“ Never entrust anyonewho talks up how great Pittsburgh is . It is a garbage townspeople full of garbage food . And like 90 % garbage the great unwashed . ”
Those Good Book were write by someone as chesty as they are shortsighted , someone absolutely and totally convinced they could never be improper about anything , for whom their Good Book was the beginning and ending of any discussion . Someone so blinded by their own preconceived notions of what make a city affair that they could n’t conceive , even for a second , of the things that make Pittsburgh singular and , in its own style , mesmerizing – the surprisingly slap-up food , the gorgeous riverbank and hilltop views , the unique ethnic architecture of a city in love with both the future and its own past . Someone who is a prick , essentially .
It ’s only recently ( very of late ) I ’ve come to realize all the thing I thought I detest about this city were far more about me than about Pittsburgh itself . It did n’t assist that I probably never gave it a fair shake to begin with . After a lifetime of the city ’s sports team humiliating those of my beloved Washington D.C. so thoroughly , so humiliatingly ( a course that showsno recent signsof let up ) , I was predisposed towards animus before I even move here almost three years ago .
Brian Koprowski/Stocksy
It had never been my choice to move here – I was give way to go wherever my fiancée did , and this city is where she earned her master ’s grade ( and is now earning her doctorate ) . I ’d like to say I was resolved to do the right thing and be steadfastly neutral regardless of my lifelong sports rooting interest and my antipathy to line any group of people as “ yinz . ” I ’d like to say that , but I ’d be lie . I ’m not sure what I expect when I come here , but I do n’t doubt that the negativity of those first moment colour my expectation .
But there was one facial expression to Pittsburgh that always stayed the full extent of my hate : the ineluctable , inconvenient fact that the extant Pittsburghers I eff were really , really great . Like , spectacularly great ! Almost universally , they were warm , funny multitude with a seemingly uncounted well of pardon towards those who say really , really dreadful poppycock about their hometown . I ’m astonished any of them are still champion with me .
That ’s the secret , though : Pittsburghers usually do n’t care if you talk crap about their metropolis , because they do n’t take any external validation – they know the place is smashing with a blowy , unshakeable self-assurance that might be off - putting if they were n’t so darned decent about it . Even though I will adamantly defend my hometown to any of its detractors , that sort of confidence is something I ’ve never had – there ’s always a little voice at the back of my head wondering if DC really is what people say about it . Pittsburghers have no such ideological crisis ; they know it ’s great , just as they know there ’s nowhere else like it .
Cam Miller/Flickr
you may travel anywhere else in the US , and every major metropolis ( other than peradventure Cincinnati ) has its charms : San Francisco is endearingly flakey and unrelentingly beautiful , New York has the best intellectual nourishment on the planet , Philadelphia is the be - all , end - all if you ’re an enthusiast of being attack on the street by random strangers . But you ’ll find few property with as fierce a allegiance to their own identity operator as Pittsburgh .
Make no misunderstanding , the urban center ’s solution are deep blue collar , and everything is design to make certain you do n’t bury it . Even as Pittsburgh ’s industry has refocus itself on eminently innovative growth industries like robotics , biomedical technology , and ( specially ) health care , the city still understand itself as working grade , and probably always will . The steel mills may be close now ( which , to be fair , is great news show for anyone who ’d like to be able-bodied to take a breath the strain outside without eventually needing an iron lung ) , but the fantasm they retch are long . Popular legend even arrest that the metropolis ’s signature food particular – french fries on sandwiches themselves rather than on the side – came from steelworkers not having enough time on their lunch breaks to eat both a sandwich and fries , so they just dash them together . In this , as in everything else , Pittsburgh is a urban center deeply devoted to its own past . Nowhere is this more clear than in the Strip District .
Located on the South savings bank of the Allegheny River , the Strip District ’s convenient watercourse location made it a rude spot for transportation and receiving for the storage warehouse , factories , and steel manufactory so integral to the city ’s identity ( both U.S. Steel and H.J. Heinz , among others , were based out of the Strip ) . By the 1920s , it was the metropolis ’s beating economical heart , with overt - line market place , restaurants , and grocer catering to all arriver . But when Pittsburgh ’s sword industriousness collapsed in the 1960s and 70s , the Strip District collapsed along with it . Like so many neighborhoods in so many cities that relied on industry to survive , it fell into disrepair .
Laura Petrilla
Where the Strip District found itself after the collapse of the city ’s industry would usually be the point at which a neighborhood either decayed into practical nonentity or was at long last bulldoze and reconstruct from the ground up by hungry developers . The Strip District , though , take a uniquely Pittsburgh approach : its resurgence would bring unexampled life to the area without sacrificing what it once had been , repurposing old buildings in new and fascinating way of life . Factories became flat building , stables became restaurant , storage warehouse became cabaret . A lot of alike neighbourhood in other urban center have reinvented themselves , but few have fulfil the feat without losing quite a little of where they follow from . Today , the Strip District is one of the city ’s hot ball club , cake , and restaurant neighborhood , and probably its most esthetically fascinating .
