– photo by Mitch Waxman

It was Palm Sunday, and… well, what do y’all think us Jews do when you Goyem are in your churches, communing with your god?

This ‘hebe’ was out taking pictures of trains.

After having captured shots of another Norfolk Southern freight unit hurtling past from a point of elevation over the tracks (yesterday’s post), one scuttled about a city block east at the edge of the South Side Flats zone, and then found a pile of big rocks to sit on while waiting for #872 up there to arrive.

Sated, I moved on.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I didn’t have any sort of plan for this part of the walk, just following my nose and kicking my feet around. Eventually, I’d need to get back to the T Light Rail’s Station Square stop, which is about a mile or so from the spot pictured above. Movement, that’s what I was after.

Hey, I don’t think I’ve walked that way yet, wonder what’s there?

As usual, I was the singular pedestrian.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Street Furniture was encountered, and somebody must seriously regret not dealing with this couch prior to a rainstorm which blew through Pittsburgh the previous night. Sheesh. Hell, back in NYC, this sofa would already be in somebody else’s living room. A lot of people don’t lock their cars up here, or even their houses when they go out. Can you imagine?

My toes were pointed, in the direction I needed to go.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Another view of the South Tenth Street Bridge, complimenting yesterday’s more aerial POV from those high flying City Steps up in the South Side Slopes. I’ve noticed a serious drop off in foot traffic in this area in the last few months. Wonder why?

I figured on being RR greedy, and headed down towards the trackage of CSX, but they weren’t busy – at all. Nothing was coming through.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

More street furniture was encountered.

Littering and dumping in Brooklyn and Queens was always done in a somewhat artistic way. You wouldn’t just abandon a couch like this, you’d need to ‘eff it up a bit,’ maybe even set it on fire before abandoning it. Paint some obscene graffiti on it. Maybe include a sort of explosive into the plan… something… give the couch a Viking funeral. It’s been loyal.

That sort of thing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I keep on reminding myself that ‘every walk doesn’t have to be an exodus,’ and accordingly kept on heading back towards transit. There’s a T light rail unit crossing the Monongahela River via the Panhandle Bridge, which was the last shot from this one.

Back next week with something – completely – different.

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

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– photo by Mitch Waxman

To start this one off: the peculiarities of the Newtown Pentacle time warp are still in effect, as the shots in today’s post were gathered back on the 29th of March. Just in case you’re wondering why you’re seeing bare trees and all that in mid May.

Your humble narrator had resolved, at the end of the hostile frigid season, to really lean into things when it warmed up and another one of my little aphorisms to simplify life is ‘do what you say, say what you do.’

One found himself, thereby, in the South Side Slopes section of Pittsburgh and scuttling down a steeply graded road called Arlington Avenue. The main goal of this walk was to exercise the big muscle found in the center of my chest, so I was scuttling along at a pretty good clip.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Didn’t have much of a plan, and this walk played out through an area that’s become fairly familiar territory for me. I used the ‘Lauer Way’ City Steps to descend down to the ‘flats,’ rather than following the measured parabola of Arlington Avenue.

The PTSD thing about steps is continuing to recede into an emotional ‘Davy Jones locker’ that I maintain – deep within a section of the brain where I store things away I don’t want to think about anymore. That memory is now neatly tucked away, right between my Dad’s Pancreatic Cancer and my Mom’s end stage Dementia. I’ve got a whole folder of events in there for all the times I’ve been punched in the face, or when I said something stupid or hateful too.

All the fun stuff, it’s found in my box of psychic pain.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I wasn’t so much scuttling here, it was a lot more like shambling. Occasionally, one would turn stiffly at the waist and then gesture the camera at something, while making a sound like ‘urhhhnnnn.’

That’s the South 10th street bridge, over the Monongahela River, pictured above. The location within these hills that I was walking down from would be analogous to Pittsburgh’s South 12th street, if I was standing on the flood plain below where the South Side Flats neighborhood is found.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I was heading for an ‘ole reliable.’

