Posts Tagged ‘photowalk’
Heading into town
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was time for my weekly ‘long walk,’ the sort which sees me scuttling along for 15-20,000 steps over several hours. I don’t wear a Fitbit or anything like that to keep track of my walks, rather I just check the iPhone health app and see what it says after I return to HQ. It’s not a terribly accurate count, but some sort of metric is better than nothing at all, and it really doesn’t matter all that much in the end anyway.
Pictured is a street in the town I’m living in, Dormont. The car Mobile Oppression Platform was left at home this time around, and a humble narrator was heading for the Pittsburgh light rail service known as “The T.” It’s a bit of a drag, I’d mention, getting ‘up’ to the tracks, as I live way down at the bottom of that hill pictured above. There’s a less severe hill to walk up which gets you to the high ground ridge line which the T tracks are on, but that’s Pittsburgh for ya. Also, the point of this exercise is actually ‘exercise,’ so… scuttle, scuttle, scuttle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Service on the T is fairly frequent, more so during the ‘rush’ periods as you’d imagine, but you’re seldom waiting more than 20-25 minutes for your ride. This one is coming from Pittsburgh, whereas I was waiting on one that’s going ‘to.’ One weird thing about their setup here revolves around fare collection. You pay when you board the Pittsburgh bound service, and pay when you’re exiting for the away from Pittsburgh route. Apparently, there’s a zone system built into the operation, but Dormont is far enough from the center that you pay full fare anyway. Once you’re in the actual center of town, the service runs free between Station Square and the North Side terminal stops.
As a note, the sky in Pittsburgh was positively boiling and cascading about on this particular day. I have been putting a bit of effort into finding the right photographic exposure settings for capturing the dynamism of these Pittsburgh sky in recent months.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The climate is very different here than the one I’ve always known back in NYC. It could be 90 degrees with an 80 percent dew point at 3 in the afternoon, but 8 hours later it’s 60 degrees with a 30 percent dew point. The clouds positively boil over sometimes, after churning about, and when they finish dumping out moisture for an hour you’ll suddenly get glorious blue skies, golden light, and cotton ball cloud formations. An hour later and the sky is black with thunderstorms. Also, there’s actual forest cover laced into the City, meaning that the ‘urban heat island effect’ doesn’t seem to be as big a factor here as it was ‘back in the old neighborhood.’
At any rate, my carriage had arrived, and it was time to get onboard and head into the City of Pittsburgh. Here’s a bit of trivia – when you see blue street signs with white/knock out lettering, you’re in Pittsburgh – as in ‘The City of…’
Back tomorrow, 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.
Move, move, move
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lots and lots of tasks needed tending, doctors appointments and other boring mundanities. This has seen me driving around greater Pittsburgh a lot and occasionally sticking the camera through the car’s moon roof when I’m waiting at red lights. I cannot wait for the inevitable day that I have to explain this to a cop at a traffic stop. That’s Downtown Pittsburgh pictured above.
I think this was from the first weekend in June. We experienced a couple of really disconcerting things during this interval. My next door neighbor’s house had a structural fire break out, for instance, which I had a front row seat for. 5 engine companies showed up to put it out. Other insalubrious stuff has happened too, but that’s life in the not so big City, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another errand of mine involved bringing the Mobile Oppression Platform into the local Toyota dealership for its 5,000 mile servicing dealie. They rotate the tires and measure the various juices, and plug in a diagnostic device to run some kind of software checks on the various systems under the hood. Warranty maintenance stuff, basically, which is something I need to contractually oblige. It took about 90 minutes and then I was out.
While cooling my heels for the hour and a half, the verticality of the opposite side of the street caught my eye. I think that house is in Beechview, but I’m kind of guessing. I gotta say, if I owned a property here with a yard that had a slope like that, I’d pay whatever I had to for some landscape terracing. Flat areas. Then again, if I do end up owning property at some point, my first priority will be planning and building the boobie traps and kill alleys. That means I’m going to have a long conversation with the Postal and Amazon guys, of course. I’m also going to want to own the mineral rights of the under lands. Coal, yo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above, in the Pittsburgh Borough of Dormont where HQ can be found, is about how bad the Canadian wildfire smoke got for us. It wasn’t anything like what y’all on the East Coast experienced.
