Librari[d]an

The travel section of The New York Times just published a really odious article entitled “36 Hours in Pittsburgh” by Jeff Schlegel. The first line is laughable: “PITTSBURGH has undergone a striking renaissance from a down-and-out smokestack to a gleaming cultural oasis.” (Schlegel)

All right, stop right there, buddy. I know you’re a liar, because I would never trust any New Yorker who calls the ‘burgh a “gleaming cultural oasis” without scoffing and rolling their eyes. That is a lie, no matter how many times you drop proper nouns like The Andy Warhol Museum, Mexican War Streets, BrilloBox, or Mattress Factory. Pittsburgh does have a lot to offer and it is a sort of a cultural center for the region, but cultural oasis? No, ‘fraid not Mr. Schlegel, unless you’re using that term and “renaissance” in a very loose manner.

Downtown Pittsburgh as seen from the banks of the Allegheny on the city’s NorthSide.

Most livable city? Oh really?

So you’ve heard time and again that Pittsburgh is amazingly livable; the most livable for 2007, in fact, according to the Places Rated Almanac. (Majors) Crime rates that aren’t too bad, it’s a cheap city to live in, it has excellent hospital systems, several prestigious universities, etc. Well did you know that our city has 768 million dollars in debt? (Blazina) That the police have to use tanks - yes… TANKS - to patrol Homewood (a very urban, very ethnically black neighborhood) and a few other impoverished neighborhoods in the city? (Deitch) That our public transit system, once one of the best and most extensive in the nation (at number 15), is falling into shambles? (Grata) That the casino our citizens fought tooth and nail to oppose will still be built on the NorthSide? That the popular “Waterfront” shopping “district” has become nothing more than a glorified strip mall?

Pittsburgh is a great city to live in if you’ve money, if you’re white, and if you’re willing to wink at a whole boatload of problems (social, economic, and so on) that a city this size just shouldn’t have. I don’t think tourism or gentrification is going to solve these problems. There are reasons why Uptown is a ghost town, why the Urban Redevelopment Authority has a dozen main streets to revitalize. (Is your memory so short that you don’t remember East Carson Street as the boarded-up wasteland it once was?)

Don’t get me wrong, Pittsburgh is wonderful despite these and other problems. But it isn’t because of a handful of art galleries, restaurants, and tourist traps. It’s something a lot more substantial, less transient and ephemeral, than the cultural tourism Schlegel suggests. Although they are hokey and rather Romanticized, I would suggest watching Rick Sebak’s documentaries on Pittsburgh - and not reading something like Michael Chabon’s Mysteries of Pittsburgh - to begin to understand exactly what that is. (You can get these suckers for free on public access television or through interlibrary loan.)

:: Bibliography ::

• Blazina, Ed. “Ravenstahl endorses Pittsburgh-Allegheny County merger.” The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 3 April 2008. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08094/870250-100.stm (5 July 2008).

• Deitch, Charlie. “Military Police.” Pittsburgh City Paper, 27 March 2007. http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=24549 (5 July 2008).

• Grata, Joe. “Port Authority transit cutbacks are biggest in history.” The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 4 January 2007. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07004/751189-147.stm (5 July 2008).

• Majors, Dan. “Pittsburgh rated ‘most livable’ once again.” The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 26 April 2007. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07116/781162-53.stm (5 July 2008).

• Schlegel, Jeff. “36 Hours in Pittsburgh.” The New York Times, 6 July 2008. http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/travel/06hours.html (5 July 2008).

:: Further reading ::

• “How now brown town?” The Economist, 14 September 2006. http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7914950 (5 July 2008). (Note: No author listed.)

This 1909 design for Pitt’s campus, inspired by the acropoleis of antiquity, is remarkably beautiful, as you can see from this huge photo from Pitt’s digital library. (Not a joke, click for amazing architectural hugeness.)

They only completed four of the buildings from the plan: Thaw Hall, Pennsylvania Hall, State Hall, and the Mineral Industries Building. I believe only Thaw and Mineral Industries are still extant. However, the latter is relatively hidden (and possibly renamed) while the former has been mutilated beyond recognition. The plan was abandoned because the new chancellor wanted a massive, phallic Cathedral of Learning instead. (What a nimrod!) Check out more Pitt acropolis-related photos here.

I had hoped to make a lengthy, uber-informative post about this missed opportunity, but don’t think I’ll get around to it. So here is a limerick I composed instead!

The Belated Lament for Messieurs P&H

Back in the day,
in Pittsburgh, PA,
before the Cathedral of Learning,
Palmer and Hornbostel
designed halls ‘n’ hostels;
their élan - fo’ sho’ - it was burning.

