Black & Gold

Yesterday was the day for the Steelers first playoff game against the Chargers. We planned our own little watching party here at Magnus Domus. I made a huge pot of chili, Nancy made cookies and we fired up the old Philco HD. Last August, we bought our own Terrible Towel at the one and only Steeler game (I prefer HD to "being there"... my bathroom is cleaner at home and there is less of a line). After we bought ours, my mom said, "We could have given you ours. It's packed away in the garage somewhere". Just a side note. Their Terrible Towel was the one that was hung up in their bar from 1975 until they sold the place 8 years ago. I remember sometime around 1984 climbing up a ladder to take it down and clean it. It was like Towel Jerky; completely inflexible, saturated with nicotine and not anything near yellow. I would have taken it down then, if it weren't for the towel shaped "shadow" left on the wall. So there it remained for another 15 years.

So, I thought our investment in a new Terrible Towel (TT) was worth it.

Anyway, I hang up the TT and the inflatable "Steeler Hammer" which remained inflated exactly long enough for Drew to beat Clay over the head with it twice. After recovering, Clay decides that he need to help "decorate" too. He roams around the house looking for anything and everything black and gold. He then lines them up on the fireplace next to the TT. First a yellow pen; then a Pirates baseball; then a SpongeBob Etch-a-Sketch; then various Tonka trucks; then the remote controlled Wall*E; then every black or gold piece of the Batcave play set. I had to put a stop to it when he wanted to complete this homage to the Steelers by bringing in the yellow folding chair and lean it up against the hearth. I appreciate his team spirit, but enough already!

It was a great game; the Steelers scored; the boys screamed; cookies were eaten; victory is ours. Today, Clay is wearing his Willie Parker shirt to school today. For the first time this year, he's all, "Yeah, I see your #7's and #86's, but today it's all #39 baby!"

SpongeBob, Batman and Wall*E are still guarding the Terrible Towel and I guess they'll stay there until early February when their job is done.

Goodbye PittGirl

After living in Virginia for 22 years, I was really excited to move back to Pittsburgh last year. Even though we came back to visit several times a year, Pittsburgh had changed a lot since I left. Where was Joe DeNardo? What the hell happened to nighttime radio on KDKA? The Parkway North?!? My wife saying she was going to work on Liberty Avenue would have had a whole different meaning 25 years ago. And don't even get me started on the Pirates; the Buccos of Succitude. How was I, a stay-at-home dad, going to rediscover my hometown?

Then Nancy discovered a local blogger. She was funny, smart, hip and she made us see Pittsburgh through her eyes. We'd get on the phone and the first thing we'd say was, "Did you read PittGirl today?" Her's became one of our favorite sites to visit. I shared her hatred of pigeons, her love of local media and her hope that this would be the year the Pirates would finally have a winning season.

A couple of weeks ago, she had to quit abruptly. She had her reasons and we respect them, but are still sad. But I'm glad that we had a friend to show us what a great place the 'Burgh is, even if for a short time. Thanks PittGirl! We'll miss you!

The 10 Best Things About Pittsburgh: #2

#2 The Strip District. "The Strip" is not Pittsburgh's premiere gentlemen's club nor is it any other seedy, smoke-filled establishment where woman disrobe. The Strip is a neighborhood bordered by the Allegheny River and Liberty Avenue from 11th through 33rd streets in Pittsburgh. In the early 19th century, the Strip District was home to many mills and factories as its location along the Allegheny River made for easy transportation of goods and shipping of raw materials. The H.J. Heinz Company, famous ketchup and condiment manufacturer is located here.

The shipping infrastructure built around the manufacturing companies lead to The Strip becoming a vibrant network of wholesalers—mostly fresh produce, meat, and poultry dealers. Soon auction houses rose around the wholesale warehouses and many restaurants and grocery stores were built to feed hungry shift workers at any hour of the day. By the 1920s The Strip District was the economic center of Pittsburgh.

Today in the Strip District there are still several wholesalers and produce dealers. Today many of the abandoned warehouses have been renovated into small specialty shops, restaurants, night clubs, and bars. The area has developed into a historic market district with many ethnic food purveyers, some art studios, antique dealers, unique boutiques and other such businesses setting up shop where trains once delivered produce by the ton. The Strip District comes alive primarily on weekends during the summer months when street vendors are selling their wares, the open-air farmer's markets are in full swing.

One of my favorite places is the world famous Primanti Bros. restaurant. There's no need to order fries and cole slaw with your sandwich; they already come on your sandwich. I remember going to The Strip with my brother when I was a kid and getting one and feeling all grown up. I spent many a night after a Sigma Nu party sobering up, I mean grabbing a late night snack there during my college years. After not having one for nearly 20 years while living in Virginia, I took my wife there. Iwas so excited. We waited in line for about 40 minutes; we ordered a couple of the #2 Best Selling Cheese Steaks; I waited for her reaction to the wonderfulness of this sandwich. It never came. I was devastated! She didn't like it!

