Rust to Robots, a Revitalization

Thomas Lord

Sun Jul 20 10:03:02 -0700 2008

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"Yinzer" here. ("Yinz" is how we say "y'all" or, more precisely, "you ones" in that region.)

Last I heard, the city was in receivership with a rapidly aging population and extremely high emigration rates, People have been talking about, promising, pointing to "early signs of", and predicting -- just around the corner -- a high-tech renaissance for at least the past 20 years. Two factions drive that: the universities (primarily Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh) and the local headquarters of some industrial-age giants (located in that area). Land and politics is heavily influenced by a lot of old money -- family friends around names like Mellon, Frick, Kaufman, Heintz, etc. and then several whose names don't much like to see print.

Some localized environmental disasters, of course. Pittsburgh was / is home to research in recovering "brown fields". I hear that, with the sucky tax base, the infrastructure is going all to hell, too.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day and these predictions of a new high-tech growth center are going to prove out sooner or later. The greater metro region is surrounded by beautiful land, ag (much fallow). A testing but doable climate with some really beautiful to see weather. Fantastic native culture (modulo the remaining pockets of racism). If you don't need steady income, perhaps for the rest of your life, it's a buyer's market, property wise. I might consider moving back to that area myself, if I could afford to never need work again.

I'd be really hot to go back there if I not only didn't need to work but could dabble in regional investing.

It's not a place for effetes. The native culture(s) can be a little bit tough on insensitive types. It's not like the whoreish nature of the SF Bay area. It's a nice place to live.

And, yes, it's cliche, but now I do have a hankering for, oh, let's pick an obvious one: a fried meat and cheese sandwich on big slabs of excellent french bred with some tomato, coleslaw, and fries stuffed in the sandwich, nice cold beer on the side. They make a vegetarian variation, too -- no meat. Somehow, they manage to just fry the cheese right direct on the flat-top. Could never figure out how they did that but it's good.

-t

Rust to Robots, a Revitalization

The Baron

Mon Jul 21 06:06:12 -0700 2008

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I attended a conference in Pittsburgh last year. It was my first time there, and I was surprised by just how beautiful the landscape in and around the city is. I loved even the drive from the airport into downtown. There are some great shops and microbreweries in the area also. I had a local recommend The Church Brew Works. Wow, what a great place! Anyone who is passing through the area and likes good beer, good food, or good architecture, should definitely plan to stop by.

While I was there and talking to locals many, of several races, commented on how bad the crime was, especially black-on-black, and how nice the City used to be. Of course, when I mentioned I was from Dallas, the normal response I got was of sympathy and knowing comments along the lines of, "so you're already used to this kind of stuff." (Dallas had just been awarded the highest per capita crime rate among major cities for the 7th year in a row).

All in all, as you said, if I could make a living there, I'd love to move. It far and away impressed me more than other spots like Seattle, Portland, or anywhere in California.

Black History in Pgh.

Thomas Lord

Mon Jul 21 09:27:41 -0700 2008

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I'm no expert in it, by a long shot, but I can give some clues for the interested reader to look into.

Large parts of the US steel industry grew up in and around Pittsburgh and that meant, for quite a few decades, some big money flowing around. (It had interesting side effects as well. For example, there's a fancy high-end "shopping area" at the bottom of the inclines (look up the pgh inclines) made of converted buildings. One of them was a factory, back when, and had a glass roof. It was only in recent years that the roof got cleaned up for, as some older folks explained to me, it had been painted opaque black during WWII in preparation for blackouts).

The steel industry gave rise to a lot of history. For example, union organizing was a powerful force there early leading to the lockout and conflict at Homestead between strikers and .... Pinkerton Security, grandpa to everything from the FBI to today's larger array of domestic security forces. Mssrs. Carnegie et al. were more than just donors of public libraries. They weren't above cracking heads, from time to time.

