Posts Tagged ‘The Strip’
Get your adverbs here
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My ‘dogs were barking’ by this part of the walk, and my back was getting a bit sore. The ankle was also a bit pissed by this point as well. I hadn’t had anything to drink for better than three hours, and overall I had achieved a state of fatigue – or as the French might say – ‘Fatigway.’
Mocking the French language is a hold over from grade school for me. Would you like a ‘whores du vores’ (hors d’oeuvres) along with your ‘Champagnee’ or ‘Cognack’? What d’ya say, Madamoysel?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The new construction in this ‘zone’ is very popular with the masses and the apartments within are prized by those who live there. You see this style of corporate barrack housing getting built all over Pittsburgh.
Personally, not for me. Too generic, reminds me of Levittown.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A sharp edge indicates you’ve left the strip, and that’s confirmed as you pass by the 16th street David McCullough Bridge.
I deviated towards the Allegheny River right about here, and wandered along it for a few steps. Decisions, decisions. Should I continue on, along the waterfront, or should I just keep my toes pointed at an eventual ride back to HQ on the T light rail?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I decided to do both, but continued with a generally ‘T-focused’ pathway.
As mentioned above, the physical effects of this effort were beginning to control my path. Remember, I’m the guy who used to walk from the Gowanus to Astoria ten years ago, but injuries and age have taken their toll upon the rotting pre-corpse that my brain is stuck within.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Walking under the gargantuan Veteran’s Bridge in this shot, I am.
I was also really thirsty. I’ve got to be careful when slurping liquids on these long walks, otherwise I might need to piss unexpectedly due to those blood pressure pills I mentioned a few days ago. This wasn’t a problem when I was all lonesome like back in Skunk Hollow, but there’s actual people here, ones who might object to me exposing my hoo-ha.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At any rate, I had a good half hour of walking ahead of me before I’d be able to board a T light rail unit back towards HQ.
Back next week with a bit more, and then… wowza.
Wait till you see the next crazy place I went.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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All lines end
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As asserted, every place worth a damn on the east coast of the United States offers a ‘Railroad Avenue’ or a ‘Railroad Street’ into its equation.
Back at Newtown Creek, it was the former, whereas here in Pittsburgh, it’s the latter. Two plans were warming my frigid soul, and luckily they overlaid with each other.
There’s a couple of sets of tracks laid into the asphalt here. One set of these rails are obviously not being maintained, whereas the secondary spur is definitely active and has somebody looking after it. It’s Allegheny Valley RR turf in this zone, and I’ve had people who live locally tell me that the service is actually quite active here, and particularly so in the small hours of the night.
Also, the rails here are shiny and not terribly corroded, so active.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I followed Railroad Street, and enjoyed its various tableaus.
Based on the sort of building stock hereabouts, this section used to be where warehousing occurred. Enormous buildings are everywhere. Pittsburgh’s film industry bases itself nearby, and I’m fairly sure I once saw Jason Statham getting into his car somewhere along this route.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Big footprint properties abound hereabouts, but what I was focused on were those railroad tracks. They lead right through an area of ongoing hyper gentrification, and then towards the ‘Strip District’ which is also experiencing a ‘build out.’ Said ‘Strip’ used to be where grocery stores bought their wholesale produce, with said cargo being brought into the city via the rail, or by barges over at the riverfront just a few blocks north of this spot.
Again, I am doing absolutely zero historic research at all. None. How dare you accuse me of doing so. The past doesn’t matter, only the future, onwards and upwards. Ignore the man behind the curtain.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That mound of dirt is a bold architectural statement, primitivism given a prime location and in a popular area. It harkens back to the burial mounds of those who once controlled this land, long before the Seneca or the Americans… and the referential structure just turns me on.
Those tracks… where could they possibly be going?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, the end of that line was spotted, with a refrigerated car sitting at the train stop on a spur. It’s parked in front of a warehousing outfit called ‘Consumers Fresh Produce,’ which seems to operate in the ‘B2B’ space.