That’s the 12th street pedestrian bridge pictured above, overflying the Norfolk Southern RR trackage which snakes along the side of Mount Washington on the landform’s Monongahela facing side. I’ve come to understand that Norfolk Southern uses the former tracks and right of way of the Pennsylvania Rail Road. I walk by this spot a lot.

I was outfitted with a ‘railfan’ scanner radio for this one, and radio chatter suggested that ‘something’ was coming this way, so I found an opportune spot and then switched lenses over to something that could easily poke through chain link fencing without occlusion.

Specifically, an 85mm f2 prime lens.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Hey Now!

Norfolk Southern #4600 thundered past, hauling a line of empty mineral cars. An attempt at squirreling out its model typology and build history ended up getting squished by a more historic NS Freight Train that once bore the same number. Again, not a railfan, I just like taking pictures of trains.

Saying that, of course, there I stood with a scanner radio on a Sunday…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The plan was to head a block or two away to the east, after achieving flat ground, and hope for another train sighting, specifically of one coming from the opposite direction. It seems that when a train is observed going one way, it’s likely that another one is coming from the counter direction shortly afterwards. Guess they try and time it out that way to avoid roadway disruptions.

Back tomorrow.

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– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part seven:

Your humble narrator has been keen to capture a shot of a CSX train running through that little bridge seen above for quite a while now.

The Carson Street Rail Bridges is what this dual span is called, just for the curious.

Really, this was a pretty lucky shot to get. I was hoping for it, but… Y’know… it’s just like fishing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s CSX #3141, incidentally.

It was hauling minerals, probably coke or coal. These are the same course of CSX tracks which I often shoot along, whether it’s from that recently shuttered brewery, or from up on the West End Bridge, or along the trails which line the banks of the Monongahela River. When pointing out that a train is heading north-westerly, that means it’s heading in this direction.

Hey Now!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I stuck with the train for a minute. The light was good.

Saying that, this was the final ‘wish’ on my shot list for the day.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One still had to ‘walk out’ of the industrial area and find a safe spot where I’d be able to ‘chill’ while waiting for a ride home. Another three or four miles to the east was a T light rail stop, but the walk there would involve walking along the side of a highway, and marching my mud covered butt right through another scary vehicle interchange.

I consider myself lucky for having not gotten squished by a truck back at that Ohio River Blvd.’s crossing, onto the McKees Rocks Bridge.

Nope.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Here’s a closeup of the rail bridge. Neat.

An amalgamation of adolescents were observed, who were congealing into a mob of unfocused energy nearby, so one skipped along his path a bit quicker.

Teenagers… brrr… no impulse control.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Finally, that’s Chartiers Creek, which winds its way through the South Hills on its way to the Ohio River. Just out of frame, a couple of guys were fishing.

About a block away is a car wash, where I summoned a rideshare cab to come scoop me up and carry the bloated monstrosity my brain is trapped within back to HQ, where Our Lady of the Pentacle and Moe the Dog awaited.

Back tomorrow with something different.

“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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part seven:

This section of road, here in McKees Rocks Bottoms (which I’m referring to as ‘Bottomsburgh’), goes by the super romantic nomen of ‘Intermodal Way.’ Sexy, no? This photo was captured right about here, if you wanted to poke about in the neighborhood via Google Maps.

One of the things which photographers do that drives me absolutely batshit revolves around closely guarding ‘their spots.’ There’s a lot of that sort of gatekeeping, and it’s annoying, so I just give out GPS coordinates to the world and hope that somebody goes there to get better shots than me sometime in the future. You’re welcome.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

All along the tracks, devastation. Collapsing warehouses, busted windows, all kinds of trouble. I’m kind of ‘interested’ in this area, so will definitely be paying a bit of attention to whatever is on the other side of those structures sometime soon.

Saying that, I ain’t an ‘urbex’ kind of guy. I always remind people that ‘I’m like a Vampire and need to be invited in to do my work.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’m sure that there’s ‘great’ shots inside of there, but it’s also dangerous, and one seems to have become accidental prone in his old age – apparently.

