Posts Tagged ‘Polish Hill’
Get a lil bit lower now
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That building pictured above (the West Penn Recreation Center) looks incredibly ‘New Deal’ to me, but it was opened in 1922… saying that, I’ve seen contradicting information suggesting that the current incarnation of the structure was opened in 1939. Puzzling, but I don’t care enough to go on a deep dive about a building I’ve only walked past once.
One gets in trouble for usage of the phrase ‘I don’t care’ pretty often. When I utter those three little words, it means that I do not object nor want to get involved with whatever ‘mishegoss’ is being presented to me. It isn’t that I’m ignoring or dismissing something happening to others, it’s just that if I don’t have skin in whatever game it is, being neutral is better than having an opinion.
For instance: Back on Madison Avenue in NYC, I’d be sweating some urgent deadline while some Art Director would be vacillating over adding 3% magenta ink, or not, into a red color, and then they’d say ‘what do you think?’ My answer was ‘I don’t care, and you don’t actually care what I think, so just make a decision.’
I was a soldier, not an officer, in the salt mines of advertising.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not caring is hard to do, but it allows you to look at things clinically. You can see people and things for what they are rather than what you want them to be. I’ve got lots of opinions (probably why I started a blog, n’at), but as I’m wont to remind: ‘Nothing Matters, and Nobody Cares.’
I used to care a lot, but life beat that facility out of me. The only time I intervene in anything these days is when I see someone is about to get hurt. It means acting more like Spock and less like Kirk. It has taken me decades to reach this level of emotional numbness.
Things got a little complicated on the walking path leading away from Polish Hill, as I was heading down a medium steep street and had to modulate the speed that I was walking. Unfortunately, I had to scuttle down the sunny side of the street, in order to be where I’d want to be at the bottom of this hill.
That’s where my advance scouting comes in handy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was heading for the 28th street Bridge, which is a small steel truss that overflies a set of rail tracks, and one of the busways, that snake through Pittsburgh. I wanted to be on both sides of the road at the same time here, but I have to keep on reminding myself about the limitations introduced by the gamey ankle. I still can’t run, for instance. My movements are cautious, and slow.
Walking ‘fast’ is still a bit of a challenge, but walking speed has improved over the last couple of months by about a half mile per hour.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the 28th street Bridge. It’s a fairly unremarkable structure, but it overflies both heavy rail tracks and a busway, and the redoubtable historicbridges.org offers this page describing its specifics.
I keep on saying that I haven’t ridden a bus in Pittsburgh, which isn’t entirely true. I have ridden on a shuttle bus, one which the T light Rail people were running during a spate of construction. What I haven’t done, and what I mean by the statement, is that I haven’t ridden a bus that travels on one of the busways. These are private roads which snake around Pittsburgh, open only to municipal vehicles and mass transit.
Interesting, no? I don’t care.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There ain’t nothing a cop loves more than having their picture taken by a member of the public, and as a Pittsburg PD car was transiting the bridge and it popped into view just as I was cracking out a shot. They didn’t stop, but I got the hairy eyeball while they drove past.
Actually, I can’t wait to sit down next to a local cop at a watering hole somewhere, as I have so many questions. Multiple NYPD officers over the years expanded my POV’s about NYC, and helped me understand the way that the City actually functions. You gotta take cop talk with a grain of salt though. Just like when you’re talking to strippers.
Strippers won’t advance a positive view of males, as they see only men at their absolute yuckiest, everyday at work. Cops live in a similar space, as they experience the citizenry only at their absolute worst, all day and every day. Basically, cops and strippers don’t have a great opinion of the human infestation in general.
On a positive note: Globally, estimates state that there are 833 puppies born every single minute of the day. That’s 1.2 million puppies a day, and 36.48 million new puppies come online every month. I prefer to think about that. Go adopt a dog.
Still, if you want to know when – exactly – you should be driving with your headlights according to statute… a cop will always a better person to ask than a stripper. A dog can’t help you here, however.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s one of the busways pictured above, with a 28X Airport Flyer navigating it. They use ‘road buses’ in the Pittsburgh area.
The rail tracks in the shot are shared with Amtrak by the Norfolk Southern freight outfit. Same set of tracks that lead off of the Fort Wayne Rail Bridge, and over the Allegheny River, which curl through the Amtrak/former Pennsylvania Rail Road station. Now I know where to stand at 5:30 in the morning, or 11:30 at night, while waiting to photograph one of the two Amtrak train sets which move through and past the former HQ of the Pennsylvania Rail Road.
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.
Polish Hill, please
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There has been a single post about a visit to Polish Hill during the interval that I’ve dwelt within Pittsburgh, which can be accessed here.
Despite my vow in that post to get inside of and photograph the Immaculate Heart of Mary RC Church, I have not done so yet. Ready your darts for hurling, as I have not done what I said I would do.
For those of you who don’t know me in real life, you should know that the mantra of ‘do what you say, say what you do’ is one of my core mottos.
I’ll get it going eventually… that ‘Sacred Spaces’ project of mine is likely going to kick into gear as we slide into winter, I think. Churches require a bit of social networking to get access to. I’ve been busy with suffering from the ankle dealie, so haven’t been social at all.
God’s lonely man, that’s me at the moment.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Leaving Bigelow Boulevard for the local street grid on Polish Hill, one soon found himself walking down a steeply graded street.
My routes are still being cherry picked for down hill slopes. This is part of the recovery process from the busted ankle, as these steep slopes allow me to specifically ‘stretch and strengthen’ the muscle groups which atrophied during the ‘sit around and wait’ part of this experience.
