– photo by Mitch Waxman

For this scuttle, one used a rideshare cab to drop my pre-corpse off across the street from Pittsburgh’s Union Dale Cemetery, a polyandrion which is itself ‘on my list,’ but tapophilia wasn’t on the menu for this particular day. This area is in the ‘north side’ of the city.

The section which I’d be scuttling through during this effort is dubbed ‘California Kirkbride.’ While moving along the cemetery’s fenceline, a mausoleum demanded my attentions from the other side of a fence.

‘That’s something,’ said a humble narrator. Serendipity, indeed.

George Elsworth Smith died fairly young, but boy oh boy did he live.

Smith was a professional gambler, horses were his thing, and he made his living betting on them. He died young at 42, after having amassed a fortune of more than three million dollars – in 1905 – a sum which would be worth more than one hundred million dollars, in today’s money.

Another professional gambler assigned Smith the nickname ‘Pittsburgh Phil,’ in order to distinguish him from a crowd of other people in their orbit named George Smith.

Apparently, Smith designed his own mausolea, which cost him $30K, and it was ready for him some seven years before he died of tuberculosis. The portrait statue of him on the roof was commissioned by his grieving mother, and added posthumously. The piece of paper clutched in the statue’s hand is a betting slip from a racetrack.

Pittsburgh Phil.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

An effort is underway to visit sections of Pittsburgh which haven’t been considered quite yet, or at least that I haven’t experienced while out on foot. I’ve done a lot of auto based scouting, yes, but as I always say – you can’t see anything from a car because you’re moving too fast. I’ve resumed an old habit, by the way, which is to start recording the street intersection signage while moving around. I often need these ‘bookmarks’ afterwards, to make sense of all the shots and remember exactly where it was that I shot them. Good news is that a non contrived usage for AI has actually appeared, wherein I ask Google’s machine what neighborhood a particular intersection is found within. This is handy, for one such as myself.

California-Kirkbride, which is where the intersection of Brighton Rd. and Ingham Street is found, is another one of those ‘North Side’ Pittsburgh neighborhoods which has a ferocious reputation. ‘Don’t go there, ‘they’ll’ shoot you dead.’ My answer to that last one has become ‘who are ‘they’?,’ ‘what are their names?,’ ‘can we call them?’

Funny thing – wasn’t scary at all – just another residential neighborhood and kind of a lovely one at that.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

See any ‘beater’ cars covered in tarps in the driveway or front yard? Garbage and furniture on the lawn? Old tires? Wooden panels filling the street facing windows? Nope? You’re in an ok section of town then. Relax.

Brighton Road is kind of the ‘main drag’ through here, and it snakes along the masonry retaining walls of that cemetery. Across the street is housing stock that’s quite typical of the sort that Pittsburgh’s post WW2 automobile enabled suburbanization process installed.

‘Dis ain’t no suburb, Mitch, you dumb.’ Actually, if you read up on the history of Astoria, Queens you’ll find out that Astoria was considered a suburb ‘back in the day.’ You’ve got Levittown on your mind when you hear that ‘suburb’ word…

If you’re interested in the history of this sort of residential architecture, and the stories behind its development, check out this 1994 vintage Rick Sebak documentary, from the local PBS outfit (pbs login required).

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’m really going to have to take a hard look at this cemetery sometime…

Pittsburgh Phil was just a lucky find, but I didn’t come all the way over here to just stand around and admire the statuary. One leaned into it, and scuttle scuttle scuttle did I do.

As usual, I had figured out a walking route prior to leaving HQ, as it’s pretty easy to ‘cul de sac’ yourself on Pittsburgh’s hills.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It was pleasant out, weather wise, with temperatures in the middle 50’s and a steady breeze. One had zipped the insulating liner out of his filthy black raincoat, and thereby felt quite ‘bon vivant.’

I was carrying the standard ‘kit’ in my camera bag, wearing the standard ‘Mitch suit,’ and had omitted usage of the headphones as your humble narrator was enjoying all of the bird’s singing and whistling.

You gotta drink up the little stuff, yo.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Yeah, I’ll definitely and really have to take a walk inside of this cemetery sometime…

Meanwhile, I still had miles and miles of scuttle ahead of me. Come with?

Back tomorrow with more.

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

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– photo by Mitch Waxman

Historic research – which I’m definitely not doing – revealed something to me recently about the ‘zone’ that I’m dwelling within.

