Cold commute & a bridge in Pittsburgh

Roberto Clemente Bridge & plaque. Feb. 10 2017

 When I first came to Pittsburgh in the early 1980s, I wore contact lenses. Painfully. There was so much construction going on Downtown then, that any excursion from Shadyside bus stop to office in the Clark Building meant walking through clouds of grit and dust. All those nasty particles always found a way to float into my eyes and scratch my lenses.
I don't wear contacts anymore, and don't work Downtown anymore and I miss both.

Friday I had the chance, thanks to Port Authority light rail issues, to hop off Downtown and walk to work on the North Shore. Even without corrective lenses, I could see a lot has changed in the nearly two years my office has been on the other side of the Allegheny.

Sak's Fifth Avenue store site on Smithfield now flat and teeming with bulldozers. Honus Wagner, Mamma Mia's and a third store whose name I can't remember on Forbes transforming into a space for Point Park University. Walked past the former Kaufmann's building and thought how much I missed shopping there.
I also noticed a plaque on the Roberto Clemente Bridge, one of Pittsburgh's Three Sisters spans, I had never seen before, honoring its design and construction. It is a pretty bridge, a bit rusty these days and weighted down by "locks of love" (dislike intensely).
It would have been a perfect bit of transit serendipity if it hadn't been so cold!

On the other side of the Allegheny, statue of No. 21 outside PNC Park.