Posts Tagged ‘Squirrel Hill’
Squirreling through the hills
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described previously, your humble narrator was heading for a historical lecture being offered at a library, in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and one had just crossed the South Tenth Street Bridge over the Monongahela River in order to facilitate a ride share pickup to carry me to said library.
The horizon line in the shot above is where I had been walking around in the posts published last week – an area called ‘The Bluff’ – which hosts both Duquesne University, and the neighborhood called ‘Uptown.’
I used Uber for this ride. Common practice that I’ve picked up here in Pittsburgh is to query both Uber and Lyft and see which one is cheaper for the same ride. Uber beat Lyft by about $7 so ‘win.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One arrived at the library, and it was thankfully quite cool within. This was one of the first truly warm days in late Spring for Pittsburgh.
Yes, the Newtown Pentacle time warp persists. Photos from May 11, words from early June, and you’re in mid July if I got my scheduling right.
The lecture itself was academic in nature, with a detailed description of the historian’s methodology. Personally, whenever I was doing one of these kind of talks about Newtown Creek back in Brooklyn or Queens, I liked to drop in a few jokes and use colloquial language, and avoided getting into the slog of how I researched the presented information, but then again I don’t have a PHD in Jewish history as the presenter did – as I’m just some schmuck with a camera who knows far too much about Newtown Creek.
I learned things, though, it was worth attending.
After about an hour, the presentation was over and one was vomited forth back onto the streets, where he belongs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Squirrel Hill is a really nice neighborhood, and kind of pricey to live in as well due to desirability, at least compared with the rest of Pittsburgh.
This ‘zone’ is literally Mister Rogers’ neighborhood, as a note.
The plan… and this is where the second half of my efforts for the day begin… was to walk all the way back to the T Light Rail on the South Shore of the Monongahela River, and use that to get back to HQ in the Dormont section. More or less about a seven mile walk. Best to just lean into it.
I had more or less decided on a path, but left it kind of fuzzy to accommodate serendipity, should it manifest.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, really lovely neighborhood.
Reminds me a great deal of Brooklyn’s Midwood, in the section where it nears Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway in the east ‘teen’ streets, and along the H-N avenues. Historically speaking, Squirrel Hill is meant to be a Jewish majority neighborhood, just like Midwood is back home. Most of the ‘important’ non Jewish people live out here – politicians, and university brass, the wealthy corporate types.
It was hot on the streets, I tell you, hot. Your narrator was humbly shvitzing while scuttling.
I’ve got a whole routine for this sort of weather, by the way. Number one thing is breathe through your nose and keep your mouth shut or you’ll dehydrate quickly. Number two is walk in the shade if you can. I’ve mentioned that I’ve recently started carrying a water bottle, yes?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a lot of weird traffic interchanges in Pittsburgh, and the one pictured above is an example. It’s at a border where Squirrel Hill bumps up against Oakland, where a large park and the two big universities are found. Hills and valleys, hollows and peaks…
This leg of my day would end up adding about seven miles of wear to the hiking shoes. After returning to HQ, I noticed that the treads on those shoes had essentially been ground smooth in the last few months, and I had to order another pair. Merrel Moab 3, if you’re curious. Been wearing this model of shoe for years, and they’re a critical part of the ‘kit.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That water bottle recently added to the kit came in handy on this walk.
A paroxysm of comparison shopping led me to purchase one of the fairly leak proof offerings from the Nalgene outfit, and I now have a 16 ounce parcel of travel liquid to rely upon during scuttles.
A big difference between NYC and Pittsburgh revolves around the presence of Bodegas. NYC has them, Pittsburgh doesn’t.
In NYC, you’re never more than a mile from someone wanting to sell you a cold drink, in Pittsburgh you have to rely on a coroner retrieving your water starved husk of a corpse, found lying on the side of a road pointing towards a Bodega which doesn’t exist.
Back tomorrow with the next leg of this scuttle.
“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.
Veiled scuttling
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Squirrel Hill to Oakland…
Locally, the ‘bicycle people’ in Pittsburgh style themselves as ‘bikePGH.’
