Posts Tagged ‘South Side’
An evening scuttle
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another short walk day was upon me, and honestly – one wasn’t ‘about’ shooting photos on this one. The weather had been fairly ghastly for several days, and according to the TV weather people, the sky was about to offer another multi day cycle of cold and wet in the coming week.
I took the T streetcar to the south side of the Monongahela River here in Pittsburgh, and stuck the headphones in my ears. This time around, it was music, in particular a playlist that features every Black Sabbath album which I own.
One hit ‘shuffle’ on the Ozzy and Dio rich playlist and started scuttling, following whatever direction my toes happened to be pointing towards.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Pittsburgh’s Smithfield Street Bridge pictured above. While walking, I was thinking. A lot. It ranged from when I would next be doing the laundry all the way into springtime, and which part of the region I was planning to explore next was ruminated upon. Eastern Ohio is being considered, as is a day trip down to West Virginia.
It was late in the day, about an hour before the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was going to dip below the horizon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While walking along, I became the focus of attention for a junkie whom (I’m pretty sure) was being employed to deliver ‘bindles’ of narcotic powder to various customers by some dealer. Dealers will often use the street people for delivery duty, letting them catch the jail time should the cops clip them. A bindle of the powder is thereby won for their efforts, as a salary. It’s a living, I guess.
One probably would have been in trouble, if I hadn’t clued in to his particular vibe. Junkies and street people always talk to me, and sing their songs. I once talked a Jehovah’s Witness into dropping his Watchtower magazine stock in a garbage pail and drinking whiskey with me at a dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen, as amicable and convincing conversation is one of my super powers.
I think this young narcotics enthusiast was trying to figure out if I was a cop, and also likely fixing to take the camera from me if opportunity arose. Always keep moving, I always say, and if they want to talk to me…
My narrative stylings went ‘hard Brooklyn,’ and we chatted about gangs, and turf, in Pittsburgh. I regaled the kid with tales of all my loser friends in NYC, all the times they went to jail, and that led to conversation about doctrinal differences, here in Pittsburgh, between people who wear red, or blue, or leather, or just ball caps with denim jackets.
The pale enthusiast soon broke away from me to ‘go say hello to that guy,’ and I subsequently disappeared into the street grid using a reversed variation of a sector search pattern that the Coast Guard utilizes during searches for missing mariners. It’s handy knowing things like this, I say.
More tomorrow.
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Rain and night in Pittsburgh
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They kind of roll the sidewalks up pretty early here in Pittsburgh, at least by NYC standards. Lifestyle wise, Our Lady of the Pentacle and I don’t go ‘out’ all that much here, and certainly nowhere near as often as used to back in NYC. A recent exception to our rule included a visit to a British style pub and ‘chip shop’ located in the South Side Flats area.
This zone is known for its nightlife, and has a ferocious reputation due the often deadly hijinx of raucous youths on the weekends. Fights, the occasional use of pistols, all that stuff.
There’s a dizzying array of restaurants and bars in this area, including the pub which we were visiting. We had left the car back at home and used a Lyft rideshare to get here. I was planning on having a few pints of draft Guinness, which is a bit harder to find on tap hereabouts than you’d imagine.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cities look best when it’s raining, I always say. We had dinner at the chip shot, and my English bride was happy with the menu’s offerings, as it was based on several comfort food dishes from her faraway homeland. Mushy Peas, Scotch Eggs, all that.
Pictured above is East Carson Street, which is the ‘Main Street’ of this section of the Pittsburgh metro, dubbed the South Side Flats.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few nights later, a humble narrator found himself wandering on the same street, and encountered this wonderful neon display in the front window of a tattoo shop. Everybody I encounter here, seemingly, has ‘ink’ and there are many tattoo shops to choose from.
Retail space is comparatively cheap to lease here, meaning that you see a lot of local entrepreneurial energy expressed in the store fronts, rather than the sort of bank machine/big box/franchise activity which dominates the modern retail spaces back in NYC.
Back next week with more from the Paris of Appalachia, 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.
It’s a bit like going fishing…
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Railfanning has never been my ‘thing.’ I certainly like taking pictures of trains, but the whole hobby of driving off at 5 in the morning to some remote trackway in order to see a train roll through is just counter to my whole dealie.
Keep moving. That’s my thing. If there isn’t a train going through between when you arrive and depart, it isn’t ‘meant to be.’ Standing around with a camera dangling off of you makes you ostentatious, and the meaner elements of street life will become attracted to you. Crooks or cops, who needs the trouble.