But.. black history:

Labor demand led to black immigration to the region. Segregationist tendencies (not quite Southern Style -- more through socio-economic mechanisms) created, for example, the "Hill District" which was, in the day, a bit of a Harlem - or maybe Harlem was really a Little Hill District, hard to say. I don't mean "1970s Harlem" I mean heyday:

First Black newspaper with national distribution came from the Hill.

An embarrassingly long list of Great American Jazz Artists honed their chops in some of the swinging clubs on the Hill. And, incidentally, the Hill was a nightlife hang-out for the hip young white kids of the day, too.

Even in today's Pittsburgh, although the Hill (and everything else) declined sharply in the 1970s onward from ecomics and "urban renewal", even today some of that older culture still thrives and, indeed, even takes on leadership roles (as in the Manchester Bidwell school and here I will link to a great talk). That school is one of the best ideas and successes (at its scale) for fighting back against crimes of desperation.

-t

p.s.: On that talk you can also here what a Pgh. accent sounds like, if you're curious. (I don't much sound like that except when I try or, I suppose,if I'm surrounded by nothing but for a while -- but that's the accent.)

Rust to Robots, a Revitalization

Thomas Lord

Sun Jul 20 10:29:37 -0700 2008

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On the "Robot250 website" the videos section: the video from the Mattress Factory is highly recommended. Gotta say: I like the giant foam finger on the Warhol museum, too. The garden at the Mattress Factory -- it's design -- (the "cricket" installation, but note the setting) -- is *so* Pittsburgh. When I first saw it but hadn't read the caption I didn't realize it was a tended garden. I was trying to figure out whether or not it was any of the good "spots" around the city I used to stumble across, from time to time. The crumbling walls, discarded chunks of steel, native weeds, etc. -- a lot of such places occur naturally and are quite peaceful, beautiful, and meditative (but, presumably, the one at the Mattress Factory is far less likely to contain rusty nails, shards of glass, a grocery bag full of empty beer cans, the tail end of someone's roach, and spraypaint on the remaining concrete, brick, or stone structures).

-t

Rust to Robots, a Revitalization

ah.clem

Mon Jul 21 08:07:52 -0700 2008

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Meh.  I'm from the Northeast - Western New York.  "From" is the operative word.  When I am back in town occasionally (visiting relatives or attending funerals, mostly) I see articles like this in the local paper, nothing real, just bullshit pieces for the locals to cling to in hopes that it's really turning around.  It's not.  Get over it.  The city I came from is literally half the size it was when I left 30 years ago, and it was in the toilet even then.  It's only slid since.  Friends that were underemployed then are underemployed now.  They justifed staying by saying they wanted to stay near family, housing was cheap (yeah, 'cause nobody got a job to pay the mortgage), the area is beautiful (I agree, WNY is a beautiful part of the country), etc. Jeebus, I don't understand it.  Gangs, drugs, arson, violence, crappy schools, unemployment, underemployment, rusted out shit-box cars, out-of-sight utility bills, government cheese, slice me off a big piece of that, momma, I'm moving back home!  Sheesh.  Someone above said it - (paraphrase) "If I didn't need to make a living, I'd move back" - that's an oft heard expression uttered by NE US ex-pats.  I will never understand why people are so reluctant to GTFO and get a life.  Ah, well.

ah.clem

well.. on the other hand

Thomas Lord

Mon Jul 21 17:48:41 -0700 2008

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I dunno. I see what you're saying... but...

For one thing, stuff like the Robot art festival, the Mattress Factory, Manchester Craftsman's Guild, Bidwell School, the Children's Science Museum (took over for the venerable Buhl Science Museum), and even the Warhol Museum -- these things actually do more than create hope. AFAICT, they build serious bridges between the world-class universities, and those communities, to the locals. They create lots of opportunities for kids (small example, the robot wars video linked to). Those things open doors and, you'd probably approve, open up routes for kids to "get out of town and get a life" -- armed with training and skill. And, they don't exactly hurt the local economy.

