earlier structure which was called the Brady Street Bridge. Birmingham has six vehicular lanes, and there’s the combined pedestrian/bike lane on which a humble narrator claimed temporary residence during this walk.
To my understanding, there were still Steel Mills and Coke Ovens on both sides of the river when this bridge was erected – operated by the Jones & Laughlin company, but both large footprint industrial sites having since been razed and redeveloped since then.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The distance of this ‘long walk’ a humble narrator was slogging through is best described using landmarks. The T streetcar station I began my scuttling at is located beneath the 64 story U.S. Steel building, which is the tall gray structure at the top right of the shot above.
Stout, the building has become a handy navigational icon for me, which is used in the same manner that I used to employ the Empire State Building, back home in NYC.
As a note: this post is being written on Christmas Eve, and for the first time in a year – I’m actually feeling a bit homesick. I just listened to the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” and an actual emotion bubbled up into my sterility of thought and one of the eyes became a bit moist.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Birmingham Bridge connects to the South Side neighborhood, on the Monongahela River’s southern shore, specifically to a ‘main street’ called East Carson Street. The former footprint of the J&L steel mill in this area has been redeveloped into an incongruous mixed use development that’s called the ‘South Side Works.’ This very modern development sits alongside centuried residential buildings, which makes the somewhat ‘shopping mall’ esthetic of the South Side Works somewhat visually shocking and out of place. There are also residences in the South Side Works area that are nestled in amongst the shops, all of which seem spacious and modern, but an urban shopping mall is definitely not where I’d want to dwell.
After all those years in Astoria, what Our Lady of the Pentacle and I desire is suburbs. Trees, deer on my lawn. Quiet at night and dark, and if you hear an emergency vehicle’s siren, that’s a remarkable moment.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, a mental picture of ‘what used to be, long ago’ is beginning to form for me here. Weird thing about Pittsburgh as compared to NYC, is that despite having hosted both British and French imperial armies at one time, and having a significant number of ‘young George Washington’ stories associated with it – most of the really interesting things about Pittsburgh start up around the time of the Civil War. NYC, Boston, and… Philadelphia… had already been crowded shitholes for better than 200 years by that point.
I was always more interested in the 1800-1960’s portion of NYC history than the colonial or modern eras, so this probably isn’t terribly surprising.
Speaking of – I gotta figure out where the spot that Lewis and Clark set out from on the Ohio River is. I’d like to see that propitious point of geography, or at least stand upon it. Touchstones, right?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Melancholy for old times, absent friends, and familiar places notwithstanding, this post was meant to simply discuss a walk over Pittsburgh’s Birmingham Bridge. It’s funny, but allowing my thoughts to drift and cast about is one of the things I enjoy so much about these long walks. Pondering while wandering?
Back tomorrow with the end of this particular adventure, which will conclude the tales of adventure and discovery during this first year in Pittsburgh. Happy New Year, lords and ladies.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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T time
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator is taking the week off from the usual folderol, and on offer are single shots captured sometime in the last year since relocating from ‘Home Sweet Hell’ back in NYC to Pittsburgh.
Pictured above is the Panhandle Bridge, with a ‘T’ streetcar crossing the Monongahela River upon it and heading towards Downtown Pittsburgh.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Kwazy Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year to you all. 2024 is going to be a real whopper, I think.
“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.
An evening scuttle
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another short walk day was upon me, and honestly – one wasn’t ‘about’ shooting photos on this one. The weather had been fairly ghastly for several days, and according to the TV weather people, the sky was about to offer another multi day cycle of cold and wet in the coming week.
I took the T streetcar to the south side of the Monongahela River here in Pittsburgh, and stuck the headphones in my ears. This time around, it was music, in particular a playlist that features every Black Sabbath album which I own.
One hit ‘shuffle’ on the Ozzy and Dio rich playlist and started scuttling, following whatever direction my toes happened to be pointing towards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Pittsburgh’s Smithfield Street Bridge pictured above. While walking, I was thinking. A lot. It ranged from when I would next be doing the laundry all the way into springtime, and which part of the region I was planning to explore next was ruminated upon. Eastern Ohio is being considered, as is a day trip down to West Virginia.