That zone is specifically called ‘Dormont,’ which is a small community, surrounded by much larger municipalities, in a larger region called ‘The South Hills.’ The ‘zone’ sits right at the edge of Pittsburgh’s official municipal border, and in the case of HQ, that border is literally across the street from me with differently colored street signs facing each other on the parallel corners.

OK – the ‘big neighbors’ next to Dormont are Beechview (which is part of Pittsburgh), Brookline (part of Pittsburgh), Mount Lebanon (its own thing), and Bethel Park (its own thing). Regionally, these communities are part of a larger area referred to as ‘The South Hills,’ which is geographically expansive.

Think the border of Queens and Nassau County, for the New Yorkers.

The shot above is from one of the crossroads, found along West Liberty Avenue (Route 19 Truck). The POV has me standing at the edge of Brookline, looking towards Beechview where the McDonalds is, with Dormont towards the left.

So – why was I standing here? What’s the deal? Did I go get a Big Mac?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Coal. It’s coal that brought me here. Coal is something I’m just starting to learn about, and it’s fascinating.

Check out this great page at Brooklineconnection.com, discussing the Oak Mine, which undermines this entire area. The location shown in the third shot on the linked page is where I was peregrinating about for the shots in today’s post. Other nearby mines were operating all the way up until the 1980’s, apparently, but this one is meant to have shut down in the early 20th.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One drove over to Brookline, parked the car, and then set out on foot to see if there was any observable remnant of the mine.

An enormous masonry structure, which appears to be a retaining wall, was jammed into the hillside. Closer inspection of the structure revealed that it was not a retaining wall, and that the large masonry blocks were stuck at least two deep into the hillside.

It seems that Brookline in particular was a central node for harvesting coal meant to serve the residential market, with estimates stating that 90-95% of the area is undermined.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As an aside, Brookline has a Flatbush Avenue within it, and a Queensboro Avenue, and there’s an Fordham Avenue there too. There’s only one true place on this planet, and the Brookline people kind of acknowledge that – despite replacing ‘lyn’ with ‘line.’ Ever read Roger Zelazny’s ‘The Chronicles of Amber’? It feels like that sometimes, to this Brooklyn Boy.

That building pictured above is a little chicken wing fry shack, but notice that its foundations don’t seem to match up with the brick building. Could this be where the first electronic vehicle scale, at the mine, in Pittsburgh was installed?

Ok… that’s obscure tech stuff… You’d drive your horse drawn wagon onto the scale, and the combination would be weighed. Then they’d fill your wagon with coal and weigh you again. The differential is what you owed the mine. Similar systems persist today, in the waste handling industry and for businesses that move rocks and soil around in trucks.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This shot is from directly across the street, within the parking lot of that McDonalds from the first shot.

This coal revelation has explained so many things about Pittsburgh to me. Why do these vehicular streets – built out in the 1940’s or later – follow serpentine routes? High speed routes built for cars don’t do that.

Answer: there used to freight rail alongside of, and predating, these roads, and the roads followed the tracks.

Everything is starting to make sense now.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

All this coal business does raise a few new questions for me, which is cool, and it also revives an older one.

The oldest question, actually, and the only one that really matters…

Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?

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– photo by Mitch Waxman

A comedic attempt at ‘cleaning things up’ has been underway for a bit here in Pittsburgh. Anticipation of the NFL Draft event has driven the local Government into a paroxysm: cleaning hillsides of trash, power washing the graffiti away, breaking up homeless encampments…

If they put this much effort into things regularly…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

On the final steps of a fairly long scuttle, and I think this one was about 8 or 9 miles – walking up and down hills, and then long empty streets, and then to the terminal stop on the T Light Rail.

Days like this one involve a one way cab ride to the top of wherever I’m going that day, and then picking my path back to mass transit if at all possible. It’s mainly about cost, this, and not bookending my day with $20+ cab rides.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Saying that, what you’re going to seeing in the next couple of weeks involved exactly that. Pittsburgh is a motor vehicle based city, after all.

I don’t drive when out on my excursions, usually, as I’d have to find my way back to the car and that limits how far I can wander away from it.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Across the street from Acrisure Stadium, and the entrance to the T light rail station above.

I’ve been enjoying these north side walks, incidentally. Physically challenging and revelatory in many ways. There’s a couple more of these in the pipeline, so hoping that y’all find them as interesting as I did.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

‘Upstairs’ at the T station, and my chariot is arriving.

