#everyalley – Page 12 – Run All The Streets

Let It Be, Brookline

https://www.strava.com/activities/3442124900 — RATS #00237 – Brookline

PLAN “BROOKLINE EVENING B”

Insure I was covered by the local artillery
Circumnavigate S Scroll Way via Starkamp and Glenarm
At 18:23 storm the Repeal Way barricade
Perform reconnaissance and establish elevation gradients
Avoid vicious dogs and those aggressive small humans on bikes

That was the plan, as texted to me in a secure message by the Mothership. I had no choice but to execute the plan. I parked my vehicle, disguised as a dusty Honda and made it to the first checkpoint: A triangular park containing a “Canon de 155 C Modele 1917 Schneider”. I verified the serial number.

Brookline’s 155mm Schneider Howitzer in their Memorial Park

Now covered by the local artillery, I trotted over to Starkamp Street and around Eathan Avenue and Glenarm Avenue. I was a bit early for stair storming, so I took a couple of pics while I waited. At 18:23 on the dot, I raced up the Repeal Way Steps. Squirrels scurried and sparrows screeched as sparks flew from my heels.

Heart pounding, but no enemy in sight, I was free to scout the area. Clearly the local population was devious; giving steep, hilly, cobblestone streets, monikers such as “Flatbush”.

Continuing my scouting and keeping an eye out for those ferocious canines, I came on a street so steep, so rugged, I nearly lost it. Drawing upon my extensive training, I pushed up the hill, perspiration and expletives exploding from me at every step. Running out of breath, I finally shouted “Holy Mary, Mother of God!!” and looked up. There she was.

….Let it be, let it be…

I swore I heard a Beetle’s song in the background. Humbled and blessed, I relaxed and took in the area. Wide streets and alleys rumbled across the green lawns and flowing gardens. Steps took me though meadows of freshly cut grass. Free lending libraries opened my mind.

I reported to the Mothership that there were no enemies here, only playful pooches and energetic families. With that, I rambled some more, eventually getting back to that dusty Honda.

19:15 Signing Off

Esplen Revisited

https://www.strava.com/activities/3426791452 — RATS #00235 – Revisiting Esplen and Sheraden

On this chilly, snowy day (yes, in May!), I revisited Esplen, where I first “officially” started this Run All The Streets project. That was in December of 2018. (blog “Esplen in Winter“). Now, 234 streets later, I came back to Esplen, with a little more direction and method. This time, Esplen was just a side-bar. My main objectives were in Sheraden: to run the corner where Stadium Street becomes Menges Street; cross Boulder Way off my list and run the length of Merwyn Avenue.

But, for old time’s sake, here are some pics from Esplen. Oregon Street is pretty typical. Radcliffe Street here is crossing railroad tracks on its way climbing the hill into Sheraden. Isolated from the rest of the community, at the corner of West Carson Street and Stanhope Street, is the Veteran’s Memorial.

Shortly after the Radcliffe Street Steps, I turned right and climbed Stadium Street. The middle section of Stadium Street is blocked off. I had been wondering why, then realized that someone had thrown out a piece of garbage and the street was sliding off the hill. Of course, it is only because the street is sliding off the hill that it is closed. But I wonder, what would happen if we closed streets because people threw garbage out? I suppose all the streets would be closed. Or would people learn to NOT throw garbage out of their car? Hmm… Honestly, this isn’t too bad compared to some areas I’ve seen.

Stadium Street. The top is blocked off by Jersey Barriers.

In my journey across the Sheraden plateau, I always like to go over to Brunot Avenue, with its sweeping views of the Ohio River and Brunot Island.

McKees Rocks Bridge from Brunot Ave — Ohio River with McKees Rocks Bridge in distance

Ohio River with McKees Rocks Bridge in distance

Coming off of Stafford, I saw a stairway rise to my right. It was Ashlyn Street. For a good bit, the stairs were solid, then the platform gave out, making little red stick figure dude scream for help. He only fell two feet and then was able to clamber out to Brevet Way, on the far side. I did learn from his mistake and just made the left onto Merwyn Street. While there’s usually an obstacle, some dynamic thinking and flexibility allows one to continue.

Merwyn wound its way into some verdant pastures where I saw turkeys and deer. It crossed Wyckoff Avenue on the way. In spite of the “Avenue” in its name, Wyckoff Avenue is primarily a stairway. Brooch Way wasn’t very sparkly either. I demand ACCURATE NAMING, damn it!

Brooch Way did take me back towards Boulder Way. This steep alleyway changes into a steep, two-block set of stairs down to Stafford Street. I love the arching old tree trunk which creates a portal for these steps.

With my main goals achieved, I circled around to West Carson Street. Earlier I had run Glenmawr Avenue, but didn’t have a camera. I ran up it a bit and got some pics this time. I feel that the railroad trestle is smaller than normal. It is certainly exciting to go under it when there is a train overhead, rattling small pieces of gravel as it rumbles past.

