Note that the power lines follow the stairs. That’s how important they are.
Two hundred years ago, the steps would have been constructed of wood, but most were replaced with concrete by the WPA.
We also loved the different styles of homes around the city. We found these delightful single family homes
...as well as the row-style houses, which are typically three stories and a basement. We found this poor guy standing by himself out there.
Pittsburgh also has more than its fair share of cobblestone streets.
They were very lovely but murder on the suspension of the tan van.
After walking so many steps that I thought my legs might fall off, we headed to Polish Hill where we found an estate sale. These old row houses often have little alleys between them that lead to a common courtyard in the back.
Some old lady had passed away, and her friend was selling off all of her belongings as well as those of the dead lady’s dead sisters. Too bad for them, awesome for me. We checked out the basement floor of the lady’s house to found some serious 1800s construction: arched doorways, huge fireplaces, the whole deal. It was so awesomely decrepit that I was not surprised to find that the house was going to be demolished.
After the estate sale, we headed down the street to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Festival. This was a street fair featuring bingo, games, baked goods, Polish t-shirts and souvenirs, and lots of other fun stuff. They offered their own version of Frito chili pie, but they called it "Taco in a Bag."
Fritos, taco meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. It was really quite delicious. It only cost $1.50. Now, here’s something I noticed at the festival that I then noticed everywhere. A dollar fifty. This was supposed to be a fundraiser. They should have charged at least $4 for that little treat. The contents alone were worth about $2 when you include the work of cutting all the veggies and cooking the meat. As I started to look around, I realized that EVERYTHING in Pittsburgh was less expensive than it could have been. What a wonderful city! I love it here!
From Polish Hill, we headed to Schenley Park for the Vintage Grand Prix.
Schenley Park is in the Oakland neighborhood in Pittsburgh right near where Carnegie Mellon and Pitt seem to collide. The park was beautiful and green with some rolling hills. It was a very cool site for an antique car race. We found a nice little place on the grass where the cars come around a corner. I thought it was a lovely place to sit until the cars started coming around the corner and we could see them fishtailing a bit. Some even seemed to want to come up on two wheels. One false move and I’d have to run for cover.
After a few heats, we decided to keep on moving. As we walked back to the car, we saw what Will referred to as “radical knitting” on the Schenley Bridge.
I found it quite lovely that someone would spend the time to do that.
We then headed to Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh’s Jewish neighborhood, to hit an awesome record store.
Almost as a rule, I am not impressed by record stores. However, Jerry’s Records was an AWESOME store. It is a huge building with more records than I thought I’d ever see in one place. It’s all vinyl—not a CD in the joint. Jerry’s boasts more than a million records, and I believe that. Jerry himself is there to help you out if you need him. He’s an older guy who clearly left something behind with the backing from his acid tabs in the 1960s, but he runs an amazing store. The records were all priced reasonably and were generally of excellent quality. The records are all categorized, too, into the normal genres one might expect: jazz, rock, hip-hop, classical, etc. But then they also have weird genres like sermons, Celtic Christmas, “good stuff,” country radio shows, and horror. I even found this little gem.
Were it not for a spoken word/poetry section, I would have been pretty miserable. I left with four records, as did Dave. I think we got out of there for a total of $40. Nice. Jerry’s is a must-see.
From there, it was on to the grocery store and then home for a nice quiet dinner with Will and Kirsten’s friends Joe and Lisel. They were delightful, and dinner was delicious. Dave treated us to his favorite Italian dish: spaghetti with olive oil, fresh garlic, Greek olives, toasted pine nuts, and raisins. It was wonderful. Will grilled up some hot dogs, brats, and veggie dogs, and Joe and Lisel brought a salad with pine nuts and raisins. I can’t recall what else we had, but it was delicious!
We finished the evening with a trip to Nico’s Recovery Room, which is a bar that features Saturday night karaoke. We took full advantage of that, as one might expect. Dave sang “She-Bop” and I sang Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” Some short little kid, likely a CMU student, got up and sang the Andrew WK song “Party Hard.”
This kid was INTO IT! He knew every little flourish on that song. Lots of air guitar and air drums. It was pretty great.
After about 2 hours of this, we just had to go home. It had been a long day, and we were beat. What a great day it had been!
taco in a bag!
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