To be placed in Pittsburgh’s metropolis,
they fashioned a Greco-Roman acropolis,
four buildings, completed,
then their project, defeated,
the abandonment sure was dolorous. =(

Bibliography:
University of Pittsburgh Digital Research Library. Full Record for University of Pittsburgh Archives (ASC): ACRP01.UA. Univeristy of Pittsburgh. 2 June 2008.

Being anonymous is one of the pleasures of city life, and I’ve been rediscovering it Downtown, in the Strip, on the NorthSide, and increasingly in Lawrenceville of late. It’s one of those Pittsburgh neighborhoods in which the people, at large and who I know, are wholly unconnected with libraries, the University, and most of my day to day concerns. It’s an escape from habit; my routine has been giving me the blues.

The garish yet strangely charming Coca Café. They have an interesting, if not particularly vegetarian or vegan friendly, brunch menu. Be sure to get a tall glass of their delicious, pulpy, fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Piccolo Forno’s exterior. The food and ambiance are acceptable. However, their summation is certainly not enough to offset the pricey menu, brusque waitstaff, and loud-as-hell open kitchen.

There’s something about Lawrenceville that really speaks to me, and I don’t think it’s that the neighborhood is on the upswing thanks to that Main Street Project. It’s the river - the Allegheny - being in such close proximity to industrial and residential spaces. Empty, decrepit places. Structures forgotten by time, ruined, passed over by most house-flippers. Whether on foot or by bicycle, I can’t haunt these back streets enough.

Oh. I planted some daylilies today in my front yard. We’ll see if they take.

Jen and I were entranced by this shimmering pillar the other day, and I fumbled to get a good shot of it. We were amazed not only by the time and money required to craft a Stanley Cup out of aluminum foil, but also the highly public place of exhibition–Route 51.

I have to agree with Jen, “the tin-foil cup makes even more sense slightly out of focus”. According to Gary from the mail room the Pens still have a chance at the Cup, but just a slim one. They need to win 4 of the next 5 games. Bonne chance, mes amis!

The other day I was thrift shopping at one of my secret thrift stores - the kind that aren’t picked over by those of means - and discovered a plethora of American Apparel t-shirts. An absurd amount; racks and racks, in fact. I was vaguely pleased that I could buy some plain, comfy t-shirts at an affordable price. ($1.99 per shirt, which is rather steep at a thrift store, but beyond economic for AA’s wares.)

However, why would a suburban thrift store have a boatload of these shirts in pale yellow, orange, and white? To my knowledge, these are not the colors of any local school. Who would be silkscreening on them, but be able to discard so many? The quality of the batch is not in question. The colors are not offensive. This leads to the only logical explanation: American Apparel is initiating a dastardly marketing ploy using the poor as unwitting pawns!

 

One of the shirts in question, as well as an
example of American Apparel’s marketing campaign.

My evidence is hypothetical, but come now! All of AA’s “models” look inexpertly (if not poorly) groomed and quite often not exactly attractive.

So, they dump a shipment of their shirts (sized small and medium) into a non-boutique-y thrift shop and let the skinny folk that shop there snap them up. Voilà! It’s ingenious, because the type of person that will buy the shirts is almost guaranteed to match their current models: skinny, not afraid of wearing clothes that fit, predominantly white. AA is unfazed by, if not flat-out aiming for, the fact that some of the people may not be particularly concerned with comeliness or personal hygiene.

This plot ultimately feeds AA’s illusory desire to appear removed from the more stylized and affluent fashions of the middle class.

:: Bibliography ::

American Apparel. Fine Jersey Short Sleeve T-Shirt - Freeship Men - American Apparel Online Store. American Apparel. http://store.americanapparel.net/2001.html (26 May 2008).

I really, really enjoy checking out how people find my blog and should start keeping track of the funny, bizarre, and repellent search strings they employ. So far, most people who get to my blog are connecting with my more image and recipe based posts.

Current event posts also seem to have staying power, as well as anything that has some sexual wording in it (no matter how distant). For example, using the word “sexual” has just ensured that this post will be viewed repeatedly. Note at the right how some depraved sexual deviant got to my blog just today by searching for “via veloso rape scenes”. (Poor Via!) I hope my post that discussed the rape scene in Hitchcock’s Marnie didn’t titillate the social deviant! ;-)

It’s also interesting to see how users punctuate their searches, as if adding symbols and operators [all over] the -place +will (return better) “results” ‘for and some and strange and reason’. Hahaha! Information literacy be damned, let’s just make things look tech-ish and Boolean for no discernible reason at all!

In conclusion, I would like to tell the person who plugged “dsytopic pittsburgh” into a search engine that I share your interest, and would like you to watch George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead for this very reason. (There is one particularly excellent, if computer-generated, shot of the Point all dystopia’d out.) Or, if you’d like to see some real dystopia, I’d suggest South Oakland (south of the boulevard) on a Saturday morning. A wasteland, that!

…I took these photos:

Not artistic at all, I know. But they do articulate my love of Bloomfield in springtime.