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Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait
It's been a while since my last update to the series, but this one was a monster that led me down several rabbit holes. I fear a few more of the upcoming ones will be like this. I'm trying to work outwards from Downtown and we're getting to some of the big ones that bring up a number of issues that deserve in-depth discussion. Anyway, enjoy your weekend.
Part 4: The South Side
Roughly speaking, the South Side Flats begin at the intersection of East Carson St. and Becks Run Rd. and end at the West End Bridge. Between these two points, the neighborhood lies on the flat strip of land between the Monongahela River and the railroad tracks. According to city planners, the area between the Liberty Bridge and the West End Bridge is technically called the South Shore, but literally no one calls it that with the possible exception of local TV news anchors (which irks my dad to no end). See map (This time with terrain!) There's also the Slopes, about which more later.
Unlike the Strip and the North Shore, the South Side was dominated by the massive J&L Steel mill at the eastern end of the neighborhood, which splayed across the river and continued on the opposite bank to an entirely different mill at Hazelwood. The neighborhood was originally the independent boroughs of South Pittsburgh, Birmingham and East Birmingham, which were incorporated into the city in 1872. For most of its history, the South Side was a typical Pittsburgh river neighborhood, dominated by industry and populated by a mix of immigrant groups, in this case mostly Eastern European. It was also one of the dirtiest parts of the city, and its population decline started well before World War II. There was never much of an upper middle class population, and the invention of the electric streetcar saw the working class heading for the hills to the south where the air was much cleaner. In the 1970s, there were plans to demolish the river side of the neighborhood to construct a four-lane highway, but this was around the time the Federal government was cutting funding for urban highway projects and it was luckily never completed, though the overengineering of the Birmingham Bridge (1977) is a vestigial remnant of mid-century transportation policy. By the time the J&L Pittsburgh Works closed in 1985, Carson St. was full of boarded up storefronts and dive bars, relics of the days when steelworkers would stop by after their shifts for a shot and a beer.
Incidentally, though, the mill closure would act as a sort of catalyst for redevelopment. I don’t know of any causal connection, but it was around this time that someone noticed that the business district was a nearly intact collection of Victorian-era buildings, and a robust historical preservation effort was begun. In the early ‘90s art galleries, music venues, and “alternative” spots like the Beehive coffee shop started opening, and the sheer density of bars quickly turned it into Pittsburgh’s favorite party spot, the Strip District’s brief club era notwithstanding. As the neighborhood improved, students from Duquesne University began renting in the western parts. The rest of the story practically writes itself.
4A: The South Side Works
The South Side is best described by tackling the ends first before diving into middle. On the eastern end, at the intersection of Beck’s Run Rd., the plain is too narrow to support much, and the only business of note is the renowned Page Dairy Mart. As you head further west, the valley begins to widen, and you begin to see scattered offices on the river side. These mark the beginning of the old J&L site, and they increase in density until Hot Metal St. (29th St.), the beginning of the South Side Works development. This is a typical New Urbanist development with a mix of residential, retail, and office space. While it’s reasonably well-done, it suffers from the same fate as all these large-scale developments in that its idea of retail revolves around big chains, and these chains don’t seem to stick around long. The retail aspect of these developments never reaches expectations, and some of the storefronts at South Side Works have been vacant for over a decade. Some of the restaurants do well, but I suspect that’s because there are offices here, including the headquarters of American Eagle, and I don’t think a midday lunch crowd is what the developers had in mind. I think that part of the problem is that New Urbanist designers are obsessed with the idea of a Town Square as the focal point of the community. However true that may be, they forgot that they weren’t building a town from scratch, but were adding on to an existing urban neighborhood. They built a town square a block away from the existing commercial artery, and it’s no surprise that it didn’t really pan out. The retail space that fronts Carson St. has been occupied pretty much continually, while the interior properties are suffering the vacancies. The square still gets a decent amount of foot traffic and the anchors are all occupied, so maybe the problem is just that the rent is too high, or that it had the misfortune of being built right before the retail market imploded. Either way, even the most “enlightened” theories of modern planning aren’t all runaway successes.
