What is it like living in Pittsburgh?

September 8, 2009 1:52 PM

I want to know everything about living in the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh.

I have taken a real interest in Pittsburgh though I have never been. I have researched most (or at least many) of the attractions the city has to offer but I would love to read about more detailed day to day life in the many neighborhoods that make up the city. I am particularly interested in Polish Hill, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, Oakland, Bloomfield, Friendship but would love any information on any Pittsburgh area.

Can you recommend books, blogs, websites, etc. that provide descriptions of life in Pittsburgh?

posted by boatsforshoes to travel & transportation (24 comments total)

Wikipedia has extensive sections for several neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.

Pop City is a good blog that gives a window onto daily life, as is I Heart Pittsburgh. I think each has archives that you can look into organized by neighborhood.
posted by palliser at 2:02 PM on September 8

Also, "What is it like living in Pittsburgh?" Kinda like tending a herd of rainbow-shitting unicorns. But better.

I wish my heart were bigger so I could love you more, Pittsburgh.
posted by palliser at 2:08 PM on September 8 [9 favorites]

For both practical information and obscure/arcane trivia, you might also check out the Carnegie Library's Pennsylvania Department, which focuses mostly on local history, and is staffed by sometimes-irritable, sometimes-amenable librarians who can field most of your questions. (I have a friend who works there and is a great resource for the peculiarities of the region; I'll meMail you his name if you're interested.)
posted by soviet sleepover at 2:11 PM on September 8

palliser, I genuinely can't tell if you're being sarcastic. Care to clarify?
posted by amtho at 2:14 PM on September 8

I grew up in Mount Lebanon, a suburb 10 or 15 miles south of the city center. Great school system, nice stone and brick houses with front and back yards. Terrain is just hilly enough to be interesting, but not too much so for bikes. You could still find swimming holes and cricks and crayfish not too far for adolescents to venture, but that may have changed. Nice rust belt decayed patina, but not Detroit Apocalypse.

A+++++ would grow up there again.
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:21 PM on September 8

I'm not being sarcastic! I say that last line all the time.

I mean, the rainbow-shitting unicorns were probably a bit of hyperbole. But I kinda mean it, too.

Apologies to anyone who thought I was sarcastically crapping on Pittsburgh. I was most emphatically not.
posted by palliser at 2:23 PM on September 8

Only In Pittsburgh is a one-picture-at-a-time look at some of the quirky little aspects of the city,and you might want to check out Pittsburghology, a Flickr group that looks to try and 'define' the city via pictures and short descriptions. [There's also the original Pittsburgh Flickr group.]

If you'd like a sarcastic spin on things, The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat put together a visitor's guide to Pittsburgh in three parts.
posted by alynnk at 2:24 PM on September 8

amtho -- In case you meant "clarify what's so great about Pittsburgh," it's the intersection of quality and accessibility in its cultural amenities; the self-sufficiency, and therefore walkability, of so many of its neighborhoods; the fact that it's very safe, meaning that you're free to do more, at more times, and in more places; the low cost of living, which essentially buys you time, because you can buy a house that's close to where you work -- biking distance, in our house -- in a great neighborhood. I've lived in quite a few places, and I think Pittsburgh is the awesomest.
posted by palliser at 2:33 PM on September 8 [1 favorite]

I loved living in Pittsburgh when I was in graduate school. One resource I used quite a bit when moving there was the Pittsburgh forum in city-data.com. Some of the people are the usual flamers and trolls, but there is a ton of information there.
posted by elder18 at 2:35 PM on September 8

I've lived in Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, Bloomfield + Bridgeville, 'Sliberty, the Rocks, most of the North Hills & Dahntahn (and if you're going to research it, you need to learn the language). Have to agree - it's an awesome place. If you're checking into the history, be sure to look into the local TV history, which gave us Mr. Rogers & Chilly Billy Cardille, Bill Burns & Myron Cope on Sports. Buy a terrible towel. Wave it for Steelers games (well, all of the games, now). All of the neighborhoods you've mentioned are very sports-minded. Most of those communities have row houses with stoops. Most of those houses are at least 100 years old and have interesting histories. Find the book, Pittsburgh Then & Now, which which compares the way things were with the way they are. Read, "From These Hills, From These Valleys," written by an old prof of mine.