It had only been a few hours since I had slipped on a patch of ice and then slammed down onto the pavement, but now in addition to my neck and shoulders feeling stiff, I was feeling a bit weird in the teeth (my jaw snapped shut during the fall, causing my teeth to ‘clack.’ I haven’t mentioned this previously, but my dentition is an ongoing and lifetime medical drama, and has been ever since I was a kid. Didn’t win the genetic lottery there, either, I guess.).

Grandma Sarah also told me that ‘you were put on this earth to suffer.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Looking up the hill towards where the people live, up in the slopes.

That newish industrial building in the fore was a bit of a mystery to me, but a quick Google search suggests that it’s home to an outfit called ‘American Steel Span’ which offers steel outbuilding kits.

Quonset my hut, then, and there you go.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s an example of the world’s smartest thing – cut the rail spur off and then create a truck based shipping yard, right alongside the rail yard instead. Might as well cut the piers away at the river and drop them into the water… oh… they did that one too. Sheiste.

This post is the penultimate of this series, I’d mention.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

More abandonment, but this one seemed to have work crews getting up to something inside, so hopefully some productive usage of this land might occur in the future.

Back tomorrow, to say ‘Hey Now!’

“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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part six:

At the southern end of the McKees Rocks Bridge, one enters that eponymous municipality which the bridge is named for. On the other side, you’re within the City of Pittsburgh.

There’s several different sections and styles of life found in McKees Rocks – normal ‘urban’ streets with wood frame homes, private suburb style development can be found up in the hills, there’s a bunch of ‘worker cottage’ style dwellings in a flood plain section that is called ‘the Bottoms.’

There’s lots and lots of commercial activity: warehousing, light and heavy industry, and a fairly enormous railyard which is operated by the CSX Railroading outfit. Saying that, there’s also a good number of abandoned industrial and commercial buildings here too.

The rest of my walk played out in these ‘bottoms.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’d be debarking the bridge nearby that first line of houses at the left of the shot above, and then negotiating myself into the industrial zone. Those aren’t ‘mill town’ houses, incidentally. That’s something else entirely. Worker cottages are also a different banana.

Ain’t so pedestrian friendly down there, I’d mention.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My plan involved following that long road parallel to the rail tracks. People just cross back and forth across these tracks all the time. I don’t.

My old pal Bernie Ente once cautioned me about being wary of the active tracks nearby Newtown Creek, as a switch could remotely trigger and trap your foot. As with everything else Bernie told me all those years ago, it was good advice and I stick to it.

I also don’t text while I drive, but that has nothing to do with Bernie. I just try to not do stupid things, although I do stupid things all the time. I do try, though.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It seems that if you need to park a semi in the Pittsburgh area overnight, there’s a parking lot in McKees Rocks just for that. It’s connected to a fairly large gas station, with multiple diesel ‘stalls’ for truckers to fill their tanks.

Finally, I negotiated myself over to that road without the sidewalks pictured above, and started heading away from the bridge.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A line of warehouse and light industrial buildings lined the tracks, as you’d expect. The steeple of that church caught my eye.

Economically speaking, things didn’t look so hot along the rails. More on that observation coming up tomorrow.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

So, this is where all that walking led me to.

I still had to walk ‘out’ and find a spot where I could summon a rideshare to get back to HQ, but that section of the walk ‘out’ involved another one of my ‘shot list’ objectives. I really wanted that rail shot…

More on that tomorrow, and the end of this particular scuttle.

“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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part five:

I mention my concept of ‘serendipity’ a whole lot.

The pinion which my intended usage of that term revolves around is ‘Mitch showed up with a camera, and then cool stuff started to happen.’

A different Towboat, which was heading westerly on the Ohio River, was observed from up here on the pedestrian lanes of the gargantua McKees Rocks Bridge. Serendipity.

About to move on, one decided to hang around instead, and that’s when I noticed another Towboat heading in an easterly direction along the Ohio River, towards the confluence point at the center of Pittsburgh where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers form up into the Ohio.

This Towboat is called the Gale R. Rhodes.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Serendipity roared again here. Notice that Norfolk Southern rail unit navigating onto the Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge? Squeal!

