Posts Tagged ‘North Side’
Hey Now! twice, with ramps
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shlep, shlep, shlep.
A mile or so’s worth of scuttling brought me here, after getting dropped off by a rideshare on Pittsburgh’s North Side, to this section of ‘Beaver Avenue’ – a wide road which services an industrial zone.
The section discussed today is defined by a straight line concrete wall dominating one side of the street, part of a larger structure that carries high speed vehicle traffic upon it towards the titular center of the city, and several bridges/highway interchanges. The environment here is ‘built.’
All caught up!
Your humble narrator was soon at the border of the ‘Chateau’ neighborhood, found on Pittsburgh’s ‘North Side.’ Just to the north of this position is a smallish rail yard – the ‘Island Avenue Yard’ – which has been described in the past. I’m thinking that these tracks are a part of that complex, but that’s an assumption.
Hey Now! That’s Allegheny Valley RR’s #6004.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a number of highway interchanges and ramps which fly through here, and a pile of incredibly overbuilt pedestrian infrastructure. More on that one in a subsequent post… but… lookit that thing! Wow.
One headed towards this feat of over engineering, to hopefully gain a POV over the RR tracks, and also to find out where this design problem might lead to. First time I’ve walked through here, Y’see, and I was completely ignoring the sage advice offered by 90’s band TLC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, these tracks and the yard surrounding them aren’t fenced off in this section and they were sort of busy, so before climbing up on ‘that thing,’ I just stood there in a sort of muddy driveway along the sidewalk, waving the camera around to capture these shots.
Hey Now! Norfolk Southern turned up next, hauling a long line of tankers.
I needed to pee, of course, so I did a little dance to kill the urge. My dance recital, enjoyed by the engineer, was to the tune of – and quite resembled – the one performed by Laura Brannigan in her classic ‘Gloria’ music video.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
#1144 lumbered past, filling the air with vibration as it did.
According to Google’s AI ‘Gemini,’ #1144 was built in 2014, and:
‘Norfolk Southern (NS) locomotive #1144 is an EMD SD70ACe diesel locomotive. Originally built with a 4,300-horsepower engine and featuring a wide-cab design, this heavy-haul freight unit operates on mainlines across the Norfolk Southern network.’
I’ve just been going crazy for trains lately, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Two in one shot, yay!
Shortly after 1144 circuited through, and after having ‘watered the verge,’ your humble narrator got all curious about that other thing. The overbuilt ramp thingamabob behind me.
What can be up there? On top of this whatzit? Ramps, ramps, ramps…
I had to know.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Had to walk the entirety of this structure, and get to know it. Make a sketch. Caress its goodness. Give it a middle name. Start it a Christmas Club account at the bank…
One can imagine the governmental design process for this thing, and how it kept on getting added on to, meeting by meeting. Then – a catastrophic cut in the budget by some politician happened – and then the thing that’s pictured today became the best accommodation they could build with the resources at hand… Ahh… government…
Directly across the street is a building occupied by the people who build this sort of stuff for the County and State, and also happen to keep the mass transit systems running.
Back tomorrow, whereupon I climb this thingamabob to its titular top, and then ooze back down to the street level again – like I’m some kind of thing…
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Back, to the North Side of Pittsburgh
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To start – the Newtown Pentacle time warp is still in effect. These shots were gathered during the last week of May, whereas the words you’re reading were written in middle June, and if my scheduling is correct you’re reading this in the third week of July. Whew.
For this scuttle, which ended up being a pretty long walk, during which I decided that I categorically needed to upgrade a part of my camera kit, a rideshare was utilized to drop me at the intersection of Eckert Street and McClure Avenue on Pittsburgh’s north side.
This is in the Marshall-Shadeland section, underneath the rusted and literally falling apart California Avenue Bridge, which is right about where Don’s Diner is found. What? You don’t cite landmarks?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is an heavy industrial area, with an enormous sewer plant found just a few blocks away. Lots of heavy truck based businesses, warehouses, and quite a few people who work with machines that could go ‘bang’ in ferocious ways – electrical, steam, that sort of thing.
This is also one of the spots in Pittsburgh which I find quite photogenic, but about which the locals say ‘you’re crazy, don’t go there, they’ll kill you.’
If I had a dollar for everytime someone has told me that about Newtown Creek, most of North Brooklyn, all of Western Queens, The Bronx, or every majority African American neighborhood in Pittsburgh… well… I’d have a lot of dollars, I tell’s ya.
