[PRCo] Re: McKeesport

[Derrick Brashear]

> In the 2010 census, the City of McKeesport is down to 19,731 people, slightly more than one-third of its peak of more than 55,000 in 1940.    The actual peak, if a census had been done, might have been 1942 before we began drafting servicemen.  The loss of the Tube Works and the open hearths over in Duquense and other steel mills caused the city to literally fall apart.   The honorable mayor was demanding that Pittsburgh Railways get rid of the streetcars in the 1950s in order to bring back downtown because he felt that was the problem.   Well, I think his problem then was the steel workers had enough money to move to the hilltops outside of town and do their shopping at the new mall on Lincoln Way east of East Pittsburgh.   But then in the 1980s the bottom fell out of steel, the mall closed, the rest of the city collapsed.  That whole story needs to be told.

Eastland was on East Pittsburgh-McKeesport Blvd.
Rainbow Village on Lincoln Way at Route 48 wasn't what did in downtown
McKeesport. It had no department stores.

>
> I remember staying in the Sheraton Hotel on Lyle Blvd about 1984 on state business ... my boss decided to go out in the middle of the night because he couldn't sleep.   The desk clerk told Dave it was OK if he was dumb enough to walk around the city at night on his own but they were not going to unlock the door and let anyone back in before 7 a.m.   At that time they were attempting to sell the Sheraton to the city or county to convert it to a jail.   It fell through.   I was walking my little orange google man down Lyle Blvd a few minutes ago and I discovered the former Sheraton is now called "Senior Care Plaza."   You can be sure they can find a little money taking care of old people but there are no longer business travelers coming to McKeesport.

Said motel burned when I was in high school, and that it was renovated
and reoccupied was kind of a surprise.

>
> It deserves a good portrayal of what happened and why it happened and what changed.
>
> Good is not necessarily taking every picture you have and inflicting it upon the viewers for 25 minutes simply because you have all those pictures and therefore someone must look at them and love them as much as the portrayer does.

Oh, as someone who has been turning over every nook trying to find
pictures of the rest of the South Side, I disagree. You say you only
want to see the interesting ones. Interesting is in the eye of the
beholder.

I don't need you to tell me why I'm interested, necessarily. I am not
the whole audience, but the problem is when you filter for the least
common denominator, what happens to the stuff I'm not supposed to want
to see? Or, more particularly, when you're wrong, do I just lose?


> I leave you with one other story.   My first wife and I stayed in a motel just off route 30 up in East McKeesport back in the 1960s.   I was young, not overly wealthy, living on about $6,000 a year.   There was no way I was going downtown to the Hilton.    The tip off should have been that you checked in at the bar because this motel had no office but it didn't register.

Was this the motel behind WIXZ?