I’ve also ventured out of the state since these photos were captured. Used the car for that, obviously, but you won’t be seeing those posts for a bit.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I poured my pre corpse into a seat, onboard this Red Line T.

A bit of organization needing handling as far as my camera bag goes, a task which was accomplished while riding the service.

Soon, I was back in Dormont where Moe the dog squealed as I walked in.

Back tomorrow with something 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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Continuing today, with the last steps of a longish scuttle described in grueling detail in prior posts. Check out last week’s series for all that.

I was in the former ‘Allegheny City,’ annexed to Pittsburgh at the start of the 20th century. ‘North Side’ is how the modern day Yinzers refer to it. The Mexican War Street and Chateau historical districts are nearby.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The building stock here is disturbingly heterogeneous.

Wood frame private homes sitting next to five and six story tall brick apartment buildings are a common sight. This ‘zone’ survived rapacious levels of multiple decade long urban renewal projects occurring all around it, somehow.

I’m just now ‘getting smart’ about this ‘zone.’ Reading up on it, all that.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Hey, that’s the hospital you see on HBO’s ‘The Pitt’ medical drama.

We’ve been watching the show, which feels a lot like a sequel to ‘ER.’

Here’s where they go wrong in portraying the Steel City: virtually none of the actors uses a Pittsburgh accent, except for the head nurse character (get aht the hawse, jag off, you need go), the patients don’t wander into the ER dressed head to toe in Steelers or Pirates gear, and nobody is sipping from small containers of the locally brewed sweet tea brand.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

At Allegheny Commons Park, I took a different route than my normal one and walked past the lovely ‘Lake Elizabeth’ section. I was heading for that rail trench, which is smack dab in the middle of the park.

Of course, I suddenly needed to pee. I was asked recently whether or not my constant need to urinate is related to my enjoyment of local breweries. Sure, if you drink beer you need to piss, but as I had mentioned, it’s mainly a blood pressure pill which drives this dynamic for me these days. Not a drop of beer had passed my lips on this day, as it was also kind of early in the day to have a drink, to be honest. I often go two to three weeks without a drink, as a matter of fact, but I take that particular pill twice a day.

Luckily, Pittsburgh acknowledges human biology and there are Porta Potties installed around public places like this.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My ‘all too human’ problem caused me to miss being stationed along that fenceline when Norfolk Southern passed by in the rail trench and I was just leaving the Porta Potty. Can’t catch them all.

I negotiated across the lawn, and got myself into position to capture the next one passing through.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As mentioned, since I’ve been kind of seeing the Allegheny Valley Railroad a whole bunch in recent weeks, I’m going to have to stop referring to it as ‘the white whale.’ The term refers to something rarely seen, and I’ve been seeing them a lot. Saying that…

Hey Now!

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

When Howard Street (which is long and fairly featureless) begins allowing you to get close to its intersection with North Avenue, some signs of human life can be discerned, or at least abundant street parking.

As described in posts all week, your humble narrator was enjoying a bit of an ‘explore’ for this scuttle. We started at the Fineview Overlook, walked over Television Hill, then down the Rising Main city steps to Toboggan Street, and then here to Howard Street.

Along the way, we’ve talked about an interstate project called the East Street Valley, and mused out loud about abandoned houses and building foundations or retaining walls jutting out of muddy but wooded slopes.

All caught up.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Closed off city steps were encountered. Wonder where they go?

Pittsburgh ain’t NYC, from a budgetary POV. When New York City has a money problem, they get creative and put a one cent tax on every pound of banana – or something – sold in their domain, and the bosses can pull a million bucks a day ‘out of their ass’ to fund stuff. Ambitious politicians like to spend, they just have to know how to ratchet up a bit more of the tax cheddar out of their flock without starting a revolution.

Pittsburgh doesn’t have that many people to sell bananas to. Nutritionists opine that you should eat one or two bananas a day. Potassium. Fiber. Good for you.

NYC, of course, has an annual budget of (currently) $112.4 billion, whereas Pittsburgh’s annual nut is $721 million.

There’s a vast distance found between the size of Pittsburgh’s population and that of NYC’s to justify those numbers, of course. Saying that, NYC politicians like spending other people’s money.