Don't forget to check out the little communities along the rivers. Most of them are awesome. If you go to Pittsburgh, always be sure to let the guy making a left hand turn at a red light go first off the light. It's a Burgh thing.
posted by clarkstonian at 3:11 PM on September 8 [1 favorite]

The thing about Pittsburgh, at least in the areas I've lived in (Squirrel Hill, Greenfield, Oakland, Morningside - haven't ventured out too far into the 'burbs, though Morningside is borderline 'burb) -- is that it takes a while to grow on you. But if you stick around long enough to let it grow on you, it's a pretty great place to live.

I don't know Polish Hill well, but the other areas you mention are all generally nice places to live. If you could tell us some more about your priorities - what kinds of activities/food/stores do you want to be near? do you need bus transport? - we could probably help more. Of course within neighborhoods it still varies - there are great areas of Oakland and areas I wouldn't feel all that safe living in, and both affordable and crazily-unaffordable areas of Shadside.
posted by Stacey at 3:13 PM on September 8

South Oakland, FWIW, is the CMU/Pitt student ghetto. That's not necessarily a bad thing-- I had some great times hanging out with my Pitt friends at their place on McKee-- but it might not be what you're looking for if you're aiming for "buy house, raise kids." In those cases, and if you have any interest in an IT or academic career, I'd suggest Squirrel Hill or Shadyside.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 3:59 PM on September 8

I am enormously full of regret that pallister and I were on opposite ends of the table at the 10th Mefi Meet Up, because she sounds like she's on the level of Pittsburgh Cheerleader that I am. In the time I've lived here, I can only speak of owning and renting in Mt. Washington - so if that holds any interest to you, let me know.

We are blessed here to have our own documentary film maker, Rick Sebak, who has made a series of one hour love stories about different parts of the city. http://www.wqed.org/tv/pghist/sebak.shtml
A list of the films available to purchase is here: http://www.shopwqed.org/cat-Rick_Sebak-29.aspx
It looks like some of them are in snippets online, but maybe your local library could do an ILL for you.
posted by librarianamy at 4:08 PM on September 8

I have lived in Squirrel Hill and Greenfield, went to school at CMU, and worked downtown (dahntahn) for two years. I moved away (far, far away), but I regret it often enough!

As for day to day life--Squirrel Hill (North) is the most heavily Jewish area in the city. Dudes with hats and beards, ladies with long skirts and a passel of children (or just a couple). Some businesses weren't open on Saturdays. The Giant Eagle (the hugely dominant area grocery store chain) in the area used to not sell pork, I hear.

Squirrel Hill is awesome to live in because you can get pretty much anything you want without a car. The grocery store is a short walk away, there are a number of tasty restaurants, a board games store, a bookstore, a movie theater, a library, a million cafes, and at least three choices of ice cream shops. If you don't have a car, you can take the bus to shadyside (64A, a little infrequent but okay), oakland (any 61 going downtown), the waterfront (61C 59U 64A), downtown (you can take a 61, but the 67H is really the better choice if you're close enough to beacon st). Biking is also possible but not my favorite, there are a bunch of hills and reasonably heavy traffic.

Greenfield is definitely more bedroom suburb, especially if you're smack dab in the middle of it and not on the Greenfield/Squirrel Hill South border. The Catholic church was a roll down the hill, along with a couple of bars/pubs. There's a well recommended doctor or few in the area, and the ice cream shop apparently just lost their lease (very sad!). Worse for biking (it is relatively steep up or down), but if you're okay with hills, it's quick access to the Eliza Furnace trail, a really nice bike trail to downtown. And now that they've finished the connection over the Hot Metal Bridge, you can get over to the South Side as well. Greenfield is significantly cheaper than Squirrel Hill, and if you have a car, is only about 3 minutes away. If you work downtown, it can also be better. I made some good friends waiting for the buses!

Downtown is pretty nice during the day, although at night it can be pretty sleepy, like most downtowns without significant living spaces. There's a small farmer's market in the summer in front of the city county building, which is a great place to pick up delicious fruits.

