Editor’s Note: Surprise! A special Tuesday edition of the newsletter during a week in which I said I’d be off. But my trip to Newfoundland got canceled because Air Canada is completely FUBAR, so here I am, about to write probably 3,000 words on the renaming of Heinz Field. Fasten your seatbelts. Turbulence ahead. Don’t bother with your call buttons. I disabled them all.
There are certain Pittsburgh cultural oddities I think outsiders might dismiss as being … well … exaggerated. Those things we like to celebrate on our Pittsburgh-themed t-shirts. Do they REALLY brake at tunnels? Do they REALLY talk like that? Do they REALLY eat pierogies? Do they REALLY put french fries on their salads? Do they REALLY wear matching outfits to Kennywood? Are they REALLY that dedicated to churches that fry various fishes? Do they REALLY have a road that has been under construction for four decades? Do they REALLY have that many bridges, that many steps, that steep a hill? Have they REALLY not yet learned how to drive in precipitation?
But those are the superficial. There are other questions—deeper questions about our culture:
Do they REALLY care about, cling to, celebrate, memorialize, and idolize their history to such an extent?
Do they REALLY latch on to all those cultural oddities and refuse to let them go, fighting constantly against the passage of time’s attempt to weaken their power?
Do they REALLY care that much about sports and the colors black and gold and the concession stand of a department store that hasn’t been in existence for two decades?
Do they REALLY cling so tightly to the past that they give directions based on where things used to be rather than where things are?
Or is it all cheap, unimportant lore exaggerated to sell shirts, win clout, and go viral on social media?
People of the world, the answer is REALLY. I say that as a lifelong resident, and I say that as the representative of the three family generations that were here before me, and I say that as a Master’s student of Pittsburgh’s history and as the daughter of a 45-year US Steel employee.
This world—these times, these circumstances, these batshit politically divided pandemic-shadowed days—is fraught. Huge unprecedented problems and occurrences are bombarding us every single day. So when it was announced yesterday that Heinz Field will soon be known as [checks notes] [stares out the window] [checks notes again] [sighs] Acrisure Stadium, lots of hot takes were fired out of thoughtless clout-chasing fingertips. Who cares!? It doesn’t matter! This is a dumb thing to care about. Fans will still go to every game no matter what the stadium is called and no matter how loudly they protest the change. Pittsburghers are too stuck in the past. Grow up.
First, valid.
It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme. It’s a dumb thing to get upset about. Fans will still go to every game and concert no matter what the place is called. There are no Kenny Chesney fans saying, “Well, that’s the last time I’ll leave six piles of garbage, two jars of pee and four piles of Red Bull Blue Bay Rum-flavored vomit in the parking lot of that place!”
But, second, we need to talk about that “REALLY.”
Understanding Pittsburghers’ reaction to Heinz Field being renamed Actisure Stadium requires an understanding of Pittsburgh herself. (Please know that with every word that follows, I am fully aware of the racial divide in this city’s past and this city’s present. It is not livable for all and my Master’s thesis will focus on that very thing.)
Pittsburgh is a city that went from being the epicenter of wealth, industry, and innovation to being empty, poor, and in some respects, abandoned. Is there another city in America that saw such a complete collapse as Pittsburgh experienced with the shrinking of the steel industry? Is there another city whose major industry was so tightly woven into the fabric of its identity that cutting out a large chunk of that industry resulted in the near disintegration of the city’s economic health? Perhaps Detroit in more recent times.
Pittsburgh’s role as the world’s steel headquarters created our culture and our identity. Class struggles and immigrant struggles and labor struggles and race struggles and out of those struggles rose pride and identity. We are strong. We are building America. Without Pittsburgh, the world is incomplete. Half-finished. Shorter. Weaker. Slower. We started with ships and glass and ketchup, and the confluence (drink!) of these rivers is where the world found their entrance to the West.
