Rural Dictionary

Pittsburgh

The 4th most polluted city in the U.S. If you're planning on visiting it will take 2 or 3 days to get used to the smell. It's dirty, depressing, grimy, filthy, and disgusting. The people are hicks and except for those who live here while attending college (and then leave quickly after), most people seem uneducated.

The Pittsburgh dialect is enough to make you want to slap the person speaking for abusing grammar in such a way. It's pretty bad.

99% of natives wear Pittsburgh Steelers shirts or hats EVERY DAY even when it's not football season. Individuality isn't a strong point. Natives are also very proud and defensive of Pittsburgh, but that's probably because they've never been anywhere else, so they can't really compare it.

Whomever designed the street layout was on drugs. I think someone else described it accurately on here. There's also a huge shortage of street signs, so if you're new to this shithole, plan on getting lost alot. People hate Sienna Miller for calling it Shitsburgh, but deep down they know she's right, and if they don't know, I'll tell you. She's right. She is very, very right.

Pittsburgh hobbies include the Steelers. If the Steelers ever left Pittsburgh, everyone would kill themselves, but not before downing a few six-packs of beer.

There's a reason people outside of Pittsburgh don't put french fries on their salads. Because it's gross. Don't plan on that food trend catching on elsewhere.

People are rude and racist. Since I moved here a year ago, I've heard the "N" word thrown around quite casually (but ONLY around other White people). That's just sad.

The TV series "Queer as Folk" is supposed to take place in Pittsburgh, but because the city is so ugly, they filmed it in Canada. That's why it looks kinda nice on the series, but don't let that fool you into coming here. You'll regret it.

No, you didn't die and go to Hell, you took a wrong turn and ended up in Pittsburgh. Common mistake with all the soot and smoke and Steelers fans.

by Moving Out Next Month July 21, 2007

265👍 333👎

pittsburgh

A junk food, smoker infested, beer guzzling city-town full of edificial eyesores and predominantly cold glum or stale humid weather; where hanging out at McWal*nald's, grimy dive bars and going apeshit over the "Stillers" is the central activity of the majority of the population. Complementing this scene are the various putrid Pittsburgh dialects and accents.

Demographics: Approximately 70% of the "under 50" population is comprised of pasty faced neo-wiggers, "fo real" thugs, and blue collar "hard asses" who all together think they're "Pittsburgh steel tough". Approximately 25% are the back biting corporate office drones, 4% comprise the decent folks who are just trying to make it through the day with as little conflict as possible, and the remaining 1% are like the 4%, except for the fact that knowing they're stuck in Pittsburgh adversely affects their well-being so much that simply meandering through a day without conflict becomes nearly impossible.

Attractions/Activities: nebulous notions that riding "the incline" (an escalator on a hillside) and going to the Carnegie museums, Mattress Factory and The Warhol are somehow fun activities to routinely engage in. And when available: taking in a Steelers, Pirates or Penguins game - to each their own. That's all I have to say about that.

Housing: Cheap, and that's exactly what you get. Utilities and taxes are by no means cheap. In fact, Pittsburgh is at the heart of the taxbelt. You want quality housing, it's going to cost - just like anywhere else. Pittsburgh is lauded for it's cheap housing simply because it has so many cheap (construction) homes.

Economy: Pittsburgh's a great place to get a job if you know somebody or if you're overqualified and willing to settle for work that pays less than what you deserve. The only fields where one can find a job: IT, Mechanical Engineering (as Westinghouse and Bechtel are the largest employers of engineers), Healthcare, and the corporate cubicle fields of Administration, Finance and Sales. Everyone with degrees/education outside of those fields has to contend with minimum wage blue collar, customer service or sales/customer service jobs.

Roads: Scatter brained, ill conceived construction and always under construction somewhere in the city and outlying suburbs. Getting from point A to point B is about as efficient and painless as having a root canal - in pieces.

Culture: aside from the opening statement and the aforementioned tourist and demographic info, their really is nothing else noteworthy about Pittsburgh (IMO). So what you have are Pittsburgh lovers who happen to be business owners that have ventured outside Pittsburgh (and liked what they saw) and try to cash in on it, by adopting, whatever it is they thought was "cool", to here in the form of a themed restaurant or a night club.

And speaking of night clubs, having visited a number of them in "the 'burgh" and other states as well, I can honestly say that Pittsburgh has, without a doubt, the largest population of wannabes and "me too!!" 's in the country. Looking at my posted "under 50 demographic" leaves little wonder as to why.

The only redeeming thing about Pittsburgh is the fact that UPMC has some world class research facilities and Children's Hospital is among the best in the country. However, neither of those factors necessarily translate as the "essence of Pittsburgh". They just happen to be in Pittsburgh.

So to all you Pittsburgh lovers: enjoy it, love it, bleed it - because you are the embodiment of the city. Just continue to stay where you are though, because you have no business spreading your "Pittsburghese" elsewhere.

