Posts Tagged ‘The T’
Where, when, what, why, and how
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Welcome to the penultimate post to come out of a fantastic afternoon’s walking experience in Pittsburgh. This one began when a humble narrator debarked the T light rail at its terminal stop on the City’s North Side and marveled at a series of on-ramps. I had crossed the triangle, and was midway across the Liberty Bridge on my way back to another T station on the South Side of the Monongahela River at Station Square.
Thereby, that’s the ‘where.’
The light was absolutely fantastic. It was the 25th of April, a Tuesday. At just about 5 p.m., so that’s the ‘when.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ‘what’ is a little more complicated, but suffice to say that a bit of a constitutional walk was required. As is my habit, the camera was clutched in my hand. This walk saw me bring a lens out of retirement, my Sigma 18-300mm. It’s a ‘crop sensor’ lens, meaning that on my ‘full frame’ camera, I’d be throwing away about 35% of the image and making minor sacrifices in terms of image quality here and there.
Saying that, I’ve really missed this ‘one lens to rule them all’ kind of setup. It’s really nice to be able to go wide to telephoto without having to fiddle about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
‘Why’ I was using this piece of glass is simple, or rather its simplicity. When I moved my camera operations over from the trusty Canon 7D which I’d been carrying for about a decade to the R6 Mirrorless model I now use, most of my collection of lenses went into the cabinet along with the 7D body. The new camera uses the ‘RF’ Mount, which Canon has not licensed any Third Parties like Sigma to manufacture for. Canon is obviously trying to make as much as they can off we users, but…
Whereas most of the RF glass Canon has released is kind of miraculous, it’s also set at price points that would make even Apple blush. Even worse, most of the stuff they’ve been putting out is aimed squarely at a) wedding and portrait and b) sports photographers. I really don’t need a 6 pound, 13 inch long 100-300mm lens that costs $9,500 to do Newtown Pentacle and if I did need that sort of reach/capability for a gig or something – I’d rent it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
‘How’ is fairly easily accomplished on the R6, you just change the crop settings in one of the menus and the camera does the rest. I can also shoot squares, or HD TV formatted images using that menu. I have a few ‘native lenses’ that I use all the time which are RF mount – a 24-105mm, a 35mm, and an 85mm. I’ve got an extremely old 70-300mm consumer level lens which I attach to the camera via the usage of an adapter – the same thing I use for any of my EF mount lenses. The 70-300 is pretty unreliable though, and it’s autofocus was crap out of the box when I bought it years ago. After a piss poor performance by the thing recently, I decided that when I need the extra reach or it’s just a ‘photowalk day’ when I’m not trying to get all artsy fartsy the far more reliable Sigma is my ‘go-to.’
That’s the Panhandle Bridge which the T is riding on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve been riding this T service a lot, especially on days when I want to keep all my options open. Maybe stop at a bar & inhale a pint, that sort of thing. Stuff I can’t do when I’m driving, basically. Also, I really don’t want to be a ‘car guy’ all the time. Gotta keep scuttling.
Also, as I’ve been quoted saying a million times: ‘you can’t see anything when you’re inside of a vehicle. Even a bike is moving too fast. You need to walk in Cities. Feel them, catch their vibe.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The icing on my photowalk cake was finally finding a POV for the Norfolk Southern tracks, which is from the Liberty Bridge. I’ll admit to stopping my forward movement for about 15 minutes, and nearly jumping for joy when I heard it coming from the other side of the tree line. These tracks are on a shelf carved into Mount Washington. I’ve gotten shots from the ground of this scene which I’ve shown y’all in the past.
I feel like I’m starting to catch the vibe here now. Back tomorrow.
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North, Miss Teschmacher, north!
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My current walkie walkie schedule revolves around having a couple of days a week wherein I leave the car back at HQ and head ‘into town’ via the T Light Rail system. The T is an electrically driven street car which operates off of a catenary system. Usually, they run two car train sets, but occasionally – particularly during Steelers or Pirates games – you’ll see the service offer a three car setup. It’s an odd system inasmuch as you pay your zone based fare differently depending on where you’re going. In the downtown ‘zone,’ or if you’re a Senior Citizen, it’s actually a free ride. Otherwise, you pay when boarding if you’re going into the ‘City,’ or when debarking if you’re heading away from it. This sort of thing is something you’re just expected to know.