4B: Station Square
The same can be said for the opposite end of the South Side, the Station Square development. This is emblematic of the same ‘70s style development that struggling city governments are huge fans of — touristy, chain-dominated places inspired by a repurposing of some local historical feature. Baltimore’s inner harbor is the success story of this, but a proposed revitalization of the Buffalo waterfront centered around a Bass Pro Shops and Detroit’s countless false starts also come to mind. In Pittsburgh’s case, it was an old railroad station, and in Pittsburgh’s case, it was actually successful. The old P&LE terminal had a fancy restaurant and there was an indoor mall, plus a comedy club and chain restaurants like Hooters, the Hard Rock Café, Melting Pot, etc. at various times (had probably isn’t the best word because some of this stuff is still here). It was a product of the 1970s and I can’t speak to its initial success as I wasn’t born yet, but by the ‘90s it was the place to be. In the early 2000s it was home to Pittsburgh’s transitory club scene, usurping the Strip by providing a whole plaza full of cheap dance clubs. Circa 2006 you could pay 6 bucks to get into the Matrix on Friday nights, which was 3 establishments in one (technically 4 if you include the perpetually-deserted techno room, entered only if there was a line at the bar elsewhere) and sold well drinks for 50 cents.
But, as I alluded to earlier, the North Shore has since usurped Station Square’s position as the top downtown-adjacent tourist destination, and most of the club scene has migrated to the South Side proper, especially after the aforementioned plaza was torn down to build housing. This actually makes sense; until fairly recently, if you were visiting from another city to attend a sporting event, there wasn’t much development around the stadiums, and Downtown didn’t offer much in the way of nighttime activities that weren’t cultural or fancy restaurant-related and nothing in the way of typical pregame activities. So Station Square filled this gap, and offered a ferry service to the North Shore to boot. Now people from Cincinnati or Toronto can just stay on the North Side. It also didn’t help that UPMC initially planned on taking over the mall to build more offices. All the tenants were evicted and the building gutted. Then the pandemic happened and they changed their mind. So the building sits empty, with the exception of a few restaurants, and the entire development is now for sale. All that being said, I don’t see Station Square going away any time soon. It’s right across the river from Downtown and has the lower stations for both inclines, so it will always get tourist traffic. And the new residential development may induce some functional businesses to take up residence.
4C: The South Side Proper
There’s not much to be said for the far western part of the South Side, unless you’re interested in unglamorous semi-industrial businesses. So we’ll head back east. Moving eastward from Station Square there are about 10 blocks of transitional no-man’s land. It’s semi-residential, semi-industrial, and semi-commercial. There’s a bar called Brewski’s I think I was in once 15 years ago. Then, at 10th St., the real South Side begins. The heart of the neighborhood is between 12th St. and 18th St. Development is still thick up through South Side Works (which is around 26th and 27th Streets), but it’s quieter. There’s a lot of cool stuff down there, but the real draw is the bars. If you’re looking to get smashed on a Saturday night, this is the place to go.
This is the first of several rowhouse neighborhoods we’ll look at. Pittsburgh isn’t a true rowhouse city like Philadelphia or Baltimore, but it has its fair share of rowhouse neighborhoods, and I’d argue that the median rowhouse neighborhood in Pittsburgh is on par with the premiere rowhouse neighborhoods in either of those cities. Why? It’s tempting to say that since rowhouses don’t dominate like they do in Philly or Baltimore, and the rowhouse-heavy neighborhoods tend to be among the most desirable, that it's simply a question of money, since wealthier residents can afford to invest more in the upkeep of the exteriors, and rising property values give flippers an incentive to make the houses more attractive. There’s certainly some of that, but it’s a bit simplistic. Even if there were a massive campaign to restore every rowhouse in those other cities to its former glory, Pittsburgh would still come out ahead. The real answer is in the way they are constructed. In Philly and Baltimore developers built what was essentially one long building per block and divided it up with interior walls to create multiple units. This gives the street a certain rhythm and continuity of style, but makes it look boring. There were occasionally attempts to make the individual units look different, but there’s only so much you can do. In Pittsburgh, on the other hand, the houses were usually constructed individually to the point where the few block-long developments that do exist are interesting for their novelty.