‘Does the NYPD actually need to maintain multiple aircraft, armored vehicles, and even tanks’ is a question that most New Yorkers don’t ask often themselves, of course. Ever have to take a piss at City Hall? Nice toilets they got, huh? It’s like that back home.

Suffice to say that there’s likely a good reason for Pittsburgh to have those steps closed, and eventually they’ll get back to them when the budget to do so manifests. Meanwhile, Bananas are around a penny cheaper per pound around here and if the Pittsburgh Cops need a tank they borrow it from the State Cops or the National Guard.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Concrete steps, leading to a home or building long gone.

There was a tarp observed here or there, up in the hills. Don’t know if they were from squats, settlements, or encampments. Could have been leave behinds from some construction project… don’t know. Didn’t seem to be currently occupied at any rate.

Wasn’t about to start climbing up there to find out.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Another set of City Steps was encountered, and this collection of rises and runs seemed open for business. Not sure which ones they are.

I was happy to see that pair of school shoes hanging off part of the steps, in the upper left corner. Good to know that kids still do that.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Howard Street vomited me forth onto North Avenue.

The highway goes into a trench here, which presents drivers with a series of exits leading towards both the Fort Duquesne and West End Bridges as well as local streets. Whew.

Me? I was ultimately planning on using the light rail to get back to HQ, so there was still a fairly decent amount of walking ahead of me. All relatively flat, though, and mostly through a park so… win.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The remainder of this scuttle would occur in familiar territory, nearby the Allegheny Commons Park, which I often visit for railroad shots.

Hey… wait a minute… railroad shots…

Back next week with more, and a ‘Hey Now’ or two.

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

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– photo by Mitch Waxman

After beginning the effort in Pittsburgh’s Fineview neighborhood, and then walking down the Rising Main city steps, your humble narrator continued with his lonely scuttle down Howard Street.

A lack of paved sidewalk found me walking upon a grassy knoll, alongside an interstate’s noise abatement wall, securing one from possible vagary or horror behind a traffic guard rail. Didn’t matter, really, as there was no traffic of any kind which I needed to avoid – but it’s better to be proactively safe than postactively sorry.

Aphorism time: It’s easier to avoid starting a fire, than it is to put one out.

The wooded hill to the right, and Howard Street itself, used to be near the commercial center of a no longer extant Pittsburgh neighborhood which was referred to as ‘The East Street Valley.’ City and State nuked the place to make room for a highway, putting more than 800 families out of their homes in the name of progress.

I mean… they were compensated in some way… but… wow.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s three high speed travel lanes in each direction heading south and north on this section of the I-579/I-279 corridor, as well as a seldomly open to traffic double ‘HOV’ lane in its center. There are just a few east/west crossings for vehicles, which are accomplished on high flying bridges or tunnels set in beneath the road, and an odd pedestrian bridge.

I’ve been referring to this road as I-579 for the last few posts. As you head north out of the City, 579 interchanges with 279 (amongst other high speed courses) before joining with ‘I-79’ itself. My inexperience with Pittsburgh’s roads is on display thereby, as I cannot currently tell or show you exactly where those interchanges are. I’ll find out, sometime.

I’ve just tipped my research lance into this East Street Valley tale quite briefly, but I’m fascinated by it.

This Reddit post has a historic photo of the area from 1960, and the ‘main drag’ in the photo is meant to be East Street itself – which is sort of where that HOV lane is today, by my reckoning. In the historic photo, the secondary street, just left of East in the photo. was the very one I was walking on in modernity, which is called ‘Howard Street’ by the City of Pittsburgh.

This video at YouTube discusses the community which was displaced. This YouTube video takes a walk with a historian photographer named Betty Muschar. Interesting stuff.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A pedestrian bridge can be accessed via Howard Street, one which crosses over the highway and provides a connection to that stand of surviving homes on the other side, and the recalcitrant Catholic Church whose parish priest would not allow it to be moved or demolished.

The annoying thing to me, about this project, is when it occurred in Pittsburgh’s timeline rather than it happened at all. If this was a 1940’s or 50’s era project, I’d understand that they didn’t understand back then.

Thing is: They really got to work on this monstrosity in the late 1970’s, and thereby should have known better. The ‘official’ reason for the project was to better connect the north hills suburbs to downtown Pittsburgh (stadiums), and to alleviate commuter congestion along Route 8 (a north south secondary arterial road that feeds into the east west Route 28, which is actually pretty far away, which goes north/south and offers local street grid connections to a series of town centers).