And, those underemployed folks who are just about right where they were 30 years ago, a little worse in some ways, maybe a little better in a couple of ways... well, say that differently: those are folks with 30 years of standing still? That's 30 years of holding ground, so to speak. Sure, life in the big city has its amenities but it's also a roller coaster ride, at times quite precarious. Case in point, here in this big city (big metropolis comprised of several major cities, densely packed) my wife and I recently were forced to move do to a removal of our unit from the rental market. As renters, that kind of thing can happen anywhere but it's a lot more common in the big city and the consequences can be a lot more dire. In Pgh. we'd likely find many comparable, available places to whatever our current happened to be, probably quite a few close by or even more conveniently located. Here, it's a crap shoot depending on the state of the economy. For example, the failing credit industry and collapsing real estate market puts incredibly high pressure on the rental market at the moment so we are firmly priced out of anything "comparable" in the usual sense of the word. "The City" (by which, around here, we mean San Francisco even though it is but one of three major and many more "not small" cities packed around the Bay) is chock full of tales of renters and homeowners being effectively forced out of town by skyrocketing rents. Indeed, it is a long-term crisis for "The City" that the vast majority of its first responders live "out of town", often across bridges, so that in a Big Quake or similar disaster the city may find itself without many trained folks to actually respond.

The Appalachian rust-belt regions have their own long-term problems like a tax base not quite sufficient to provide adequate first-responders but, at the same time, they've been dealing with that, in increments, for 30 years already and so even though many are of "modest means" they're not going away any time soon. There's a lot of stability, by some measures.

Lots of rusty ol' cars, barely running? The flipside is that it's a buyers market for that beater you suddenly need to get you through the winter in a pinch.

One thing I've seen in Pgh. (last I was there, it's been a few years) was a lot of contraction around certain neighborhoods. Yeah, you do get surprisingly large dead-zones where, and adjacent too, crimes of desperation get to be a problem but the long-term-smooth hunkering-down process condenses around another set of surprisingly large zones where things are just peachy, thanks very much.

And, who knows -- recovery may seriously happen yet. Every time a new research or serious mfg. bit gets built (and they do, albeit slowly) -- every time: there's a few man-centuries of employment in diverse skilled trades for the region right there, and a bump-up in probability that more will follow. As the dollar suffers and work comes back home, the Appalacian range may be one of the better prepared regions in the nation to start soaking up investment. The Big Cities, meanwhile, are in a spiraling gridlock.

Look at the way places like LA, NYC, the SF Bay Area, etc. ... look at the way they fail, when they do. They're "effete", civically -- they're "precarious" -- when they hit bumps in the road they tend to fail Hard, and right quick. The resident tribes dance around one another fairly OK, day to day, but there's no long-term stability there.

I was the guy you referred to that said "If I didn't need to make a living, I'd move back."

Hindsight is cruel but I'd also say that I'd likely be a wealthy money if I'd never wasted a penny on university, picked up a few trades (car repair, HVAC, painting, basic construction, janitorial, plumbing, pipe-fitting, etc.), picked up some essential habits real early (frugality, saving), and stuck it out in one of those Appalachian shit-holes. I'd probably be living in a depreciating house, driving a rusting out car, have one or two kids in school on partial scholarship, and having a just-might-work plan in place and executing to retire just fine around 65 or 68. I'd be eating out more and seeing more live performances. I'd have more close friends and more of a social support network. I wouldn't have to double check on "the net" about the actual measures of nominal pipe and lumber sizes when building heavy duty shelves. I'd have been able to go fishing in the past N years -- not "catch and release" and not worrying about the toxicity of what I caught but honest fishing.

I don't mean it's "paradise" back there, in the slightest. Just that it's a pretty ambiguous set of trade-offs, at least. Instead, I got drawn down to the cross-roads, not entirely by choice and not entirely not. Came to the big city. Road the roller coaster. Which reminds me: anyone traveling back in the old stomping grounds, if you see my friend Willie Brown, I have a message you could give him a little message from me....

-t