ridgemont

Endness Way 

Middle Hill

Amazing discovery in Hazelwood

Yesterday I went for a run. The weather was perfect and unseasonably warm for late January. I found myself in Hazelwood. 

a video of my experience. 

the lower portion of the steps closest to Irvine St.

The lower portion of the steps closest to Irvine street is inaccessible. Allegheny Fence Company which resides on Irvine street has erected a fence blocking the steps. Imagine that. 

the view from the top portion above Sylvan St 

If you feel like exploring these steps yourself, do it in the winter. If you try during the warmer months, chances are the overgrowth will be too thick. The best bet for reaching the location is to take Sylvan Street from Hazelwood. Follow the trail and be careful of the mud. You could also reach the location from the other side of the trail in Greenfield. Theoretically, you can find the steps from the top of the hill by Tasso Street but it feels a lot like trespassing. You'll have to go through someone's back yard.  Just be careful. 

looking down toward Sylvan Street from Tasso Street and Noah Street 

looking toward Tasso St and Noah St

Thoughts on the butler street bottleneck

The intersection of 40th and butler streets is almost always a nightmare; Choked with traffic and dangerous for pedestrians. The problem is clear. Eliminate the Wendy's and the get go. As if a bottle neck wasn't bad enough, this poor design begs the motorist to exit and re enter the bumper to bumper traffic from opposing corners. Lawrenceville needs a gas station, yes, but in this particular location? And the necessity of a fast food drive through is always debatable. This one is just so tremendously inefficient.

Kdka

So last week I received a Facebook message from a local news reporter, David Highfield, to be interviewed for a story about the city steps. Elated, we set up an interview for Tuesday evening at the place of my choosing. I picked German square in the south side slopes. It's isolated and a bit weird and the steps are plentiful as are the views.  Perfect in my opinion. But Sunday night I had a pretty rough bike accident resulting in a sprained wrist and bruised ribs. If anyone's ever bruised a rib you know how laborious breathing becomes. It was also 90 degrees the day of the interview and I obviously had to wear pants and a nice shirt to be on tv. This already is a perfect storm for sweat city but as part of the special, the lovely people with the cameras wanted like a million shots of me ascending and descending the steps. Wide shots, different angles, action shots, steady cam, some weird go pro shot from underneath. Don't get me wrong, I was absolutely thrilled to participate, I just think the circumstances were silly. You'll see this jag-a-muffin all glistening and out of breath on September 29th at 7:30 on kdka talking crazily about my weird obsession.

Loose Ends

Lately I have been transferring all of my data into Google map engines which is an app building program. 

This program works so much better than what I had been using before. It does everything! Correlating data from spreadsheets and all. You'll see below the many Tapping a green line in the active map brings up all the info on the particular set of steps.  One is even able to get directions. 

New Home

Just some pictures from my walk today. This is mostly 54th St. in Lawrenceville. I live in Lawrenceville now right between two of the biggest sets of steps in the city. It's an interesting little alcove of homes built at the turn of last century. Yeah, it's a dream come true. I hoped that moving next to these steps I'd be more motivated to work on the old book. It's slow going however. Moves are rough and I only just got internet hooked up last week. So expect lots of back logged blogs.