Posts Tagged ‘Smithfield Street Bridge’
Trailing behind
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular scuttle in Pittsburgh had a simple premise, which was to ‘keep moving.’ The current medical phase of my broken ankle related drama involves ‘stretching and strengthening,’ which basically boils down to a bunch of roadwork. If I was like everybody else, I’d find an athletic field and walk the track (there’s plenty of that sort of thing around these sports happy parts), but I’m an odd duck and easily bored so my interpretation of the Doctor’s mandate to ‘use it’ is instead to walk a different kind of track. Railroad tracks, that is.
After riding the T light rail into the metro core of Pittsburgh, from HQ in the Boro of Dormont, one navigated over to one of the trails which garland the three rivers’ waterfront. I was moving through the Monongahela River coast, on the south side of the so called ‘Golden Triangle,’ and that green painted area in the shots below and above indicates the pathway which this particular trail follows.
This is a fairly ‘complicated’ spot, with an interstate’s off ramps feeding into local traffic. You really want to use the walk/don’t walk buttons on the lamp posts when executing a crossing in this zone.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the path, centered between those ‘do not enter’ signs. Given that I’m moving pretty slow these days, and running really isn’t an option, I waited for that red hand symbol on the light to turn into a white walking person icon before stepping off the curb.
It’s ironic, given how much Pittsburgh uses its waterfront for recreation and all that in modernity, that the city is stuck with a (literally) Robert Moses spawned highway design that was rammed in through its downtown and which completely blocked public access to the waterfronts back during the 1930’s and 40’s. Of course, there were steel mills and rail yards in this area until quite recently, and the waterfronts were engaged in commercial activity.
Modernity always presents a false picture of the past. It must have made sense at the time, but a lot of these decisions our grandparents made look awful from the perspective of the tyranny of now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If anyone cared what I had anything to say about it, they’d deck over the highway and create new land for more productive usages than a high speed traffic trench, which is given to flooding during spring spurges of water on the rivers. I suggested this to several of the feudal lords back in Queens, regarding the Grand Central Parkway back in Astoria. Yeah, it would be expensive, but more so than exposing children to a residential exposure to all of that automotive exhaust? What about storm water? Decking a highway and installing a sponge park on the deck plates? Something? Anything? No? Let’s stay with the car canyon instead, and worry about affordable housing which nobody can afford.
At any rate, I wasn’t ’urban planning’ on this walk, I was just trying to maintain a steady walking pace and avoid having to sit down too often. That’s my deal at the moment, along with telling friends that I can’t walk terribly fast and that they should just move at their own pace, I’ll eventually catch up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s where I executed a left, at the Smithfield Street Bridge over the Monongahela River. In the background, you can see one of the two inclines operating, the ‘yellow one’ as I refer to it. After crossing onto the bridge, I heard a train horn sounding off to the west and tried to get myself into a fortuitous spot to capture a shot of the thing.
As mentioned above, running isn’t really an option for me right now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX #7215 was heading south east along the Pittsburgh Subdivision trackage. Like ornithology, it seems that everytime I try to say what kind of a train is I get it wrong, so in accordance with my ‘birds workaround,’ that’s a General Motors rocket sled which is powered by sixty angry kangaroos which are chained to extremely uncomfortable bicycles within. Cruel, but efficient, the rocket sled is.
I made an effort to find out what actual reality #7215 exists in, but for some reason the internet blew a gasket and all that Google wants to tell me about it involves the legal status of the CSX rail cops. I’ve learned a lot about the world of rail from watching ‘Hobo YouTube,’ and one of the bits of wisdom offered by the traveling folks involves total avoidance of the rail cops and at all costs. They’re not nice like regular cops.
Since you likely know what ‘regular’ on duty cops are like, with their complete lack of a sense of humor, imagine that cranked up to level 10. Rail cops.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, a T light rail appeared over the active CSX tracks. I like it whenever I can capture multiple trains in a single shot, especially so when they’re both moving.