Tsuris, amirite?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is surprisingly difficult to get a decent photo of a moving train. It’s moving faster than the human eye would suggest, the machine itself is huge and literally bigger than a house, and there’s a ton of fiddly details which are vibrating about and also moving independently as the thing rolls by you. You have to set up the shot in advance; get the exposure right, figure out a composition, aperture and ISO. Even then…
I have a trick for vehicles of any type, which is to focus in on the strut at the edge of the windshield closest to you, which the intersecting plane of the driver’s side window trails away from. Learned that one when shooting the long running ‘cool cars’ series of posts I had going back in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All of the train shots in this post were gathered over something like 30-40 seconds, which speaks to how fast these things are actually moving. Each exposure is in the neighborhood of 1/1000th of a second, at ISO 800 and F8. That’s when the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself is floating directly overhead in late afternoon/early evening, and light is bouncing around everywhere. Like I said – ain’t that simple shooting trains.
Back to railfanning, that’s not what I’m doing with this latest fascination of mine. Instead, I’m trying to conquer a difficult subject and develop a muscle memory for the act so that when I encounter it happening in the future, an understanding of the settings are intuitive. Like I said, these trains really are moving quick. Additionally, Pittsburgh sits squarely in a nest of rail tracks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX 968 (an ES44AC-H, I’m told), wasn’t carrying anything too exciting, mainly cargo boxes and tanker cars. One is still working out when the most frequent activity takes place along this Pittsburgh Subdivision of theirs, but limited experience suggests that it’s early mornings and evenings. There’s traffic all day, of course, but in terms of frequency I’ve observed a lot more activity at the edges of the day.
For a few years before COVID, I’d developed an acumen for what times of day the NY&Atlantic outfit in Long Island City were most likely going to be doing something along Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The head of the snake, as mentioned, is the singularly interesting section of the train for me. I’ve seen shots of these trains moving military equipment around – tanks and the like – and that’s a sight I’d like to record, so I do pay attention. Mostly normal cargo, followed by a coal or coke train, rinse/repeat, that’s what you mostly get here.
As the title would suggest, I keep on having the sensation you get when fishing a waterway for the first time. You drop a hook, dangle the bait, and hope for the best. Sometimes you get one train over the course of a couple of beers worth of time (I’m a nurser, drives my friends crazy. They’re starting their third and I’m finishing my first) and sometimes you get five. Seriously, I don’t know how the foamers do it, I don’t have the patience.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All fixed up after a couple of belts, and with several photos on my camera card, I gathered myself together and headed off for the T light rail and a ride back home. That’s a blue line one crossing the Panhandle Bridge, I live along the Red Line.
Back tomorrow with something somewhat different.
“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.
Utterly pedestrian
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another ‘long walk’ started with a humble narrator riding on the T light rail service from HQ in Dormont, and back to the center of Pittsburgh. My end stop for the day would be a bar I found that sits alongside the Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks of CSX. Beer and trains! What could go wrong?
This all started around noon, of course, and I had a whole megillah planned for the interval. I negotiated a series of street crossings from the T which would make the ‘Bicycle People’ back home clutch at their pearls, and found my way to the pedestrian path of the PJ McArdle roadway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, I discovered a few absolutely beautiful spots to capture Norfolk Southern rail traffic from, and was treated to a series of intriguing city views which I’d only witnessed from behind the wheel of the car while hurtling along at speed.
This is sort of the lower half of the viaduct, sometime soon I’ll show you what a subsequent walk of the upper section revealed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A pretty view of the St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church was on hand from on high. For a panorama image of the view from 100 steps further down the path, click here.
Next week, I’ll be displaying what I captured on the rest of this walk, and the train photos I got while sitting at an outdoor bar drinking pints of craft beer. They’re real big on the craft beer thing here.
Back 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.
Winding down
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whew, that was kind of an epic walk I showed y’all this week, huh? Wait till you see the next one, which made this week’s one seem like a stroll. After descending down that crazy flight of stairs shown in yesterday’s post, a humble narrator scuttled across the Monongahela River using the South Tenth Street Bridge, and soon found himself back to the increasingly familiar South Side section for my transit connection.
To connect with the T Light Rail at the Station Square stop, I’d need to walk a fairly negligible distance – if it’s even a mile I’d be pretty surprised. I opted to use one of the rail trails to negotiate the distance. Our Lady of the Pentacle and I had a social engagement this particular evening back in Dormont, if memory serves.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s fairly obvious why I followed this particular path, ain’t it?
As you may have noticed, I’ve crossed a certain boundary in terms of how I’m looking at things in Pittsburgh, and beginning to get granular in my explorations rather than doing the broad stroke stuff. We’ve also crossed the six month point, in terms of leaving NYC behind. It’s become ‘normal’ – waking up and going to sleep here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was rewarded for my choice of path when a freight train came roaring through, which put the cherry on top of my photo sundae.
Back next week with more from the Paris of Appalachia, 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 