Two Great Tastes: Snow & Trains

March 20, 2015December 5, 20152 Comments

Coal car and warehouse, Lawrenceville

If the Milton S. Hershey Company is to be believed, chocolate and peanut butter are two great tastes that taste great together. The number of great one-two combinations certainly doesn’t stop there, though. I’d suggest that the guitar and the accordion are two great sounds that harmonize great together. Fresh mowed grass and burning charcoal are certainly two great aromas that smell great together. Kirsten’s mother believed that bright orange and deep purple were two great colors that looked great together, and I wouldn’t argue about that, though I don’t think I’ve run it up the flagpole myself. Watching French cop movies with a cat on your chest are certainly two great sensations that, uh, feel good together.

If you’ve spent any time around Bloomfield, you know that Zubaz and tank tops are two great fashions that look great together. Deep-fried cod and mac & cheese are two great solemn religious observances that celebrate the rebirth of Christ great together. A lot of people will tell you that biceps and tattoo ink are in this same league, but we’re staying mum on that one.

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah! Here on this first day of Spring, let’s say goodbye to Ol’ Coldipants with one of the action blog photographer’s great two-fers: snow and trains. Black rail cars, white snow, blips of color that pop like the first flowers right around the corner–they just work, and they work great together.

Rail yard, Duquesne

Rail switch, Lawrenceville

Coal car with graffiti reading "I Don't Give a Fuck"

“I Don’t Give a Fuck”, Duquesne

Coal cars, Lawrenceville

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).

Flowers in February

February 14, 2015February 27, 20161 Comment

Pop des Fleurs test installation, Arsenal Park, Pittsburgh

On this grayest of days, in the midst of the most miserable of months, even the hardest of core ice-in-his-veins bloggers is tempted to just stay holed-up inside with his hot coffee, British crime dramas, and cauldron of thick stew.

But no! Not with beautiful flowers blooming a mere two blocks from Chez Orbit. Flowers? In February? In Pittsburgh? Indeed! Possibly (or maybe not) coinciding with this most contrived of holidays, the miracle workers of the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh have created their first test installation of the Pop des Fleurs project at Arsenal Park, in Lawrenceville.

Pop des Fleurs detail

The Fiberarts Guild were the masterminds behind 2013’s incredible Knit the Bridge project which brought together tons of volunteer knitters of all types from all over the county to ultimately cover the Andy Warhol (nee 7th Street) Bridge in knit and crocheted panels.

Pop des Fleurs has similar goal of taking fiber arts to public spaces, but with the very deliberate timing of bringing bright color to the outdoors in deep bleak winter. The project team is looking for makers to create the flowers either on their own or in a number of public workshops and events.

The test installation will be up for just three more weeks (through March 8). Find a cold, snowy day and get your keister over to the park for a blast of magic.

Old Glory

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?