This is a long rail spur with – seemingly – a single customer.
Wow. I’ll find out when the AVRR makes regular street running deliveries here (as mentioned, I’ve been told ‘middle of the night’) and try to get some shots of that in the future. Wow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is what I was looking for, the ‘train stop.’ End of the line.
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.
Corridors, oh the urbanity
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with a scuttle down Penn Avenue from Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield, and then Lawrenceville, towards the Strip District and then ‘downtown.’ Along the way, I noticed a colorful bit of architecture and it turns out that it’s the Pittsburgh Midwife Center. Neat.
I was pulled in by the artwork on a mural they have installed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s just lovely, thought a humble narrator. Nice.
The section I was walking through seems to have escaped the gentrification hammers so far. At least the old building stock, and some of the businesses which occupy them, seem to still be extant.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Signage occasionally catches my eye. My guess is that this is a late 1980’s vintage painted sign. It’s mainly the design sense that says ‘1980’s’ to me.
Good news is that the shop’s window has an ‘open to the public’ sign in the window, meaning I now know where to go shopping for commercial grade cooking equipment. This replaces that joint on 43rd and Northern I used to buy pots and pans from, back in Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Strip District, where you can express your love of all things Pittsburgh by buying souvenirs and gewgaws. There’s also a bunch of multi generational businesses which offer specialty meats and cheeses, candy and treats, and all the Steelers and/or Pirates gear you can afford. Very popular area.
The streets there are positively infested with humans.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Exiting the Strip and approaching the last leg of the day’s effort. This ‘zone’ used to be involved in the commercial level of food distribution. In NYC, this area would be referred to as a ‘terminal market.’ Essentially, produce and meats would arrive by boat and train from extant locations and then were sold to market and shop owners wholesale. The latter would then stock their retail shelves in whatever section of the city they served. The Heinz factory was just on the other side of the river from here, btw.
It was time for a quick sit down, incidentally, as the humidity had been growing all day and your humble narrator needed a break from the sun.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I sat down on the steps of a church, and within a couple of minutes, the Pastor came outside and asked if I needed a drink of water or wanted to come and sit inside to partake of their air conditioning. This was extremely nice of the fellow, thought I. Very Christian.
I introduced myself, and mentioned my nascent desires to get the ‘sacred spaces’ project going. We exchanged business cards. Hopefully, I’ll get an invite to come inside and photograph the place sometime.
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.
Dark alleys
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If a street is labeled as a ‘way’ in the Pittsburgh area, it’s an alley.
Unlike NYC, which has few alleys and those that exist have an ‘affordable housing’ component, Pittsburgh uses these alleys for deliveries and trash collection. The garbage trucks work through the alleys, which are usually badly maintained but still serviceably paved roads. Every now and then, you’ll find yourself driving through one of these paths as a motorist, while trying to avoid congestion or a construction project.
Me? I was walking along recently on a stroll from Lawrenceville to the Downtown section, and for some reason found myself wanting to walk through these ‘alleys’ as much as possible along the ‘way.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a lovely sensation of isolation when walking along these paths. Just half a block in either direction, the sidewalks of Pittsburgh’s Strip District were absolutely packed with pedestrians. There was a baseball game occurring later in the day, and the Strip District seems to be where people visiting the City for a day trip like to congregate. It’s an ‘Arthur Avenue’ sort of situation on game days, where people who are descended from the original inhabitants of the neighborhoods return from the suburban hinterlands for a game, and seek out the familiar and unchanging that they remember from childhood.
Notice that the alley is relatively orderly. Illegal dumping, not so much. A reasonable amount of graffiti, no piles of blood, scabs, or hair (which is a call out reference to the punk band Fear’s ‘New York’s Alright.’)
While walking through these paths, I was generally completely alone, which is also kind of interesting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m sure that this is another one of the things that I find myself doing here which will elicit an ‘are you crazy, you’ll get killed’ from the locals. According to about half of my friends, every walk I took around Newtown Creek was going to end with me getting killed by Mafiosos, with my body disappearing into either the flow of garbage through the Creeklands, or that I’d entombed in a concrete block. The latter warning was literally offered to me once as the likely consequence of taking a walk in Maspeth.