All I can say is that Robert Moses would have loved this project and the way that that generation of highway planners ‘swung a meat axe’ at the East Street Valley.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The view from that pedestrian bridge, looking south towards Pittsburgh.

As is usually the case with roads of this size and capacity, an aura of blight travels along with it. People driving at 60-70 mph (the speed limit is actually quite a bit lower, but… Pittsburgh) don’t stop off at a mom & pop operation ‘on the way’ to buy a hot dog. They carry their money out of the City with them to somewhere else far away, at a high rate of speed. Highways like this are like knives punched into the heart of municipal economies.

Ask anyone who lives near the LIE, the BQE, or the Cross-Bronx – my NYC homies. High speed roads driven into the hearts of cities create corridors of devastation and poverty around them, so spread the word.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My eye kept on getting drawn towards all that masonry buried in the verge and mud along the cliff like hills along Howard Street. At the time I was shooting these photos, it was puzzling to me. ‘What happened here?’ is what I kept asking myself.

What a waste.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Steps, foundations, all sorts of stuff for the future’s archaeological people to dig up and discern. Fascinating.

I wonder how many family dogs are still buried up there…

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

Serendipity, I tell’s ya, is what makes all the suffering worth it.

As detailed in two prior posts, your humble narrator recently engaged in a long scuttle which carried his cadaverous form down the titanic ‘Rising Main’ city steps, which are found on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Rising Main comes to ground on what looks like an entirely condemned street called Toboggan.

This walk ended up opening up a story for me I was ignorant of, that of Pittsburgh’s ‘East Street Valley.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A highway project was rammed through this section, which ended up seeing massive numbers of residents displaced between 1962 and 1985.

Entire neighborhoods were emptied, the street grid broken, and communities erased. All that really survives from that prior incarnation is a Catholic Church, one which refused to give up its plot of land. You can see the church from the eight lane highway, while you’re driving north at sixty miles per hour.

Conversation with a friend who’s local to Pittsburgh revealed the name of this section as being ‘the East Street Valley,’ and he also mentioned knowing somebody who was displaced by the highway project.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Looking back up Rising Main from the bottom of the steps, and standing in front of some of the condemned homes.

Some work seemed to be going on in one or two of the buildings here, but the ‘condemned’ blue signage Pittsburgh uses as a legal notice was displayed in the surviving windows. Shame.

There was no life here. Didn’t hear birds or critters ‘effing around in the woods, nothing. All you could hear was the buzzing of car tires on asphalt and the sound of engine inhibitors on semi trucks throttling down, all of which was coming from the direction of I-579.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That car had moss growing on it. Looks like it hasn’t been moved in decades.

Feeding into my Cotard delusion, there were absolutely zero other human beings encountered along this path. Perhaps… I am a phantom floating along in a filthy black raincoat.

Hey… it’s warmed up a bit here, so maybe I’ll finally wash the thing. It’s got mud all over the butt and back section after I… well…

…that’s a story for another post…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Along the wooded slopes, foundation stones and retaining walls can be observed. The atavist masonry I saw everywhere is what made me so curious about what happened here.

I’ve actually had to buy a book, to learn more!

One scuttled past a municipal facility that pumps drinking water, from a resovoir on high at the top of the hill, out to the neighborhoods.

The end of Toboggan Street leads out to a fairly long and largely featureless road called Howard Street. Here’s the intersection on Google Maps if you want to click around and look for yourself (the lone structure is the aforementioned pump house).

I had to follow it out, in a relatively southernly direction. To the east, or left as I was oriented, is a noise abatement wall for the high speed road, and to the west or right – a former neighborhood that was scratched off the earth around 40-50 years ago.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the noise abatement wall, which marks the border with I-579.

There was no sidewalk on the other side of the street for this section of Howard Street, so I opted for a walk in the grass, on the safe side of that guard rail pictured above. The ground was squishy, as it had rained in the last 24 hours, but that was a nice change after walking up Television Hill and then down the Rising Main.

All you can hear is the traffic. I put my headphones in, thereby, and got back to my relisten of the ‘History of Rome’ podcast (which I just discovered is on Spotify, if you roll that way). I’m listening to the episodes discussing Constantine the Great now, so what a wild thousand years it’s been. I’m a big Diocletian fan, so the last few episodes have been a Tetrarchical Joy.

