Posts Tagged ‘Pickman’
Squeaky wheel
Thurs
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few random shots from the end of a satisfying scuttle. I swear, the working guys have no idea how esthetically pleasing I find these sorts of arrangements they leave behind. They’re artists, and don’t even know it.
I was moving through the area surrounding Allegheny Commons Park, which has a trench running through it for the railroads.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Norfolk Southern #1832 came through, heading north/west. It was hauling short blue cargo boxes, of the type which sewer solids are shipped within. Likely heading towards the sewer plant nearby the McKees Rocks Bridge, or Ohio. A lot of things nobody else wants end up in Ohio. I’ve been there, and really – they pretty much sent their best to Washington in Vance.
Stay out of Ohio, you’re not ready for what you might see there.
Regardless, one haughtily scuttled on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This truck caught my eye. I was intrigued by those Doberman silhouettes silk screened on the thing. Also, that’s one crazy truck, yo.
My steps carried me into the ‘ceremonial center’ section of the Coty of Pittsburgh, where the Stadiums are found, and where there’s coincidental opportunities to board the T light rail service and ‘get out of dodge.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See that mound on the right side of the shot? Coal mine’s historical entrance, as it turns out.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, this coal thing suddenly brings everything into a place where it makes sense. I’m not ‘smart enough’ to really delve into the topic here yet, but I’ve started reading up on the Pittsburgh Coal Company Trust, and others.
Heck of a story there. Eventually, I’ll know enough of it to point y’all at primary sources on the subject.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T station came into sight, just as one of the light rail units rose out of the tunnel that it travels under downtown within, and climbed up the truss to the terminal stop opposite Acrisure Stadium.
Most of the Yinzers I meet ‘poo-poo’ the T, but I ride it all the time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My chariot arrived, and as soon as those doors opened, I was ensconced in a seat. This was about a six or seven mile walk, all told. I had a nice time, and nobody threw any rotting fruit at me, for a change.
Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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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.
Sunday Street Steps
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post visits the ‘Sunday Street’ City Steps in Pittsburgh’s California Kirkbride section, which were installed here in 1946.
The section of ‘sidewalk steps’ on the intersecting Maravista Street (which was described yesterday) offers pedestrians some 54 ‘sidewalk’ or ramp style steps, whereas the Sunday Street section offers a longer course of 90 steps whose proportions are more in tune with common stairs.
When I’m planning out a scuttle, I like to have a ‘goal’ location somewhere along the course. This one was met early in my day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an amazingly well preserved and kept Victorian era home on the corner of Sunday and Maravista. I was torn by my personal prohibition against taking pictures focused in on people’s houses – as that’s creepy – and my absolute need to get this building in frame for the next few shots as it’s gorgeous.
Fantastic, that. I’m jealous.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One set of steps continues down from Maravista Street to the flatlands of the neighborhood below, and both it and the Sunday Street steps branch off from the common intersection.
I spun around to the right, and got on with things.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Again, not in great shape, these steps but neither am I, so fair.
Same concrete issues as elsewhere, also same bannister problems, but other than a few spots where you wanted to be fairly careful as far as where you stepped down… they’re in passable shape. Won’t win any good government awards, but also not ‘hazardous to human life.’
One proceeded along, with the stair based PTSD singing in my head. Luckily, that Big Special music I was listening to drowned out most of my invasive thoughts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the bottom of the stairs, which were fairly steep – in retrospect.
‘Steep’ has an entirely different meaning in Pittsburgh than anywhere else except – possibly – all of Scotland. Coincidentally, back in the ancient time before the bacteria which rots vegetatation had evolved, Appalachia and Scotland were part of the same forested and moist land mass.
Plate tectonics, yo, it affects us all. The bacteria? Well, there’s a reason that Coal and Oil are found deep underground. Rotting bogs and forests and dead oceans lie down there, and that’s where we draw our petrochemical happiness from.
My recent fascination with coal has led me to read some geological ‘stuff’ which clued me in about the ‘Pittsburgh Coal Seam.’
They didn’t teach this in high school history class back in Brooklyn. At Newtown Creek I learned all about the maritime, sewage, rendering, acid manufacturing, waste handling, swill milk, oil, and gas businesses there. I’m learning about all this coal stuff now.
The history of the Appalachia’s is the history of life, and death, itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ok, goal hit, I got this particular shot which I wanted. It’s sort of a ‘known composition’ as in a lot of people take a photo from somewhere nearby. It’s on the cover of a book, but that’s a far better shot than mine. That photographer either got super lucky, or they had observed the scene in different seasons during different times of day.