High in the streets of Sheraden, I found more evidence to support my “Pittsburgh Boat Theory”, while down on a small street off of West Carson, I found this old brick building. It looks like an abandoned old factory now, but nothing gave evidence as to its former use.

Another boat on a high point in Pittsburgh

So that was it. I’ve covered much territory in these last 235 runs, but will have to revisit Esplen again before this project is all done.

Gardening in Garfield

https://www.strava.com/activities/3413828815 — Rare morning run – RATS #00233

Ah, mornings, that time when I like to slowly awaken, shake off vivid dreams, think about the upcoming day and blink myself into consciousness. This morning, however, I popped out of bed, shoved my contacts in and darted out the door for a pre-work run. It was rather cold for early May, in the 30’s, but I think I overdressed. I headed for Garfield, just off of Penn Avenue. It wasn’t too far away and I had many streets to run there. I pressed the like button on a bold mural on North Evaline.

Then there were the steps. North Evaline begins as an average residential street but then continues to Hillcrest on two sets of stairs, becoming more and more overgrown.

Thankfully, Garfield is only really steep on the road coming off Penn Avenue. The cross streets, like Hillcrest, Kincaid, and Broad, are wavy, but not too extreme. Hillcrest is crisscrossed by other small streets and alleys. While some areas are tightly knitted with houses, there are also many wide open spaces. Presumably, there used to be houses on all the lots, but they were torn down as the houses fell into neglect. On Garfield’s hilltop the result is space for gardens and urban farms. Garfield residents seem to also have an artistic flair.

Of course, there are lots of steps as well. In addition to North Evaline, I did the steps on Fannell Street and Ardary Street. The Ardary steps come up from Columbo Street and widen into a full-fledged street. I’m had not been on that street before, so its always suspenseful to see what’s at the top of a set of stairs.

Warmed up by the run and the rising sun, I descended once again to the flat lands of Friendship. Nice way to start a morning, I must admit.

Gilded in Highland Park

https://www.strava.com/activities/3386291976 — RATS #00229 in Highland Park

Last Saturday was a stunningly beautiful day in Pittsburgh. Bright sun, deep blue skies and mild temperatures. I took this opportunity to run some stunningly beautiful miles around Highland Park. I started at Wellesley and Farragut, catching sections of hilly Bryant Street earlier missed. Then I snaked along the alleys behind Bryant Street business area enjoying surprisingly bold colors.

Gallery Alma was cute, but closed. As a city that loves itself, perhaps it was no surprise to see a naive mural of Pittsburgh. Its happy and mischievous honeybees look a lot like the Steelers’ throwback uniform.

Moving on, I hit another goal, to run down Elgin Street. At the end of Elgin is Baywood, aka the Alexander King Estate. If you’re looking for completely renovated example of Gilded Age houses, check out this real estate listing. The tribune review has an nice article about it as well.

I did a circle around the driveway, I must admit. But then it was on to the only stairs of the day, a small affair going down to King Avenue.

After this, I went back and forth in alleys and streets of Highland Park as it flattens out between Stanton Avenue and Black Avenue. Got another picture of a cat and a few dogs along the route.

This relatively ‘short’ run ended up over seven miles. I crossed paths with a few other runners along the way, though with face masks and social distancing, I wasn’t actually sure who they were.

April 2020 Catch-Up

April 2020 was the month of Covid19 quarantining. All group runs, all races and all gatherings of any size were officially prohibited. Stay-at-home orders were issued. Luckily, exercise was permitted. Under these dire circumstances, I continued to run and cover new streets. I have generally been planning runs more carefully and as a result, all seventeen runs I recorded this month hit new streets. I have also shifted my attitude. A few months ago, I might have been happy to cover one or two new streets in a run. These days, if the run doesn’t cover 90% new streets, I’m disgruntled. In spite of progress on the project, it’s been a tough month with motivation and lack of camaraderie.

Now for some stats: I did 124.3 miles of running with 15,441 feet of elevation and at least seventy sets of steps climbed.

RATS #00214 Hazelwood

https://www.strava.com/activities/3259970465 — RATS #00214 Hazelwood

This was a little run in the grid of streets between Second Avenue and the Monongahela River. The area has busy train tracks on both side of it and is adjacent to the Glenwood Train Yards. It is flat, but the small grid of streets is packed with small houses and row houses. On the far end, a pedestrian walkway carries you over one set of tracks. Lots of dogs in the area, including a few pit bulls, well trained, but not on leashes. It’s not a pretty area.

RATS #00215

https://www.strava.com/activities/3264749974 — RATS #00215

A quick run in Perry North. No phone, so no pics. Pleasant enough, but will have to go back to finish streets, do stairs and get some visuals.