A non-profit, the group is focusing some of its city-wide efforts on pedestrian concerns this year, and offering walking tours through the various neighborhoods which discuss traffic, safety, and transit issues. A recent excursion occurred in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and your humble narrator was in attendance. Nice people, fairly short walk.
After the tour, though, I got all concerned with pedestrian concerns of my own. Getting back to HQ in Dormont!
I leaned into a five mile(ish) scuttle, during which I feared that my life would be snuffed out by some speeding car or random pickup truck no more than three times. Pretty good for Pittsburgh, that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One cut through a park, which was horrifically nice and terribly well maintained. The burning thermonuclear eye of god itself stared down at me balefully, hurling electromagnetic radiates with hateful intent. The breeze carried waveforms of airborne micro-ballista at me, in the form of needle nosed pollen missiles. My skin hurt for some other reason, maybe it was the pollen, but… For once, I didn’t urgently need to pee. My left eyebrow also hurt for some reason. The ankle was… ahhh feck… I’m all ‘effed up.
The plan was – and I did check the direction on my little compass – to head towards the Monongahela River from the central triangular peninsula of Pittsburgh, but where I was poised is pretty close to the hypotenuse. One had pondered this route the night before, and ‘step one’ would involve heading towards the big colleges, from Squirrel Hill. Specifically I was heading towards the ‘Pitt’ (University of Pittsburgh) and ‘CMU’ (Carnegie Mellon University) zone of the Oakland neighborhood.
Tall buildings that stick up over the tree line, which you can use as navigational landmarks, are indeed a plus. I used to navigate all around NYC by triangulating the World Trade Center, Empire State, and Chrysler buildings.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a series of ornate bridges, found where the campuses bump up against the park. This particular bridge was closed for construction, but the bike lane remained open and I followed that course.
Can’t close a bike lane, it’s all that truly matters, the bike lane.
One feels very much out of place in this area, as a note. I’m a thousand years old, and horrible to behold in my state of decay. There I walked, scuttling past impossibly young people at the very beginning of their journey.
One must have looked like some sort of ancient mariner, trapped in his endless existential loop, marching around with a camera in a strange city.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Down below, in the park, there’s a set of rail tracks. I did spot a train going through, but couldn’t get a decent shot of it. Fail.
It was right around this point that I realized a new pair of shoes will be needed pretty soon, as too little of the treads on the soles of the ones I’ve been wearing are still extant. There has to be at least 500 to 1,000 miles of wear on the ones I’ve been wearing since last summer.
All this scuttling adds up, Y’know…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the bridge over the park closest to Pitt’s campus, hundreds of padlocks are on display along the fenceline.
I’m told this is a modern custom for young lovers to engage in, with the symbolism being that they are locked together. I see these all over the place on bridges, and it’s adorable, but apparently also a source of great angst for the engineers who maintain these bridges. Literally hundreds to thousands of pounds of ‘load’ are being inserted into their bridge equations due to this social media trend. Also, that chain link ain’t structural.
People, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were still miles and miles, and a river, to cross.
One leaned into it, pushed forward, adjusting the various camera and bag straps affixed to my torso as I did. A good moment to check all of my pockets, and confirm that all the small things which are secreted about my person were still there. Wallet, keys, Leatherman, cash, headphones, all the camera stuff, etc.
‘Personal Area Network’ is the underlying concept that guides me when I’m dressing to leave the house. Everything has a function, and a place.
I’ve had to expand that list since living in Pittsburgh, to include a water bottle, and a few other objects which weren’t part of the NYC version of my ‘everyday carry.’ I’m very, very embedded into the ‘EDC’ concept.
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.
Poale Zedeck Synagogue
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself have secured tickets for several tour events here in Pittsburgh. Several of these events are on offer from Doors Open Pittsburgh, a non profit outfit which is a regional analogue of organizations back in NYC like Open House NY. Our Lady and I are still finding our footing here, and there is so much to learn, so why not take part in a few historic tours, and experience the cultural resources of this amazing American City? Don’t worry, I’ll be bringing all of you along for the trip.
