VISITING CHAMPION CITY
Quick: Pittsburgh. Thoughts?
Something like that?
Not really. On a recent trip with my wife and four-month-old daughter (who sleeps at 6:30pm), we decided to be 9-to-5 tourists for a weekend: spend a day on foot around downtown and a second with a rental car. And we found a Pittsburgh that's outgrown its first syllable. Curling about three rivers below forested hills, the surprising 251-year-old city has quietly prettied itself up the past decade. Gone are (most) of the smokestacks, replaced with shimmering new buildings, a slew of public art in the form of four-floor-high murals, 14-foot-fish-on-a-stick and heated water sculptures that trickle all year. The woeful Pirates play baseball in one of the nation's greatest situated parks -- PNC Park -- on the Allegheny a block from the more famous home of the Steelers, Heinz Field.
For much of America, 'the Lake' serves as the only tourist destination. In Pittsburgh, it surrounds downtown. On nice days, boaters zoom up and down the 'Y of water' where the Allegheny and Monongahela form the Ohio, crossed by ped-friendly bridges painted Steeler-gold. I stopped to chat with one boater, a 20-something in an "America" t-shirt and holding a Bud Light, who had docked across from an in-progress Kenny Chesney concert at the Heinz Field. "Yes, everyone knows our sports, but Pittsburgh is a boater's paradise." He had a barbecue grill and a few tiki torches plopped out on the river walkway. "We just have to keep the beer in the boat." I told him that'd never fly at a place like New York's Battery Park. He asked, "Why would you live somewhere like that?"
And I paused.
I live for moments like these -- complete surprises in unexpected places. The essence of travel. I love going to towns and imagining myself a local. Scrolling classifieds for apartment rent rates, passing through neighborhoods to find one for myself, like Pittsburgh's gorgeous Georgetown-style townhouses on quiet shady lanes of the Mexican War Streets historic district (without a doubt my favorite neighborhood name in the USA).
I'll probably never move to Pittsburgh, but it's easy to enjoy for a couple days.
Downtown Walk
For day one, we walked across Andy Warhol Bridge to Andy's museum, where I enjoyed seeing a 1975 letter Mick Jagger wrote to Andy regarding the cover of the Stones' horrible Love You Live album. "I trust you completely... just tell us how much money you'll need." The basement cafe had a chalkboard that read "Six-Pack Cafe" framed with six Lombardi Trophys, celebrating the Steelers Super Bowl success. Later, we had a great greasy late breakfast at the classic Deluca's in The Strip District. A series of non-waifish middle-aged women in shorts alternated as waitstaff. One proudly pointed out the full wall mural of a bizarre Greek scene. "We were in the film Passing Away" -- no, I hadn't heard of it either; came out in 1991 -- "and they painted that for us." Later we walked along the Allegheny River with a $3 lemonade squeezed before our eyes to Point State Park where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River -- a place Huck Finn and Jim should have come if they had made that crucial left at Cairo, Illinois, when drifting down the Mississippi in a book published 125 years ago. Then their great-great grandchildren could have been Steeler fans.
Side Trip
For day two, we drove 90 minutes southeast, along patches of the Laurel Highlands Skyline Drive to Fallingwater, the house Frank Lloyd Wright built for $155,000 atop a waterfall when the rest of country was enduring a depression. It's gorgeous, not even remotely underrated. At nearby Ohiopyle, I felt a bit out of place without a Harley or US flag bandana -- my wife: 'This is not Obama country" -- but was warmly welcomed when I ordered a fried fish sandwich to take to the nearby river to watch spilled kayakers try to recover their rented boats. Above bikers in helmets pedalled across a bridge of the old train line, now part of an in-progress 150-mile network of trails that runs on an old train line from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland.
Pittsburgh? Two days is not enough.
Quick: Pittsburgh. Thoughts?
--> Steel town, smoke-belching factories, a few rivers, a football team so poor it could only afford a decal on one side of its helmet. A place that Interstates 76 and 70 narrowly avoid -- with mercy -- on trans-Pennsylvanian road trips.
Something like that?
Not really. On a recent trip with my wife and four-month-old daughter (who sleeps at 6:30pm), we decided to be 9-to-5 tourists for a weekend: spend a day on foot around downtown and a second with a rental car. And we found a Pittsburgh that's outgrown its first syllable. Curling about three rivers below forested hills, the surprising 251-year-old city has quietly prettied itself up the past decade. Gone are (most) of the smokestacks, replaced with shimmering new buildings, a slew of public art in the form of four-floor-high murals, 14-foot-fish-on-a-stick and heated water sculptures that trickle all year. The woeful Pirates play baseball in one of the nation's greatest situated parks -- PNC Park -- on the Allegheny a block from the more famous home of the Steelers, Heinz Field.
For much of America, 'the Lake' serves as the only tourist destination. In Pittsburgh, it surrounds downtown. On nice days, boaters zoom up and down the 'Y of water' where the Allegheny and Monongahela form the Ohio, crossed by ped-friendly bridges painted Steeler-gold. I stopped to chat with one boater, a 20-something in an "America" t-shirt and holding a Bud Light, who had docked across from an in-progress Kenny Chesney concert at the Heinz Field. "Yes, everyone knows our sports, but Pittsburgh is a boater's paradise." He had a barbecue grill and a few tiki torches plopped out on the river walkway. "We just have to keep the beer in the boat." I told him that'd never fly at a place like New York's Battery Park. He asked, "Why would you live somewhere like that?"And I paused.
I live for moments like these -- complete surprises in unexpected places. The essence of travel. I love going to towns and imagining myself a local. Scrolling classifieds for apartment rent rates, passing through neighborhoods to find one for myself, like Pittsburgh's gorgeous Georgetown-style townhouses on quiet shady lanes of the Mexican War Streets historic district (without a doubt my favorite neighborhood name in the USA).
I'll probably never move to Pittsburgh, but it's easy to enjoy for a couple days.
Downtown Walk
For day one, we walked across Andy Warhol Bridge to Andy's museum, where I enjoyed seeing a 1975 letter Mick Jagger wrote to Andy regarding the cover of the Stones' horrible Love You Live album. "I trust you completely... just tell us how much money you'll need." The basement cafe had a chalkboard that read "Six-Pack Cafe" framed with six Lombardi Trophys, celebrating the Steelers Super Bowl success. Later, we had a great greasy late breakfast at the classic Deluca's in The Strip District. A series of non-waifish middle-aged women in shorts alternated as waitstaff. One proudly pointed out the full wall mural of a bizarre Greek scene. "We were in the film Passing Away" -- no, I hadn't heard of it either; came out in 1991 -- "and they painted that for us." Later we walked along the Allegheny River with a $3 lemonade squeezed before our eyes to Point State Park where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River -- a place Huck Finn and Jim should have come if they had made that crucial left at Cairo, Illinois, when drifting down the Mississippi in a book published 125 years ago. Then their great-great grandchildren could have been Steeler fans.
Side Trip
For day two, we drove 90 minutes southeast, along patches of the Laurel Highlands Skyline Drive to Fallingwater, the house Frank Lloyd Wright built for $155,000 atop a waterfall when the rest of country was enduring a depression. It's gorgeous, not even remotely underrated. At nearby Ohiopyle, I felt a bit out of place without a Harley or US flag bandana -- my wife: 'This is not Obama country" -- but was warmly welcomed when I ordered a fried fish sandwich to take to the nearby river to watch spilled kayakers try to recover their rented boats. Above bikers in helmets pedalled across a bridge of the old train line, now part of an in-progress 150-mile network of trails that runs on an old train line from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland.
Pittsburgh? Two days is not enough.
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