Posts Tagged ‘photowalk’
Golden crossing
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described last week, a humble narrator was taking one of those regular but quite existential ‘long walks,’ here in Pittsburgh. The scuttling motions were not following any particular design or desire, nor was there an esoteric photographic subject which my steps were chasing toward. Rather, one was simply wandering about, in the manner of a mendicant, clothed in black sack cloth.
The car was back at HQ, and I had taken mass transit (The T Streetcar service) to the northern shore of the Allegheny River. Pictured above are two of the ‘Three Sisters’ bridges spanning the waterway in this section, as captured from the ‘Three Rivers Heritage Trail.’
I don’t remember exactly, but I think the bridge pictured above is the one named for Roberto Clemente, an athlete who was beloved by the masses of this city. The span is also known as the Sixth street bridge, if I’m right about which one it is.
They all look alike, this triad, hence ‘three sisters.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m fairly sure that this shot was gathered on the Rachel Carson (author of Silent Spring) or Ninth Street Bridge, which I crossed the river upon, from the ‘North Side’ to ‘Downtown.’ Nothing really matters, however, and nobody really cares.
Longtime readers of Newtown Pentacle will remind the newer victims that a humble narrator often gets a bit morose around this time of year – it’s the cold and the dark and the paucity of opportune moments, and most of all – serendipity – which puts me into a mood.
Not anyone’s problem but mine, though, and I always end up finding something ridiculous or interesting to do, the novelty of which blows away the shroud of winter cobwebs, and lights those shadowed places wherein I dwell in garish fashion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The curative to the sort of mood I’m experiencing is discipline based, for one such as myself.
Got to get out, keep on walking, shooting and ‘experiencing.’ A big part of my recent somnambularity has been weather and holiday related, but mostly it’s been Pittsburgh’s environment. We’re experiencing what the locals will often refer to as “the Gray.” Overcast, dark, cold, and wet. Bah.
The day I was taking this walk, on the other hand, offered a brief six or so hour spell of blue skies and a chance to absorb the radiates of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself, freely spilling down from the vault in unoccluded fashion, so I took advantage.
Back tomorrow.
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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.
Scuttle, rinse, repeat
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another of my ‘long walk days’ arrived, and for this one I was feeling a hankering for pointing the lens at downtown Pittsburgh’s North Side.
Up the hill one scuttled, and to the T streetcar station did one shamble.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pittsburgh’s buses come in different colors, but I cannot describe the logic behind the polychrome, as my ignorance on the subject hasn’t been punctured.
There’s a pretty extensive network of bus routes hereabouts, a municipal service which I haven’t taken advantage of yet. The unit above was sitting idle nearby the terminal stop on the T.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As always, I followed the direction my toes happened to be pointing towards, and found myself in front of Heinz Acrisure Stadium where the Steelers carry the hopes and dreams of millions upon their broad backs.
I was traveling light on this walk, with a bag full of prime lenses rather than zooms.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The stadium abuts the Three River Heritage Trail, which follows the Allegheny River, and that’s where I was heading.
This time around, my headphones were in and I was listening to an audio adaption of Stephen King’s ‘Children of the Corn.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the trail, the river, and the downtown section of the city of Pittsburgh pictured above. The Mr. Rogers memorial is on the left.
People ask: Why Pittsburgh?
Answer: this Brooklyn kid always wanted to live in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood. Won’t you be my neighbor, you effin icehole?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The trail proceeds up the Allegheny River, away from its end at the confluence of the Three Rivers, and that’s the Fort Duquesne Bridge pictured above.
More next week…
“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.
Salisbury Viaduct
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator crossed the Mason Dixon line again recently, and just shy of the famous borderline between America’s ‘North and South,’ a visit was paid to the Salisbury Viaduct in Pennsylvania’s Somerset County, nearby the Commonwealth’s border with Maryland.