If you’ve got a great history podcast I should be listening to, please drop a link to it in the comments section. I want to know more about everything, all the time.

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.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Gargantuan, the Rising Main City Steps on Pittsburgh’s North Side, in today’s post.

These are the fourth longest ‘City Steps’ in the city, and they are in a deleterious state of repair. The ground which their foundations rest within is subsiding, sliding, and pulling the staircase to and fro. I tried to illustrate this a few times by looking back up at where I started, so you can see the almost serpentine footprint of the things.

As longtime readers will tell you, I’ve endlessly talked about this weird mental condition regarding stairs that has taken root in my mind, ever since shattering my ankle on a set of steps at home. I freeze up, grasp for dear life at the bannister, and mistrust both my sense of walking balance and the purely mechanical propensity of walking down stairs.

It’s a kind of PTSD, and I’ve been self medicating for the last year with exposure therapy, forcing myself to seek out and expose the senses to this stimuli. It’s working, in terms of ‘normalizing,’ but still quite present.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My phobic intuitions were tantalized, thereby, by this.

At one point, the bannisters on Rising Main are literally fallen away. Some civic minded person seems to have attempted an impromptu repair, using a garden hose.

I really do wish that this was AI.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There you go. Securely attached.

The Rising Main steps connect the Fineview community at their apex to what used to be a thriving neighborhood at the bottom.

More on that is inbound.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The Rising Main path is parallel to what looks like an entirely condemned and abandoned roadway called Toboggan Street, which also has its own set of stairs which seem to be in the process of being reclaimed by nature. Several fairly picturesque abandoned houses were seen along the way.

As mentioned above, it’s going to be a while before – or if – I come back here. These steps were causing me no end of anxiety.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

What a shame.

Now, as mentioned yesterday, my puzzlement over this situation led to me ringing up my pal Tim Fabian, who casually threw out the phrase ‘East Street Valley’ during our conversation about my visit to the area.

I then looked that term up, and as it turns out, it refers to a generational road building project that saw an extension of I-79 (locally – I-579) rammed through this neighborhood. This ‘zone,’ as it turns out, used to be a densely populated section of the City of Pittsburgh.

The highway project played out between 1966 and 1989. Here’s that story. A bit of depth to the East Street Valley project will be offered in a subsequent post this week.

As a point of trivia, when discussing the ‘Interstate System,’ an odd numbered road is north/south whereas an even one is east/west. There’s an exception or two to this rule, in various spots around the country, but otherwise…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Y’know, sights like this abandoned building are just candy for wandering photographers. You could draw us in, trapping shutterbugs like moths attracted to a flame. Get enough of us, you’ve got a baseball team.

Saying all that, the devastation and abandonment witnessed in this section of Pittsburgh is – at it turned out – a feature, not a bug.

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

Eighteen stories, vertically speaking, and then just two tenths of a mile horizontally – that’s the size box you’d need for the Rising Main City Steps, which are waiting for you on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

I plan on never walking these steps again, as a note.

During this, and tomorrow’s, post you’ll see why.

Let’s just say that they are structurally compromised, and that the only thing which Rising Main really has going for it in terms of not collapsing is gravity. All the parts of the steps are just piled up on each other in a currently stable fashion, but the land they are set into is shifting and subsiding.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Abandoned homes surround you here.

Curiosity about this apocalyptic condition forced me into learning something, an unwelcome moment which punctured a carefully curated ignorance.

Suffice to say that many of the things I’ve learned about this area will be discussed in forthcoming posts, but the walk opened so many questions to me that I was actually forced to buy a history book, which I will now be forced to read and learn something from.

Farkin bastiches…

Ok… I admit it… I’ve been doing historic research about Pittsburgh. Damn it all, it’s true… it’s all true.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Now that my secret shame is public, I feel freed.

I’m beginning to understand everything now.

Why things are where they are… Y’know, everybody focuses on the 20th century steel stuff, but not on coal extraction and glass manufacturing – both of which happened first, and steel was a consequence of the supply chain network established for glass manufacture and coal/mineral extraction.

Coal… you wouldn’t believe it… parts of Pittsburgh are 90-95% undermined… it’s like mole hills down there. I’m getting ahead of myself, however… that story is still coming into focus…

Steps… the City Steps… Rising Main…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The record is a bit hazy, but apparently these particular steps were installed in 1945. Don’t know if they replaced an earlier set.