If you thought I was going to post a picture of a nicely varied Victorian rowhouse street, though, you’d be wrong, because the South Side isn’t the neighborhood for that. Instead, I’m posting this picture from South 26th St. that is practically a field guide to mid-century remuddling. These houses are all at least 150 years old, as they appear on an 1872 map of the city. But note the massive dormer (complete with 90s fanlight) on the fourth house from the end. Note the front picture windows. Note the anachronistic brick façade on the end unit. Note that several houses have completely redone the front doors, removing the wood frames and transoms. I could go on but I don’t have all day. One thing I will point out, though, is the Kool-Vent awning on the house next to the one with the dormer, if only because architectural historian Franklin Toker once facetiously remarked that the South Side should be designated the Kool-Vent Awning Historic District. This may not be the kind of architecture that has outsiders paying big bucks, but I find it more interesting than what’s going on in Baltimore, and infinitely more interesting than anything in the Sun Belt, where even the old neighborhoods look like underdeveloped rural communities.
Anyway, the creeping problems with the South Side seem to be an unforeseen consequence of what happens when a formerly run-down neighborhood becomes trendy. A little too trendy. When most people complain about their neighborhoods, they look around and say “This place isn’t as nice as it used to be; the neighborhood has changed.” In the South Side, they say “I don’t like this neighborhood as much as I used to; it’s exactly the same as it was when I moved here”. To understand this seemingly odd state of affairs, you have to understand the dynamics that led to the South Side’s revitalization. The urban pioneers who took it from a declining working-class neighborhood to the Place to Be were young professionals in the ‘90s. They were also, incidentally, the people who made Carson St. the city’s premiere nightlife district. But there are more bars than any reasonable neighborhood to support on its own. Premiere nightlife district means outsiders. It also means noise. Now we’re in a situation where the people who initially invested in the neighborhood are in their ‘50s, and they’ve mostly aged out of the bar scene, and the music is starting to get loud.
This is partly a consequence of the South Side being the first Pittsburgh neighborhood to gentrify in the commonly-understood sense of the term. There were always areas that were nicer than others, but the South Side was the first neighborhood to become trendy, with hipster coffee houses and bars, an art scene, in-demand housing, and interest from outsiders just visiting for the day. There was always a bit of a hipster scene in Oakland (which will be discussed more thoroughly when we get to that neighborhood), but that was more of a consequence of proximity to Pitt and CMU; colleges always attract that element. As an inevitable consequence of this, combined with the increasing student interest from Duquesne, a lot of the bars catered more to the bro scene than the hipster scene, even in the early days. And since it spent so long as practically the only game in town for suburbanites and tourists looking for a good time, rather than morphing into a typical upper-middle class yuppie area, it solidified its reputation as an entertainment district. When other neighborhoods began gentrifying after 2000, this reputation became more and more ingrained, much to the chagrin of those who expected the neighborhood to mature along with them.
If you look at the Pittsburgh subreddit, every time someone moving to the city asks about living in the South Side, the consensus view is that it’s a nice area, but you’d better have a high tolerance for noise, and if you’re over the age of 30 the scene might not be for you. Someone else will inevitably point out that noise is only really an issue on Friday and Saturday nights within a block or two of Carson in the western part of the neighborhood, and that the businesses are diverse enough that there’s something for everybody. I’m inclined to agree with the latter view. I’ve never actually lived there, so take it with a grain of salt, but in my experience as a visitor on weeknights or during the day, and on most of the residential streets the weekend rowdiness is a low roar at best, easily drowned out by a TV or radio. Not the best place if you love peace and quiet, but not unbearable by any means. That being said, there are a number of places here where young people go to engage in what I call Loud Drinking. This is where you and your friends get dressed up to crowd into a bar that features overpriced drinks, no food, and a DJ blasting terrible music, wherein you struggle to get the bartender’s attention, fail to have a conversation over the noise, and ultimately guzzle your drinks as quickly as possible before moving on to the next equally crappy bar. They appeal to the kind of people who are either looking to relive prom every weekend or haven’t yet figured out that frat parties are boring, probably both.
