Murals of the Bloomfield V.F.W.

April 1, 20154 Comments

Detail of mural on the Bloomfield V.F.W. showing returning sailor kissing a nurse

The Kiss

The murals popped-up probably ten or twelve years ago and just like the scenes depicted in them, for Foodland’s (now Shur-Save’s) customers it was like a bomb had dropped in the parking lot. Seemingly overnight, the nondescript backside of the windowless cinderblock Bloomfield V.F.W. was suddenly transformed into an electric war fantasy where a battleship caricature drifts next to haggard Vietnam G.I.s, a chopper hovers in air support. World War I-style trench warfare plays out next to a rendering of the famous photo of the V-J Day Times Square kiss. An evil black stealth bomber soars overhead.

The single large mural covers two sides of the building and features a collection of the most iconic images from each of the last century’s big wars (Korea and Kuwait don’t seem to have made the cut). The scenes are all John Wayne glory without any of suffering, tragedy, or boredom that the actual veterans inside the post must have experienced. I suppose that’s to be expected, and yet things can’t have been all that great for every V.F.W. member.

I don’t know when or why the Bloomfield V.F.W. closed, but now that time has passed and the murals have faded and physical structures decayed, they’ve lost at least some of their gun-toting braggadocio and taken on a new air of sadness and absurdity.

Why is the Times Square couple in front of a wall of breaking waves? Many of the wave crests are literally breaking as the four-foot retaining wall deteriorates under them. Why does the battleship have hundred-yard-long cannons? (Ladies: don’t answer that one.) And why is there a flag-colored curtain exposing the scene as if it is a literal theater of war?

The Vietnam section suffered either a most inept act of vandalism or an unfortunate spill from someone working on the roof. The gas mask-wearing warrior looks out from a trench immediately behind more crashing waves.

I don’t know what will become of the former V.F.W. or its murals and for once I don’t even have a rooting interest either way. Godspeed.

Detail of mural on the Bloomfield V.F.W. showing battleship with exaggerated cannons

It’s not the size of your cannon…

Detail of mural on the Bloomfield V.F.W. showing Vietnam soldiers and helicopter

“The Shit”: ‘Nam

Detail of mural on the Bloomfield V.F.W. showing World War I trench warfare

Beach/trench warfare

Italian Colors

March 15, 20153 Comments

Two rowhouses in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh: one green, one red

Green house, red house, white snow, Bloomfield

Even the most casual student of the classics will recognize the names of great Italian painters. Botticelli, Caravaggio, Verrocchio–the list goes on and on. Their descendants made their way in droves to Pittsburgh, settling largely in Larimer, Bloomfield, South Oakland, and other parts of the city. And they continued to paint.

The medium of choice is still oils (albeit exterior enamel) and they’ve simplified their color palette to the trinity of green, white, and red. Boldly eschewing the staid canvas and gallery presentation, these artists work large and for the world to see: on cement walls and park benches, street lights and entire houses.

Garage wall in Italian red, green, and white

Garage (detail), Uptown

It’s curious to me that while Pittsburgh’s great expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was famously from eastern and southern European immigrants, it seems that only the Italians felt the need to reproduce the flag over and over again. Why don’t we see crude renderings of the white eagle on garages in Polish Hill and Lawrenceville? Why no black, red, and gold telephone poles in Deutschtown? We’ve got (people who identify as) Croats and Slovaks out the yin yang. Who’s representing?

Street light pole, Bloomfield

Flower pot with red and white flowers and statue of Jesus

Jesus Planter, Bloomfield

While only a fraction of the population of those other neighborhoods, the tiny neighborhood-within-a-neighborhood of Panther Hollow has possibly more Italian colored things per capita than anywhere else. There’s a bi-lingual war memorial with the flags of The United States, Italy, and Pittsburgh, an Italian-colored park bench and picnic table, the flag rendered graffiti-style on a retaining wall, and one abbreviated stretch of picket fence.

Park bench and picnic table in Italian colors

Park bench, picnic table, Panther Hollow

It was there, at the very end of Panther Hollow, that we had the great fortune to run into lifetime resident, local historian, and maintainer of the terrific pantherhollow.us website, Carlino Giampolo. “Everyone should have a fence to hide their garbage,” Carlino told us as explanation for the curious freestanding set of tri-colored fence at the edge of his property, the last plot in the Hollow as the dead-end Boundary Street trickles into Schenley Park bicycle trail.

