#412_adventure – Run All The Streets

Sandcastle And Beyond!

https://www.strava.com/activities/4600869666 — RATS #00353 in Glenwood, and Glen Hazel

Water slides in winter are silent reminders of summer. Sandcastle, on the edge of the Mon, is a bubbling madhouse on hot August days, where lines of sparkling wet bodies, lathered with sunscreen, wait to speedily spill down the slides. Now, running past in early January, not a soul was to be found. Like Kennywood, an amusement park a few miles upriver, Sandcastle reminds me how work and play are so closely intertwined here, with an active railroad, a biking path and a water park within fifty yards of each other.

Bikeway along a RR Track and Sandcastles Parking Lot

At the far end of Sandcastle is the Glenwood Bridge. I’ve never run across that bridge and wasn’t sure how to make it to the sidewalk across. It’s a large bridge, with ample room for floods. (Sandcastle, on the other hand, periodically gets flooded.) Fortunately, I came across several staircases which got me to the bridge. I’m thankful that the designers of these roads took pedestrians into account.

Once past Sandcastle, metal recycling facilities dominate the scene, a far cry from the steel factories which once were here. The Glenwood Bridge crosses the Mon and is a major roadway for South Hills commuters. On the far side of the bridge is Glenwood. Prior to poring over maps of Pittsburgh, I would have called that area “Hazelwood”. It is actually Glenwood, Glen Hazel and Hazelwood. Some do consider it “Greater Hazelwood” and it is encouraging to see community involvement as a part of recent urban planning. For a PDF of their recent neighborhood plan, click HERE.

I’ve recently done many runs in Glenwood and its companion, Hazelwood. With this run, I pretty much have completed the area. It has stunning views of the Mon Valley and a mix of houses, from hard-knock alleys to large houses wrapped with porches. Recently a fire gutted this house on Cust Street. The adjoining house was also damaged by the heat. It is likely that this house will just sit here for years, slowly falling apart.

Of course, there are stairs. Cust Street steps take you from Second Avenue all the way up the hill on two flights. Off the second flight are orphan houses – houses which front the steps and do not have direct road access. The Sunnyside steps take you from Glenwood Avenue up to Sunnyside Avenue. Further on, tiny Steelview Avenue steps took me down to Brownsville Road right above the Homestead Highland Bridge.

Finishing up in Glenwood, I made my way through Glen Hazel to the Homestead Highland Bridge. Glen Hazel’s Kane Living Center is a senior care home and had scary Covid numbers this past year. Generally, Glen Hazel has newer houses than Glenwood and Hazelwood, probably built in the 1960’s or 70’s and is largely subsidized, I believe. However, there’s lots of unused land and a few blocked-off streets. It seems typical for publicly owned land in Pittsburgh for housing – it’s mainly vacant (see also Arlington Heights and Saint Clair). Nonetheless, changes are in the works here as developers start work on the area. What will they build? I don’t think anybody knows.

At any rate, in times past there was a set of steps from Johnston Avenue to Broadview Street. Right now, they are hidden behind a bus stop and blocked off by debris. However, I found them. As they are built into the hillside, rather than soaring above it, I was willing to go up them.

Looking down from the top, I noticed the tops of the handrail posts were shimmering with light. At first I thought someone had put crushed beer cans on top of the posts, or someone had put LED lights there. The real reason was much cooler. These were ice caps. The recent snows and fluctuations of temperature left little hockey-pucks of ice in the slightly recessed pipe-ends. These icy pucks caught the fading sunlight and shone like beacons.

After this off-road and otherworldly experience, I made my way to the Homestead High Level Bridge. Formerly the site of Homestead Steel Works, it is now a shopping center.

There are still a few reminders of the days when 10,000 workers crossed the bridges and worked in mills, like these smokestacks.

Alleys in Mount Washington and Streets in East Carnegie

This blog will cover two runs I did earlier in December. RATS #00335 covered yet more little streets in Mount Washington. It seems that every time I look at my maps, I discover another missed street there. The second, RATS #00336, was a foray into East Carnegie, a small (Western) neighborhood jutting into Carnegie, a borough separate from Pittsburgh.

RATS #00335 – Niggly Alleys in Mount Washington

https://www.strava.com/activities/4433833694 — RATS #00335 in Mount Washington

By this point, if you’ve read anything about Pittsburgh or followed this blog at all, you’ll know that Mount Washington has iconic views of Pittsburgh, overlooking the Point, where the Ohio is formed at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Inevitably, I got a couple of such views.

Broad View of the Mon, Uptown (left) and South Side (right)

However, I really planned this run to cover Beam Way, Laura Way (aka Thorpe Way on Google Maps) and Dill Way. I also had my eye on Volk Street, but I was unsure about it since it was marked as a “private drive”. Sometimes, a “private drive” is gated and guarded against the common folk. Perhaps that was their vision, but going up Volk’s street steps, I gather that maybe the rest of Mount Washington should be guarded from Volk Street. Laura Way is more of a service driveway between a couple of eateries.

That is it. Any run in December is a good run. And, it looks like I just have one more super-niggly alley to do in Mount Washington before finishing that whole damn area.