4D: How Many Shootings in a Rash?
The other issue plaguing the South Side in recent years has been the perception that crime is on the increase. This was punctuated by a few high-profile shootings that occurred outside of nightclubs in the madness that was immediate post-COVID America. As usual, this was entirely overblown in the public consciousness, as the shootings were easily avoidable by staying away from Loud Drinking nightclubs in the western part of the neighborhood in the small hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings, but shootings are still shootings. The neighborhood usually has about 3 nonfatal shootings and 1 homicide per year. This ticked up slightly in 2020 but not enough to really gain anyone’s notice, especially since most people weren’t looking to go to bars. In 2021, however, there were 10 nonfatal shootings, and in 2022 there were 11. The numbers ticked back down to 6 in 2023, and so far in 2024 there has been only 1. Homicides were steady at 1 throughout the period, except in 2020 when there were none. The South Side has always been among the city’s worst neighborhoods in terms of total number of crimes, but this has always been downplayed in the public consciousness since it’s a generally wealthy area and it’s easy to blame it on the bars. Indeed, statistics bear out what I mentioned earlier, that the only really dangerous time is between 1 and 4 am on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It’s easy to wave of assaults as the result of bar fights, robberies as drunks being easy targets, etc. But when shootings are on the news seemingly every weekend (at least in the warmer months), perception begins to change. The idea that the South Side was dangerous became rooted in the public consciousness as it never had before.
Compounding the problem was that Bill Peduto had seemingly lost interest in being mayor. He had already been defeated in the May 2021 primary, but he probably would have won if he had bothered to campaign. He basically deferred to the chief of police, who responded by implementing traffic restrictions and increasing police presence. This didn’t do much to curb the violence, though the response times were excellent. The traffic restrictions proved so disruptive that they were jettisoned a few weeks after being implemented. Conservatives chastised Peduto and his successor, Ed Gainey, in the media, claiming that crime had increased in the wake of the George Floyd protests due to a kid gloves approach taken by Democrat mayors who didn’t have the balls to solve the problem. This attitude played well in certain circles but it’s unclear how true it was. Crime in the South Side didn’t start increasing in earnest until well after the “defund” insanity had subsided. And neither mayor showed any hesitation when it came to deploying extra officers in response to the violence; some argued that police presence was worthless if they weren’t allowed to do their jobs, but arrest totals were up as well, suggesting that they were doing plenty.
As 2022 was turning into a retread of 2021, Ed Gainey made a late night appearance in the neighborhood to assess the situation and meet with community leaders. The night proved uneventful from a crime standpoint, and Gainey insinuated that the problem was somewhat overblown based on his own observations, but critics countered that his appearance had been announced well in advance and he was escorted by police, media, and other local government officials, making it unlikely that anyone would do anything stupid in front of him. In July of 2023 he announced the formation of an “Entertainment Patrol” that would aggressively enforce quality of life violations in the South Side between 8 pm and 4 am Thursday through Sunday. There have been a number of articles in local media marking the one year anniversary and proclaiming the whole thing a smashing success that is set to be replicated in other neighborhoods, and soliciting comments from local business owners who want assurances that the patrol will be permanent. Aside from reporting the news, these articles seem well-placed to announce that the South Side has lost its stigma, and it’s all thanks to the smart leadership of local government.
Or is it? Yes, shootings on the South Side are no longer much of an issue, and haven’t been since 2022. But there was a dramatic citywide crime reduction between 2022 and 2023, which appears to be continuing in 2024 — is the drop in the South Side do to police tactics, or overall trends? These articles mention that the Entertainment Patrol consists of 10 officers and 2 sergeants. It doesn’t mention that at the height of the violence the city was regularly deploying 40 or 50 officers to the South Side on weekend evenings, with little effect. There’s also some question as to who, exactly, was perpetrating the violence. The Entertainment Patrol articles mention that, during the pandemic, a lot of people started drinking in the street or in parking lots, and police gave them a pass since the bars were closed. But the behavior continued after the pandemic ended, particularly among underage kids, and this fueled the shootings. I don’t particularly buy this, though, since ground zero for the shootings was in the crowds that congregated in front of bars around closing time. I’m not suggesting that the Entertainment Patrol is a bad thing, since the business owners seem to like it, it’s by and large made the area at least appear more desirable, and it sends the message that the city is committed to keeping the area nice, but I doubt its overall effectiveness at preventing violent crime.