Pittsburgh has a lot of ‘vernacular’ built into its culture. People will say something like ‘I’ll see you at Smith’s at 8.’ The presumption is that you know what and where that something is, since such knowledge is second nature and familiar to all the Yinzers. It’s the same thing with transit. Of course you know and understand the system, so why erect signage or anything? I think this might be why the amazing culture, food, and circumstances here are practically unknown in the rest of the Northeast. It is such an interesting place to live, this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator rode the T to its terminal stop on the ‘North Side’ of Pittsburgh, which is found across the Allegheny River and at the doorsteps of the Steelers stadium. It used to the Heinz Stadium, but a company called Acrisure recently secured naming rights to the place. Most of the Pittsburghers I’ve spoken to use ‘Heinz’ still.
It was a beautiful day – sweatshirt weather, as I call it – and after riding the T to the North Side station one began to scuttle forth. The loose path I had laid out for myself was going to be a fairly long one, and I would end up walking most of the T’s path through the center of the City and crossing both the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers on foot.
It was actually quite a productive day, in the end. I had a nice time, too.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve always had a fascination for the massing shapes of elevated trackways and vehicular ramps, and the way that they interact with the cubic massing shapes of surrounding buildings in urban environments. On the right is the back door of the Steelers stadium, and the curvilinear shape on the left is the trackway of the T. This is on the north side of Pittsburgh, in what used to be a separate municipality called Allegheny City which was annexed early in the 20th century.
Getting back to that ‘vernacular thing,’ the North Side is one of those terms which carries a lot of implied meaning for the folks who grew up here. I can’t describe to you what that meaning is, but when I told a neighbor that I spent a bit of time walking around the North Side, their eyes narrowed and I was admonished to be careful. Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle.
For any of you who aren’t devotees of comic book movies, here’s the reference behind the title of today’s post.
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.
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.
Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A visit to the Heinz History Center in Downtown Pittsburgh had been undertaken by Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself recently. That’s “Heinz” as in the Ketchup people with the 57 varieties, and one of the displays at this Smithsonian affiliated museum is centered around the iconic streetcars of Pittsburgh. The unit above went out of service in 1988, and it’s designated ‘Pittsburgh Streetcar #1724.’ I’ve come to understand that the high water mark for Pittsburgh’s streetcar system was in the middle 1950’s, when there were about 600 of the sort of vehicle pictured above roaming about.
historicpittsburgh.org has a succinct description of this class of streetcar, once so ubiquitous in Pittsburgh, which can be accessed here. There used to be a serious network of public transit in these parts, in addition to the surviving inclines which get most of the modern attention. For a history of how mass transit rose and fell in Pittsburgh, check this out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the modern day equivalent of the historic streetcar display at the Heinz Center, which is dubbed the ‘T.’ When Our Lady and I were planning the great escape from New York, transit was definitively a part of the decision matrix, so we moved into an area which the T serves. I end up driving a lot here, but there’s days when I just want to scuttle about and not be tied down to wherever I parked the car. It was on just such a day that the shot above was gathered, after having ridden the Red Line service from HQ in Dormont here to the Station Square stop nearby the Monongahela River. Pictured is a Silver Line light rail T set, which is headed the other way and out of the downtown area.
The postindustrial gentrification forge has definitively been stoked here in Pittsburgh, and a lot of real estate in the urban core is being converted to or entirely replaced by residential buildings. Saying that, it doesn’t burn as brightly or rapaciously as it does back in NYC.
The mental map which I had made for the day involved skirting along railroad tracks and some of the still industrial blocks in the Southside Flats area. After debarking the T streetcar, one began kicking the dirt while depressing the shutter button and trying to notice everything.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This area is my sort of thing, incidentally, with a web of elevated ramps for the T and vehicle traffic which lead to bridges. Huge post industrial and still industrial buildings, broken and lonely streets with a hint of danger… there’s even a set of quite busy freight rail tracks woven into the tapestry down here. Additionally, there’s many interesting points of view from which to wave the camera about.
It was a perfect day for a photowalk, with temperatures in the middle 60’s – sweatshirt weather. I left most of the gear at home, and brought a handheld camera kit with me.
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.
End of week, odds and ends
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few odds and ends photos from my recent exploratory visit to Pittsburgh’s Oakland. Popped this one out from behind the wheel of the Mobile Oppression Platform on my way home while stuck at a light.
The bridge in the distance is called the 30th street Bridge over the Monongahela River, but truth be told, I was pulled in by the painted “B&O” Railroad logo on the overpass. If that’s original… it has to date back to when I was in high school and that was before Metallica.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
See that shot above? Panther Hollow, that’s all I’m going to say. I know what time to be here, and now I know where it is. At the right time, and this is the right place, there’s going to be a train in future iterations of his shot.
I’ve now got two locations scouted for the “money” rail shots. Right place, not the right time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back home in Dormont, and Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself successfully went out for drinks and dinner and then took mass transit back home. That’s the T street car leaving the Potomac station at beer o’clock.
Back next week with more from Pittsburgh, lords and ladies.
“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 