The steps do look octogenarian, really.

The horizontal iron bannisters are just barely attached to the concrete sections of steps. In some places, they’ve corroded away entirely, in others, you reach out for one and it sort of pulls towards you, bending away from its posts. I’m certain that these steps haven’t just been sitting out here since the Second World War without any maintenance, but holy smokes they are in lousy condition. Cracks, spalling, subsidence.

The stairs lead down into a ravine. There’s the remnant of a street down there, dubbed Toboggan Street. Several residential buildings can be observed along the path, condemned and collapsing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

How? That’s the question I kept asking myself, along with ‘why’?

Maybe, it’s the resovoir people? There’s a pumping station on the flat section below which needs the land, maybe? Maybe they’re planning something and need these houses out of the way?

Not so much, as it turned out.

I started looking into the matter, and hit a series of dead ends.

Your humble narrator did learn about the distribution of gangland turf on Pittsburgh’s North Side, during the 80’s and 90’s. ‘Back in the day sitch’ as several veterans of that era described a local milieu when crack was king.

In desperation for some sort of understanding of this scenario, I called my pal Tim, who has lived in Pittsburgh for decades. He worked as a real estate guy for a bit, and thereby has a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. Tim referred to this area as being the ‘East Street Valley,’ and that injection of terminology unlocked some understanding of the entire area for me.

Still had to buy the book.

Coincidentally, Tim is also an accomplished photographer – who shot the photos featured in the very first book about these City Steps from 2004.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Me? I uttered one of my little aphorisms out loud while shooting this photo – ‘It’s all downhill from here,’ and I continued picking my way down the moss and nitre cloaked concrete of these Rising Main steps.

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

Lanark Street, on the north side of Pittsburgh, and looking back towards the Fineview Overlook where this scuttle got started. According to municipal signage, I was standing on ‘Television Hill.’

The reason for that is pretty obvious, if you look at the next photo.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This broadcast antenna is used by two local television stations WPGH-TV (Fox 53) and WPNT (The Point). It was in a large and stoutly fenced off property with lots of ‘no trespassing’ and ‘danger of electrocution’ signs. No bueno.

I underexposed this one by a couple of stops to make that pale sun visible in the cloudy sky.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

So, why was I up here on Television Hill on the ‘ass side’ of the Fineview neighborhood? Glad you asked.

Pittsburgh offers pedestrians a choice of hundreds of sets of ‘City Steps’ to help negotiate the often steep streets within this Appalachian city.

I was heading for the fourth longest set of steps in the city, which offers 371 individual vertical steps that play out over just 2/10ths of a horizontal mile. The vertical distance from the top to bottom of these steps is equivalent to the height of a 15-18 story building. Masochists and sports enthusiasts use these steps for training and running upon, usually in an upward direction. I opted for the downhill experience instead.

That’s where I was heading… and they’re called ‘Rising Main.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The first sets of steps along Rising Main Avenue you see are wooden, constructed from the sort of ‘treated’ lumber which is commonly used for decks and docks. The first house at the corner of Rising Main Avenue looked abandoned and I spotted a condemnation notice on its window. This persists for about a block, ending at a wide intersection.

That’s not so dramatic, you might think. Interesting but…

Then you see the actual Rising Main steps.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One has been fascinated by the City Steps of Pittsburgh since moving here. Remember when I walked down those terrifying metallic steps nearby Duquesne University back in 2023? I’ve been wandering all over the place, using the ones strung through in South Side Slopes section as well. Heck, I’m just getting started out here…

On a side note: let’s say somebody regularly experiences fairly debilitating episodes of PTSD, at the top of staircases due to having suffered an ankle crushing injury in the recent past. In that case, what sort of gentle ‘exposure therapy’ might you recommend in the direction of mending this mental health issue?

18 steep stories of rickety ass steps? Yup, that’s the ticket.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Also, I’d like to mention that I’ve been going back and forth on the title of this post. It’s not my term, ‘Big Kahuna,’ rather that’s what they call these steps locally. Saying that, I’m fairly certain that there’s got to be some form of racism which I’m completely clueless about which describes the origin of the term ‘Kahuna.’ Don’t know. If so, sorry. That’s what they call these steps. The Big Kahuna.

Back next week with more from Rising Main and the North Side of Pittsburgh 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.