I sure noticed it. Hey Now!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I tracked the locomotive across the river, and cracked this one out when both the train and that distant Towboat – doing its duty between Pittsburgh’s Ohio River shoreline and Brunot’s Island – were in frame together.

One was obliged to hang about, thereby, until everything fell into place.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I love it when a plan comes together.

Wish that the locomotive engine was mid span on the bridge for this one, but I’ll take what I can get.

Back to scuttling!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I still had a decent amount of bridge left to cross.

After overflying the river, the McKees Rocks Bridges continues inland for a bit. Part of this is to handle the fairly startling difference in altitude between the bridge’s two sides, the other is to not compromise a rail yard and a down on its luck industrial zone below.

Once down on the ground in the McKees Rocks ‘Bottoms’ section, the timer start running out for this walk, but there was still some fairly interesting stuff I wanted to see down there. There was also that rail shot I was desirous of.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

McKees Rocks, and specifically the ‘bottoms’ residential side of the neighborhood is pictured above. I’ve been here before, during the first walk that I experienced over this amazing bridge.

Back next week with a couple more posts from this walk and then… man, oh man, the things I’ve seen and the places I’ve been…

“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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part five:

Still onboard the McKees Rocks Bridge for this one, but a lot closer to the southern shoreline. Yesterday, I mentioned that I was purposely ‘drag assing’ a bit up here, lingering and loitering in the hope that the Ohio River might put on a show for me.

Lucky.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

While waiting for ‘something to happen’ I waved the camera about a bit. I was trying to ‘box in’ a set of exposures for the three cardinal directions that are visible from this position, and also figure out how to expose for the water below. I was hoping for a train, or maritime activity. Something.

Lucky.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the tippy tip of McKees Rocks sticking out into the water. My next forays in this ‘zone’ are going to involve trying to get close to that shoreline. Don’t know if there’s any access at all, but you don’t know till you try.

Lucky.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Finally, the curtains opened, the band played, and the show I was hoping for started. I do miss my NY Harbor tugboats, yo, but I’ll happily take this.

Of course, this is a ‘Towboat’ on this inland waterway, not a Tug.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It passed under the McKees Rocks Bridge, the Megan Ames did.

The boat was towing four barges of a black mineral that was likely coal. Might have been coke, as well, but the one thing which I can say for certain is that the material was colored dark/black.

Also previously mentioned, a temperature inversion overnight had created somewhat random misty conditions popping up out of isolated and wooded spots. The light was changing several times a minute.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Off in the distance, another Towboat was observed, this one handling the back and forth of vehicles and crew to Brunot’s Island, where a ‘peaker’ electrical plant is maintained by the local electric utility.

That bridge is a railroad crossing for the Norfolk Southern railroading outfit, and is dubbed as the ‘Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge.’

Back tomorrow with the payoff for being patient.

“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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part four:

One managed to safely cross that gnarly intersection mentioned yesterday, an act whose execution caused me no end of existential anxiety, and soon the camera was positioned onto the McKees Rocks Bridge.

I’ve only walked this bridge a single time, and have been desirous of a return, as I think it’s fantastic.

This particular scuttle, which ended up being just a bit under ten miles horizontally, also saw me descending better than a thousand feet in elevation from ‘Observatory Hill’ in the Perry South area, nearby the Davis Avenue Pedestrian Bridge, moved through the neighborhoods of Brighton Heights and then Marshall Shadeland, crossing this bridge, and then heading down to the flood plains of the Ohio River in ‘McKees Rocks’s ‘Bottoms’ section on the other side of this bridge.

I get ahead of myself, however, and we are at the ‘crossing the bridge’ part of all that.

Just in case you’ve been wondering what the ‘Topsburgh and Bottomsburgh’ thing is about.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

McKees Rocks bridge is the longest span in Allegheny County, and it overlooks the massive Alcosan wastewater treatment plant found on the Ohio River on its northern approaches.