Who might kill me? Do they have names? Can we call them? Can I pay them some agreed upon toll for the privilege of passage, rather than just having them kill me on sight? Sheesh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Beaver Avenue, that’s what this Pittsburgh street is called.
The rail trestle connects to the Ohio Connecting Rail Bridge, which I’ve mentioned before. The tracks belong to the Norfolk Southern outfit.
It was an absolutely perfect day for a long walk, weather wise. High 70’s and breezy. Overcast, but with occasional floods of sunlight.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another view of the rail bridge, as I crossed beneath the trestle.
On this leg of the scuttle, I kept on missing shots of the locomotives at the front of these trains, but this ended up being a very, very productive day as far as the subject of photographing trains goes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator is so far ahead of the schedule here that at this writing, I can’t remember which post it was that I mentioned turning a corner towards a waterway one day and observing some guy dancing around with a kitchen knife in each hand, behind a building.
I’m pretty sure he was playing the Grateful Dead on his boombox, if you want to picture what the dance vibe was like.
Protocol, since he didn’t notice me, was to just quietly back away and get back to a nice safe patch of pavement where he wasn’t.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned above, I kept on missing the head of the RR snake during this section of the walk. No worries, I had a cool set of captures coming my way shortly, on this fairly long walk in the Paris of Appalachia.
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.
Yinz confuse me, yo
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Swindell Bridge to North Shore, part seven.
That’s the same Norfolk Southern train seen in yesterday’s post, transiting over Pittsburgh’s Merchant Street Bridge, on the city’s North Side. There’s been a decent number of bridges seen during this scuttle, huh?
When these shots were gathered, specifically on the 9th of April, a great tumult had seized Pittsburgh, in advance of the forthcoming NFL Draft event. Workers were everywhere; obliterating graffiti, painting things, filling potholes, etc., and a large number of street closures here on the North Shore, where the Draft would play out, were enacted. Lots and lots of wind blown garbage was collected, from both highways and river fronts/
The powers that be called it ‘the immaculate collection.’
Even we happy pedestrians were ejected from our tenancy over the sidewalks during this interval, on these affected streets, and many detours were introduced.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now, this pathway which the ‘detour’ signage directed me towards is one that is commonly transited by scores of people, but there are explicit ‘Private Property’ and separate ‘no trespassing’ signboards seen all over the place back here.
In accordance with my normal policy of respecting that sort of thing, I’ve not walked through here once during all of my scuttles. There’s a proper ‘street’ path you can take instead, which is actually a lot more direct, so why trespass if you don’t need to?
This time – though – the government’s signage people were telling me to trespass, so… gotta follow the law, right?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some members of the Urbex crowd think me timid. That’s ok, but I don’t have a Police record. You?
I’ve got a lot of ‘rules’ based on lived experience.
The ‘youngins’ don’t remember when packs of wild dogs prowled around in Brooklyn, for instance, but I do. Don’t want to mess with the junk yard dogs, and the Mafia isn’t just a thing in the movies. It’s real.
Just the other day, during a scuttle which I’ll be discussing in a few posts from this one, I turned a corner and saw some guy dancing around with a knife in his hand behind a building, and near a waterway that I was interested in grabbing a shot of. ‘Noped’ out of that one, right quick.
When you spend your time in potentially dangerous places, you’ll often meet potentially dangerous people.
Also, yes – the Newtown Pentacle time warp is still in effect – as I’d really been ‘hitting the bricks’ and ranging all over the place in March and April.
As stated above, these shots were gathered on the 9th of April, and the posts are being written on the 27th of that same month. If I’ve got my scheduling right, you’re reading this in early June.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So… this was the pedestrian detour path.
It’s running through one of the ‘overflow’ parking lots nearby the stadiums. The ramps above are a combination of Route 28 and the various bridge ramps that it feeds into.
The big wall on the left is a rail berm, carrying tracks which lead back to the Merchant Street Bridge, and that rail trench in Allegheny Commons Park, and eventually back to the Conway Rail Yard and beyond. Whew.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This area is regularly transited by street people, which is something I can report from observation. It ‘ain’t so nice’ under these ramps, lots of highway noise, and you can observe little piles of ‘precipitant’ from auto exhaust soot which is lurking everywhere. Blech!
This shot looks back at where I was.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One got to walk through a decent amount of that sooty zone under the highways before sunlight began factoring back in. An Allegheny Valley RR unit was just idling up on the tracks, for a long while. I hung around to see if anything was going to happen and then got bored.
