Oakmont Bakery and Homestead Murals

11/11/12 238# 42M

Glorious day for a bike ride, although I think it could have been drizzling poop and I would have enjoyed the ride. This was a route that we had been saving for a Sunday morning.

Started at Millvale at 0715 with S in about 45F. Crossed the 40th Street Bridge and rode north-east along the south shore of the Allegheny River. Stopped in Verona to take a picture of a flag mural outside of Billy Kay's Dine and Dance at 701 East Railroad Avenue in Verona:

Continued into Verona looking for the next mural by Rick Boniker and Pete Theofilis, found it at the NAPA Parts Store at 763 Allegheny River Blvd. Kind of cool that it includes a Doughboy on Veteran's Day:

Continued over the viaduct into Oakmont and we found the world-famous Oakmont Bakery, took seats near the fireplace and ate pastries and I drank coffee, life is good.

Reversed course and returned via Allegheny River Blvd, except we turned at Sandy Creek Road (Route 130), Verona Road, Mt. Carmel Road, and Blackadore Avenue to Frankstown Road and the heart of Homewood.

Season of Hope Murals

At 7340 Frankstown Road (Pittsburgh 15208) we found a series of murals called "Season of Hope" from 2005, by James Maszle, assisted by Tommy Budjanec.


Here's a few closeups:

Homewood Busway Murals

At the Homewood Busway station, we found these four murals, and we know that the first one is titled "Peace Over Pittsburgh".

We came across this street, which has to have one of the most heartbreaking names of any address in the universe. I live at 213 Absolute-Bottom Street

At the Homewood Montessori School, we found this mural painted by the students of art teacher Valerie Lucas, with support from students at Pittsburgh's CAPA school:

We cut across town into East Liberty and then Larimer, and found this mural that we'd had a hard time locating at 225 Larimer Avenue:

Rode across Shadyside to CMU, down Junction Hollow, Hot Metal Bridge, and down to Keystone Metals. The temperature was mild and there were all sorts of people out on the trails, parents with little kids, grandparents both with and without little kids, it was LastNiceDayForNoobsDay or something and it was way crowded on the trails.

We decided to eschew the SouthSideTrail and the planned ride to the Bastille and went off-trail up to Troy Hill, where we found this mural "Troy Loves Hill". It's really very well done, another Sprout Mural, Lowrie and Tinsbury Streets. It features local churches, and incline, and the Heinz plant, and it helps to know that one of Troy Hill's roads, Rialto Street was once also known as Pig Hill because of the abattoirs below on Herr's Island (which has since gentrified into Washington's Landing).

We rode around Troy Hill and enjoyed the view from a few perspectives. Took an opportunity to examine (now closed) Rialto Street, which is one of the Dirty Dozen climbs. Then we descended the way we came up, and rode back along the trail to Millvale. The Millvale trailhead was packed beyond capacity when we returned to our cars, people with bikes everywhere. It was a beautiful day, turned out to be 65F when we got off the bikes at 3pm.