Back tomorrow with lotsa Choo-Choo.
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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.
‘Can’t’ can’t be in my vocabulary
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This walk which I was attempting wasn’t terribly ambitious, it was more about repeating a few of the steps which had proved painful and burdensome just a couple of weeks prior, and played out over just a few miles. It’s going to take a few minutes for me to get back to proper shape and form.
After riding the T light rail to the center of all things Pittsburgh, a short walk over the Monongahela River via the Smithfield Street Bridge was on order. The T kept on popping up all afternoon, and it was incumbent on me to accept that I had to keep on photographing it every time it passed by.
The weather situation has improved somewhat, but it’s still damned cold here. We haven’t seen meaningful snow in a bit, but you can smell it on the wind. This cold winter isn’t over yet.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After crossing the river, my plan was to hang a left and look for some freight trains that I might be able to photograph. A new purchase has been made, and I’ve got one of those radio scanner things now. I have no real idea how to use it, but I was able to listen in to an approaching Norfolk Southern train for a minute. Really have to read the instruction manual again, me.
Happy to report that the ankle was functioning within normal parameters. Here’s the weird thing – it’s not really my good ‘ole ankle anymore due to the screws and hardware which were inserted during the surgery, or at least the joint is quite a bit different than it used to be. Not better, not worse, just different. Weird.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, each and every time I saw the T… this time one of their train sets was headed into the transit only tunnel which allows it to travel beneath Mount Washington.
This particular scuttle was instituted in response to a walk from a couple of weeks ago which caused no small amount of discomfort, which caused the thought ‘I can’t do this’ to intrude into my thoughts several times.
Nothing but nothing motivates your humble narrator more than hearing, even from himself, that he can’t do a thing. Back tomorrow.
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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.
An agonizing scuttle
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Y’know what? A broken ankle really hurts, even four months later when you’re officially ‘on the mend.’ After getting off of the ‘T’ Light Rail, which I had ridden into town here in Pittsburgh after attending a ‘PT’ or Physical Therapy appointment nearby The T’s last stop, the ankle was definitively not happy. A weird clicking sensation was occurring on downsteps, and the muscular atrophy in my hips and upper thighs, caused by sitting in a wheelchair for two months, made itself known.
I walked half way out onto the Smithfield Street Bridge, which I had intended to cross from the other side of the river, but every step became an act of will to complete and I had debarked the T a stop earlier than my planned location.
This experience reminded me of the first time I walked to Dutch Kills from Astoria back when I first started getting interested in Newtown Creek after the cardiac incident almost twenty years ago. I was using a cane in those days, and the two and change miles walk to the waterway exhausted my reserves and it took me a couple of hours. It was a long walk, back then.
A couple of years later and this became a half hour to 45 minute walk, from Astoria to my beloved creek. You gotta just suck it up, sometimes, knowing that payoff is coming down the line. Push! Lean into it!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My destination and reward for all this effort were about a half mile (or a little more) away from this spot. Normal circumstances would describe the following path as a 15 minute walk. It took me an hour. Luckily, one of my favorite podcasters – Dan Carlin – had just released a ‘Hardcore History Addendum’ broadcast featuring an interview with journalist Zeinab Badawi discussing the African Kingdom of Kush. (Spotify link). Worth a listen, and it’s a subject seldom discussed.
It was about 5 p.m. when I was walking around, a pretty busy interval in Pittsburgh as everybody is moving around and going from one place to another. Auto traffic is pretty heavy, and what they call ‘rush hour’ occurs. As a former New Yorker… it’s not heavy highway traffic if it’s moving at 35 mph. Hell, it’s not heavy traffic unless you put your car in park on the BQE and lie out on the car’s hood to work on your tan while waiting for things to loosen up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in the past, I’m goofy for funiculars, so when I saw the incline moving around on snow covered tracks, I couldn’t resist. The fact that I got to stand still for a couple of minutes didn’t hurt either.
