Pittsburgh, PA Party Palace

Remember my passing mention of having been to Pittsburgh, PA, USA for a week? Well, I was! And what a fine time it was.

Part of the success of vacationing in a dying industrial hot-spot is to have like-minded travel mates who also want to spend a goodly amount of time riding bicycles up hills as well as be surrounded by abandon buildings, lots of brickwork, the oxidized colors of industrial decay, and loud, sometimes sudden clanging noises. Luckily my buds Meg and Jean are exactly those type of people. And we were doubly lucky to be housed by our New England ex-pat friends Miriam and Jeffery.

Rooflines

Boris, our feline host.

MoGlo Coffee Housing it

Days were spent exploring the area, alone or in groups, and in the evenings we made some real delish meals, played cards, caught lightening bugs, and listened to John Tesh’s AM radio show. A real adult summer camp.

View across the Allegheny River from the front of the house

Serious public stairways everywhere.

Forgive me. I have fallen for painted brick.

We also took a nice bike trip out of the city and down to Braddock, PA. I have every intention of keeping this post to mostly pretty pictures, so I’ll just briefly note that the experience really gave me a good deal to think about regarding historic preservation, city planning, the good/bad influence of accepting corporate hand outs and “what would jane jacobs do”?

Image stolen big time from Tricia Royal/bitsandbobbins.com

I’m also bummed that my camera battery was ready to kick the bucket, so I was only able to take a few photos while I was there. But! searching the vast world of the internet will provide you with tons of other pictures that are probably way nicer than mine. Like this one:

And here, the first Google image search is free.

I stole this from Jean. I do love this shot.

Note that this is the only building in the whole field. Surreal!

More of those great industrial colors.

And just to make it extra long, a few other images of industry from around the area where we stayed.

Turning big pieces of metal into little pieces of metal.

Sign pile

It was such a good trip, I wish that I had allotted more than 6 days. I’ve been there before many, many times, but this was the first time that I was there with the intention of just hanging around and going with the flow. I didn’t even make it downtown. Now that I am map-packing PGH bike and bus wizard, I can’t wait to have more rust belt adventures!