See that… an existential crisis has now transmogrified in my mind to being ‘an experience.’ It’s now just ‘something that happened to me,’ but saying that, I’m not going to print up t-shirts and start a nonprofit to advocate for ‘ankle safe spaces.’ Nor will I deride people who aren’t ‘ankle aware.’
Man oh man, do I hate the way that the future has turned out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our living future is just so pedantic, and seems to mirror the plot line of the movie ‘Robocop 3.’ Are there moving sidewalks? Only in airports. Jet packs? Nope. Space bases? Pfah.
We did get cryptofascism, pocket computers, government surveillance, and all that though… Bah!
That’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary RC Church pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another set of City Steps were encountered, but I was still pretty determined not to stray from my course.
Famously, I like to plot out my paths using Google Maps in advance of a walk. There’s lots of dead end streets and cul de sac neighborhoods here in Pittsburgh, and coupled with the steepness of the streets… you don’t necessarily want to find yourself having to walk back out of a dead end street that’s set into a twenty degree grade.
I don’t use the Google app ‘in the field’ all that much, I just like to plan out a route which gets resolved while I’m walking it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an abandoned catholic school alongside the church, and those city steps, above. Clearly, if any building is going to be haunted, it’s this one.
I’ve read that the RC Church here in Pittsburgh is anxious to disburse itself of real estate holdings left over from when the City’s population was double or triple its current size, during the era of steel.
There’s actual church buildings and all sorts of scholastic and medical buildings available. One of the stop gaps for the real estate people, surrounding these properties, is that the RC church wants top dollar for the real estate and they insist on ‘covenants’ governing what can be done with some parts of the land once it changes hands. You’ve also got ‘historic district’ limitations on a lot of their stock, so… it’s complicated.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Seriously: haunted looking, ain’t it?
One continued on with kicking the dirt, and following his downhill spiral.
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.
a church on Polish Hill
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the 28th of December, one had an errand to run. It’s seems that the ubiquitous ATM machines of a certain NYC based bank which my accounts are with are not so commonly found here in Pittsburgh. That meant that in order to avoid paying a fee when withdrawing some cash, I needed to drive for a bit in order to do so. I will crawl through broken glass to avoid paying ATM fees, as a note. That’s how I ended up in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, nearby the campus of the University of Pittsburgh or “PITT.”
That’s the literal crowning glory of their campus, called the “Cathedral of Learning.” I know very little about it, but the Wikipedia link attached to the name can explain it all to you, lords and ladies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Since I was sort of in the neighborhood, I satisfied my curiosity regarding an impressive religious building that I had spotted from the flatlands of the Strip District on prior outings to this area.
That’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, a 1905 structure that hosts a presumptively Polish Roman Catholic congregation. The prominence it is set onto is called Polish Hill.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing I can report, after my very limited experience here in the Pittsburgh area, is that the neighbors are quite friendly. Several times have I been approached while taking pictures of this or that, expecting the old refrain of “what are you doing, or you can’t do that, or are you in Al Qaeda” that I’ve often encountered. Instead, there’s a real pride in the neighborhood bubbling out of the locals, as in the case of an older gentleman who walked over to me while I was cracking out a few exposures. Before ten minutes rolled by, he told me his whole life’s story before he had to skedaddle off to meet a girlfriend. Dude had to be 80. You go, son, you go!
Most of the chats have been the usual ones – they have a camera that they don’t know how to use and do I know what it’s worth – that sort of thing. The second I open my mouth to speak, and they hear the accent, they’ll ask “where are you from.” When I tell them I just moved to Pittsburgh from New York, they look at me all puzzled and say “Why?”
This has happened several times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One circled around the church in the automobile, easily finding spots to park in when an interesting point of view appeared. This one is looking north towards the Allegheny River from up on Polish Hill.
A lot of my time at the moment is being spent trying to a) finish the moving process and get established here, and b) learn the jigsaw puzzle of the neighborhoods and roads which form Allegheny County.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an abandoned looking parochial school just up the hill from Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is one of the very few places I’ve seen graffiti. I don’t know if it’s municipal will or civic pride, but I find it striking how little of that sort of thing I’m seeing. Maybe it’s just how over the top NYC is with graffiti. I’m not talking about the nice “street art” murals kind of graffiti, mind you, I’m talking about “punks” “tagging” stuff.
It’s been very interesting living in a place where the government doesn’t seek to “monetize” you quite as much as the NYC one does. Robot cameras aren’t sitting on the traffic lights, there’s abundant free or fairly cheap parking for motor vehicles, especially so nearby mass transit centers, and when you need to go somewhere only a few miles away you can do so without passing through a crucible of purposely induced traffic jams. You can also go from one section of the metroplex to another without having to shell out an hour’s wages in tolls.
Again, it ain’t necessarily sunshine and handjobs out here, but it’s nice not having an army of professional assholes thinking up new ways to get the buckaroos out of your pocket so they can fund some numbnut’s political ambitions.
Say… how’s d’at fer da most Brooklynz t’ing I’s said inna last few weekz?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I really, really want to get inside this building. I’m positive that I’ll figure out a way to do so, and my desire to photograph whatever glories it contains should be obvious to longtime readers. I like photographing Catholic Churches (Greek ones too!). This is, of course, something I’m going to figure out a way to social engineer some official permission for. I’ve never been one of those guys who walks into a church and just starts shooting without asking. That’s rude.
I mean, I’ve done it, but it was rude. Like I said, this part of the country has manners, and is polite. They also don’t curse as much, if you can ‘effin believe that.
“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 