So I was all a flutter when attending a Pirates game this past weekend when she said she'd give them another try. Luckily, PNC Park has a Primanti Bros. right behind home plate. OK, I've got to give her credit for trying again, but she had the same reaction. To be fair, the ones at PNC aren't as good as the ones in The Strip; or could it be they just tasted better at 4 a.m. after a party with my fraternity brothers and a few CMU and Duquesne co-eds?

The 10 Best Things About Pittsburgh: #3

#3 "We Are Fam-a-lee". OK, when I was a kid during the Pirates '79 season, they played that gawd awful song "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge ad nauseum! I hated it then, I hate it now. Pittsburgh was never a "disco" town, yet during that year Pittsburgh lost it's collective marbles and that song became everyone's favorite; except mine. I remember sitting at game 5 of the '79 World Series with my best friend at the time John V. John was into Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet and Led Zeppelin, yet even he swayed to that disco beat. I was not alone though. The twenty or thirty Baltimore Oriole's fans who sat in our section also sat there scowling when that song came on; mostly.

So what does this have to do with the "best" of Pittsburgh? Even though I despise the song, Pittsburghers really are kind of a family. Pittsburghers for the most part are not a class-conscious group. That's part of the blue-collar ethos that still lingers as part of this area's culture. Pittsburghers don't like conspicuous displays of upper-class status and pretensions. Trends aeren't as important here, at least once you are over 30. Pittsburghers genuinely like each other despite social and economic differences. I see it every time I stop for coffee, go to the grocery store or see a show. We are family.

The 10 Best Things About Pittsburgh: #5

#5 Sidney Crosby. The 20 year-old Pittsburgh Penguins phenom is my favorite player; and not just for his skating and puck handling abilities. Here's some excerpts from a recent article about him from ESPN.com.

All requests for Crosby's time are filtered through the prism of, "How does this affect my teammates?"

Interviews and photo shoots often are carried out in the morning before other players arrive.

Crosby frequently keeps in contact with a wheelchair-bound girl from Montreal. When the Pens are in town, Crosby gets tickets for her and her family and always manages to spend some alone time with them. On one visit, Crosby invited her down for the morning skate. He gave her signed Pens gear and made sure players gave her high fives on their way to the ice.
Not long after the visit, Montreal's training staff received a text message from Crosby, thanking them for helping with the visit.

After he signed a big endorsement deal with Reebok, the company wanted to send promotional material to Crosby. He said he didn't want anything unless his teammates and staff got the same.

During the playoffs last year, when the Penguins were in Ottawa, Crosby spied a group of children within the hundreds of fans and whispered to Buonomo to bring them over so he could sign for them.

This is one classy kid. I never really had a sports hero that I looked up to when I was a kid, and I never thought that my sons would ever find a sports figure to look up to. But, I think that I'd be proud to buy them a #87 Pittsburgh Penguins shirt. It's nice to see that in these days of steroids, "gangster" players and multi-million dollar contracts, there is still at least one pro athlete who kids can look up to.

The 10 Best Things About Pittsburgh: #7

#7: Rivers and lakes. I'm not a great swimmer and I haven't waterskied since college (well, it was more like being pulled by a boat as water rushed up my sphincter until I fell flat on my face at 20 MPH) and I don't really like to fish. But I've always loved the rivers, creeks and lakes around Pittsburgh.

When I was a kid, I used to play in the "creek" (an open sewer) behind my parents' bar. It was fun building dams and floating sticks, but mom always said that I couldn't play in the part where the creek turned orange. Yes, orange. Bright orange. Pre-E.P.A. enforcement orange. This happened where the discharge pipe emptied from one of the local steel mills into the "creek". We thought it was pretty cool back in the day that the water turned this neat color. Looking back, I can't get the image of the three-eyed fish from "The Simpsons" out of my mind.

Well, now the mills are closed, the water is, well, it's not orange any more and I'm looking forward to enjoying my time by the water this summer. I love watching the water flow down the Ohio. I spent many a summer day staring at the fountain at Point State Park. I anticipate the first warm day where I can take the boys for a walk around North Park Lake. Maybe I can even convince my brother to put his boat back in the river.

The 10 Best Things About Pittsburgh: #10

#10: "The Pittsburgh Left. "The Pittsburgh Left" is not a group of ultra-liberal Western Pennsylvanians nor is it the name of a really cool punk band. Here's Wikipedia's definition: "The "Pittsburgh Left" involves two cars facing one another waiting at a traffic light or other stop signal: one turning left and one going straight. The left-turning car will execute its turn through the intersection before the car going straight passes through the intersection, where normally it would yield. Permission to do so is either given by the car going straight, or sometimes taken by the left-turning car by starting through the left turn early enough so as not to obstruct the straight-going driver."

You'd think that this would never work or that there'd be massive road rage issues, but in Pittsburgh it works. As a matter of fact if you are turning left and don't go, the other driver will usually look at you funny; flash his lights or wave at you until you go. After living in the DC area for all these years, I just assumed everyone had chronic pissed off driver syndrome, me included, but dare I say it; Pittsburgh drives; for the most part; are actually friendly! Well, if not friendly at least as not as prone to shooting you.