Day 39: Pittsburgh, pt. 2
Welcome
Yesterday we played a show in the 412, the Paris of Appalachia, The Iron City, The Steel City, The Dirty ‘Burgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Beths/Rosie Tucker Summer Tour 2022 Run Club had its second and final meeting yesterday morning. Our hotels were in different areas, so we met at the top of Heron Hill, halfway between our two locations. The top of the hill is home to the Heron Hill Reservoir which plays an important role in supplying water to Pittsburgh’s many hilly neighbourhoods. We took in the splendid view of the city and then proceeded to the next waypoint, the 31st Street Bridge which crosses the Allgheny River. There is an excellent cycling/walking trail alongside the river, and we followed it heading towards Pittsburgh’s downtown. We passed the historic Heinz Factory Complex on our right, and then the Three Sisters Bridges on our left, before arriving at our destination, the Point State Park Fountain. The fountain sits right on ‘The Point’, the confluence of the Allgheny and Monongahela where they combine to form the Ohio River.
The Heron Hill Reservoir.
The view from the top of Heron Hill.
The Beths/Rosie Tucker 2022 Summer Tour Run Club, looking down the Allgheny River.
The Heinz Factory.
The Three Sisters Bridges.
“The Point”, with the Point State Park Fountain treating onlookers to an impressive performance.
The Pittsburgh Plate Glass building dominates the downtown skyline with its Gothic architecture and 20,000 pieces of glass giving an ‘Urban Castle’ look.
At this point we parted ways with Rosie and Jess so everyone could return to their respective hotels. Tristan and I continued our jog, heading up the Monongahela on the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. Pittsburgh has 446 bridges – a number that has led to the claim of it having more bridges than any other city in the world. Sadly, for Yinzers, this is not true, with other US cities like Houston having over 2000 bridges, not even mentioning European cities like Hamburg or Amsterdam. The Smithfield Street Bridge does have a claim to fame, though, being the first Steel Truss Bridge in the United States. The trail provided us with great vantage point to take in its interesting design which is a Lenticular Truss.
The Smithfield Street Bridge.
Lenticular means that it is shaped like a double-convex lens, and also like a lentil, although I don’t fully understand the etymology here. The trusses are the internal triangular structures that are the load-bearing part of the bridge. The Smithfield St Bridge has two Lenticular Truss spans of 110m each and a total length of 361m. It was completed in 1883, only 9 years after the famous Eads Bridge in St Louis, the first bridge in the world constructed from steel, instead of wrought iron like other structures of the time.
Feeling inspired by America’s 19th century industrial and engineering might, Tristan and made it back to the hotel and after cleaning up headed out to have a burrito engineered for our breakfasts. The burrito shop was out of rice, but the guy threw in heaps of sweet potato and beans to pad it out, along with chorizo, avocado, and probably many other ingredients I couldn’t identify.
At 3pm we loaded into Spirit, a music hall that used to be a Moose Lodge, seemingly home to some kind of Freemason-esque organisation. After soundcheck we played cricket on a patch of grass across the road. Some folks had begun queuing up outside the venue and a few came across to join our game. The Beths cultural exchange made great progress as we taught people to bat with a straight bat and bowl with a straight arm.
You could really imagine a Moose Lodge in here.
We watched Rosie Tucker play for the penultimate time, and it was sad, but great. They played beautifully and Pittsburgh was completely charmed. Our own set was well received, and I think fairly well performed.
After the show we received a slab of ‘Silence is Golden’, a New Zealand Golden Ale that was brewed for us by a local outfit, Hitchhiker Brewing. This collaboration was supposed to take place in 2020 and it was cool to see it finally come to fruition. The beer itself is brewed with Golden Promise barley, flaked oats, and four New Zealand hops: Wakatu, Motueka, Rakau, NZ Cascade.
The pack train, seen from the perspective of the driver.