New Coffee Shop

You just walked headlong into one of my pet peeves.

If I told you there was a new bar opening in the East End, you'd be like, where? Sq. Hill? Oakland? Grenfield? Shadyside? Similarly, the North Side is a HUGE tract of land, with many distinct neighborhood. Okay, I hate it more when the news tells me there was a shooting on the North Side, and I'm left to figure out if it was near me or like 6 miles away. But you get the picture.

Lately it seems East End is supposed to refer to the area around the Shadyside / East Liberty border, and East Side is anything east of Downtown. Or maybe it's the other way around — the developers going in seem to be playing the game where they try to make a neighborhood more attractive by changing the name until everyone gets confused as to where they are. I believe I just got a new "civic pride" mailing from Ravenstahl's office outlining the new gang signs that go with our new neighborhood names. Shadyside and East Side are more or less the same: hold out your index, middle and ring fingers sideways so it looks kind of like an E. There are subtle differences, though: For East Side it actually is an E, whereas for Shadyside you do it in the other direction so it looks more like a 3, representing how much you're willing to pay for a cupcake. Also you have to do the Shadyside one while holding a martini in your other hand.

No, it doesn't make sense. I've lived in Pgh all my life, and the
core 'East End' neighborhoods were always considered to be Shadyside and Squirrel Hill. It's where the city's 'ruling class' is from, basically. When East Liberty was also still hopping (folks liked to brag it was the 3rd largest commercial district in PA – the 'East Side' designation is an attempt to revive that without bringing up the stigma of blight that East Liberty's name has since taken on) it was also a core part of the East End. Other areas like Bloomfield and Friendship and Garfield were always considered the east part of Pittsburgh, but not really the 'East End', frankly, because they never seemed that important – nothing was ever going on there. However, now that hipsters have moved into those areas it is now suddenly cool to also call it part of the expanded East End. And by the way, Iheartpgh gets Lawrenceville wrong in it neighborhood categorization – it is *also* part of the new expanded East End. Definitely not part of the 'North' – that's across the river entirely. You should change that!

The neighborhood thing is interesting because sometimes it's hard to understand where one ends and another is beginning. I work on the North Side, which is technically a bunch of other "neighborhoods." For example, they include, the North Shore, Allegheny West, Allegheny East, the Mexican War Streets, etc. The city has done a pretty good job marking them on major street signs in all parts of the city. I'm amused when I come down Noblestown road into the West End. At one point you will see a sign that says Elliot, one that says West End Valley, and another that says Crafton Heights all in the general vicinity of one another. No wonder people get confused!