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I have been to Pittsburgh and back. It's an okay-looking city on a triangle of land between three rivers - the Ohio, the Allegheny, and the Mongasomething. There are yellow bridges and nice new sports stadiums. There is a sandwich called a Roethlisberger that will make your colon explode. They call this place "The Steel City." Its official motto is “Pittsburgh: where excitement is temporarily closed due to weather!”
Why would I drive to Pittsburgh if I didn't have tickets to the AFC Championship football game between the Patriots and the Steelers? I wouldn't. Obviously. But in case you ever have to go to Pittsburgh for a boat show or something, I've put together a visitor's guide that will make your stay a 3 or a 4 on the Awesome Scale. The Awesome Scale goes to 57.
Here are ten things you should know about Pittsburgh...
1. Um, the thing about the Roethlisberger sandwich was actually number one.
2. Pittsburgh is not close to you.
Pittsburgh is located somewhere between the Midwest and Canada, meaning that it is at least eleven hours from everywhere else in the United States. There are two large highways that approach Pittsburgh, coming from the North and the East, but if you want to get to the city from anywhere else, you have to take Route 28. Route 28 is a two-lane road famous for drunk driving and sexually awkward relationships between farmers and their livestock. There are also white dogs that can run fifty miles an hour. I'm not making that up. This dog was keeping up with my Jetta until I started going sixty. Maybe he was half leopard or something.
3. If you take Interstate 80 through Northern Pennsylvania, don't stop at three in the morning at the Exxon station that has bathrooms in a separate white shack.
While I was in the bathroom I realized that there would probably be a trucker in a cutoff plaid shirt and Caterpillar boots waiting outside the door. He would definitely want to cut me with a knife and then rape me. I decided that I should karate kick the door open, so that the door would hit him in the nose and he would be stunned and I could make my getaway. I kicked the door and it flew open, but there was no trucker waiting for me.
I escaped, but you might not be so lucky.
4. When you're driving on Route 28 with out-of-state plates, a police officer will drop whatever he's doing to pull you over.
Have you ever left for a trip and thought, "Wow, this would really be the wrong trip to get pulled over?" Well, this trip was THAT trip for me. It started when my dad gave me vanity plates for Christmas. They have lobsters on them and say NMBA 22. Yes, this is the second time in my life that a parent has given me vanity plates and yes, that's going to be discussed in depth when I have enough money for a therapist, but right now I just have to deal with it. So I was trying to put the new plates on my car before the trip because the car is already registered as MAINE LOBSTER NMBA 22. Unfortunately the screws on the old plate had rusted. I couldn't remove them. So I was traveling to Pennsylvania with the wrong license plates.
I also didn't have a rearview mirror. I had been scraping the frost off the inside of my windshield (because that's where the Jetta puts its frost) earlier in the week and had accidentally tapped the mirror, which had fallen off the windshield. I tried to Super Glue it back on, but I couldn't get it to stick.
And finally, my windows don't roll down because some girl was fooling around with the child locks and somehow broke the whole system. It's never good to get pulled over when your windows don't work because if you open your door, it looks like you're trying to run away, and police officers tend to shoot people who try to run away.
So of course I got pulled over.
5. The most popular car in Pittsburgh is the H2.
I can't explain this.
6. The walk signals talk.
I think the street corner poles have people in them. These people say things like, "It is now okay to cross Seventh St." If I were one of the guys in the poles, I would always be like, “CAR!” when someone was halfway across the street, but then I would be like, “Just kidding.”
7. Don't even bother looking for nightlife in Pittsburgh.
We were told to go to the Strip District for a good time. We walked there through a windstorm that had brought temperatures down to 4 Kelvin and found that the Strip District was a collection of abandoned factories and a fish market. It's an excellent place to start a trashcan fire and drink malt liquor. So if you're a hobo, it's the place to be.
8. The mayor of Pittsburgh is a male.
I only mention this because the whole city is so irrational that I had assumed a female was in charge. I was thinking this, not realizing that I was talking out loud, and a woman in a doorway with blue hair corrected me. “Actually, he’s a male,” she said. “And he’s a real @$$hole.”
9. If you are not wearing Steelers gear in Pittsburgh, you are not from Pittsburgh.
This goes for men, women, children, dogs, whatever. We walked by one woman in a Franco Harris jersey who wore high tube socks and glittery eye black. And people aren't just wearing Starter jackets. They have gear for all occasions. They have casual AND formal Steelers clothing. If you're trying to get into a fancy restaurant that requires a blazer, you're actually MORE likely to get in if you sew a Steelers patch on the breast pocket.
10. But everyone in the city is really, really nice.
It was kind of sad, actually. Here we were, Patriots fans, in the city for one thing: to beat their beloved Steelers. Pittsburghers have nothing to do besides think about Jerome Bettis and Ben Roethlisberger all day. Their favorite song is called "The Steeler Polka." And they didn't mind that we were there. They said, "Thanks for coming" and "Where you from?" and "Can I buy you a beer?"
We couldn’t really gloat about the Patriots’ victory while they were still in the stadium. It would have been rude. We had to wait for them to leave in the fourth quarter. As the final seconds of the game ticked off the clock, Patriots fans moved down to the bottom rows of seats and high fived each other. Then we all got the hell out of Pittsburgh.
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adam@theadamwhite.com |