Overall, I think the shootings are just one of those things that we’ll never have a good explanation for. I think that a big part of the problem is that most people, particularly those who study these sorts of things, are by and large rational and logical people, and accordingly assume that the perpetrators of violence are rational and logical people who simply lack the same moral compass that the rest of us do. But if you start from the premise that someone who would shoot someone else is inherently irrational, then there’s not much you can do in terms of traditional policing to stem the problem. The city threw officers at the problem, which sounds good in theory. But when an illogical person decides he is going to shoot someone, the presence of police doesn’t so much prevent the shooting as it does ensure swift apprehension of the suspect. Hell, one of the shootings took place directly in front of a parked patrol car with two officers inside.
4E: No Minimum
Among online urbanists and YIMBYs, there is no greater evil than the parking minimum. While they may grudgingly concede that some aspects of zoning codes are necessary — keeping housing away from industry, not putting a skyscraper in the middle of a historic district, etc. — the parking minimum gets nothing but scorn. This is understandable, to a degree. Parking lots are ugly, they take up a lot of space that could be used for better things, and they make businesses harder to walk to. But there’s a bit of a Chesterton’s Fence thing going on here, with the South Side being a textbook example.
Parking in South Side was never easy, considering that unlike many other rowhouse neighborhoods in the city, virtually no houses have a full-size lot which fronts on an alley, meaning there is little off-street parking. Given many people drive to the South Side to socialize, the popularity of the neighborhood made it difficult for residents to park near their homes. In relatively quick succession, essentially every residential street in South Side Flats went over to permit parking. The initial enforcement of it was limited at nighttime, meaning it didn't really cut down on bar traffic. It did, however, cut down on daytime shopping. Worse, employees of many South Side businesses had nowhere in the neighborhood to park all day, making it difficult to work there unless they lived in the neighborhood (which is hard for low-wage service workers) or took one of the few buses in. The city then compounded the issue in 2017 by prohibiting meter parking on Carson St. after 10 pm on weekends to keep a traffic lane open for safety vehicles.
Parking is a complex issue. The permit parking was good on paper but implemented horribly. The perception locally is that the permit parking has no clear winner and mostly losers, and as a consequence proposals to implement permit parking in other popular neighborhoods have died a quick death. Councilman Bruce Kraus has tried to make parking available across the river over by the jail offering a shuttle service; however, this has been a huge flop. Much of the feedback is people don't like waiting for a shuttle every 30 minutes to get to their car parked half a mile to a mile away. Trying to force changes in consumer behavior that don't adequately meet the demands of the consumer doesn't usually work well. Uber and Lyft were successful in derailing Yellow Cab because they provided a pathway to convenience, not because they forced people to jump through their hoops. It should be noted that residential permit parking is the preferred solution among online urbanists. Kraus, who retired a couple years ago, was an unapologetic NIMBY. He advocated vociferously for South Side residents but had no sense for the bigger picture. Proposed residential developments, which would have given the neighborhood more of a local base for the business district, were killed due to parking concerns. He was fully opposed to the construction of any garage, which would have helped immeasurably. There are a couple of inexpensive garages in the neighborhood, but they’re all at South Side Works, and, even if they could use the exercise, you can’t expect people to walk 15 blocks just to go out to eat.
