Category: Pittsburgh

Toronto to Pittsburgh

 

We took the long way out of Toronto before eventually getting on the QEW somewhere in the vicinity of Mississauga. It was the start of a very long drive that took us through Niagara Falls, across the border into Buffalo, and down to Pittsburgh, where we spent the night.

Along the way, Mark was impressed by how simple the border crossing was. I got to visit my first Wegman’s. We both got to see Buffalo and decided that it was worthy of a later visit.

This being the fifth anniversary of the night we met, we also had our obligatory dinner at Denny’s. This year is was at the location on the New York State Thruway service plaza just south of Buffalo. And if that doesn’t sound romantic to you, then you don’t know us very well.

We Like Winston-Salem

The hubby and I spent yesterday afternoon in Winston-Salem. I’ve always liked it there, and I’d argue that it may well be the most attractive city in North Carolina. It has a denser urban feel than many similar or larger cities in the area, most likely because until the 1920s, it was the biggest city in the state.

As I’ve opined many times before, the size of any given city in the 1920s is perhaps the most accurate single predictor of how “urban” we perceive that city to be today. It seems the form and density of 1920s development is what defines urbanism to many of us, if only from an aesthetic perspective. A city can have earlier or later development too, but without a fairly high proportion of semi-dense early twentieth-century residential and commercial areas, it just seems quaint and precious like Charleston or a little sanitized and bland like Charlotte and Phoenix…

Winston-Salem is our own little slice of Pittsburgh, not just gritty and industrial at its heart, but also built on numerous hills and more than a little run-down. Yet there are still beautiful and stable inner-city areas which are amazingly inexpensive compared to their counterparts in Charlotte or Raleigh or even Greensboro.

Yes, Winston-Salem is a really nice place…

Armstrong Cork

Mark sent me sad news today. One of my favorite buidings anywhere is about to be converted into lofts. I’ve been obsessed with the Armstrong Cork Factory since my first visit to Pittsburgh eight years ago. I’m sorry to see it go…

While the capitalist in me is happy to see such a potentially valuable piece of property no longer going to waste, the urban aesthetician (is that even a word?) in me is terribly depressed to know this amazing building is about to be cleaned and sanitized to make cute little hipster condos which will strip away every bit of its character and context…

Oh well. I guess it couldn’t stand forever in that magnificent state of neglect and decay…

Back to SF

Been back home in California about three hours now. Must keep reminding myself that my self-imposed sentence here will be over soon…

Pictures soon from Charlotte, Greensboro, Baltimore, Schenectady, Albany, Niagara Falls, Pittsburgh, Arlington, and assorted other locales where groceries are cheaper, homes can still be purchased by mere mortals, and Waffle Houses are plentiful…

Pittsburgh to Baltimore

  

I crawled out of bed before Mark awoke and snuck off to Weirton for some quality time with my Kroger. It was cold as a witch’s tit outside and I actually even saw some snow on my windshield going over the hill, but it all pretty much ended by the time we REALLY ventured out into the world for breakast at Ritter’s. I love Ritter’s…

And I hate Giant Eagle. After a couple of visits, I’ve decided that it is one of the single worst supermarket chains I’ve ever patronized. And I’ve patronized a lot of grocery chains. The stores are a tacky merchandising mess and the employees range from incompetent to down righ surly. Of course, they have a virtual monopoly in Pittsburgh, and it shows. Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest…

 

Today, we toured Shadyside and some of the outlying areas on the way south to Charleroi, which is where Mark’s father and aunt were born. We saw the old family homestead and drove through the surprisingly large and active downtown, before stopping at the Sunoco and getting on the Turnpike. We got a price break because the toll collectors were in the last day of a strike…

Lunch was at a very sucktastic Bob’s Big Boy in a service plaza. And we actually made it to Baltimore at a reasonable enough hour to have dinner there, at a passable pizza place in Timonium, before touring the bridges and tunnels by night…

Pittsburgh

   

Pittsburgh continues to be one of my favorite cities on a purely aesthetic basis. It’s just a quite fascinating place to drive around in, even though I realized I hadn’t driven any at all on my last visit and was therefore less familiar this time than I might have liked…

We had lunch at the Plaza Restaurant, where I was about half the age of every other patron in the place (and which made me consider asking for a booster seat for Mark), and then started finding our way around the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, concentrating today more on the hills and the more dense areas by the rivers. We also visited The Strip so I could visit the old abandoned, factory which had so fascinated me in 1997. It was now even older, even more abandoned, and even more fascinating…

As evening hit, we made a 30-mile trek across West Virgina to Steubenville OH, adding two states to Mark’s list with very little effort. On the way back, in Weirton WV, I saw one of the most beautiful and ancient (but still open) Kroger stores ever, and vowed to return in the morning for a good photo…

As sometimes happens, we ended up having dinner at the Olive Garden…

Schenectady, Niagara Falls, and Pittsburgh

  

We managed to spend another couple of hours driving around taking pictures of the places which had been a little too rain-soaked on Sunday…

