RAOG on the road

greetings from the midwest. er, the mid-atlantic. or whatever designation this place gets. i'm in pittsburgh, PA till the end of the weekend. i logged on to see what my fellow bloggers (and all 3 readers) were up to and figured i'd share a few random thoughts from the road.

i haven't been to the 'burgh in about 18 years. i think the last time i came here i was with my dad, crashing at one of his friend's places. my lasting impression of the steel city was gray, dank, dirty and altogether unattractive.

times have changed a bit. here are some observations:

-the grayness of the city has seemingly dissipated, along with the existence of the actual steel industry. now the under-educated manual labor force spends its time inhabiting any of the 2.6 million bars in town.

-this city is old a shit. every major city i've been to has at least one part that has new homes, new commercial developments, etc. pittsburgh does not. at all. except for the PNC park and Heinz field, there is nothing in this city built after 1972.

-there are too many colleges/universities in the same area. there are literally 4 universities that share one neighborhood of the city. SE michigan had a few schools that were a few miles apart, which was a nice way of sharing the land. pittsburgh's schools mix, match and meld into one bohemian, urban college campus. sounds cool? remember, soilent green is people. there's not a patch of green for miles. ew.

-the girls on the campus(es) are surprisingly good looking. very much so, in fact. i'd go so far as to call them "stellar." joke around town is that the only good looking pittsburgh girl is one that is not from here. i must find out where they came from then and move there. i fell in love about 6 times on a 1 hour campus tour.

-people here have a weird accent. i don't know what it's called or even how to characterize it. it's not like the east coast with NYC and boston. nor is it like the south, with its easily identifiable drawl. there's no west coast surfer slang to speak of, and they don't annoyingly add an "r" to words like "wash" as they do in cincinnati. i don't know what it is, but evidently, people here are all bilingual.

-there are 3 rivers here that all look the same. everything around them looks the same. and the people who "planned" this city may very well have been blind. or retarded. take your pick. chicago is on a square grid, detroit was planned on a spoke and wheel, and denver is a flat grid and a cross grid (our planners were dumb too). pittsburgh has no plan. it has no grid. nothing makes sense. roads that travel north-south quickly turn to east-west, and then back to north-south. even the natives get lost.

-pittsburghers love their food. a lot. for as many beautiful hills and valleys as the region has for running and cycling, locals evidently do not take advantage of them at all. how could they when they're busy stuffing their faces with all sorts of italian and german goodies? oh, and beer. milwaukee and chicago are beer cities. add the 'burgh to the list. i'd put a 'burgher up against and chicagoan every day of the week and twice on sundays. and i'd lay big odds on the man from PA.

-humidity is god's way of telling people he hates them. i moved from the midwest for a reason. all this time i thought it was the cold, dreary winters. nope. it was the hot, insufferably humid summers. now i remember. nothing quite like needing a shower after a shower. and for a high plains dweller like me (5280, remember?), consuming the thick, humid air is like trying to inhale a brick. oppressive and suffocating.

-businesses like pittsburgh. i don't know why either, but many large, respected companies make their homes here. or at least have a huge presence. alcoa, verizon, ppg, del monte, heinz (of course) and many others inhabit the buildings that create the skyline. pittsburgh is 2 weeks from everywhere, except cleveland. but cleveland doesn't count because it's a hole and no one actually considers it a real city. so the isolated nature of the city and its penchant for drawing large businesses makes the job market relatively attractive, even in a down economic cycle.

-lastly, i know now that i do, in fact, prefer the western U.S. to the mid-west/mid-atlantic/eastern seaboard. but, with everything the region has to offer, there are worse places to procure an MBA and put it to good use.