We thereby found ourselves visiting the Poale Zedeck Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill section on a Sunday morning. Representing the institution was a fellow named Abbie Mendehlson (not sure if that’s correct spelling, but there you are), and after a brief introduction in the ‘meeting room’ of the Synagogue we entered the main room. A ‘meeting room’ in Jewish tradition is a non consecrated space which is used for a variety of purposes. Kids practice their Bar Mitzvah dealie in the meeting room, the faithful gather to ‘davan,’ community groups discuss the issues of the day – that sort of thing. Also, you don’t have to heat or air condition the big chapel room when it’s only a few people so…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The cornerstone for this building says 1881. Now, that’s fairly recent if you’re talking NYC, Boston, or… Philadelphia…, but remember that in Pittsburgh you still had cowboys and native peoples riding in and out of the woods to sell fur pelts in 1881. Conversely, at the same interval as the cowboy thing, a 40 family group of recently emigrated Hungarian Jews were organizing this institution.
For you Goyem: there’s basically three branches of Judaism – Orthodox, Conservative, and Reformed. This synagogue is part of the Orthodox interpretation. Full time yarmulkes, kosher house, strict observance of the ritual calendar described in the Torah and Talmud, all that. The “frums” that follow the Hasidim and Lubavitcher pathways are considered to be “Ultra Orthodox.” The Frums are here in Pittsburgh as well, I’d mention. There’s other variants of the faith, incidentally, most notably the Sephardic ones.
Me? My Dad would drive me over to an Italian Pork Store (a Salumeria) on Avenue N in Old Mill Basin on Saturday mornings to pick up ham and others deli meats for the week, and I accidentally said “Oh, Shit” in stead of ‘amen’ after screwing up the Haftorah at my Bar Mitzvah, so…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The modern Synagogue was opened in 1929, and its a beauty. Our host answered questions from the crowd about a wide range of subjects. Special interest was paid to descriptions of the segregated by age and gender sections (a common practice for the Orthodox), and to the stained glass windows. A consequence of the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre, which happened in another section of Squirrel Hill, saw emergency Police signal boxes installed throughout the building.
The last Synagogue I was in that used a similar floor plan to this one was on NYC’s Lower East Side, on Eldridge Street. There’s basically two altars – one where the Cantor and others do their thing, and another which directly involves the Torah and the ark.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A massive chandelier caught my attention, and it was set into a dome. I could deep dive into a lot of the iconography here, but am resisting the urge. Suffice to say, if you notice a repeating design motif in an orthodox synagogue, count how many iterations of that repeat occur. That number will have some sort of ritual meaning for initiates. 18’s, 144’s, that sort of thing. I’ve learned to pay attention to and notice this sort of thing over the years.
One of the things I noticed, and asked our host about, was the presence of a design motif on the wall behind the altar depicting grape vines and fruit (with 16 grapes in each twist of three vines) to which he laughed in reply and said it’s just a design.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the other hand, a good friend of mine – referred to here in the past only as the “Hermetic Hungarian” – is descended from an Orthodox Hungarian line so I called him up the next day. The first thing he says when I described the motif is “Oh yeah, Hungarian Jews were large and in charge in the Austro Hungarian Wine business. My family used to own several Vineyards there before the wars.” I then hung up the phone without saying thank you. The Hermetic Hungarian does not tolerate pleasantries. Smelt and Spelt eaters like him have zero patience for the western habits of small talk, preferring seriousness and intellectual pursuits instead.
At any rate, the motif is probably something wine related. Saying that, numbers, numbers, numbers. Symbolism.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We were allowed to visit the ladies section upstairs, which allowed for a wider view of the Poale Zedeck setup. Mr. Mendehlson had another tour group to move through the space, and after a short interval Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself were back out on the street.
We drove around the Squirrel Hill neighborhood a bit afterwards. Squirrel Hill is a nicely kept neighborhood which I’d describe as being ‘upper middle class’ but ‘not rich.’ It reminded me a great deal of the section of Brooklyn that follows Ocean Parkway through the middle of the alphabet avenues – I, J, K, L etc. to Kings Highway.
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 