I still had the better part of a mile ahead of me, so I leaned into the walk and got moving. Unfortunately, and this wasn’t intentional, my stride length had diminished seriously at this point. I found myself walking like a penguin, with short steps and swinging my hips around more than my legs. Doesn’t matter, said a humble narrator out loud, got to keep moving. If you stop moving, you die.
You have no idea how horrible it is to have ‘me’ inside of my head. I’m tougher intellectually than I am physically, and I’m often a real dick towards myself.
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.
Gyratorium iter
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Well, it looks like this and tomorrow’s posts will be the only ‘new’ stuff you’re going to see here for quite a while. The ankle injury which I mentioned last week has effectively crippled your humble narrator for the foreseeable future. I’m planning on republishing ‘classic Pentacle’ posts during the interval, so there’s that. I’ve been hospitalized and am recovering from orthopedic surgery, am back at home, and on bed rest as of this writing, but it’s going to be a long, long time before I get to take another walk. Helpless at the moment, me, and I’m writing this while sitting in a wheelchair.
Now… on with this penultimate ‘new’ posting.
My short walk on a pleasant summer evening carried me across Pittsburgh’s ‘Golden Triangle’ downtown area to the Smithfield Street Bridge over the Monongahela River. A weird combination of effort and importance is expressed in this bridge – the original version of it was designed by John Roebling (Brooklyn Bridge), and the modern version was designed by Gustav Lindenthal (Queensboro Bridge).
The river was crossed uneventfully, on one of the two shared bike/pedestrian paths offered by the thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After crossing, one negotiated through a tunnel driven through the anchor of the Smithfield Street Bridge. That carried me into the South Side Flats area and pointed my feet at the Great Allegheny Passage rail trail, heading towards that brewery I’ve been haunting at the end of walks in this section of Pittsburgh. I should mention that the T light rail’s ‘Station Square’ hub is nearby, and the service offers me transit from here to a spot just few blocks away from HQ. Easy peasy.
I was hoping to see a few trains rolling by, and I wasn’t disappointed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While walking to my eventual reward of a glass of Cream Ale, which I’m favoring at the moment, CSX #3300 hurtled past on the other side of a wooded fenceline. It wouldn’t be the last train I saw on this particular evening, but it’s the only one I’m showing you today.
Back tomorrow – at this – your limping along 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.
Ebrius est calor
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That abandoned structure pictured above, found in Pittsburgh’s ‘Uptown’ section, feels like it might be my spirit animal.
One was scuttling along on a dangerously warm afternoon, guzzling water from a flask that I now carry religiously. I had a bit of a trek ahead of me, but had downgraded the breadth of the route due to the fierce weather. A plan was hatched, and a new destination and path decided upon.
It still surprises me how many abandoned structures there are here – not just in Pittsburgh – but in the many communities that cluster around the city. After the steel industry pulled up stakes, the population collapsed.
Apparently, it’s quite a palaver to try and do anything with these properties – due to red tape, politics, etc.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One leaned into it, and soon found myself heading towards my new goal.
There’s a long stretch of fairly empty buildings and barren streetscapes to cross, between my spirit animal house nearby the Birmingham Bridge, and the downtown area. This is the very edge of the Downtown section, quite nearby the court houses and City Hall.
Some kid walked over to me, who appeared to be a creature of the streets, and scolded me for taking a photo which she thought she was in. ‘You have to ask permission to take somebody’s photo,’ she said. Rather than get into an argument with her, I just said that I didn’t take a photo of her, which I didn’t, and she sauntered away probably looking for someone else to annoy and boss around.
Lots of ad hoc constitutional scholars out there, these days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My short term goal is pictured above, the Smithfield Street Bridge over the Monongahela River. Given the atmospheric conditions, I decided that my best course of action would be to find some shady but photogenic spot where I might spy some passing Railroad action.
That brewery I like on the other side of the river, thereby, became my next walking target.
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 