Category Archives: News about PGH

Pittsburghese in the NY Times

signs A reader has alerted us to a profile of Pittsburghese in the New York Times. Fine eating and drinking establishments in the South Side and Bloomfield are given their due. Oh, those East Coasters can’t get enough of our freakiness. This is my favorite part of the article:

Julie Schoonover, the barkeeper from Corning, had described the dialect of the Steel City (a k a Pixburgh) more succinctly: “If you want to hear some freaky talk, go to Pittsburgh,” she told me. “It’s all ‘yinz goin’ dahntahn’ down there.”

Read the rest below!
Continue reading →

NY Magazine Tells us New Yorkers are Fleeing to Pittsburgh

No, I am not making this up.

According to New York Magazine, the current hippest destinations for New Yorkers are:

1. Shanghai
2. Budapest
3. Pittsburgh

From the magazine:

If Philadelphia is our “sixth borough,” then Pennsylvania’s second city is Philly’s West Village. “It’s more gay-friendly than Manhattan,” says Coldwell Banker relocation specialist Mark Rutigliano, who moved here (with his partner) from West 11th Street. It’s not just that Queer As Folk is set hereâ€â€?a serious performing-arts scene thrives downtown and the city hosts the annual International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Of course, Pittsburgh’s appeal also lies in its affordable real estate: $300,000 gets you a three-bedroom house. And if you do get homesick, there’s an upscale gay bar called New York, New York. – 2/27/06

I beg to differ. $300,000 could actually buy you three 3 bedroom houses here.

Carnegie Museum of Art – for children

Child Magazine ranked the best museums in the country for children.

Check it out:

1. Art Institute of Chicago
2. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
3. Dayton Art Institute
4. De Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
5. CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART, Pittsburgh
6. Los Angeles County Museum of Art
7. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha
8. Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, DE
9. Dallas Museum of Art
10. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
(Thanks to Ambrose for the link!)

Why? According to the article:

5. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh:

  • Hosts weekend drop-in programs in the galleries for kids ages 4 and up that often include a treasure hunt and an art-making activity
  • Offers hourlong Preschool Playdates for toddlers; a child and a parent hear nursery rhymes, watch finger plays, and make art in the galleries
  • Boasts many family conveniences, including free strollers to borrow, quick-service restaurants with kid-friendly fare, and a Brown Bag Lunchroom with a microwave

Continue reading →

A Steeler Nation

I am not sure where this came from or who wrote it but it has been emailed to me 5 times and it does a darn good job of talking about Pittsburgh so I thought we should include it here for those visitors to I heart PGH that haven’t recieved it 5 times.
If you know where this came from so we can give credit where credit is due.

In the 1980’s, as the steel mills and their supporting factories shut down from Homestead to Midland, Pittsburghers, faced for the first time in their lives with the specter of unemployment, were forced to pick up their families, leave their home towns and move to more profitable parts of the country. The steel workers were not ready for this. They had planned to stay in the ‘burgh their entire lives. It was home. Everyone I know can tell the same story about how Dad, Uncle Bob or their brother-in-law packed a U-Haul and headed down to Tampa to build houses or up to Boston for an office job or out to California to star in pornographic videos. All right. Maybe that last one just happened in my family.

At this same time, during the early to mid-eighties, the Pittsburgh Steelers were at the peak of their popularity. Following the Super Bowl dynasty years, the power of the Steelers was strong. Every man, woman, boy and girl from parts of four states were Pittsburgh faithful, living and breathing day to day on the news of their favorite team. Then, as now, it seemed to be all anyone talked about. Who do you think the Steelers will take in the draft this year? Is Bradshaw done?
Can you believe they won’t give Franco the money – what’s he doing going to Seattle?

The last memories most unemployed steel workers had of their towns had a black and gold tinge. The good times remembered all seemed to revolve, somehow, around a football game. Sneaking away from your sister’s wedding reception to go downstairs to the bar and watch the game against Earl Campbell and the Oilers – going to midnight mass, still half in the bag after Pittsburgh beat Oakland – you and your grandfather, both crying at the sight of The Chief, finally holding his Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Continue reading →

Seattle native loves Pittsburgh

Hi all,

Due to increasing traffic because of the STILLERS VICTORY we got off track and off our bandwidth for a few days. But we’re back with more juice! Thank you for your patience.

And on that note, check out the wonderful column below, which appeared in the Seattle Times. It speaks for itself! (Thanks to a friend and native Pittsburgher – now living in England! – for sending me the article.)

Editorials & Opinion: Friday, January 27, 2006
Guest columnist

Why this Seattle native is rooting for the Steelers

By Kathy M. Newman
Special to The Times

Don’t get me wrong. I love Seattle. And I grew up with the Seahawks.

Their franchise started in 1976 when I was 10 years old. Naturally, the peak year of my devotion to the Seahawks was 1983 � the season during which the Seahawks made it to the AFC Championship.

That fall I watched every game from a chair next to my father’s hospital bed. My father, Bill Newman, died of leukemia that December at the age of 40. A few weeks later, the Seahawks lost the AFC Championship to the Oakland Raiders. I abandoned the Seahawks for grief, for college, for graduate school, and, eventually, for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

In 1997, I got my Ph.D. in American Studies and was offered my first job as an English professor at Carnegie Mellon University. I was excited to be offered a job in a real city with hills, rivers, unions, history, bricks, brains and bridges. Pittsburgh, I thought, is what Seattle will be in 100 years if it’s lucky. Seattle, with its Microsoft billions, is like Pittsburgh 100 years ago, with its Carnegie/Fricke/Mellon/Scaife millions.
Continue reading →