The big city parks are awesome. All fourfive of them. The vintage car rally at Schenley, sand volleyball at Highland Park, the observatory in Riverview Park, and the lush woodedness of Frick Park. The new park near Mt. Washington was being put together while I watched (I made maps!), but wasn't really finished until very recently. If you want maps of Pittsburgh (within the city boundaries), I know who to talk to!
posted by that girl at 5:55 PM on September 8

Thanks everyone, just the kind of stuff I was looking for.

that girl, Wow it's like you read my mind, Thanks
posted by boatsforshoes at 7:22 PM on September 8

The local columnist Brian O'Neil has written a new book about living in Pittsburgh called The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-first Century. I was just looking at a copy during a neighborhood meeting (he's a neighbor) and it looks like a neat little love letter to the city. His column in the Post-Gazette often talks about life in the city too. His co-worker Diana Nelson-Jones also has a blog about city life.

Walking Pittsburgh is a fun blog/activity club that takes hikes through a different neighborhood each time they meet and then document what they see there. It looks like they haven't updated the site in a year so maybe they've quit but they took a lot of nice shots of the neighborhoods.
posted by octothorpe at 7:23 PM on September 8

Do try to track down the Rick Sebak documentaries that librarianamy mentions. He's charming while being informative at the same time. Some of them are a little dated but still worth watching. The local PBS station here, WQED (original home of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, as someone said) shows a continuous reel of Sebak documentaries on the third digital channel, and oh man, I cannot flip over after, say, 11 at night because I will still be there like two hours later.
posted by chinston at 7:35 PM on September 8

There are quite a few video clips floating around that do a good job of illustrating life in Pittsburgh:

Enjoy a look inside the Cathedral of Learning
Enjoy some unique Pittsburgh eateries
...especially Primanti Bros. sandwiches
Drive through a tunnel
Ride a wooden coaster at Kennywood
Take a ride up the incline
Walk around downtown
Shop in the Strip District
Sing the Franktuary song
Drive up the steepest street in the world

p.s. Rick Sebak's "Sandwiches That You Will Like" is one of the greatest documentaries ev-AH!
posted by Alison at 8:05 PM on September 8

I read your mind? Awesome! I can tell you more, if you'd like!

The view on coming through the Ft Pitt tunnel from the Airport is something that you really need to see. TunneltunneltunneltunnelDOWNTOWN!

Here's some info about Shadyside for ya, too. Never lived there, but have gone there often enough. Shadyside is probably one of the most affluent areas of Pittsburgh, competing with Squirrel Hill. The prices of real estate are higher than other places (A house that would go for $250k in certain parts of Sq. Hill could go for $300-$350k in Shadyside, and that same house would probably cost $100k in Brighton Heights on the North Side--my friend has a wonderful 1900s house in Brighton heights with original windows and porch and hardwood floors in good condition and he got it for less than what you would spend on a condo in Squirrel Hill), but the general level of upkeep is probably higher. Walnut Street and Ellsworth Avenue are the two main shopping streets. If you were to live closer to the Negley end of Walnut Street, you would have walking access to a good variety of nicer shops, the best Giant Eagle in town, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's would be a reasonably short bike ride away. I always felt that there were more apartment buildings in Shadyside than in Squirrel Hill.

The South Side is where most Pittsburghers seem to go to drink. Parking is very nearly impossible on a weekend evening. The city council and zoning department very carefully crafted some zoning rules to make it very hard to create new bars in the South Side without affecting any other neighborhood much. There were lots of exciting maps involved! (I hear Butler Street may also have been affected somewhat as collateral damage)

Do not try to drive anywhere after the Steelers win the Super Bowl. The weather will be unfailingly icy and the drunk happy people will be out in full force, running into the roads and making you worry about the probability of vehicular manslaughter. I am afraid the same would likely happen if they lost the Super Bowl, however.

Rick Sebak is awesome. Listen to the people who tell you to go watch his stuff. My favorites are his videos on things that aren't there anymore. There are two jokes about Pittsburgh I hear in regards to driving and directions: 1) You can't get there from here; and 2) Pittsburghers will give directions based on where certain things used to be.
posted by that girl at 10:00 PM on September 8

Pittsburgh on the night after they win the Super Bowl is almost my idea of what heaven would be like.

After college, I lived in Robinson for a year, and Sewickley (in the village) for a year, working in dahntahn for both. Then I moved to NYC and realized I should have moved straight there. Pittsburgh is a nice enough place, but more so for raising a family than sewing your wild oats if you will. That said, I had a great time.

