18 September 2012


Pittsburgh is cold and industrial. I like that. It's the Midwestern in me. Having been raised in Metro Detroit, having gone to college and grown up (kind of) in Lansing, I'm nostalgic and happy in wintry, brick neighborhoods with considerable pasts. It's why Long Island City is one of my favorite places in New York.

Pittsburgh feels ancient, like it existed as ruins for thousands of years before the settlers excavated it from the coal. Every building is stained by history, the smoke and sweat and toil embedded in the walls. Even the sewage system seems old; whenever I use a urinal, it's easy to picture a bootlegger using it decades before me, the surroundings unchanged except for maybe the graffiti on the walls.

In the summer and fall, the damp moss smell of abandoned factories hangs in the air. I've never been there in the winter, but I've sensed the season waiting nearby. I assume it's not just cold then, but agonizing, an arctic hell that sinks into the bones. The outside freezing, the wind blowing and the snow sharp, the inside an oven, the radiators blasting too much steam and the scalp incongruously sweating. The skin chaps, the beer freezes, the Steelers play.

The city is expansive and sprawling, dotted with dense neighborhoods that have their own communities, mood, and stories. They're separated by a network of bridges, a maze of roads laid out at random across rivers and hills. Nobody seems to know how to get anywhere, and the drivers brake suddenly when surprised by the tunnels they pass through every day. If I explored it over a lifetime, by foot, car, bus, and subway, I would still be as lost as I was on Day One.

One of the reasons I travel is to find inspiration. For me, Seattle was more inspiring than Miami, Berlin more than Munich, Japan more than anything else. I don't know why. I like large cities, built up areas that speak of their previous inhabitants. Places where every street and corner offers a different tone, a different feel, a different story, and where you can never experience it all, not if you lived ten thousand years. Pittsburgh is one, and I hope to return for a lengthier stay than usual.

Anyone want to make a movie there?

1 comment:

  1. Let me know when you come back.