Good morning!
This newsletter will be slightly shorter than usual for two reasons. I’ve been working on the 2021 Yinzer Gift Guide and holy moly. So many good items on it this year. I’ll likely launch it next week because I want to give you all enough time to get your orders in since I expect the supply chain and mail times to be all sorts of FUBAR this year. This is the final call for suggestions for the list, so get at me.
The second reason is that I’m the world’s oldest teenager and as such, I had my wisdom teeth pulled, with only novocaine, and one of the teeth was such a bitch to get out because of twisted roots that I nearly screamed out the name of every single personal injury law firm in the city. Not because I planned to sue (novocaine only was my request) but because those names just make really great euphemisms. Anyway, I’ve been in pain and chipmunk-faced for several days. It’s extremely sexy.
But onward! Let’s get to it.
Let’s have a calm conversation about this tweet, shall we?
Now, I know most of you join me in asking …
who in the name of Shenderovich, Shenderovich, and Fishman is Chase Williams?
Well, I looked him up and apparently he was a WPXI sports reporter for three years until March of 2020. Now, me never having heard of Chase Williams is not a dig at Chase. I’ve never watched local television news because the closed captioning often looked like it was being done by people whose first language was Na’vi. “In jokwy’s rwor Sibrey Cosbri.” I don’t have time to translate that shit, Neytiri.
So who or what sent Chase to his Twitter account to tweet that about Pittsburgh? Well I tell ya, it was apparently this:
Chase knows the City of Pittsburgh does not tolerate the slander of three people — Fred Rogers, Rick Sebak, and Troy Polamalu, so he wisely/cowardly subtweeted (I assume) the halftime Hall of Fame ring presentation by insulting the whole city.
Chase … Buddy. Sport. Champ. Who hurt you? “Living in the past” is celebrating the Hall of Fame ring for a man who last coached the team 13 years ago? Celebrating the deity-like perfection of the strong safety with Godhair who last played for the team 7 years ago?
What’s the statute of limitations on pride? When do we cross the line? Five years? Ten years? Any accomplishments older than seven years shall be sent to the dustbin of history, never to be acknowledged again? Nostalgia has an expiration date?
I don’t need to hear the answer, because I’ve actually spent time analyzing this cultural penchant Pittsburghers have for holding dearly to nostalgia and here’s the truth — Pittsburgh doesn’t live in the past; Pittsburgh respects the past. Pittsburgh respects that the past built our present because our past includes so many valleys that we’ve learned to take what we can from the mountaintops while we’re there. We respect what steel meant for our grandfathers and dads. We respect that Kaufmann’s Basement meant our moms could afford decent school clothes for us. We respect Hills for giving us the knock-off Keds that let us feel like we fit in. We associate the smell of cherry Icees and soft pretzels with a childhood spent at the layaway window putting winter coats away for later when the money would be there. We respect our old news anchors for being the voices we grew up with when there were only three channels and therefore every momentous event of the past still holds a link to those who were behind the anchor desk. We respect what was once there, because in doing so, we only more appreciate what remains in spite of the collapse and renaissance cycle this city has undergone more than once. We respect the old Steelers guard because we know what they meant to a city watching the steel industry crumble within it — community and pride. We respect the Carnegies for giving us the von Ahns. The Brackenridges for the Salks. Yes, we know where long-gone buildings used to stand and by acknowledging that, we’re respecting the imprint they left on not only the land, but our consciousnesses, our everyday lives, our memories. We’ll riot if you take the Kaufmann’s clock down because we know it’s not just a clock in front of a store that no longer exists — it’s a physical, tangible link to our past that represents a place to come together from generation to generation. The alternative to all of that? Hold so loosely to the past that the slightest breeze, time, or distance pulls it away from us, leaving behind a city not only unable to learn from the past, but also one with a character so lacking in depth and so root-lessly superficial, it’s no longer worthy of pride. Then it’s just a bed. A place to sleep. I don’t want to be in a city that so easily lets go of that which built it up. I don’t want to be a part of a community that puts an expiration date on nostalgia — hunting for the “Best By” date, trying to predict when it turns from a good, proud thing to a sour, pathetic thing. I’d rather be in a city that carries the past along to the future, unapologetically, with awful accents, weird jargon, and questionable hair styles, holding the good as a treasure and the bad as a reminder. I want more than just the bed. I want the whole home with the warm fire and the pictures on the walls showing me everywhere we’ve been and everyone we’ve been with so I won’t forget those people and places when we get to where we’re going.
I guess what I’m trying to say to Chase Williams is … suck it.
Speaking of Pittsburgh’s past, the DVE Morning Show’s Randy Baumann shared this Ghosts of Pittsburgh documentary from 1995, holding it up as a classic example of the quintessential Pittsburgh accent.