Now it was time to wander again, somewhat aimlessly.
My plan for the remains of the day was to eventually get back to a T light rail station, and I intended to get there inefficiently. Wander about, follow my nose, hope for serendipity to strike.
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.
California dreaming, kirkbride scuttling
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As opined yesterday, your humble narrator was feeling pretty good on this particular outing. The weather was on my side… if anything it was too ‘nice’ out… clear and bright.
I was scuttling along, in a loathsome manner, alongside the colossal masonry retaining walls of the Union Dale Cemetery in Pittsburgh’s California Kirkbride section. All caught up.
The structure and ‘halo’ of the high speed roads leading to and from Downtown Pittsburgh are such that entire neighborhoods have been overlooked or forgotten. This is one of the several ‘north side’ neighborhoods which you drive past, at speed, on your way to somewhere else. Expressways, highways, interstates – all have limited exits and lead to extant locales. Money once spent in the city will instead be spent in a distant suburb. The area surrounding the roads loses value, due to pollution and noise.
As seen across the world, when an urban area touches the start of a high speed road, it tends to wither away over time. This observation will be a lot more apparent by the end of this walk, than it is at the start. NYC examples: Astoria Blvd. between 31 and 48th streets especially, but really the entirety of the Grand Central Parkway. Borden Avenue from the Queens Midtown Tunnel to Maspeth comes to mind, and there’s always the BQE, and Cross Bronx, and the Interboro and… and… and…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
‘That’s one heck of a school building,’ thought your humble narrator.
It turns out that it’s the Pittsburgh Oliver High School campus pictured above, and a quick web search suggests that this building is used as office space for the local school bureaucracy in modernity.
Shrinking population, less students, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The interim goal for my morning was to check out a nearby set of City Steps. Nothing quite as gargantuan as that last North Side set of stairs which I walked at Rising Main, mind you, but I’m working my way through a sort of list right now. It’s not actually written down, this list of mine, but there’s things I want to see and experience this year.
This was fairly easy walking by Pittsburgh standards. Hills, yes, but not crazy steep ones. No abysses, either.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I find the esthetics of the building stock here quite satisfying.
My path was a bit complicated – walk a block make a right, another and you make a left – that sort of thing. I’ve started a text document which I’m encoding all these directions into, so if anyone reading this is planning a trip to Pittsburgh or if you’re already here – if you want to check any of these places out for yourself, leave a comment below and I’ll send you the directions so you can go check things out.
It’s easy… you put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’re walking out the door…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Promises are offered that I won’t regularly be running shots of street signs here, but I’d also like to re-mention yesterday’s statement that I have finally found a practical usage for AI. If you want to know where you were on a walk, as in which neighborhood or whatever, providing the machine with the intersection info on signage solves the problem.
I’ll be talking about using AI to help plan an out of state day trip in a few weeks, and let me tell you – it was both disastrous and time wasting.
It’s like asking a blind man to describe what a parrot looks like, when an AI is considering answers to ‘meatspace’ questions. The technology is great at parsing numerical and spreadsheet information… but the real world is… not… it’s generally not as it’s described on paper.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Going to break off this week before getting to the first destination on this scutttle, which will continue next week when you get to see the Sunday Street Steps in Pittsburgh’s California Kirkbride.
Back next week with more – 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.
Mole Hills
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Historic research – which I’m definitely not doing – revealed something to me recently about the ‘zone’ that I’m dwelling within.
That zone is specifically called ‘Dormont,’ which is a small community, surrounded by much larger municipalities, in a larger region called ‘The South Hills.’ The ‘zone’ sits right at the edge of Pittsburgh’s official municipal border, and in the case of HQ, that border is literally across the street from me with differently colored street signs facing each other on the parallel corners.
OK – the ‘big neighbors’ next to Dormont are Beechview (which is part of Pittsburgh), Brookline (part of Pittsburgh), Mount Lebanon (its own thing), and Bethel Park (its own thing). Regionally, these communities are part of a larger area referred to as ‘The South Hills,’ which is geographically expansive.
Think the border of Queens and Nassau County, for the New Yorkers.
The shot above is from one of the crossroads, found along West Liberty Avenue (Route 19 Truck). The POV has me standing at the edge of Brookline, looking towards Beechview where the McDonalds is, with Dormont towards the left.
So – why was I standing here? What’s the deal? Did I go get a Big Mac?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Coal. It’s coal that brought me here. Coal is something I’m just starting to learn about, and it’s fascinating.
