Pittsburgh

We were out to dinner last night with my boss and a prospective new hire, so we were doing a little convincing of why he should relocate from the Southwest to Pittsburgh. As we talked about why we chose Pittsburgh and what has made us happy to stay here, I didn't view it as a sell job at all. Hopefully our sincerity was obvious, because we have lived in Pittsburgh for four years now and we have no intentions of leaving anytime soon.

Four years and a month ago, we had just returned from the Peace Corps and wanted/needed a place to settle down and stop being transient for awhile. We didn't have jobs, we weren't accepted into grad school and we had never darkened the door of Pittsburgh, but we made an appointment with a realtor and drove West. Much like others who haven't been here, we had visions of a run-down Steel town with not much going for it. We read statistics about how it has such a large aging population and wondered if it might not be a place for young-ish people like us. After two days of looking at houses, we put an offer down on a house (and got a loan thanks to all those high risk no-income loans that haven't worked out well universally) and moved the wagon here a few weeks later.

I could go on and on about why we like the city, but many of my reasons have to do with our points of reference, which may not resonate with others. For example, it's not as crowded or as hot in the summer as D.C. It's not as hot or full of garbage in the streets as Mauritania. It's not as cold and grey as Rochester, even though Pittsburghers want to claim it is. It's got more character and common folk than San Diego. Plus it's got three professional sports teams. Well, two and a half anyway, with that half being a great place to watch other teams play baseball.

Lest this post have nothing to do with Sir Henry, one thing that we think is pretty cool is that Henry will be FROM here as long as we stay here. After having lived so many places in so many years, we don't really feel like we're from anywhere anymore. But we'd like to think he'll grow up with an appreciation of all this city has to offer and claim to be a "yinzer" with pride. He did go to a Steelers and Penguins game in utero, so I think he pretty much bleeds black and gold...