And we had breakfast at Mike’s, which reminded me very much of the Baker House in Greensboro, which my dad used to take me to on the occasional Saturday morning when I was very young. It’s your basic diner dive where the clientele is almost exclusively male, the food is cheap, the seating is stools at a counter, and the predominant aroma used to be cigar smoke. I think my dad exposed me to places like this at an early age hoping I would learn how to be a little more of a “guy”…

  

By early afternoon, we were on the Thruway headed for Niagara Falls, our only major stop being for lunch and gas at a service plaza with a Sbarro. I think we arrived around 6:00, and pretty quickly crossed over to the Canadian side. Granted, Niagara is only moderately Canadian, but we did get to see Esso stations and Tim Hortons in their native habitat, and Mark added another country to his list…

It was extra fun when we got the “potential terrorist” treatment on the way back into the US, all because I’d forgotten to turn off the video camera. We have officially now informed an agent of the US government that we are domestic partners. And we were eventually cleared of being terrorists, although the border guard made us erase some of the video we’d accidentally shot. I knew somehow that this would come back to haunt us at the airport, but it didn’t…

After Niagara Falls, there was a very long drive to Pittsburgh, with a detour by a service plaza denny’s and the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Meadville or Grove City or some other godforsaken town full of very young white trash…

We arrived in Pittsburgh at our now-customary 1:00 in the morning…

Find A City

Major US cities I’d most like to live in if family, climate, and economy were not factors:

  • Chicago

  • Baltimore
  • Boston
  • Seattle
  • Portland
  • Detroit
  • Pittsburgh

Major US cities I’d probably consider living in given the right set of inducements:

  • Los Angeles
  • Minneapolis
  • Atlanta
  • Washington
  • Richmond
  • Denver
  • Kansas City
  • New York
  • Philadelphia

Major US cities I can’t imagine ever wanting to live in:

  • Phoenix (or anyplace in Arizona)
  • Miami (or anyplace in Florida)
  • San Diego
  • Houston (or anyplace in Texas)
  • Salt Lake City (or anyplace in Utah)
  • Norfolk – Virginia Beach
  • Albuquerque (or anyplace in New Mexico)
  • Oklahoma City (or anyplace in Oklahoma)
  • Nashville
  • Las Vegas (or anyplace in Nevada)

Planet Cincy?

I have seen the future and the future could very well be Cincinnati. Planet Cincy. Whaddaya think?

Upon looking at a map tonight while planning this year’s road trip from hell, I suddenly realized that this Ohio city might be the perfect place to relocate. It’s not a really objectionable sort of place. I imagine it’s pretty cheap. It’s appealing on many levels just because it’s the sort of place most people prefer to move away from rather than move to. Cincinatti was once the largest city in the midwest, and it’s been losing population steadily since 1950. I like that trend.

And best of all, it’s about a one day drive from alsmost everyplace I’d ever want to go, including Greensboro. I could visit Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Washington, New York, Atlanta, Saint Louis, and Kansas City on a regular basis. I could be home with Mom and Dad within nine hours.

And I could listen to Doctor Johnny Fever every morning on WKRP, right?

That said, this year’s road trip extravaganza is set to include New Orleans, someplace in the greater Cincinnati-Indianapolis area, and most definitely the Piggly Wiggly Museum in Memphis. Other suggestions will be accepted, but I’m not planning to do too many detours off the I-80 and I-10 paths. I’m also allowing a maximum of three weeks.

Off to the kitchen for leftovers now…

Indianapolis IN and Cincinatti OH

 

Indianapolis was something of a homecoming. It was the first stop where I’d spent any significant time previously. It’s also the home of my friend Bob, on whose shoulders I place the blame for these annual mega-trips. Thus, I had some perspective (and lots of pictures from last year) so I could actually look at things with my eyes rather than with the camera.

I miss fall. It was always my favorite time of year when I used to live in places with discernible seasons. So it was pretty cool to see (a) trees and (b) trees with multi-colored leaves. It takes so little to make me happy. Sometimes.

After a couple of thrift stores (including Bull Winkle’s where I managed to find the missing link in my set of Flintstones mugs from McDonald’s) and a pretty decent used bookstore, we did the southeastern Indiana tour along US52…

 

…which led ultimately to Cincinatti. I’d never been to Cincinatti. It brings to mind images of a really repressive social climate and of scrappy little AM radio stations. Actually, it seemed a fairly interesting place with a sort of seedy urban aesthetic I really liked. Reminded me a little of Pittsburgh. Definitely worth a longer look next year.

 

The evening brought a quick trip to a bar or too. At the 501 Tavern, I had a brief conversation with a crowd of lightweights who thought I was completely nuts for dribing around the country when I could have spetmy vacation flying to really “fabulous” places. They were pretty much irredeeemable and I moved on to this strangely endearing sort of mega-club (whose name I forget) where I spent a few minutes chasing a boy who looked completely out of his mind. I didn’t catch him. In retrospect, I think I’m glad…