That was our identity. Steel. Strength. Pride. Pittsburgh began losing manufacturing jobs just as the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pittsburgh Pirates were winning championships. The Steelers in ‘75, ‘76, ‘79, and ‘80. The Pirates in ‘71 and ‘79. When things changed. Got worse. As steel towns emptied out and storefronts shuttered and downtown became ghostlike after five p.m. As unemployment rose and population declined, among that stress and fear and devastation were three things that could not be lost or taken away: pride, history, and our teams. These were three things that were tucked away in a place unreachable by banks, economic pain, or pink slips.
And that is when this city clung even more tightly to those things than ever before. Things are bad, but we are a proud people, we have a proud history, and we are winners no matter what. Circle the wagons and don’t let anything go.
And this clinging to history? This pride? This devotion to the black and gold? Somehow, in some way, it gets passed down through generations. It happened to me. It happened to many of you. And you’re probably passing it on to your children. And if there is no past generation to pass it down, it gets acquired. Like a contagion. People here, whether here for generations or here for five years, mostly lean in. We lean into the past and we lean into each other, because that’s how our people survived when the steel industry collapsed.
Therefore, we will never forget what used to be there, whether it’s an entire industry or whether it's the Uni-Mart that used to be on that corner near where Hills was but if you get to where the D&K used to be, you’ve gone too far. But if you’re trying to get to where the Syria Mosque used to be, you can’t get there from here.
And it’s why we want Pittsburgh things, even if their connection to the city is looser than it once was. It’s why we want Heinz and not Hunts [glares at Kennywood]. It’s why we want Michael Keaton and not Ben Affleck. It’s why, as I say in speeches, you can reach the world—whether it be your art or product or message—through Pittsburgh. It’s why we never stopped calling it the Civic Arena or Starlake. It’s why we respect our icons to the extent we do. Our Sally Wiggins. Our Rick Sebaks. Our Fred Rogerses. Our Roberto Clementes. We simply lost too much to so easily let go of anything more.
And perhaps there is no greater insult to such a city, such a people, such a history, than to name the home of the team to which they once clung so tightly for escape and comfort after [checks notes] an insurance brokerage firm in [stares into the middle distance] [flips a pigeon off] Michigan.
Where is the history? Where is the pride? Where is the provenance we can trace and cling to and wear on our chests when our church pierogies shirt is dirty? It has been drowned by dollars.
Is it Actisure? Acrisure? Aclisure? Aptisure? You aren’t sure. You’re looking at those and you’re PRETTY SURE you know, but you have to go check. Is a Michigan company that sounds like the operating system on the Battlestar Galactica spaceship going to become a word that rolls easily off of our tongues? No. Never. No one is “going dahn the Acrisure for ‘da big game.”
It is not a Heinz. It is not a Mellon. It is not a Carnegie. It is not a Caliguiri nor a Lawrence nor a Masloff. It is not a Stallworth or a Greene or a Clemente or a Mazeroski. It is not an Alcoa or a Schenley or a Forbes or a Magee or a Rooney or a Wilson or a Carson. It is not a Duolingo or a Dick’s or a Westinghouse or a PPG. It is a meaningless word being attached to perhaps the most meaningful building in the entire city.
It is the Beef O’ Brady’s Bowl of stadium names.
It will never stick unless Acnisure adds a word or phrase after their name. Rooney. Steel. Blast furnace. Something, anything that Pittsburghers can cling to with some pride.
So stop with the “who cares!” and stop with the “there are bigger problems” and stop with the “grow up” and stop with the “Pittsburgh is so stuck in the past!”
Saying those things dismisses our history and the fraught path this city traveled to its present. Let us be sad. Let us mourn a lost name. Let us mourn that, once again, we’ll tell our children what something used to be called and where something used to be so that one day they’ll tell their children who will grow up to wonder why they have found pride in a past they didn’t experience.
Long live Heinz. Long live Pittsburgh.
Actrisure can suck it.