‘Fear is the mind killer.’ If something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. Can’t sit at home fretting. Go outside. Talk to somebody. See a thing. Do a thing. Don’t wait, the day after tomorrow might not come. Every single media outlet and social media site is designed to scare you into thinking the world outside is far worse than it actually is so that you stay home and consume more of their content. ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ is an actual motto in news rooms.
Go.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve always been obsessed with Apocalyptic thema. From the Christian book’s ‘Act 3,’ to the breaking of the iron gates of Dhu al-Qarnayn, and of course: George Romero’s Zombie opuses…
The bit of historical wisdom I often offer the young is that ‘Civilizations come and go, but life goes on.’ The Romans are Italian now, and the Ottomans are now just Turks. Just in my own lifetime, the Soviet civilization collapsed, but the Russians kept on going.
Unfortunately.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This wasn’t an alley, in the shot above, rather it’s an avenue. I had arrived at the gateway point to Pittsburgh’s Downtown section. The structure above the street is a rail trestle which feeds into the Amtrak station (to the left) off of the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge spanning the Allegheny River.
This walk was about six miles. I find I can easily do that distance now, in comparison to the late spring when my still gamey ankle was giving me all sorts of problems after a couple of miles. Push, push, push.
In the long term, the only thing that can actually cripple me is my own bullshit, and fear. I can and will survive, even if it’s just out of spite, until I don’t. I will survive this year, if it kills me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I think spite, and an underlying garden bed of simmering hatred, might be an important motivator. Everybody rejects the negative emotions, but in doing so, they end up in psychological hell by sublimating and feeling guilty about using the software that they were born with. It’s ok, let it out occasionally to bleed out the pressure. Anger is an energy.
On a different note, last year Our Lady and I attended one of Mark Houser’s Skyscraper Roof tour events, and I was able to record the view from up top on a couple of those giant piles of brick and steel above.
Check out ‘suit and a tie zoning,’ ‘Koppers Building Roof tour,’ ‘Frick Building Roof tour,’ and ‘Benedum Trees Building roof tour.’
Back tomorrow with the end of this particular 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.
Almost, almost…
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After reacquiring the waterfront trail here in Pittsburgh, which follows the shoreline of the Allegheny River, your humble narrator continued on his lonely path. I wasn’t using headphones on this walk, as I wished to remain very aware of my surroundings for some reason. Wasn’t worried about getting jumped at all, although I was likely the best target on the trail due to the camera. A vast physical coward, if somebody tried to mug me, I’d probably just end up vomiting on them out of fear. Experience states that puke ends a street fight faster than Kung Fu does.
This walk ended up being six and half miles long (that’s 411, 840 inches), a new personal best in this post broken ankle season I’m living through.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was fascinated by the tree growth seen around the lumber piles above, which makes the wood look like it was molten and poured. There’s a ghastly life and death narrative at work there, with the cut lumber piles being subsumed by the living trees. Wonder what used to be here that needed docks…
This is where I soon found myself marching into another ‘angle’ between neighborhood areas, as it’s where Pittsburgh’s ‘The Strip’ metastasizes into ‘Downtown.’ Still wondering what was here that required docks…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I cannot express the sense of joy I get from my ignorance, and then getting curious about something. Recent background reading has focused in on Zinc, as in the mining/processing/industrial application thereof. Positively galvanizing, the story of zinc is. It’s anodizing, as well.
Guess I’m going to have to start reading up on the history here, as I’m getting curious about all the ‘once, long ago/used to be’ stuff. Sigh. I’ve been enjoying my ignorance… did you know that Zinc is the 4th most abundant metal on the Earth, despite its relatively low melting point?
Your humble narrator still had a little bit of walking ahead of him to get to that T station where the light rail would be boarded for a ride back to HQ.
Come with? 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 