I'm Not Dead (I'm in Pittsburgh)

Poor Pittsburgh. Apparently there is a dearth of songs written about this fair city; my only real option was this title by Frank Black, which is great if you're in the mood for some bitter pseudo-country alternative whining. That said...

Pittsburgh!




The stitch function on my camera leaves much to be desired in terms of assisting with constructing panoramic shots, but you get the idea. This composite was taken from the top of the Monongahela Incline, named for the river it overlooks, which is popularly shortened to "the Mon," smacking of a pleasant albeit deceptive Jamaican influence. The "incline" is actually a funicular (yay learning new words!), one of two built in the late 19th century to drag tired workers from the city back up to their homes on the hills that surround the peninsula and its rivers.

Riding the incline is a little creepy, as it is old and (at least from the bottom) appears to be fully automated. Which, in context of the oldness, makes it feel more haunted than anything else. And if I imagined that the immediate post-death experience consisted of a slow, grinding, somewhat rickety ascent from wherever you died, this is pretty much what I would envision. If you sit facing outwards towards the city, it does feel as though you are being taken up, if not into heaven, then at least into a place more exalted and deserving of the name "Mount Washington" than this hill overlooking the city. This New Hampshirite, for one, is offended.

I do have to admit, though, that this would make for pretty much one of the coolest commutes ever. It is still used for that by people who live on the hill, and this particular incline is under the auspices of Pittsburgh's Port Authority (going up is considered "outbound" from the city, for fare purposes).

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So much for the bird's eye view. Down in the streets, Pittsburgh is really - I like it, quite a lot, but I'm still trying to grasp it, if that makes sense. It's strangely familiar to me, having spent the last five years in Boston, but there are several crucial differences. For one thing, while it is a city, it is emphatically not a "big" city. I described it to Jen as feeling like a neighborhood of Boston, or maybe of New York, that had been taken out of the larger metropolis and isolated, so that you lack the undercurrent of busyness happening around and outside your own particular neighborhood. They call Boston a/the walking city, but in Pittsburgh you could walk from one end of the city to the other, and it would not only take less time, but you would get the sense of having seen everything that there is to see about the place. It seems disproportionately small to the population size as suggested by, say, the amount of public transportation.

The other strange feature of the place is the fact that it doesn't seem to belong where it is. Though it sits at the confluence of two major rivers (the Allegheny and Monongahela) and the origin of a third (the Ohio), you're never unaware of the fact that you are in the middle of an otherwise relatively inhospitable mountain range, because the hills surrounding the city and its rivers are visible from almost any point downtown, either embracing or menacing it, depending on your point of view.

At any rate, though, this is so far one of the prettiest downtown areas I've ever seen. If you walk down Liberty Avenue, which runs parallel to the northern edge of the peninsula and is approximately equidistant to both north and south shores, the other streets all intersect this main drag at acute angles, so the buildings growing up from them create these alleys that give the impression of being clean and intriguing rather than dangerous. There's a good deal of construction around the downtown area, but also plenty of signage laying out the renovation plans and - more importantly (take note, Boston) - the proposed completion dates of each project, so that Pittsburgh feels more like a city on the make than a city trapped in a perpetual mess of building and rebuilding.

There's a lot of green, as well, and an inordinate number of decorative landscaping installations that are just there for the sake of being there. The Heinz Hall Garden, for instance -

I heard the waterfall first, and when I saw the fence enclosing the place I assumed it would be a courtyard that was only accessible to patrons of a restaurant. But no - apparently it's just there for people to enjoy. What a novel concept.

This is the center of the downtown area and definitely one of the coolest sights of Pittsburgh (and I never thought to say/write that without tongue in cheek, but there it is): PPG Place, Pittsburgh's response to both Rockefeller Plaza and medieval castles.

It's basically impossible to photograph properly from the ground, but you can get the idea - the tall tower is the center of a six-building complex, all done in the same reflective glass, creating canyons between the buildings and an open courtyard space that are as aggressively modern as they are reminiscent of Romanesque architecture. During the summer, the courtyard boasts a fountain that kids (and non-kids) can cool off in; during the winter, the obelisk is covered by a tree and surrounded by a skating rink, à la Rockefeller. So, naturally, I visit when it's fenced off and full of dirt. Oh well.

A fake duck boat. I was full of rage. (Yeah, I know Boston's weren't the first, but I don't care.)

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Much more to come - this isn't even halfway through day one yet. For now, though, I'm wasting precious daylight hours.