Pittsburgh

There are only two places that I’ve ever had a sustained yearning to live in besides Minneapolis.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of places I love to visit. And on certain perfect nights of alcohol, communion, and warm wind blasting in through open car windows on the way to the next bar, I can catch a mental glimpse of myself picking up stakes and making a new life in a new place – anonymous, lost, a brand-new baby bird.

But only Chicago and San Francisco have had real staying power in my psyche as places where I actually belong. Like I could and should have started my life there but have just chosen to live another one back in Minneapolis for 15 years instead.

But there’s a reason that home is home. And my lust for these two rubies isn’t hearty enough to roam. I also honestly love Minneapolis independent of the fact that I’ve lived here since I was 12. Right now especially, what with the Water Park of America opening right next to the Mall of America. Having those sorts of American amenities close at hand makes it hard to leave.

Interestingly, it’s the place that I’ve had maybe the least desire to actually live in that has intrigued me the most in my travels, has crawled inside my brain and refused to leave. Hands down, that is Pittsburgh. Disarmingly beautiful, with a storied past, a bleak present, and an uncertain future. The Jewel of the Rust Belt. Home of the 2006 Super Bowl Champion Steelers. Hell With the Lid Off.

The Topography Quotient

I don’t think people who’ve never been to Pittsburgh understand how striking and unexpectedly gorgeous it is. I know I didn’t when I first went. Western Pennsylvania is just the beginning of miles upon miles of bumps and bruises and breaks in the earth that comprise this region.

So the approach by car is obscured by foothills and valleys and gives you no indication that you’re actually nearing the city center. Then you turn around a bend and it’s RIGHT FUCKING THERE, and you’re almost right in it, right in the belly of the beast, with no warning or provocation, and its big and its terrible and its terrifying and its epic and its ancient.

A mangled and beautiful mess of hills and valleys, drops and curves, sudden and jarring inclines and declines in elevation, leafy and unlit passages, ancient trees and unforgiving roads, jagged angles and startling vistas. Bricks and mortar and concrete and sagging foundations, dense row housing placed carefully and cautiously wherever it won’t fall over from harsh gradients. A city built in-spite-of rather than because-of.

Sutured and connected by bridge after bridge after bridge over three troubled waters, three converging and colossal rivers that meet together at the tip of the center city, as old as the earth and death and time, worked to exhaustion carrying decades of coal and steel.

When driving on high-arcing roads perched precariously far above the winding rivers, one can look out on the whole horrible and gorgeous clutter all at once and get the unshakable feeling that they are not tethered to this earth, but rather flying with great velocity and confidence through the air. At the summit of Mt. Washington, minutes from downtown, looking down upon massive skyscrapers as if they’re children’s playthings, you are floating effortlessly above the city like an angel on silk wings.

I guess my point is that it looks kinda cool.

The view from the top of Mt. Washington (photo by Alison):


The Shame Quotient

There was a time when Pittsburgh was On Top Of It All. People will tell you this and it will be true.

Steel and Coal were King and Pittsburgh was Queen. Jobs plentiful, homes abundant, schools full, beers cold, skies black with coal smoke, but hearts content. Like Detroit, Cleveland, and every other city in the Rust Belt, everything changed as manufacturing production moved overseas in search of cheap and unregulated labor.

After Big Industry left town, water and air purity went up. But job opportunities, apartment rents, municipal revenues, and spirits certainly went down. This marked the true beginnings of a palpable Pittsburgh Shame.

Defining Pittsburgh Shame with precision is a challenge as its not shame in the purest sense of the word. There are no hung heads or long faces. Its more akin to a knowing smirk while shaking one’s head and tossing back another Iron City, a shared collective humor built on celebrating the absurd and comical elements of one’s hometown. While most Pittsburgh residents – current or former – probably harbor some semblance of this consciousness, Pittsburgh Shame is most prevalent in those born after 1980.

There’s a reason.

Unless you’re going to Carnegie Mellon or UPitt there’s not a lot for people under 30 to do (beyond develop a sizeable drinking problem). Some of my favorite people in the world are from Pittsburgh, and most of them left after high school for cities with, you know, other young people in them. They speak about their old hometown with the dark and self-deprecating humor that is the hallmark of Pittsburgh Shame.

They explain that Allegheny County has the second oldest population in the entire country, second only to some coastal Florida county filled with retirement communities. I’ve never actually checked Census records to confirm the veracity of this statement, because that’s not the point. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It matters that their Pittsburgh Shame leads them to believe its true.

Drunk and/or stoned after 3AM is usually the best time to talk to them about these things.

The Pride Quotient


As insistent or moreso than Pittsburgh Shame is Pittsburgh Pride.

Pittsburgh Pride is the kind of indignant and slightly resentful dignity that can only be forged in places that are overlooked by mainstream media and the majority of the country (see also: Flyover Country). A unique, insular sort of pride that shows wild and enthusiastic support for all things local. Hometown heroes and sports icons, mostly.

Hometown Heroes
In Oakland, just to the east of Pittsburgh proper, there is a huge wooden sign standing firmly and confidently in the midst of a quiet residential neighborhood. The first time we ever visited Pittsburgh, my friend Ryan made a point to drive us to this sign during our tour of the city. He thought we should see it because it represented something significant about the Pittsburgh Experience™.

It meant little to him personally (his Pittsburgh Shame caused him to find it more hilarious than inspirational), but he knew it was a meaningful symbol for the lionization of hometown heroes that is endemic to Pittsburgh Pride.

The sign (photo by Alison):


Sports Icons

There are probably very few things in the world more awesome than being in Pittsburgh and being Mario Lemieux or Bill Cowher. This is because if you are Mario Lemieux or Bill Cowher and you are in the Pittsburgh vicinity, you are a Golden God.

You have both pulled your respective franchises (Pens and Steelers, duh) from ruin and placed them among the league elite. You have consistently performed at an extremely high level, with the utmost class and professionalism.

Perhaps most importantly, you have never expressed an interest in leaving the Pittsburgh area and you have consciously chosen to make Pittsburgh your home. For your loyalty to this city, a city that so many denigrate and so few understand, you have been anointed as saviors by the soldiers of Pittsburgh Pride. Congratulations. Yinz done us proud.

SECTION DELETED.

Yinz Gon’ Dahn-Tahn?

As I said before, I really have no desire to live in Pittsburgh. But something about it is undeniably compelling. It rose to glory and fell from glory – a fallen angel, a dashed dream – but stubbornly perseveres with equal parts grace, shame and pride.

Visiting it reminds me why I love cities. They’re the massive, intricate and ancient representations of our hopes, fears, needs, and wants all laid out together – raw, urgent, complex and hopeful – in a physical, built form that took centuries to grow.

Blurhackppthbht. Oh shit, sorry, I just threw up in my own mouth. A natural gagging reflex to my own pretention. My bad.

Go Steelers.