I Vortext

Wednesday

Exile in America (Part 2): McKees Rocks

After 25 years in New York, the author moves back to his hometown and discovers a new world lodged in the old one . . . Sometimes the strangest destination is home.

Creek Road along Chartiers Creek, under the Wind Gap Bridge

“Road’s End,” as the locals call it, is a leafy patch of light industry, abandoned cars, and (probably) a few misanthropes who want to “get away from it all” while remaining in earshot of the highway above.

Satellite image © 2012 Google

Showing some leg, showing some skull

Road’s End is an intimate nowhere; a woman there will gladly oblige a stranger with a camera who asks her to roll up her short shorts and pose against the bridge.

Vestige: Old brick road peeking up through new one

Slim passage (where Creek Rd. meets Singer Ave., near the tracks)

A sacred aura pervades

McKees Rocks is a lush and rusted jewel on the Ohio, faded but still glimmering, with beautiful churches, streets and vistas that are beyond quaint . . . Through its trove of architecture, local sages, and industrial archeology the history/aura of an old city will survive.

Volume drinking

A 22-ounce beer (~ 2 beers) for $2.50 is not uncommon in Pittsburgh bars (almost like giving it away).

On this day: Grand Opening of Bottom Dollar in McKees Rocks

Pittsburgh takes a good picture

Brooklyn, where I used live, takes a good picture as I’ve often said, but so does Pittsburgh. The hills make for a constant layering effect, plus you can always go higher and get a new perspective.

A trio of churches at twilight seen through the McKees Rocks Bridge

House swallowed by vegetation

Exile in America (Parts 1-4)

More Images of Pittsburgh (Slideshows)

Monday

Exile in America (Part 3): Lawrenceville/Strip District

After 25 years in New York, the author moves back to his hometown and discovers a new world lodged in the old one . . . Sometimes the strangest destination is home.

Stephen Foster’s tombstone, Allegheny Cemetery

A most nondescript monument for such an iconic figure (and native son). But it may be fitting, for even though Foster wrote some of the most popular songs ever — songs I sang in grade school music classes, that are still lodged in my head — he died on the Bowery, drunk and destitute.

Down to the waterfront (satellite image)

Gingerly I walked the narrow shoreline, hearing explosions up ahead. I encountered a group of shirtless urchins, setting off fireworks, doing what urchins do. “Just passing through,” I declared. Lord of the Flies occurred to me then — primal regression, at society’s edge; a vision of being swarmed, having my throat cut and left for dead. (I don’t think they were the type, though, and surely I didn’t deserve it, for my harmless intrusion on their obscure hideaway.)

“Bad Kids . . . Spunk”

Houses in Lawrenceville

Lawrenceville has undergone a renaissance in recent years, through the same "mixed use" formula that's driving the revival of neighborhoods across the Rust Belt. It’s the antithesis of suburbia: instead of houses in one place, the shopping mall in another, and industry segregated in some no-go hellscape, it's all intermixed. When it works, as it does here, it’s a vivid, concrete expression of vitality.

Pgh. Casing Co., Strip District (next to 33rd Street Bridge)

My band used to rehearse here; the guitarist’s father owned the company, which made natural sausage casings. I most remember the drying room upstairs, a large space filled with racks where pig intestines were stretched out on slats, and that smell — like walking into the belly of a pig.

Former site of 27 Bar, a dive my grandmother owned for 20 years(then sold to the city, which cleared the property a long time ago)

One of the wholesale candy stores my uncles owned (17th St. & Penn Ave.) . . . My cousin took over the business (this store and the main one in Mt. Oliver are still operating).

Exile in America (Parts 1-4)

More Images of Pittsburgh (Slideshows)

Sunday

Exile in America (Part 4): Troy Hill/Spring Garden/North Side

After 25 years in New York, the author moves back to his hometown and discovers a new world lodged in the old one . . . Sometimes the strangest destination is home.

Real Pittsburghers don’t cross bridges, they say, meaning people stay in their own self-contained enclaves.* That was true for me growing up. Those cross-river neighborhoods might as well have been two or three states away. The North Side, for example, was alien territory surrounding Three Rivers Stadium, where I ventured occasionally to see my beloved Pirates play, retreating back to familiar ground immediately after the game.

Some months after moving back to Pittsburgh, I got a temp job that took me north, to Spring Garden/Troy Hill, writing copy for a flight simulator company. Something about the area, which I had never even been near, fascinated me. Every smoky vista and perilous concrete staircase illustrated the convergence of location and destiny, and how a different neighborhood in the same city is really another world.

*That’s also true for Brooklyn, as well as other cities pocked with diverse and far-flung neighborhoods.

Parking lot of the flight simulator company where I worked

The staircase I used during my job – down in the AM, up at night (photo taken winter 2013)

Another look at the same staircase (summer 2013)

Troy Hill, probably more than anyplace in the city, is hostage to the hills – separated from the surrounding neighborhoods (and even from itself) by elevation, and the inaccessibilites that come with building/destroying/rebuilding all over such difficult terrain. Also, it doesn’t help that the neighborhood’s only direct link to the waterfront, arterial roads, and the other side of town – Rialto St./31^st Street Bridge – is under construction and will remain unusable for at least another 18 months. Such isolation gives the neighborhood an intimate feel, and makes those familiar staircases truly essential for basic navigation.