It was late in the day, about an hour before the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was going to dip below the horizon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While walking along, I became the focus of attention for a junkie whom (I’m pretty sure) was being employed to deliver ‘bindles’ of narcotic powder to various customers by some dealer. Dealers will often use the street people for delivery duty, letting them catch the jail time should the cops clip them. A bindle of the powder is thereby won for their efforts, as a salary. It’s a living, I guess.
One probably would have been in trouble, if I hadn’t clued in to his particular vibe. Junkies and street people always talk to me, and sing their songs. I once talked a Jehovah’s Witness into dropping his Watchtower magazine stock in a garbage pail and drinking whiskey with me at a dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen, as amicable and convincing conversation is one of my super powers.
I think this young narcotics enthusiast was trying to figure out if I was a cop, and also likely fixing to take the camera from me if opportunity arose. Always keep moving, I always say, and if they want to talk to me…
My narrative stylings went ‘hard Brooklyn,’ and we chatted about gangs, and turf, in Pittsburgh. I regaled the kid with tales of all my loser friends in NYC, all the times they went to jail, and that led to conversation about doctrinal differences, here in Pittsburgh, between people who wear red, or blue, or leather, or just ball caps with denim jackets.
The pale enthusiast soon broke away from me to ‘go say hello to that guy,’ and I subsequently disappeared into the street grid using a reversed variation of a sector search pattern that the Coast Guard utilizes during searches for missing mariners. It’s handy knowing things like this, I say.
More 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.
Beyond the bend
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, a humble narrator was executing a short constitutional scuttle of about five miles along the Three Rivers Heritage Trail, found on the south shore of the Monongahela River here in Pittsburgh. That’s the South Tenth Street Bridge pictured above, which I think I’ve finally taken an interesting picture of. It’s a fairly unremarkable span, and it’s a challenge I’ve been entertaining myself with for a while now.
It’s also the start of a huge encampment maintained by a population of homeless mendicants. The city of Pittsburgh has been dealing with these sorts of encampments all over its turf since COVID, and has been roughly uprooting the dwellings, tents, and shanties in the ‘Downtown’ area of the ‘golden triangle’ since I got here, in response to complaints by the business community about the situation.
These poor people had to go somewhere, and apparently it’s here, far away from the Downtown corporate world and the cameras of new crews.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the 1930’s, this would have called this a ‘Hooverville,’ shanties and makeshift dwellings composed of other people’s discarded items. During this walk, one noted that both sides of the trail were de facto neighborhoods. I observed a young guy doing missionary work here, bringing sanitary products to the residents. I also saw him cutting firewood for a camp of three elderly men at one point. He was wearing a T-Shirt signifying he worked for some local church. Good stuff.
Instinct is to pass some sort of moral judgement on our fellow Americans for ending up in this circumstance due to addiction or bad luck, but that does nothing to solve the issue and serves to dehumanize the homeless into a homologous ‘mono-issue’ population rather than individuals who all have different problems that have led to this circumstance.
Conversely, there are some fairly dangerous people amongst them and it’s important not to underestimate that. I don’t have an answer to the problem I can offer on this subject. Life on the edge is a hard life.
I’ve said it a hundred times (and especially so to members of ‘Team DeBlasio), that there’s not a ‘homeless problem,’ rather there’s thousands of individual ‘homeless problems’ with no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Few of them want to be living in a tent made of garbage alongside a river.
If you’re concerned about these people, think ‘existential’ instead of ‘penitential’ and drop off some old blankets or clothing nearby their campsites. At least they’ll be able to stay warm while living like this in the richest country that’s ever existed. That’s what I’d call the ‘Christian’ response, rather than putting them in jail for being destitute or something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See what I mean about the South Tenth street bridge? It’s really hard to get an interesting shot of the thing… bah.
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.