Pictured are – what looks to me – like aeration tanks, which wastewater professionals use to separate solid materials out of the ‘flow.’ Basically, the aeration causes solids to drop to the bottom for later collection. Solids can be anything from a matchbox car that some kid flushed down the toilet, to the rocks and stones and other detritus carried into the sewer grates during rainstorms.

My pals at the Sewer Plant in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint once told me that they had a bowling ball shoot out of one of the incoming pipes during a storm, which entered the plant in the manner of a cannonball. It caused all sorts of damage. The question of how a bowling ball ended up in NYC’s sewer system remains unanswered.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Looking across the Ohio River in a more or less southern direction for this one. I enjoy this bridge for a number of reasons, but primarily it’s an absolute ‘cat seat’ in terms of altitude and POV over the waterway, and the views are just fantastic.

Also, I like pointing the camera at industrial stuff, and there’s plenty of that visible from up here.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Saying that, I ended up spending close to an hour moving over the bridge as everytime I started walking, something caught my eye and I had to stop to get a shot. That’s the Fort Pitt Bridge in the far distance, catching a bit of light while standing in a cloud of rising mists.

As mentioned in my recent telling of the ‘slipped on ice and fell flat on my ass’ story, it had been fiendishly cold the night before, and the weather on this particular day saw temperatures in the high 50’s and low 60’s. That meant that a whole lot of misty weirdness was rising out of the hollows, crevasses, and ravines of Pittsburgh.

Lighting conditions were changing several times a minute, and things got photographically complex.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Me? I had a literal mile and a half of bridge to walk.

Pretty much loitering at this point. Waiting for a subject to pop into view, and scanning around for activity worth taking a picture of.

These moments are great tests for me, as a man who exhibits zero evidence of patience, and believes that the universe only shows him things that ‘need seeing’ when he randomly walks by them and that ‘you can’t force something to happen.’ One must compel himself to linger.

I remind myself of another personal aphorism – ‘it’s like fishing’ – and that you need to wait for a bite as you can’t order the fish onto your hook.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

You may notice how these shots continually look back towards that set of railroad tracks. One of the things I was looking for was rail activity.

I stuck the headphones into the ear holes, and started listening to that good old ‘History of Rome’ podcast again. I think I was on an episode numbered somewhere in the high 90’s, around the time of the Tetrarchy, but this walk was perpetrated on the 24th of March and today is the sixth of May, so… late in the game Italy based Rome, basically.

I find that ‘spoken word,’ as in podcast or audiobook, doesn’t lodge into my brain the way that the written word does. I need to listen to an audiobook at least a couple of times for it to ‘stick’ into my brain, whereas I can usually read a printed book, and then be able to quote it directly for a long bit afterwards.

Different parts of the language center in the brain, I guess.

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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part three:

After visiting the Davis Avenue Bridge, accessed via the Perry Hilltop ‘zone,’ your humble narrator began loathsomely forcing the rotting pre-corpse through and along the hazy borders of the Marshall Shadeland and Brighton Heights neighborhoods.

Man, what a ‘zone’! The housing stock here is exquisite.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This church seemed to have constructed atop a giant outcropping of rock, and I couldn’t stop myself from getting a photo of it.

This section of my day is best analogized by an old aphorism of mine from Queens, which is that ‘you pretty much have to walk through Sunnsyide to get to Newtown Creek from Astoria, so just get used to it.’ Also, Queens’ 43rd street used to be ‘the Shell Road,’ so you’re walking through Dutch colonial era NYC history by going that way. Connected the Rycken (Rikers) properties on the north all the way to Newtown Creek on the south. Just saying.

To get where I was going, I needed to scuttle through a couple of residential neighborhoods.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Disturbingly heterogenous, that’s how I’d describe the residential architecture encountered along this route. There were a few row houses, and many examples of ‘Pittsburgh style’ brick home, which features an enormous front porch.

While scuttling along, I saw a curtain drawn back as a shadowy figure observed my passage. I hissed in that direction, in the manner of a stray cat. The curtain fell back to a resting position.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Finally, the end of the world was reached.

At least, it’s the end of this part of the world. It put me right where I hoped to be, but there was a decidedly dodgy street crossing ahead. I was actually a bit anxious about this crossing, which can be difficult to navigate – in a car.