4F: When Gentrification Ends
Over the past decade and a half, the South Side has been eclipsed by the gentrification of neighborhoods in Pittsburgh’s East End. Virtually every vacant lot has been built out. Most of the existing housing has been rehabbed, and what hasn’t is selling for top dollar for something that needs six figures worth of work. And despite this, house prices are actually dropping. A lot of this is obscured by the across-the-board price increases since COVID, but while the city has seen an average home price increase of 37% since pre-COVID, the South Side has only seen about a 20% increase, and the houses take a while to sell (the South Side data is admittedly based on my own perusal of Zillow sales, so take this with a grain of salt). What’s more, this decline was occurring well before COVID. 1717 Jane St., a new construction town home, sold for $362,000 in 2011, but only $355,000 in 2017, and took over a year to sell. It sold again last fall for $418,000, which looks like a decent increase, until you realize that it’s only up 15% from 2017 prices. Growth in itself is its own economy. If an area stops growing or improving, the speculation and capital that creates investment is basically where you hit your diminishing returns. Investing in residential properties in the South Side is a bit riskier these days, as you aren’t seeing the kind of ROI that you can get in other neighborhoods. Retail leases are still astronomical while residential prices are falling. This isn’t sustainable. Gentrifying neighborhoods generally have low retail rates that allow hip, independent businesses to set up shop, while residential home values in the surrounding area skyrocket to do increased desirability. The South Side is seeing the opposite happen. It’s also getting to the point where a lot of the original rehabs are becoming dated and will need to be redone soon, but since the owners bought them when the market was hot they can’t get the kinds of returns that the original gut-jobs did. I don’t know if this ends with stabilization or decline, but the next decade or so will be interesting to watch. I read an article suggesting that the rough reputation it developed during 2021 and 2022 might lead to a second round of gentrification, but I don’t see that happening. Gentrification happens, in Pittsburgh at least, because the area is cheap enough that it’s worth investing in. As recently as the 2000s, houses in some “up and coming” areas were selling for like $40,000. They weren’t even gut jobs, though walking into them was like going back to the 60s in a time machine. I doubt the South Side would see that much new investment unless the area sees a significant price drop, and I don’t see that happening. My guess is that the neighborhood will be what it’s always been to outsiders, with Carson St. still being the rowdy part of town, but with relatively cheap rents compared to other places.
Neighborhood Grade: Upper Middle Class. Despite the problems I discussed, the typical markers of decline aren’t present, and though it’s not as desirable as a place to live as it used to be, no one is itching to get out and it’s nowhere near the point where Section 8 housing will start moving in. It’s also not accurate to say that it’s at an incomplete stage of gentrification because the traditional markers of gentrification aren’t there either; the original mill hunkies have all passed on, and the “quirky” businesses have either closed or been there long enough that they’re practically institutions. It’s not hip to hang out on the South Side, and it’s not hip to open a business there.
4G: The South Side Slopes
This is already a marathon post, but it doesn’t make sense to discuss the Flats without discussing the Slopes, since they’re really all just the South Side. The Slopes begin where you cross the railroad tracks around Josephine St. and end at the top of the hill. This area was never part of the aforementioned Birmingham or East Birmingham and was essentially undeveloped until around 1880, when the increasing need for housing near the J&L facility meant that any available land had to be developed. Being on a steep hill, this was always the least desirable part of the area, and it shows. The housing is mostly frame “mill houses”, that weren’t built well to begin with, and have often been remuddled or downright neglected. One interesting feature, though, is the so-called “low side house”. These look like tiny cottages from street level but descend another story or two in the back. While the Slopes never saw any significant levels of urban flight or abandonment, the benefits it’s seen as a result of the gentrification of the Flats have been limited. Some streets near the bottom of the hill have been rehabbed and sold for decent amounts, but the further up you go, the worse it gets. The benefits to the Slopes are that it’s relatively close to an active commercial district and the houses can have absolutely stunning views of the city. That’s about where it ends, though. The housing is cruddy and outdated. The areas near the top of the hill, while not dangerous themselves, are close to bad areas and are incredibly run down. The worst part, though, is that, in defiance of all logic, it’s neither walkable nor car-friendly. The Slopes have no business district of their own, so walking means a long trek down the hill to Carson St. and, more importantly, a long trip back up the hill from Carson St. The roads are circuitous, meaning that the only way to get their in a decent amount of time is to use a series of public staircases that don’t see snow or ice removal in the winter and can get overgrown in the summer. Driving means parallel parking on a narrow road with a 30% grade, which also happens to be at the bottom of the city’s snow removal priority list. It also means driving on similar roads to get in and out. A friend of mine lived here for a while and liked it, but he’s also an idiot.