RATS #00336 – East Carnegie

https://www.strava.com/activities/4439460584 — RATS #00336 – East Carnegie

East Carnegie is a small neighborhood in the western fringe of Pittsburgh; beyond Westwood and beyond Oakwood. It is generally bounded by Noblestown Road, Chartiers Cemetery and Chartiers Creek. This was my first foray into East Carnegie and I actually parked in Carnegie’s business district to trot over.

I’m always happy to see the “Welcome to Pittsburgh” signs on a run. However, East Carnegie is rather dominated by warehouses and mills along Chartiers Creek, and there’s not too much to see there. It was one of the flattest areas I’ve seen around here.

In Pittsburgh, ‘flat and near creeks‘ often spells “F L O O D I N G”. A cursory search revealed a few instances of flash flooding in East Carnegie, but not too much in the last decade. Mine run-off, seems to be a more persistent problem. This small creek, “Whiskey Run” is on the border with Carnegie and has the tell-tale orange look of an iron-laden stream. It doesn’t seem to impact Chartiers Creek much, but it does flow there.

In spite of the quiet and out-of-the-way nature of this neighborhood, while I was running, a car went off the road on Idlewood Road, so I avoided that area. I’ll be back, to get, all those, niggly streets.

Sunset Run To City Views

https://www.strava.com/activities/4287269570

A run after work, this run quickly went from a jaunt through leaf-covered streets to picking my way through the dark on a closed road. Closed for good reason, it turns out.

I started near Heinz Lofts, apartments where once ketchup oozed. Who knows, perhaps ketchup is still oozing somewhere up there. I made my way through the Northside, eventually turning right onto Marshall Avenue, as it ramps up to the top of cemetery hill. I’ve sometimes wondered if the two huge cemeteries, Highland and Union Dale, has killed off normal urban development in the area. The sun was setting as I got to the small streets at the top of the hill. After snapping that pic, I crisscrossed the few small streets back there, then popped out onto North Charles, via Crispin Street.

North Charles rises like a ramp then jumps over I-279 on the Swindell Bridge. From the bridge, I glimpsed glowing towers downtown. With all the hills and ravines, effective darkness falls at strikingly different times.

Shortly after crossing the Swindell Bridge, I had planned to come down Gershon Street. I found it blocked, but decided to venture down it anyway. Sometimes, it is only bad for cars and pedestrians have free rein. That was the case here and a short internet search revealed some answers. It turns out that Gershon has been closed since February 2018, when landslides made the road unstable. Apparently the no-nonsense Jersey barriers were installed a few months later, after a driver drove past the police sawhorses and subsequently had to be rescued. I can see why it’s still closed. Yawning gaps on the right side disappear down the hill.

I wasn’t the only one on the street. A middle-aged man walking his dog waved as I ran by. Actually he challenged me to run up it! Maybe another day.

It was now fully dark and I simply ran along East Street, following the faint residual ketchup smell back to Heinz.

Halsey Place n@

https://www.strava.com/activities/4200222449 — RATS #00314

So, I’m jumping around in my blog posts. This run, #00314, was almost two weeks prior to run #00321 in my last post. However, it had too many interesting tidbits just to shove it into October’s cleanup post. My main goal was the Halsey Street Steps off of California Avenue. However, to get there, I ambled a bit more in California-Kirkbride.

I started in “Lower” California-KirkBride where a few residential streets struggle between Brighton Road and the USPS facility on California Avenue. I like the mural on the scrap yard door, only realizing later it was Warhola’s Scrap Metals. The Mero Way mural is impressive, as is the massive postal service facility which dominates the area. Up from California Avenue, streets A and B climb up the hill, sometimes with the aid of steps. A Street is shown on my map as climbing all the way up the hill. In reality it ends at Kirkbride Street. B Street has more luck, climbing to Lamont and then as steps to Morrison.

Lamont and Morrison both dead-end into a wooded slope where they used to be connected by A Street. Most of the houses in the area have been demolished, but there a few a still standing and being renovated. In fact, on my way up Morrison, a young guy impatiently waited for me to go by before continuing to clean in front of his house.

From here, I sauntered down to California Avenue, crossing Marshall Avenue, looking for Halsey Place on my right. Shortly I found it, a short street up a steep hill. It quickly became a set of stairs.

So, I was pleasantly surprised by the little streets around Halsey Place. It’s no Fox Chapel, that’s granted, but it was a decent little neighborhood. Kids were riding bikes, moms were chatting on the stoop, families were coming home from school.

From here, I completed Colorado Avenue, as it parallels California. This ended on Superior Avenue. I squiggled my way up Superior, to Stayton and eventually to North Charles. Off of North Charles were a few streets I’ve repeatedly missed, Strauss and Cross. I’ve been mystified why I never have been on Harlan Avenue either, then I realized it had been blocked off. The steps going to it are intact, but overgrown.

I ended by going up the cobblestone street, Melrose, then circling back down Buena Vista again. It was a rather long run for a weekday evening, but pretty invigorating. I’m thinking perhaps a run on blocked off streets is in order; Harlan, Metcalf, Irwin and Yale. Hmm.