!!! HEY, THAT’S THE FIRST TIME I’VE GOTTEN TO SAY THAT! A disaster happened in NYC and I wasn’t in the middle of it! WOW.
Really… Get out while you still can.
“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.
Getting there
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, my buddy was doing an appearance at a comic convention in Downtown Pittsburgh. He’s a bit of a star, and the convention organizers put him up in a hotel for the show. The shot above is the view from a hotel room window on its twenty something’s floor.
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself joined him and his spouse for dinner and drinks, leaving the car back home in Dormont so that a humble narrator could imbibe. We took the T Light Rail into town, and called for a cab afterwards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s been a while since someone else was doing the driving for me here in Pittsburgh, so I took the opportunity of being in a ride share LYFT car to shoot pix out of the open window on our way home afterwards. The sun sets a bit later hereabouts than it did back home. It’s weird seeing it light out at 9 p.m., but there you go.
I’m absolutely fascinated by the web of off and on ramps here in Pittsburgh, which had been mentioned in the past. All of those curvilinear massing shapes…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One realizes that he’s likely the only person on earth who sees a high speed road and says ‘ooh, look at them parabolas,’ but that’s me. I’m like the Kiwi – a fuzzy little fruit with a lot of personality and quirks.
As always, 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.
Convention Center fountains
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A buddy of mine is a very successful comic book artist, and he was in Pittsburgh recently as one of the invited ‘marquis name’ guests at a Comic Convention which was held at the Pittsburgh Convention Center which is found in the downtown area.
I’ve mentioned the convention center in the past as being an interesting bit of architecture, and even noted the tunnel that sits in the middle of its two halls which allows public egress to the Allegheny River and the bike and pedestrian trail found along its banks. Saying that, I had never seen what it looked like when they turned on the fountains at the Convention Center. Wow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The water cascades down out of some recessed area, and there’s lighting which cycles through a few different colors, and which is positively nice. I couldn’t help but snap out a few shots, and make a mental note to come back here sometime soon with the whole kit to gather some artsy fartsy filter shots of the thing.
This was really neat. On either side of the tunnel, up on the level which I was standing on, there’s pick up and drop off lanes for automobile traffic, and foot bridges across the tunnel for pedestrians to get from one side of the facility to the other. Neat!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unlike the Javitz center in NYC, where Andrew Cuomo established a mass casualty hospital ward during COVID, the convention center here in Pittsburgh is a functional entity and is popularly attended. A can of Coca Cola does not cost $7 within it. It’s also not a glass island found in a ragged no man’s land at the edge of the City far from transit.
It’s got pretty fountains, too.
“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.
All wet on the Ohio River, part 1
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself attended another rainy day boat tour recently, one which proceeded down the Ohio River. It was teeming, unfortunately, but that’s the gamble you make when you buy a boat ticket in advance of the date. This one was offered by the Doors Open Pittsburgh outfit. It proceeded from a dock on the Monongahela River and headed over to the Ohio River, where a circumnavigation of one of the largish islands found in Pittsburgh was accomplished.
We’ve experienced a weird couple of weeks in Pittsburgh. Our next door neighbors suffered a pretty involved house fire, one which saw a massive response by local firefighters who saved the building but not before some pretty major damage occurred. This really freaked us out, I should mention. Horrible stuff. Nobody got hurt, thankfully, but seeing somebody’s entire life go up in smoke was a pretty awful and unsettling experience. In a separate storyline, we got an up close look at the Opioid Epidemic in this region which was… it was wild.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the boat we were riding on, there were a small and soggy band of camera wielders which I soon found myself a part of. We were all compressed into a spot which offered some shelter from the rain. It was difficult to keep the lens clean, but there you go.
From what I could discern of the narration, over the sound of the rain itself hitting the river, the facility pictured above is some sort of wastewater plant.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the more intriguing places here on the Ohio River is called Brunot’s Island. It’s private property, and owned by an electrical transmission outfit, and thereby unavailable to public inspection. There used to be an automobile racetrack there, I’m told. I’m also informed that bird watchers and nature enthusiasts will sometimes kayak to and landfall/trespass on its privately owned shorelines during the summer months.
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 