And speaking of the city ’s restaurants : it ’s deserving add up that I ’ve given this city a lot of crap in the past times about its nutrient civilisation in the past . To be fair , Primanti Brothers , the city ’s most well - known purveyor of french fry - laden hoagies , actually is drivel nutrient – I was n’t talking out my ass on that one . And while many Pittsburghers vehemently insist sandwiches with french Fry on them can be great if they come from other sources , I remain dubious . That being said , any metropolis ’s “ key signature ” food for thought is potential to be kitschy refuse ride luxuriously on report over substance . It ’s unfair to contain Chicago responsible for the atrocity that is deep dish pizza pie , half - smokes are a pitiful clownshow that should n’t detract from the balance of DC ’s intellectual nourishment view , Cincinnati chili is a blight upon all humanity and … ok , actually , I ’m coolheaded with fault Cincinnati for that one . Anyway , the head is , Gallic fries on sandwich are no exception to the rule of “ hallmark ” solid food being hot garbage not musing of a city ’s overall food quality .
On the other deal , a pot of the other food here is shockingly dear . you may walk into any random burger or sandwich place ( Primanti ’s notwithstanding ) and expect a level of quality far above what you ’re pay . Pittsburgh ’s pizza , meanwhile , is far better than it has any right wing to be – I ’ve yet to feed a bad pizza from any local spot here . It ’s not even that Pittsburgh does anything unequalled or off-the-wall when it come to pizza pie ; it ’s just really , really damn respectable . ( Granted , I ’m from DC , where terrible pizza is the one blight on an otherwise greatest food scene , so it ’s possible my opinions are warped from the beginning . )
Alamy
If high - end grub are more your thing , the city has plentifulness of those , too – the city ’s Italian food in particular is phenomenal ( Girasole in Shadyside and Piccolo Forno in Lawrenceville are both fantastic ) , and 2016 saw three James Beard Award nomination handed out to Justin Severino ’s Cure and Morcilla in Lawrenceville and Rick Easton ’s Bread & Salt in Bloomfield . Pittsburgh ’s solid food prospect is widely regarded as beingon the rise , and that only seems potential to remain .
And the views in Pittsburgh – my God , the views . Let no one say this city is n’t stunningly , staggeringly gorgeous . Funny thing about place a city on and around hilltops in a lush , forested field at the confluence of three river : it leads to some darned beautiful sights . The brand mill hummer may have obscured the expanse ’s natural lulu for a foresightful time ( and let ’s not pull the leg of ourselves ; even with Pittsburgh ’s vastly improved pollution control effort , the air quality still has a fashion to go ) , but the scene is n’t hidden any more .
Even as far back as 2007 , Parade magazine grade the panorama from Mount Washington as thebest in the integral nation . It ’s only gotten better since as the air has continued to sack , and it ’s far from alone : Pittsburgh has a loyalty to ever - present verdure few other city can match , and the urban center ’s park are great ( Schenley Park and Frick Park are especially beautiful ) . The views from Point Park , settle right at the place where the three rivers meet , have to be seen to be believed . Even the city ’s many span , which should be the sort of indecent metallic element monstrosity you ’d find elsewhere , have an odd sort of good luck charm to them – peradventure because most of them are paint bright yellow .
Cure/Facebook
It ’s not backbreaking to see why Pittsburgh ’s native sons and daughters are so attached to it , but the noteworthy thing is how committed the metropolis itself is to them . Much as I love DC , it rarely even bothers to call up its hometown kids – and it ’s far from the only metropolitan country with that problem . Pittsburgh has no such issue .
You might not expect a fiercely sorry collar town to proudly extol the virtue of an openly merry creative person from the 1960s-80s who pull off a now - legendaryavant garde - rock bandin his excess fourth dimension , but this city make out Andy Warhol ; theAndy Warhol Museumis in reality the orotund museum in America devoted to a single artist . The independent matter Pittsburgh cares about ( with Warhol or anyone else who make it big , even if that success happens elsewhere ) is that he was one of theirs . There are even bridges bring up after Warhol , historiographer David McCullough , naturalist Rachel Carson , and baseball participant Roberto Clemente ; once you belong to Pittsburgh , the city refuses to forget you .
A part of me knew all this , even as I gave Pittsburgh hell on Twitter and took potshots at it in blog posts . It ’s telling that when people would require me , “ so , you really hate it there , huh ? ” at any head in the past three years , I would waver , invariably coming up with some excuse about how I did n’t really mean it . The worst I was ever willing to say when face about it at once was something along the line of business of “ well , it could always be worse ; I could be stuck in Oklahoma . ” It was the closest my pride would let me get to admitting I was thoroughly full of it .
Alamy
So there you have it , Pittsburghers : my mea culpa to the rich tapestry that is your city . All the crap I ’ve talked has been driven by nothing more than jealousy and malice . You win ; your city is outstanding . I concede defeat .
Sidney Crosby can still sting me , though .