Back tomorrow with the end of this one.
“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.
Where other people live
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Swindell Bridge to North Shore, part five.
Yet another abandoned residential building, seen on Pittsburgh’s North Side, and captured while mid scuttle on a medium length walk. That blue sticker on the door is what a Pittsburgh condemnation notice looks like.
Much of the building stock in this ‘zone’ miraculously avoided demolition, during two 20th century seismic waves of urban renewal, which ravaged nearby blocks and neighborhoods. The ‘zone’ used to be part of a separate municipality called Allegheny City, which Pittsburgh annexed at the start of the 20th century.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having written about the Borough of Queens back in NYC, endlessly documenting how the warnings of LIC’s last Mayor – Patrick ‘Battle Axe’ Gleason – that ‘if the Manhattan people ever get a hold of us, the first thing they’ll do is export all their dirty industries to LIC’ – played out.
Looking around LIC, at the Midtown Tunnel, and the LIE, and the train yards that serve Manhattan and not Queens, and the waste transfer stations and the rendering plants and… and… yeah, we can state that Gleason was right in his assessment.
A similar process played out in Pittsburgh. Need a highway? North Side. Prison? North Side.
Now… here’s where some ‘nitty gritty’ that I’m not a hundred percent sure about begins to come into play. I was cutting down what turned out to be Eloise Street. Eloise is a bit more of an alley than it is a street, but what I was wondering was ‘am I in the Mexican War Streets historic district?’ I used to be able to point to the exact border between Astoria and Woodside or Sunnyside, so this sort of pedantry means a lot to me.
According to Google AI:
- The Mexican War Streets in Pittsburgh’s Central Northside is a historic district renowned for its restored 19th-century Victorian row houses and tree-lined streets. Developed in the 1840s, the area features streets named after Mexican-American War battles and figures, including Buena Vista and Monterey. It is a vibrant residential neighborhood, featuring community gardens, the Mattress Factory art museum, and proximity to Allegheny Commons.
- Key Aspects of the District
- Location: Situated in the Central Northside, adjacent to Allegheny Commons, and within walking distance to Downtown.
- Architecture: Characterized by restored late Victorian, Greek Revival, and Italianate row houses, often with unique architectural details.
- History: Originally the “Buena Vista Tract,” the neighborhood was developed for residential use in the mid-19th century and is recognized for its successful urban preservation efforts in the 1970s.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ‘main drag’ is a block away, and facing Allegheny Commons Park. There’s retail businesses there, and that hospital which you see on the HBO TV show ‘The Pitt.’ Medical offices, retail businesses, one truly great pizza joint. It’s nice.
Me?
I don’t navigate through this section often, as I’m usually moving a lot closer to the river, and I generally tend to avoid residential streets. It’s never good if- the humans notice me slopping along, and pointing a camera at their homes.
Additionally, driving wise, it wouldn’t make sense to interact with these narrow streets unless you had to. One scuttled along, with the eventual goal of connecting to the T Light Rail, for a ride back to HQ at the end of this walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Interesting housing stock, have to say. ‘Disturbingly heterogeneous’ is how I’d describe what’s on display. Again – just like Western Queens.
This area is easy walking, as a note. Mostly flat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s quite few ‘gems’ back in here, and this is quite a desirable neighborhood to live within, if you can afford it. It’s a bit more ‘urban’ than I’d want these days, but when we were moving out here from NYC nearly four years ago, this neighborhood was actually one of the places we considered living.
Thing is, I’ve got a strong desire not to share a wall with anyone anymore.
This is something realized when end stage planning the move from Astoria, and it’s why we ended up in ‘the burbs.’
I don’t have to worry about the old lady/cat hoarder who lived next door to me in Astoria having a fire anymore, or why the common wall we shared with her was always wetly bulging in from her side. Nor am I still concerned about my upstairs neighbor falling asleep while drunk, forgetting that she was deep frying something on the stove (same neighbor once fired up a BBQ – in the house). Nor do I have a bookie pulling up in front of my house at seven in the morning, every day, yelling ‘Mario, where’s my money, Mario,’ anymore.
Haven’t had a roach or a mouse randomly turn up in the house for nearly 40 months, either. That’s a record for this ex-New Yorker.
Yeah, there’s a lot of things I don’t miss…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That one is a beauty, I tell’s ya. Turns out it’s all kinds of historic.