Robinson is a pretty commercial area - lots of shopping, an Ikea, a huge mall, restaurants. Near the airport so nice if you have to travel a lot. Express bus-lane into down town makes the commute none too bad. Quiet area with lots of younger families in their starter homes or condos. I had a 3-story condo, brand new, 3-bed 3-bath with a stupid large master suite. Paid less for it then I did for my apartment in NYC when I moved there, and the NYC apartment wasn't as big as the garage in the condo.

Sewickley - in the village in particular - was awesome. The hills around the village hold some of the biggest estates in the whole city - old oil and steel money. On the low-rock-wall-lined roads that wind through the manicured rolling lawns and gardens, you almost feel like you could be in Europe. The village has a bit more of that big-houses typical north-east upscale neighborhood. The houses are so big that a lot of people rent out some of their upper floors to help pay the mortgage - I stayed in one such apartment. Beautiful old victorian-style street, just off the main drag in town which made catching the bus convenient. Sewickley was more middle-age and older families, lots of soccer moms in SUV's and not many young singles at all, something I didn't realize until I moved away how badly I was missing. But still a nice, quiet place to live.
posted by allkindsoftime at 7:13 AM on September 9

I just finished up living a year in Pittsburgh, living in Shadyside. I'm from the East Coast; lived for the past 15 years in Boston. Pittsburgh was ok for a year. I wouldn't want to live there for a more substantial period of time.

Shadyside was nice. There's a Whole Foods and a Trader Joe's. It and Squirrel Hill are very walkable. I found that compared to the larger cities with which I'm familiar (Boston, New York, San Francisco, Chicago) that the quality of restaurants was very poor. It's also a pretty mid western place. If you're from somewhere in the mid west, you may find it more east coasty; I guess it all depends on one's point of view.

Public transportation is poor, as are the cab companies. There are a lot of Zipcar's around.

Downtown is dead. There's really no reason to go there. Ditto Oakland, unless you have some affiliation with Pitt or CMU.

If you have to go anywhere crossing one of the few bridges across one of the rivers, be prepared to wait. There's not that much traffic in absolute numbers, but the roads and highways are narrow and the bridges are chokepoints.

It's much better than Detroit. Also, if you want a strong urban experience, Pittsburgh is not for you. As a city, Pittsburgh is pretty surburban. Except for right downtown, most homes have some sort of yard.

The overall quality of apartments is low. You can get a really cheap place, but it will be nasty.

I suggest that if you have a week or two of vacation time, visit.
posted by reddot at 7:13 PM on September 9

Downtown is dead. There's really no reason to go there. Ditto Oakland, unless you have some affiliation with Pitt or CMU.

I'm not sure I understand that, I've spent most of my time out of the house over the years in either downtown or Oakland. To be fair, I work downtown and my wife works in Oakland but I still end up in one of the two more often than not.

Other than that, what reddot said is mostly true but I'd consider them features, not bugs. I love that I can live in the city but don't have to be contained in an apartment. Pittsburgh's not New York and if it was I wouldn't want to live here. I grew up near NYC and have spent enough time both there and in Boston to know that I'd never be happy with the cost, speed and attitude. YMMV.
posted by octothorpe at 8:55 AM on September 10

I found that compared to the larger cities with which I'm familiar (Boston, New York, San Francisco, Chicago) that the quality of restaurants was very poor.

I'm also a former east coaster and someone who likes searching out good food, and I disagree about the restaurant quality. For a city of this size there are a lot of really, really good places to eat. For example:

Chaya, Bangkok Balcony, the Rose Tea Cafe, Enrico's, Pamela's, the Library, Tamari (brand new and fantastic), Dozen (especially Sunday Brunch), Zenith Cafe (ditto), Piccolo Forno, Coca Cafe, Lemongrass Cafe, Food Glorious Food, Joseph Tambellini Restaurant, Bona Terra, Gullifty's, Abay, Ceviche, Sushi Kim (Strangely, I would recommend anything but the sushi), the Double Wide Grill (Best mojitos!), Thai Me Up, Eleven, Church Brew Works, Mallorca, Crepes Parisiennes‎...blah, blah, blah

What's wonderful is that there are so many places where you can have a pretty good meal for $6. I'm not even talking about fast food or chain restaurants, I mean neighborhood places where you eat off of an actual plate with silverware. I never saw that in DC.

My only big complaint is that there is no authentic Cuban food other than a guy named Ray and his Mom.
posted by Alison at 1:39 PM on September 11

Can we count Udipi? Because that right there is BAM game over.
posted by palliser at 8:45 PM on September 11