We went to Pittsburgh for a few days a few weeks ago. Every time I go there I leave inspired and impressed. What a lovely, underrated city. The hills remind one of San Francisco, but without any of that pesky smug. My wife's father lives on the south side slopes in a steelworker's shack to which he's added various decks and a third floor. It overlooks an overgrown forest where similar houses once stood along steep dead-end streets before the city bought them all and let the land go back to nature.

Eleven years ago, the first time I visited Pittsburgh, we went mountain biking in here and I watched my new girlfriend fly over her handlebars as we flew down a steep hill. She told me then she always did her best to impress her dad, and he always pushed her just a bit past where she was comfortable.

The growth that's occurred in those eleven years is amazing. This is truly a wild place now, surrounded by city. I surprised two different sets of whitetail deer while hiking around in here. One was a doe with two healthy-looking fawns. I was too awestruck to snap a good photo before they darted away. I also saw an owl.

If you look carefully you can find signs of the long-gone neighborhood. Bricks exposed in a hillside. Strange-shaped dirt piles. Stone foundations. Telephone poles like dead trees.

The city sprays the staircases up the slopes to keep the vines from overwhelming them.

Sometimes cities shrink. Sometimes neighborhoods get turned into something else. It's nothing to get depressed about.

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SOURCE: El Rebelde's Flickr stream

I have been enjoying the documentary photography taken by people in other post-industrial rustbelt cities that I have been able to find on flickr (obviously I feel some kinship with other people who find this sort of thing interesting). I have particularly enjoyed browsing through El Rebelde's photos of Cleveland, and when I saw this recent photo of a glove being devoured by moss I had to share it. This summer I spent so much time taking pictures of the way nature was slowly taking over the works of men, I find myself a bit stumped now that winter is here and the foliage is dormant.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

I tried to make it down to Southwyck ghost mall in Toledo with Juniper last December but got sidetracked by something or another and then the boy was born. We have been going to ghost malls around Detroit and planned to make another attempt at Southwyck but when I looked it up on the internet everyone says that it's officially closed. I'm glad these Ohio urbex photographers documented the place in its final days. The second photo speaks volumes.

SOURCE: Il Duce, Ohiourbex

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.

SOURCE: Rosa Parks?

I found this large (11x17) photo in a closet of an old office in an abandoned skyscraper downtown. It had obviously hung on a wall at one point. After the sun set and I hopped back out onto the street (coughing out a few mouthfuls of asbestos dust and black mold) I brought it over to my wife's office where her coworker seemed to recognize most of the white guys and had guesses for the black guys. From left: Rep. Steny Hoyer, Rosa Parks, Rep. Thomas Foley (?), Rep. William Gray (?) (is is that her boss, a younger Conyers?), Rep. John Lewis (?), Rep. Richard Gephardt. I am assuming this was after Ms. parks received some kind of honor on the hill back in the early 1990s. I know she received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999, but the suits and youthful visage of now-grizzled Steny Hoyer make me think this was a bit earlier (also, the building where I found it was shuttered in 1997). There is a photo from the same meeting at Gephardt's site.

Rosa Parks worked in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers for many years, and the office building where I found it is really close to the building where Conyers' office is now. I wondered who in the abandoned, ramshackle office with its overturned desks and moldy carpet had once cherished this photo. Rosa herself?

A guy at a coffee shop told me the other day that he once delivered a pizza to Rosa Parks. She buzzed him into her building and then rode down the elevator to meet him. He says he then rode in the elevator up to her apartment where she retrieved her purse. He says she tried to tip him, but he declined, saying, "You just keep your money, Ms. Parks."

Leaving comments open in case anyone recognizes the congressmen in the photo.

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This blog is intended solely to share the things I come across that inspire me. If I have posted a copyrighted image, I have only done so to the extent necessary to comment upon or discuss it; I will always include a link to the original source of the image if that source is online or acknowledge the source if it is in print. If I have reproduced anything of yours here that is copyrighted and you want me to remove it, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will do so right away.