Neighborhood Grade: Stable. I don’t see this area ever becoming trendy, but I don’t see it declining much either. This is a prototypical Yinzer neighborhood that people won’t move out of because: 1. Their entire family lives on the same block, and 2. They can’t afford to. A few years back I was in one of the South Side’s dingier bars (at which I was a regular in my younger days), when a girl in the group I was with said that I girl in one of the booths said I was cute. I looked over and saw a reasonably attractive girl in her late 20s, so I took a seat across from her and introduced myself. I experienced a disappointment that is all to common here, as the first two words out of her mouth indicated that she was raised in a household that did nothing to discourage the development of an accent. I’d say it’s among the thickest I’ve ever heard, except that at a certain level it’s just like an on/off switch. Needless to say, she was also fucking insane, and when she asked me what I did for a living, I told her I rolled back odometers. Thinking I had made a successful escape, I was disappointed to learn that my friends would spend the rest of the evening winding her up about my obvious moral failings, which I later extended to include title washing, so that we could continue to hear her ramble about how degenerate we all were. She was from the Slopes. We dubbed her “Princess Sarah” and she’s become somewhat of a legend among the group.
So she thought crime and criminals were l bad and that makes Princess Sarah somehow bad?
She wasn't bad, we were just having a little fun with her.
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This is an example of Squareallworthy's Law of Societal Change.
To give some credit to Kraus, the shuttle idea wasn't bad on paper. The South Side is notoriously difficult to park in on weekend evenings with or without restrictions, and offering a free parking and shuttle service seemed like a no-brainer. Waiting for a shuttle is a minor inconvenience compared to circling blocks at low speed while dodging drunk pedestrians as you try to decide which parking space is the least questionable (I always had good luck parking in loading zones since people only see the "No Parking" and not the "6:00 am to 6:00 pm Except Sunday" part), and there's a significantly reduced chance that your car will be broken into/vandalized/hit by a drunk driver if it's in a garage. Using the shuttle would be the logical thing to do. It's just that there's weird psychology at play when it comes to parking; if the only free parking at Wal Mart was 100 yards from the door, that's where most people would park without batting an eye. If there's the theoretical chance of free parking closer, though, they'll circle the lot for 10 minutes to try to find it before parking 100 yards away. This includes people who are able-bodied and have no problem wandering the store for an hour. It's kind of like how in a grocery store we'll spend and inordinate amount of time looking at shit we don't plan on buying but we're all of a sudden in a hurry come checkout time. As for the garages at South Side Works, Kraus never suggested that people park there, I was just commenting that they were the only garages in the neighborhood but were too far away for anyone to want to use.
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Oh neat, we just went to Pittsburgh recently and happened to stay at an AirBnB on the Slopes. Driving was indeed as terrible as you say, though luckily most of the places we wanted to see were reachable via walking/transit. And speaking of transit, is it normal for Pittsburgh transit to be oddly lax about fare enforcement? More than once, incline attendants told us to just pay $5 for our family, even though prominent signs indicated that we should be paying more like $7 for 2 adults plus an older child. A subway employee also told us to just buy 2 adult tickets and not bother buying the half-price child ticket. Were they just going easy on out-of-towners or do they do that all the time or what?
I've never heard of transit employees giving a break on fares (one even bitched about my student ID not being in the new format even though it was up to date, though this was 15 years ago), but I take it you were only taking the T from Station Square into town which is only one stop away from the free zone so it doesn't surprise me they wouldn't charge for the kid. I haven't been to the incline since 1989 but the Duquesne Incline is run by a private nonprofit so they may operate differently than the Port Authority. If you were on the Monongahela Incline I have no idea.
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Is the Yinzer accent really that bad? It sounds pretty inoffensive to me.
It's not so much that it's offensive as it is that it's decidedly unsexy. Also, the accent you hear from a grandmother in 1985 isn't the same as the one you'd hear from a 28-year-old girl in 2018.
Would be interested to hear a more up to date accent if you can dig up a recording.
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