Now, the audio isn’t great, but the really good Pittsburgh accent comes in with firefighter John Arnold at around the 10:16 mark. This is the classic accent that Curt Wootton has largely perfected as Pittsburgh Dad, and that celebrities like Joe Manganiello try their hardest to match — not always perfectly. But John Arnold? The only way to match this man’s perfect Pittsburgh accent is to have lived his life; it’s that ingrained. And it’s not just how he says “sahnd asleep” and “get up aht a bed,” or how he says “wohl” for “wall,” and other such phrases whose pronunciations we can easily imitate. But, the man somehow managed to inflect a Pittsburgh accent into the word “open” a few times and for the life of me, I can’t duplicate it. It’s like it has got a bit of the soft A sound mixed in with the hard O sound? A weird casserole of vowels in the exact right proportions to create this new vowel that exists nowhere but in Pittsburgh. You can kind of hear this sound in how some Pittsburghers say the word “no” — like nao? But not really like nao. Like they’re using their jaw or tongue differently? Ugh. This is like trying to describe a color. Frustratingly impossible.
I also want to point out that this video illustrates the point I was making in the previous item. This right here? It’s the past and it’s lovely and raw and rough and scratchy and their accent is something we marvel at and pick up and carry with us into the future not as a point of ridicule, but a point of humorous pride. We don’t all sound like that anymore, and certainly those with accents like John’s are fewer and further between these days, but we still appreciate what the accent represents about the city’s past and people who came before us.
I still catch myself saying “going” in that Pittsburgh way my parents do and I literally cannot figure out how to spell it phonetically for you. Like, how in the name of Berger, Reed and Green do you spell “goyn” but with less Y and a smidge of U and a pinch of a vowel that doesn’t really exist except maybe in whatever language the Minions speak?
I might as well try to describe the color blue. “Well, you see, it’s like … a color … that is … blue.”
Thank you, Keanu.
The Phipps Garden Railroad: Bridges and Tunnels exhibit is a nod to all things Pittsburgh such as the inclines, the tunnels, a Sister bridge, and yes, the sinkhole bus!
Look at the little Sheetz truck! Look at the lady taking a selfie! Look at the business man in the red jacket holding his newspaper and just staring into the middle distance like “How the Edgar Snyder and Associates am I supposed to get home now?” It’s perfect and is one more checkpoint on the path to the sinkhole bus becoming permanently enshrined in Pittsburgh’s lore.
Which leads me to ask a very important question: why doesn’t the Miniature Railroad Village at the Carnegie Science Center have a tiny Hills Department Store with a bunch of little kids running out with 80s toys, cherry icees, and soft pretzels in their hands? It deserves a spot in the lore too.
Make it happen.
As I write this, Ed Gainey has secured an insurmountable lead in the race for Pittsburgh’s mayor over Tony Moreno, who has not yet conceded. But I feel pretty confident in saying that if I wake up in the morning with my giant chipmunk cheeks and Tony Moreno is the next mayor of the City of Pittsburgh, I will roll myself in stale french fries and lay down in Market Square for the pigeons to feast upon.
Ed Gainey will be Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor.
Talking about the past, one of Pittsburgh’s valleys, so to speak, was the mayoral term of Luke Ravenstahl. I was a huge critic and, you know, it was deserved. He was thrust into the role and then kind of just didn’t accomplish much of anything unless you were a country music star visiting Star Lake, then you had 700 official proclamations and a personal invitation to a private party at the Foggy Goggle at Seven Springs via a ride in a stretch Hummer with a mini-fridge full of Jägermeister.
Bill Peduto loves Pittsburgh. For me, that’s just a fact. He took the reins from Luke and giddy-upped this horse we call Pittsburgh into the world arena — using science, technology, data and a progressive set of ideals to push us through this latest renaissance. Pittsburgh is a respected first-class, world-class city (who never forgets its roots, Chase Williams). So much has improved during Bill’s time and I’m always going to be grateful that he brought us out of the valley Luke had mired us in. He worked hard. Spent long days full of long hours in service to the city and its people, and I know he’ll continue to do that until his last day in office.
But Pittsburgh has a racism problem. Pittsburgh has an earnings gap problem and an education gap problem. We need more unity. We need to grow the city’s Black middle class. We need to become a city that’s NOT statistically the worst in the country for Black people … but the best. A lofty goal for sure, but an important one to reach for. And I’m so hopeful that Ed Gainey will grab those reins from Bill in January, say, “Good job. I’ll take it from here,” and find a way to make some real changes so that all Pittsburghers can feel pride in a city that values them enough to fight hard to level every uneven playing field.
Thanks for loving Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto.
Make us proud, Ed Gainey.
That’s all for today. Remember to reach out to me via email, Twitter or Instagram if you have gift suggestions for the Yinzer Gift Guide that will launch one week from today. I love every item on it so far and you will too.
See yinz.