According to Google AI:
The cottages located at the intersection of Resaca Place and Eloise Street (formerly known as Civil Alley) in the Mexican War Streets Historic District are classic examples of the neighborhood’s mid-to-late 19th-century architecture.
- Architectural Features Scale and Material: Most homes in this area are approximately 20 feet wide and two stories high, constructed primarily of brick, though some rare wood-frame structures exist.
- Design Styles: The district showcases a mix of styles, predominantly Italianate and Second Empire, characterized by ornate woodwork, stone or marble fireplaces, and high ceilings.
- Independence: Unlike row houses in other cities that were built as unified blocks, these cottages were often constructed independently, leading to subtle variations in height and detail between neighbors.
- Neighborhood Context Historic Significance: The streets were named by William Robinson Jr. in 1847 to commemorate battles and generals of the Mexican-American War (e.g., Resaca de la Palma).
- Preservation: Saved from demolition in the 1970s by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, many of these cottages have been meticulously restored from a state of disrepair into “refined beauties”.
- Layout: The district is known for its walkable, tree-lined streets and narrow alleyways like Eloise Street, which often house smaller carriage houses or modest cottages originally intended for workers or as auxiliary structures.
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.
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All downhill, buddy boy
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Swindell Bridge to North Shore, part four.
Continuing with an interesting walk, from the Perry Hilltop section down to Pittsburgh’s North Shore along the Allegheny River. See last week’s posts for predicate and other details. This section of the walk was headed down Perrysville Avenue, towards the Federal Street Extension.
My ‘spidey sense’ for danger operates at historically acute levels these days, since I still cannot run due to the ongoing after effects of the orthopedic incident, but given that I was feeling happy and secure with zero worries – I decided to pop the headphones in to the ear holes for this section of the scuttle.
The weather had been uneven here, one day cold and the next hot.
This was a warm but breezy day, and I was wearing shorts with a cotton hoodie sweatshirt up top. A new camera bag that I’ve acquired is working out, although there’s a couple of modifications I need to make.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few weeks ago, frequent commenter George the Atheist asked if ‘all I do is walk around.’ My answer was no, but what I specifically write about here revolves around my long walks. If the question was ‘do I enjoy doing anything besides walking around thusly,’ my answer would be ‘no.
I’ve hit that stage of life where everything just sucks. Restaurant meal? We could have done better for less at home. I don’t want to sit in a movie theater, attend a live concert, or see a play. I’ve become incapable of playing along with a conversation I’m disinvested in. Particularly so if the topic revolves around some kind of sportsball competition. Patience is not something I do anymore. If you’re boring me, I’m out, and I’m easily bored.
I’m more interested in what Boeing or Raytheon is doing than I am in following news about professional athletes, or anything like that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was never a sports kid.
Played a few games with the kids on the block, but soon discovered that ‘I ain’t no athlete.’ Your humble narrator was always a comics and sci-fi nerd instead. Want to talk about Federation’s ‘First Contact’ protocols? How about the macro economics of the Star Wars Galaxy?
If you told twenty year old me what nearly sixty year old me gets up to, I wouldn’t have believed it. That long haired angry kid didn’t make many good decisions, and unfortunately neither does the gray haired and somewhat less angry old man that now wears the same but quite scarred up skinvelope. I like to think that what I get up to now is kind of fun.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This route had quite a few abandoned structures along the way, which were incontrovertibly sitting between occupied residential structures, ones that were obviously maintained with love and attention. So weird.
As mentioned during prior posts about Pittsburgh’s North Side, what I’m seeing here is aftermath. This ‘zone,’ I’m led to understand, used to be territory, fought over by local ‘entrepreneurs’ during the crack era.
Things are a lot quieter and safer up here than they used to be, I’m led to believe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a public housing project along this route, so maybe that’s why this area seems to host so many abandoned or shut-up homes due to the blighting effect of reputation. As a former New Yorker, the idea that a house or property could just sit there empty, less than a couple of miles from the center of the city… it’s madness.
For yet another Brooklyn analogy, this part of the street that I was scuttling down might be analogized as being a lot like Pittsburgh’s ‘Nostrand Avenue.’ It almost makes it to the ‘center,’ but not quite.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Federal Street Extension path becomes just plain ‘Federal Street’ where the ground begins to flatten out a bit.
My plan for the day involved breaking off this particular route, as Federal Street’s route ends in about a half mile – and then wandering for a bit – following my nose as it were.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 