Not in the South Anymore. . . Pittsburgh!

Since moving to Pittsburgh three weeks ago, I am learning to see the city through the eyes of an adult. As a kid, I used to visit the Burgh as much as once or twice a month, but that hardly made me a Pittsburgher, loyalty to the Steelers aside. So as I rediscover the city, beyond my childhood compass of relatives' houses, dinosaurs, and Mancini's bread, I hope to blog about what I find.

The photo above is from Sewickley, a borough I know little about but that touts some impressive Victorian mansions, as do other parts of Pittsburgh, a legacy of the industrial age people forget when focusing instead on the smog of the city's post-industrial slide that came later and is long gone. I love that wealthy Pittsburghers bought summer homes in Sewickley, 12 miles away! Sewickley has a small but nonethless independent bookstore called Penguin Bookshop, which pulls in well known authors and has been there since 1929. Also lots of boutiques and a legit baguette at Mediterra Cafe.

You know you are not in the South anymore when a war memorial in the Sewickley Cemetery reads: "Erected by the Citizens of Sewickley in Memory of Their VOLUNTEER SOLDIERS who sacrificed their lives for the UNITY of the REPUBLIC in the war of the Great Rebellion 1861 to 1865." The caps are not mine. I wouldn't get in the middle of THAT conversation after living 18 years in the South!

One of Pittsburgh's many steep, street-connecting staircases, a blog topic for another time. . . 

Less than 10 minutes away, heading east along the Ohio River is Neville Island. People live here--we saw a long line outside the skating rink and a woman asked us for directions to Carmody's Grill--but the whole island is essentially one huge industrial complex of various metal and chemical manufacturers. 

Hard to believe they used to grow asparagus here, shipped directly to the Waldorf Astoria in NYC. My grandfather built ships on the island during WWII. The bridge onto the island now commemorates their efforts. 

https://historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/object/pitt:MSP285.B030.F33.I02

From Neville Island we made our way to McKees Rocks, where that same grandfather raised two boys with my grandmother, and scooped up the obligatory loaf of Mancini's bread. Today was a mix of discovering parts known and unknown (a nod of course to A.B.--and A.B. is NOT Antonio Brown). That's what makes moving to Pittsburgh "so yoga, so uncanny" for me. The city is threaded through my childhood and so a part of me (known), but in most ways, Pittsburgh is entirely unchartered territory.