Fear… Fear is the mind killer.

Loping along like some crippled chimpanzee, with my stiffened shoulder and neck due to that slip and fall annoying me, and a perfect mud tattoo of the butt on the back of his filthy black raincoat, your humble narrator nevertheless strove on… and on…

Really, what choice did I have? If you stop moving, you stop moving.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The world – or at least the legal borders of ‘Pittsburgh’ – more or less ends at that fence, which then leads you down to a short set of stairs. Those stairs place pedestrians at a spot never meant for them, despite there being crosswalks and walk/don’t walk signals which were an obvious ‘add-on.’

On the other side of that fence is found Ohio River Blvd./Route 65, a de facto four lane highway masquerading as a local street. Historically speaking, it’s meant to be the deadliest of Pittsburgh’s high speed roads, due to its conditions in the 1960’s and 70’s.

Sounds nice, no?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the intersection which I was worried about, which theoretically allows pedestrians to cross Ohio River Blvd. and access the walkway to the McKees Rocks Bridge.

You see Junkies with signs here begging for handouts, but this ain’t exactly a safe spot – street crossing wise. Heavy traffic flow from three sides, lots of big trucks, angry pickup truck drivers who had to endure an entire two or three minutes of traffic congestion… brrr…

One survived the crossing, obviously, as these shots were captured at the end of March and here I am still rattling on about them in May. Besides, as I had already hurt myself during that fall, the safety odds were now on my side.

Right? Right? That’s the way the world works, right?

Back tomorrow.

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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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part two:

As one may recall, last week your humble narrator had pulsed out the door of HQ and set out upon one of his longish scuttles through Pittsburgh. In accordance with recent interests – the Steel City’s North Side, and in particular – the ‘Perry Hilltop’ neighborhood is where this one started.

A construction project forced me to reroute my steps to get the newest bridge (2025) in Pittsburgh, a pedestrian and bike connector called ‘The Davis Avenue Bridge.’ Along the way, I slipped on a patch of ice and came pretty close to an injury, but managed to walk away just a little stiff.

The reroute put me in front of that baby deer pictured above, so I guess everything was meant to be.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One broke off of the original path at a narrow and steep road called ‘Rodney,’ which carried me away from the descending road to an ascending one. Really narrow road, with no sidewalks. No bueno. Very Pittsburgh.

Saying that, this was only the equivalent of a city block. When a vehicle did pass me by, I just stood to the side and let them transit through.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

At the top of Rodney Road is another abandoned home. This is a huge problem in Pittsburgh, and that’s something which always jumps out at me while moving around the area. So many.

The good news is that you can see the Davis Avenue Bridge directly behind the abandoned house, which means that I had gotten to the top of this particularly steep road and closer to ‘stop 1’ on my scuttle.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Well, there you are.

Yep, I felt a little non-plussed, or ‘non-trussed’ if you would…

Saying all that, getting this bridge ‘modernized’ and replacing the earlier iteration of the span here, which was in danger of collapse, seems to have been a generational project for the folks in the neighborhood across it from the park – which is dubbed as ‘Brighton Heights.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One waved the camera around a bit up here, but the only POV’s on hand were looking back down at the same homes I had just walked past – and where that patch of ice lurked.

That slip and fall did have an effect on me, just not an orthopedic one.

I smacked down onto the pavement with a decent amount of energy, and accordingly my shoulders and neck were a bit sore afterwards.

Hilariously, the bad ankle was just fine even though it was directly involved in the slip and fall, due to my heel striking on that fairly invisible patch of ice.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Accomplished, and I can scratch another Pittsburgh bridge off the list.

Thing is, I wanted a ‘bridge,’ not some mere high flying truss.

Turning my heels and pointing the toes in a direction where more massive infrastructural interests lie, and then scuttling through another set of the neighborhoods which causes the Yinzer jaw to literally drop open when I say I’m ’going there for a walk.’ I’d be heading in a mostly westerly direction, thereby.

Seriously… Fear is the mind killer.

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.