Part of the Great Allegheny Passage trail in modernity, this structure was built by the Western Maryland Railroad and opened to rail traffic in 1912. Abandoned in 1975 by the rail people, it was rehabbed into a bike and pedestrian ‘rail to trail’ which opened for inspection in 1998.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had a photographer buddy along with me on this particular day. We had delayed our original plans for this road trip to Maryland by a day, because of a precipitous drop in atmospheric temperature and a concurrent series of storms that manifested as the cold front moved in.
When we piled into the Mobile Oppression Platform (The MOP, aka my, my, my Toyota) back in Pittsburgh the next morning, it was 11 degrees outside.
It had warmed up a bit by the time we arrived at Salisbury Viaduct, about 22 degrees according the MOP’s dashboard display. I was wearing two fleece sweatshirts up top, but had neglected to put on thermal underwear leggings for the roadway interface section of the physical plant.
Told you that I’m an idiot in the mornings, and I should have laid them out the night before as a prophylaxis against my stupidity but there we are. My legs were quite chilly, thereby, but once we started walking…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s pretty rural in this zone, which – I’m told – is the Casselman River Valley. Dairy farms, agricultural fields, highways. That’s the service road of US 219 pictured above, with the main road riding on top of those ramps at top left. It’s right here, if you’re curious or want to take a look around on Google Maps or something. Before you say it, I’ve been to the middle of nowhere – which is in Northern Arizona – and this ain’t it.
We were on our way to other locales, but one such as myself is always drawn to these sorts of places. It’s a liminal space! It’s also 101 feet off the ground, so ‘view.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, a CSX freight train was heading… north?… while I was still within throwing distance of the tracks. Recently, another friend (who is coincidentally the Brother of the guy I was hanging out with on this day), told me that I’ve become a railfan.
My answer to that one was that I no longer have tugboats. What do you all say? Have I transcended to a higher level of nerdom? Too much with the train stuff?
To be honest, I enjoy the challenge of shooting something that’s the size of multiple blocks of houses and moving along at 35mph through less than ideal lighting conditions. T’aint all that easy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We proceeded to walk the 1,908 foot span of the Salisbury Viaduct. My friend got busy with his camera in an old grave yard on the other side, whereas I became transfixed by a small dairy farm and what Our Lady of the Pentacle might call ‘Moo Cows.’
We had other places to get to on this day trip and a quick half mile walk back to the MOP, in the crisp winter air, was enacted.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This spot is 115 miles from Pittsburgh, and 218 miles from Washington D.C. It kisses up against the Western Panhandle of Maryland, at its border with West Virginia. It was also very, very chilly.
Tomorrow, the Mason Dixon is crossed, and Western Maryland visited.
“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.
Flats to Hills
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Today’s post is a short one, offering a few shots gathered while walking from the Birmingham Bridge to a T streetcar station found on the south side of the Monongahela River, here in Pittsburgh.
There’s a bunch of really interesting, and disturbingly heterogeneous, housing stock found in the South Side Flats area. Looks to be late 19th, early 20th to me, and are mainly ‘workers cottages.’ This neighborhood used the Philadelphia style of planning for its layout – short blocks with narrow streets and sidewalks and populated by humble row houses.
I was intrigued by the fire escape on this particular home, for some reason.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along my path, several sets of those ‘City Steps’ were bypassed. An accommodation for Pittsburgh’s crazy terrain, these things are everywhere you look. I plan on doing some exploring of this infrastructure in the coming year.
A humble narrator made it to the station just as a ‘T’ Red Line streetcar was arriving, and I quickly boarded it for the five or so mile ride back to home. A random thought invaded, and I rode past my stop to the neighboring community of Mount Lebanon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a bar nearby this stop which unfailingly offers Guinness beer on tap. Ubiquitous in NYC, Guinness was always my choice of poison, and I miss being able to count on its presence in the saloons of Queens and Brooklyn. It was time for a pint, and a quick text to home summoned Our Lady of the Pentacle from her domestic comfort to join.
As the poet O’Shea Jackson would say – I gotta say it was a good day.
“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.
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
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 