Pittsburgh: weeds growing out of a rusted smoke stack.

by Krakken January 11, 2008

187👍 274👎

pittsburgh

Overall, Pittsburgh is a gloomy, depressing place to live thanks to its glum weather and sense of overall decline. On most days, you will find a gloomy, overcast sky overlooking rusty bridges, grimy roads and tired old buildings that have not been maintained since 1787.

It takes about three months or more to learn how to navigate the highly confusing road network, which appears to have been constructed crudely out of bits and pieces of streets built at random. It was apparently one of the first attempts to build a road network and so every possible mistake was made here.

Almost all roads are two lanes (one on each side) and so a single sluggish dumptruck can ruin your afternoon.

On the other hand, driving the winding roads can be a joy in any kind of sporty car because they are so challenging. Until you meet that dump truck, anyway. Strangely, again, most residents don't take advantage of the driving fun; most of them drive brand new pickups or rusted out old American cars.

People really do use "Pittsburghese", an ugly, ungrammatical dialect that has invented phrases like "The car needs fixed" and "Yinz". Yes, unlike some of the entries I have read, these really are used. I have heard them many, many times, unfortunately.

Even though the road network is horrible, public transport is worse, with an expensive and sluggish system. However, if you're a student or college faculty member, you can ride it for free.

A house that would sell in Los Angeles for $500,000 could be found in Pittsburgh for about $150,000. But don't be too cheerful about it; few homes in Pittsburgh are as nice to live in as even a humble Los Angeles tract home. Houses are badly designed to let as little light or view in as humanly possible. Most people close their curtains tightly against any sign of light and so artificial light is heavily used even during the day. This is thanks to a tight-knit social environment that features snoopy neighbors.

There are nice architectural details in many of the old houses, but unfortunately they are not designed with any sensitivity to light, the site or views. So you might have a magnificent hillside with tons of houses, but none of them take any advantage of views or natural beauty. For the most part, the only views will be of someone else's living room -- or, to be more precise, their living room blinds.

Real estate taxes are extremely high - in fact, that $500,000 house in LA will have significantly cheaper taxes than your $150,000 house in Pittsburgh. This and the cost of heating oil during the winter goes a long way to make those housing costs look much closer than you might think.

It may seem promising that the city is on the water, but it's a grimy, ugly waterfront that consists mainly of rusted-out steel mills and decaying industrial plants. Due to the frequent flooding and all that old creaky industry that was on the water, there's very little housing on the water or even with a view of the water.

If you have good personal relationships and connections, you can go far, and the business environment is relatively undemanding - even highly mediocre, if not downright awful stores and restaurants can thrive.

I was finally able to find a few decent restaurants, but most of best ones are the chains like Bravo and P F Chang's. I can highly recommend Pan Asia on Route 51, Cambod-ican on the Southside, and Thai me up, also on the Southside. Most of the other places I have tried have been terrible. Let's just say that this place is a poor restaurant town compared to pretty much anywhere else in the US and leave it at that.

For groceries, Giant Eagle's Market District is actually pretty nice, much to my surprise. Most Giant Eagles offer mediocre food at high prices, so I routinely make the lengthly trek to my closest Market District, where I can get better food at the same prices. There are a whopping two of these stores in the entire Pittsburgh urban area. There is one Whole Foods Market, close to Downtown Pittsburgh.

Otherwise, Giant Eagle is bad, Foodland is worse, and Wal*Mart pretty much rules by comparison. It's pretty darn sad to live in a place where Wal*Mart rules.

On the upside, this is a very honest place. If your car has a broken lock, and you have to leave your key in the ignition you need not fear; it will be there when you come back. I have left my laptop computer on a chair in the bookstore, only to see it there when I returned for it in a panic half an hour later.

Otherwise, I haven't found the people to be particularly impressive. This is a clannish town that feels suspicious of strangers. In fact, people often will stay in their native clan areas and not go elsewhere. There are many people who live in the South Side, for example, who will not visit the North Side or Downtown or anywhere else no matter what. The horrendous road network (see above) does not encourage exploration or leaving areas that you are comfortable with.

If you want people who are "honest" and "genuine", I suppose this isn't bad. But if you like people who are adventurous and love innovation and new things, you will not like it here at all. If you want people to seek out great places to eat or wonderful experiences, you'll find people here just don't care; they would rather go to the places they have been to hundreds of times before -- even if those places are abysmal in every way.

Most people here are sports fans. The Steelers are definitely an addiction here, since they are just about the only world-class institution the city has to offer. Even I, the #1 non-sports fan, have caught myself caring about whether the Steelers win just because so much of the city's mood depends on it.

So, in summary, a gloomy, depressing place that's losing population and gets just a little poorer and a little grimmer every day. A cheap cost of living doesn't help when you feel that your life is seeping out of you every passing day. Living here is empathetically not recommended, no matter how cheap it is.

Pittsburgh is one of the gloomiest cities in the UsA.

by David H Dennis March 8, 2007

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