Art in Braddock

I biked out to Braddock the other day to see the art of a couple of friends. The gallery was under the flames and billowing smokestacks of the area's last surviving steel mill--next to some public gardens.

It's easy to see why someone in the rust belt would say they live in a post-apocalyptic world.

The show consisted of photos, mostly exhibiting the peculiar beauty of the rust belt: Trees grown around rusted chairs, rotting windows of abandoned buildings, the little things that are so fun to stumble upon when you're coming out the back of that abandoned four-bedroom with a stack of books you found that date to the '50's, or are tromping through the woods that cropped up where the land had too steep a grade for building.

The photographs weren't necessarily mind-blowing, but they were well composed, and they reminded me of why the post-apocalypse is a place for adventurers, amateur archaeologists, scavengers, and children. I biked home a bit warmer for it.