[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh___Today

[mtoytrain at bellsouth.net]

Alex
Thanks for the "good" report on the BURG!      Most major cities have lost their "Downtowns" so that isn't such a  big thing.    Pittsburgh is a beautiful city and the view from Mt. Washington can hardly be beat by any city in the country.    If I were to retire from Florida back to Pittsburgh it would be out in
the Bethel Park area where I could ride the T to downtown to Heinz Field and the baseball stadium.
The suburbans areas or Pittsburgh are tops, and the ethnic restaurants all over the place can't be beat!   So long live the BURG!

Jerry M
> 
> From: aprochek at aol.com
> Date: 2007/01/09 Tue PM 06:30:38 EST
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh___Today
> 
> the wife and I went back to Pittsburgh for a week last October and loved every minute of it.  I discovered Point Breeze (don't know why I just discovered it, I lived in Shadyside for 5 years and as far as I can tell, point breeze was there at that time too).  Coffee shops, slate roof houses, hills, brick roads, trees turning fall colors, nearby pubs, several nearby colleges... just about everything I don't get here in Houston.  The problem is I can't afford anything decent in Point Breeze and certainly not in Squirrel Hill, and I make about 4x the average income.  So I don't know how rock bottom it really is.  I will say that my friend in LA who lives in an equivalent neighborhood about 5 miles southeast of Westwood had to pay at least 3x as much for his equivalent house, not including earthquake insurance.  He gets an ocean but he also gets circa 1950 Pittsburgh smog.
>  
> Amd Holy crap what happened to Shadyside near East Liberty?  When i was there it was a pit, now its got a Whole Foods, several art galleries, and a great French restaurant.  I half expected Frasier Crane to walk by.  I told a couple Carnegie Mellon kids we met at dinner to enjoy all this while they could, because you never know when your job is going to send you to a flat featureless generic humid hellhole like Houston.
>  
> we walked through Schenley park, down in the ravine by the reservoir.  hiking back upstream it was really hard to tell you were surrounded by the city and was pretty much just a walk in the woods.  Same thing can be done in Frick and Highland park. 
>  
> I was also google earthing Pittsburgh today and discovered Ben Avon Heights.  Again never knew it was there.  Looked terrific from the air. 
>  
> about the only thing keeping me from making it a retirement place is the weather - after 15 years in Houston I don't think I can take winter anymore - or at least the long dreary build up to spring, though it looks like global warming might be taking care of that problem if this winter is any indication. 
>  
> now back to streetcars...... the good news is that Pittsburgh is broke, so the tracks in Chestnut street should still be there.  I am convinced the only reason they survived from the time the line closed ('64?) is because the city kept running out of money by the time they got to that street.  About a year ago I was looking for some loop on the north side - don't remember which - troy hill or the nearby line - and I found it in a parking lot but they were tearing up the steet, exposing the original track, and hauling it out.
>  
> Regards
> Alex
>  
>  
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: joshuad at cs.cmu.edu
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Sent: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 4:26 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh___Today 
> 
> 
> Jim Holland wrote:
> > The following is from a person in New York State who has strong ties to 
> Pittsburgh and is looking fo
> r a retirement location;  I have sent info from this individual before.       
> This is dated  --  Mello
> n comments reveal that:::::::
> > 
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> > However, with the population down to 350,000 now and the endless strip 
> developments up
> > in the north,
> > the city in my opinion now is doomed....  High tech and robot technology, are 
> the big
> > things out in O akland, but this is now the only area with any life in the 
> city...
> > Forbes and Murray is now downtown,
> > but has no connection with the city....
> 
> That's nonsense.  Squirrel Hill and Oakland are *in* the city; how can
> they have no connection to it?  What they have no connection to is those
> "endless strip developments up in the north", thank goodness.
> 
> >  Of course, nobody would ever build a subway out
> > to Oakland, nor would they make proper use of the spine line to bring transit 
> into
> > Oakland the back way....
> 
> Well, last I checked, Oakland had plenty of transit.  Just not any *rail*
> transit.  I'd have loved an East End subway too, but the fact is that the
> current level of transit service in Oakland is remarkably good.
> 
> IMO, Squirrel Hill is one of the best places to live in the whole country.
> Homewood would probably be one of the worst.  They're both the city.  Why
> does your friend want to judge Pittsburgh only on its failures?
> 
> And "rock bottom" real estate?  It's affordable compared to much of the
> country but I don't think it seemed "rock bottom" to a friend of mine who
> bought a house in Highland Park last year.  (BTW, he's not from Pittsburgh.
> Funny how actually living in Pittsburgh for a few years can change one's
> perspective.)
> 
> Best,
> -j.
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