RATS #00224

https://www.strava.com/activities/3347917264 — RATS #00224

A short run in Bloomfield and Friendship on a gray mild evening.

RATS #00226

https://www.strava.com/activities/3363707148 — RATS #00226

This route looks like a bull to me. Again, no phone, but I covered a number of streets in the Elliott and Crafton Heights section of Pittsburgh. Some things of interest included the fact that Zahniser Street, while looking like a reasonable street on the map, actually has a “lower” and “upper” part, not connected by pavement but rather by a footpath.

At the end of one dead-end, there were turkeys prowling, while two doors down people gathered and chatted. Ringgold Street and Lessing Street are long. The houses there have large yards; large enough for pitching cages, kids play towers and other cool things.

Small Street is justly named and also has steps down to Crucible, which weren’t indicated on either Google or OpenStreetMap. Of course, it had the blue City of Pittsburgh street sign.

Meandering Thru Homewood and Point Breeze

https://www.strava.com/activities/3373044259 — RATS #00227

Sometimes I’m full of vim and vigor and have a great experience with amazing views. Then there was last night. As the sunny day descended into a cloudy evening, I was only nudged out by the goal of hitting my Strava April Running Distance Challenge.

My first happy surprise was coming upon a Burgh Bees Community Apiary. One of my friends raises bees and it is something I would (eventually) like to do. But for now, I’ll just buzz by.

I made it to the end of North Murtland Avenue, which was my one and only streets goal. But then figured I would do a few more streets. Of course, one can’t go far in Pittsburgh without hitting steps, and I came to these at the end of Sterret Street under the threatening sky.

On Apple Street, I passed this formerly grand building.

I always get a bit confused where Apple Street intersects Lincoln Avenue and ended up going down Lincoln for a little. On my return to Point Breeze, I caught this mural above a yard of junky cars. Again, the my long arms allowed an “over the fence” pic. Do you notice the boats? Just supports my theory.

Now inspired with a spirit of exploration, I decided to find the elusive Edgerton Street steps. I’ve run up South Dallas hundreds of times, but never realized where they were until today. Apparently these are part of the setting for “An American Childhood” by Annie Dilliard.

Between the endorphins kicking in, the various discoveries I had made and the blooming Spring flowers, I was pretty happy by the end of this run.

Highland Park Earth Day Run

https://www.strava.com/activities/3338736564 — RATS #00223

This was a little run through Highland Park on Earth Day; a perfect neighborhood for Earth Day, given the number of gardens and blooming trees I saw. It didn’t start out so nice, though. The small street behind Sacred Heart’s gym has a graffiti covered end. However, the new pedestrian walkway over the East Busway is a sleek, modern improvement. It’s also good to see that project finished.

Getting into Highland Park proper brought me back to the wide streets, huge houses and verdant area which is so appealing. It’s also rather large, compared with some neighborhoods I’ve been running in lately.

It was also cool to come across a few of these little libraries. Since this one has a charter number (5363), you can look it up at Little Free Library . It could be interesting to do a mapping of Little Libraries “wild” in Pittsburgh. I’ve definitely seen more around than I see on their website. When I’m not running, I often browse the books and take or leave one.

Find them everywhere, these little libraries

Coming back to Shadyside I came across the site of the East Liberty Farmer’s Market. Between Covid19, the season and the time of day, it was closed, but I do like their murals.

That was it. More than seven miles on a cool spring day.

Another Side of Stanton Heights

https://www.strava.com/activities/3328610726 — RATS #00222 – Stanton Heights

Nestled between the hills of Allegheny Cemetery and Stanton Avenue is a rather suburban section of Stanton Heights. I grew up in neighborhoods like this, albeit in Alabama.

To get there, I parked near McCandless and Wickliff in Upper Lawrenceville. I scooted down the stairs to Upland Terrace, a one street suburb built in the 1950’s. Crossing Stanton Avenue on Woodbine brought me into this cul-de-sac heaven.

Three and four bedroom houses built in the 1970’s sit back on their green lawns from the wide, winding, tree-lined streets. The stately trees soared into the bright blue sky. Compared to some areas of Pittsburgh, this is amazing. While hills rule Pittsburgh, the idea of large lawns, wide and clean streets with decent housing has yet to catch on everywhere.

Of course, with such wide and winding streets, the mileage added up quickly. Just looping through most of these avenues took me over seven miles, two miles further than circumnavigating all of Riverview Park, as I did earlier this week. It also wasn’t a mecca for street art, or fascinating steps, or unique architecture. But that’s OK; what are kids going to complain about if there aren’t some boring parts of town to grow up in?

Slip sliding away

This was an interesting and surprising run in the Riverview Park area. According to Google maps, it was partially in Perry North and partially in Brighton Heights. After you see the pictures, though, you might think I teleported to West Virginia too.