Retaining wall, Panther Hollow

Carlino went on to tell us about growing up in Panther Hollow, when what is now Pitt’s lower parking lot was a ball field, community park, and cow pasture. When there were as many as six different operating businesses in the Hollow (today there are none, nor any obvious former retail spaces). He showed us where the hotel once stood in what is now his side yard, the community oven that would cook the neighborhood’s bread, and how self-sufficient the whole place once was (and not that long ago)–butchering their own animals, making cheese and butter from the small herd of cows they kept, etc.

“Everyone should have a fence to hide their garbage”, Carlino’s fence, Panther Hollow

Un-Graffiti

February 19, 2015January 1, 20161 Comment

"No Dogs!" painted on side of small factory in Millvale

“No Dogs!”, Millvale

If there’s anything that watching television has taught us, it’s that serial killers are everywhere. The Pacific Northwest, the beaches of Miami, Belfast, 1950’s London, you name it. Hell, Chloe Sevigny turned up scads of them right here in Pittsburgh–imagine if she could have finished the season!

We street bloggers can learn a lot from the fictional hunting of these seemingly very normal monsters: trust no one, collect as much material evidence as possible, we all need to take a long look at our own mothers, and mainly that we’re always looking for patterns.

When The Orbit photography staff started going through their deep back-catalog of photos, one such interesting pattern emerged. Photos of places that had all the hallmarks of graffiti: the crude, quickly-executed messaging, raw emotion, paint applied directly to wall surfaces. But these weren’t graffiti in the typical sense; they all appeared to be committed by the owners of the buildings, too in-a-hurry or just too cheap to have a sign created, instead scrawling the messages directly on their own property. We’re calling these “un-graffiti“.

"No Parking Open-Pantry Customer Only" painted on wall in Lincoln

“No Parking Open-Pantry Customer Only”, Lincoln

Not only were there no non-customers parking at the Open-Pantry, there were no customers, there was no open business, and there were no human beings anywhere to be seen for blocks around this former convenience store in Lincoln.

"PAULs" letters on side of building in New Kensington, PA

“PAULs”, New Kensington

PAULs is a little different in that the medium isn’t paint, but rather recycled letters from (likely) commercial signage, fixed to plywood. So maybe this is more like “un-street art”, but I think it counts.

"Wrap Your Garbage" painted on side of building in Lawrenceville

“Wrap Your Garbage”, Lawrenceville

This message obviously predates some heavy-duty rewiring of a commercial building on Butler Street. On this day there was no problem with unwrapped garbage.

"Quit Paintin...... Dumb Shit on Garage" painted on garage door in Bloomfield

“Quit Paintin…… Dumb Shit on Garage”, Bloomfield

This one is the mother of all un-graffitis: a homeowner’s desperate plea/demand for the scofflaws of his or her Bloomfield neighborhood to cease and desist their assault on this small cinderblock garage. The request seems to have gone unheeded.

Update: since this photo was taken the entire garage was repainted a deep blue and I don’t recollect any new tags on it (yet).

Allegheny Cemetery: The Shark Grave

February 6, 2015October 18, 20154 Comments

Shark grave marker, Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh

Lester C. Madden: Korean War veteran, Jaws fanatic

Allegheny Cemetery is as vast as the largest of Pittsburgh’s city neighborhoods, occupying some three hundred acres. There are well over a hundred thousand permanent residents on site, some going back to the French and Indian War. These include titans of industry, mayors and congressmen, silent film actress Lillian Russell, baseball great Josh Gibson, and the father of popular music, Stephen Foster. With any luck, The Orbit will get to all these folks at some point in future.

Possums, squirrels, field mice, and scores of deer scurry about when the rare visitor is encountered. Thousands of blackbirds haunt its treetops, moving in coordinated squadrons. Its steep hillsides, dramatic views, and gentle sweeping passes rival any of the city’s great parks, but it’s rare to encounter even a single other living human, making it unique for its solitude.

As one may imagine, it also has many curiosities. One of the most interesting (and out-of-place) is “the Shark Grave” of one Lester C. Madden (1931-1983). I won’t pretend that I did any more digging than a Google search, which merely turned up the two facts that Mr. Madden was a veteran of the Korean War, and that indeed, he was a great fan of the 1975 blockbuster shark thriller Jaws. So much so, apparently, that he chose to spend his post-mortal coil eternity under a headstone in that film’s most indelible, terrifying image. For you, Lester C. Madden, in the words of Jaws‘ old sea dog character Quint, “And so never more shall we see you again,” but we’ll enjoy your marker for a very, very long time.

Movie poster for the 1975 shark thriller “Jaws”

UPDATE (3/2/2015): Mere days after this post was originally published, a suspiciously similar image appeared spray-painted on the wall of a Bloomfield garage. Coincidence?