David Conrad: The Blue-Eyed Wonder of Pittsburgh

Other Side of the Strip

contributed by: David Conrad

There are clubs in the strip. Big ones. People dance there and make a lot of noise. The streets are clogged come weekend nights. Some years ago I went to the biggest one of all. I was drunk, it was late, and I felt as if this temporal evening with it?s now forgotten music, it?s passing fashions, and it?s raving children in the center of a damaged city was the center of the universe.

I felt for a few moments as I hung from the banister like a ship?s angel over the dance floor that this was a way to touch eternity--\that people had always done this and always would, that they would gather in groups around the beat of a fire and roar at the world, ?I was here, I lived, I am right now, forever real.? And then it passed. The lights came up as they always do.

I wandered out in the cold, dodged some cars, listened to the failing voices, got a donut from the guy who sold them out of the back of his car and had to my brothers when they were in high school, and walked back to my apartment. On the way I stopped at a light, a busy intersection off Liberty to wait for the 2am rush (home) hour to pass. There?s a plaque there. In 1877, employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad went on strike, the government called in troops to stop them stopping trains. 177 people died, or that?s the number they settled on. Right there, they died. I touched the raised letters on the monument. The next morning I mentioned this to the guy who runs a cheese shop on Penn. ?Yeah, bigger than Homestead. Crazy, huh? Where were you last night?? I said the name of the club, closed now 6 years, a block from his store. ?Never been.?

Hole of Thunder, South Side

contributed by: David Conrad

When you drive down Carson towards the Mon Valley, away from the city, when you pass the last and latest mall complex turn left for the Hot Metal bridge. Park just before you hit the bridge, there?s an access road to the Pitt Sports complex on the right that you?re not supposed to use but can.

Get out, walk about twenty yards away from the river, just on the other side of the lot, and you?ll be standing in a tattered field of grass that seems to be hiding the foundations of some cauldron of industry rusted down to its roots. There?s a hole there. A two story drop in the earth, girded up by old railroad ties and iron. Stand there some night for while and you?ll hear them. The sound comes out of the earth. The ground shakes. And then the train goes by underneath you. Feet away. An entire train past this little window into the past and when it?s gone you realize you?re standing inside a steelmill. What was. The trains still come and go, delivering regardless, running in an underground trestle the length of the Southside, which is why sometimes at night, when you?re out late enjoying the bustle and flow of Pittsburgh?s hippest neighborhood, you can hear one right on top of you and still have no idea where it is or for that matter, where you are.

Slipping into Oakland

contributed by: David Conrad

We used to just walk into the buildings at Pitt, CMU, Carlow, and Point Park. Into the Carnegie, Frick Arts, Soldiers and Sailors, the PAA. We?d use the gym, read in their libraries, lounge in the student centers, wander through their offices, and labs, and galleries. This was high school. Now this might seem like a problem. What if we were thieves, what if we were vandals, what if we were out to hurt someone? But we weren?t. Most people aren?t. So who do you design your world for? The vandals or the masses? Pittsburgh, I feel, chose the latter. Might not have been a conscious decision, probably no committee sat down and said, ?Keep the doors open!? but they were and to some extent still are. Granted you need an ID and a key to get in to a dorm, but everything else is accessible. Be polite, act like you belong, know the dress codes, study the floorplan, and you?re in. If the American University town is socialism?s last stand and if the idea of the University as a public service remains, Oakland?s the standard bearer. Oakland is the place to go if you don?t have a cent. There isn?t a gallery, museum, play, library, rehearsal or gym that with a little ingenuity you can?t walk into for nothing down. Probably the reason why, when the Pirates won the National League East in ?91, and the Pitt kids flew out of their dorms and closed down the streets with pure joy. I felt like, at 25, I was one of them.

Real places and people of the North Side

contributed by: David Conrad

The North Side has nothing to do with football and baseball. Yes, there are two stadiums within walking distance, and the Rooneys have lived there since they left Colter Hollow, but the North Side you wanna see is on the other side of the tracks. I left Allegheny Observatory late in the afternoon. The clouds and the sky had been that awesome contrast of cotton and cobalt. I came down into the City across Spring Hill and then Troy Hill, switching back through neighborhoods people in Seattle would kill for and most Pittsburghers have never seen. A mile from PPG place and I could have been in Budapest, could have been in Butler County, could have been home. I could have gotten out of my car, sat down on a stoop, starting paying rent, and I?d have been as content as I was growing up in the East End. And that?s the thing, wherever you go in Pittsburgh, you know it?s somebody?s home. You feel it in your bones. Cities have markets, cities have teams, cites have bridges they say are theirs and that define them, as if a city were a backdrop to the performance of our lives, and cities have harbors and beaches and roads. But Pittsburgh has it?s homes, above all, and it?s people. It?s a place built by, for, and of families. They are its greatest industry, not Steel, not Football, not Glass, and when you move through the place you can feel them everywhere.

Niagara Falls, Pittsburgh-style

contributed by: David Conrad

Mount Washington. Pittsburgh?s most famous spot that no-one really knows anything about. Our Niagara Falls. Go and look, but know who lives there? Thought so. The best thing about Mt Washington is Mt Oliver behind it. A place where working-class people can live and send their kids to a decent school district. It?s one of the best kept scholastic secrets in the city. Day I graduated from high school, we drove up McArdle Roadway at night, turned right, away from the ?viewing platforms,? and parked up where the hilltop crests, past the Trimont building. Jumped a fence, walked down the stairs, ducked another security measure, and climbed out onto the flashing Pittsburgh/Bayer sign that hangs off the cliff. Sat there for an hour staring out at a city made mad by the pulsing generators behind us. Could barely hear each other speak over their roar. Kept thinking it is like Niagara, and this sound?s the pulse of an entire city right at the vein. Checked later to see if I got a tan. No luck.

Happy Hour Haze

contributed by: David Conrad

Lawrenceville doesn?t get a lot of sun. It?s on the north slope of the Pittsburgh peninsula, and until 3 or 4 PM, it doesn?t get a full dose from our local star. But then, what light does fall is stunning. It?s magic hour, as the movie people call it, that quarter of the day when everything?s lit at an angle, and even accountants are moved to poetry. The sun sets pretty much over the Point and Lawrencevile?s main streets run like fireways right at it. For a couple hours at least, the streets of Havenmeyer?s old fiefdom are paved with gold. Maybe that?s why the bars there keep their doors open. 5 PM?you?re done with work, you go to Sufaks, sit in a cave lit from without by this molten glow---why not stand by the door for a couple minutes, pretend you?re looking for someone, catching a smoke ?cause someone?s kid?s at the bar, make a phone call. Watch. It?s Pittsburgh?s best happy hour.

Why Bloomfield is so right

contributed by: David Conrad

Bloomfield is the proof that there?s a Third Way--not bourgeoise development, not fallen industry town--it?s the sustainable neighborhood dream. Find a large stock of affordable, in fact, cheap housing a flat mile from any city core and compare the costs. Living in Bloomfield versus living in ?..fill in the blank.

I walk through Bloomfield and it?s like walking in a dream--these stores, these restaurants, this bakery, that tiny magazine shop there is NO WAY they haven?t been bought out. But it?s for real. It?s so for real a lot of the Creative Class isn?t attracted to it: it?s not the gentrified simulcrum of a town, with a remade street façade, quaint yet rebuilt homes, family owned but insanely overpriced eateries?no, this is the real thing. These are working and middle-class people who, through a combination of efforts, have held onto development in their square mile of city. If you want to actually live in Pittsburgh, actually be a Pittsburgher, move to Bloomfield.