Check out this great page at Brooklineconnection.com, discussing the Oak Mine, which undermines this entire area. The location shown in the third shot on the linked page is where I was peregrinating about for the shots in today’s post. Other nearby mines were operating all the way up until the 1980’s, apparently, but this one is meant to have shut down in the early 20th.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One drove over to Brookline, parked the car, and then set out on foot to see if there was any observable remnant of the mine.
An enormous masonry structure, which appears to be a retaining wall, was jammed into the hillside. Closer inspection of the structure revealed that it was not a retaining wall, and that the large masonry blocks were stuck at least two deep into the hillside.
It seems that Brookline in particular was a central node for harvesting coal meant to serve the residential market, with estimates stating that 90-95% of the area is undermined.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As an aside, Brookline has a Flatbush Avenue within it, and a Queensboro Avenue, and there’s an Fordham Avenue there too. There’s only one true place on this planet, and the Brookline people kind of acknowledge that – despite replacing ‘lyn’ with ‘line.’ Ever read Roger Zelazny’s ‘The Chronicles of Amber’? It feels like that sometimes, to this Brooklyn Boy.
That building pictured above is a little chicken wing fry shack, but notice that its foundations don’t seem to match up with the brick building. Could this be where the first electronic vehicle scale, at the mine, in Pittsburgh was installed?
Ok… that’s obscure tech stuff… You’d drive your horse drawn wagon onto the scale, and the combination would be weighed. Then they’d fill your wagon with coal and weigh you again. The differential is what you owed the mine. Similar systems persist today, in the waste handling industry and for businesses that move rocks and soil around in trucks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot is from directly across the street, within the parking lot of that McDonalds from the first shot.
This coal revelation has explained so many things about Pittsburgh to me. Why do these vehicular streets – built out in the 1940’s or later – follow serpentine routes? High speed routes built for cars don’t do that.
Answer: there used to freight rail alongside of, and predating, these roads, and the roads followed the tracks.
Everything is starting to make sense now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All this coal business does raise a few new questions for me, which is cool, and it also revives an older one.
The oldest question, actually, and the only one that really matters…
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
“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.
North Side Pittsburgh w 2 Hey Now’s
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing today, with the last steps of a longish scuttle described in grueling detail in prior posts. Check out last week’s series for all that.
I was in the former ‘Allegheny City,’ annexed to Pittsburgh at the start of the 20th century. ‘North Side’ is how the modern day Yinzers refer to it. The Mexican War Street and Chateau historical districts are nearby.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The building stock here is disturbingly heterogeneous.
Wood frame private homes sitting next to five and six story tall brick apartment buildings are a common sight. This ‘zone’ survived rapacious levels of multiple decade long urban renewal projects occurring all around it, somehow.
I’m just now ‘getting smart’ about this ‘zone.’ Reading up on it, all that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey, that’s the hospital you see on HBO’s ‘The Pitt’ medical drama.
We’ve been watching the show, which feels a lot like a sequel to ‘ER.’
Here’s where they go wrong in portraying the Steel City: virtually none of the actors uses a Pittsburgh accent, except for the head nurse character (get aht the hawse, jag off, you need go), the patients don’t wander into the ER dressed head to toe in Steelers or Pirates gear, and nobody is sipping from small containers of the locally brewed sweet tea brand.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At Allegheny Commons Park, I took a different route than my normal one and walked past the lovely ‘Lake Elizabeth’ section. I was heading for that rail trench, which is smack dab in the middle of the park.
Of course, I suddenly needed to pee. I was asked recently whether or not my constant need to urinate is related to my enjoyment of local breweries. Sure, if you drink beer you need to piss, but as I had mentioned, it’s mainly a blood pressure pill which drives this dynamic for me these days. Not a drop of beer had passed my lips on this day, as it was also kind of early in the day to have a drink, to be honest. I often go two to three weeks without a drink, as a matter of fact, but I take that particular pill twice a day.
Luckily, Pittsburgh acknowledges human biology and there are Porta Potties installed around public places like this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My ‘all too human’ problem caused me to miss being stationed along that fenceline when Norfolk Southern passed by in the rail trench and I was just leaving the Porta Potty. Can’t catch them all.
I negotiated across the lawn, and got myself into position to capture the next one passing through.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, since I’ve been kind of seeing the Allegheny Valley Railroad a whole bunch in recent weeks, I’m going to have to stop referring to it as ‘the white whale.’ The term refers to something rarely seen, and I’ve been seeing them a lot. Saying that…
Hey Now!
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 