Large houses along Perrysville Avenue — Perry North Neighborhood is characterized by very large houses

From a favorite parking spot on the entrance to Riverview Park, I traipsed over to a small subdivision near Perry Traditional Academy bounded by Semicir Street. Those city planners were clever… Guess what shape “Semicir Street” makes? However, the house builders weren’t so clever it seems.

That’s not actually fair, I suppose, but seeing this collapsed house was shocking. Upon further research, it seems the rains of 2019 weakened the foundation. The residents were forced to move out and shortly after, the house slipped into the ravine. This happened about a year ago and the slope apparently hasn’t stabilized enough to remove the debris. Either that, or it is low on the priority list.

SemiCir Street is rather narrow, but finishes its short span as a driveway between two buildings of Perry Traditional Academy. On the other side of the Academy, Hemphill Street’s cobblestones crest a steep hill.

I finished this little warren of streets and moved on to the next section. This took me past the high school and down Mairdale Avenue. A few weeks ago, I ran down here, past the high school’s football field and noticed houses high on the right. Today I was exploring that neighborhood.

Looking Up at Houses on Portman from Mairdale

If hill repeats are your game, go to Portman Avenue. It’s not long, but damn it’s steep. The houses are a hybrid between the ostentatious mansions on Perrysville Avenue houses and the tall, narrow structures you see in Spring Garden. I followed Portman back to Perrysville Avenue then started down Vinceton Street, where the corner store is festooned with bold, colorful murals.

Now things began to diverge from the urban setting I was expecting. Menlo Street, the featured image, looks more like a Virginia horse farm lane rather than an inner city street. I made the next left onto Dornestic Street (that’s right “Dornestic” not “Domestic“). That street became a winding lane along the hillside, with houses haphazardly spaced here and there. The right onto Stolz Street completed the transformation with ponies grazing behind a fence.

Jogging along in West Virginia now, I was jolted back to Pittsburgh by stairs which led me down to Oakdale Street, where the ravine widens up to a pleasant glade surrounded by towering oak trees.

At this point, I clambered back up the hill, took note of the streets and stairs I had missed and ran back to my car. This four mile run had transported me from turn of the century mansions to a collapsed house to a pasture. Where would I go next?

Criss-Crossing the Hill

Recently I have been traveling to different areas of Pittsburgh to find new streets and run them. Today’s run was closer to home, in the Hill District. The Hill District has several long parallel streets which roughly go from the hilltop above the University of Pittsburgh to Downtown Pittsburgh. These streets, Bedford, Webster, Wylie and Centre are the main thoroughfares which people take through the Hill District and I’ve already run them. Today’s run was about the smaller streets crisscrossing those major roads.

I had parked in West Oakland, so from this perspective, the small streets begin at a low elevation along Centre and rise to the cliffs off of Bedford Avenue. This is properly called the Middle Hill. Over the years, many of the structures in this area have been torn down, so now, there are plenty wide open grassy blocks.

I started with Junilla Street Steps, which come off of Centre Avenue. It continues, sometimes as a street and sometimes as steps, all the way to Bedford Avenue. Along one stretch of Junilla Street, I saw a few turkeys and heard their gobbles. Groundhogs were freely roaming in the vacant lots.

Morgan Street starts rather wide-open and then closes in as you reach Elba Street. From previous adventures, I call the flight of steps from Morgan to Centre the “Who’s You!” steps.

Briefly put, I had been accompanying a friend along these steps when she decided to go down to Centre Avenue to take pics. For some reason (perhaps because I had run a long way), I just hung out on the sidewalk in front of the porch in my black hoodie and woolen Army beanie. Turns out, a tall dude in a black hoodie and a woolen Army beanie hanging out in front of your porch in the Hill District can be a concern. After a few minutes, I heard some shouting. From the street above, a big black guy in a brown jacket was yelling:

“Who’s You? Who’s You?”

I had just realized he was yelling at me when my companion sprightly sprang up the steps, gave some big smiles and whisked me away. Whew! Even now I muse, “What was the proper response?… I am me?”

But I digress.

Francis Street was interesting. Starting from Centre, it is a rather broad avenue heading up the hill. Then, as I crossed Wylie Avenue, it became a cul-de-sac of newer, rather suburban housing. I did the big circle and went out the way I had come. Later, as I started down Francis Street from the other direction I spied some steps, took them, and again landed in the suburban cul-de-sac. Surprise, surprise.

Coming down the Watt Street steps provided a nice view of Christian Tabernacle Church. I gradually made my way towards the Upper Hill, aka Sugar Top, where the big blue water tower lives. I finished off Milwaukee Street and a few little streets before heading down Herron Avenue and headed back to my car. No one shouting at me today. Thank goodness for social distancing.