Editorial: Top 10 things that happened in Pittsburgh this decade

As we prepare to enter a new decade, we’ve been reminiscing on important things that happened over the past 10 years. From TikTok and self-driving Ubers, to Ugg Boots coming into fashion to dabbing, whipping and flossing, we’ve seen it all — even if we wish we hadn’t.

In honor of 2020 coming around, these are The Pitt News Editorial Board’s top 10 things that happened in Pittsburgh over the past decade.

10. Peter’s Pub

Oakland’s favorite bar, Peter’s Pub, announced its closing after 44 years in spring 2018. We were all too young to enter bars back then, and we never got to wear that famous Viking hat.

9. Eagles Victory Riot

The Philadelphia Eagles won their first Superbowl in February 2018. Since half of the Pitt student body is from “outside of Philly,” students rioted on Forbes Avenue and even climbed the bridge between Towers and Lawrence Hall. Downtown Philadelphia greased its lampposts so that people wouldn’t climb them in the event of a victory. Pitt didn’t, but it should have. We’ll never get the “fly Eagles fly” chant out of our heads.

8. The Alligators

In July 2019, a man was walking his dog in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood and spotted a 5-foot-long alligator. Over the course of about six months in early- and mid-2019, seven alligators were spotted hanging around Pittsburgh, most of them being pets that were let loose. We would like to give a special shoutout to Chomp the alligator, who was found within this time period. He’s our favorite, because he had a cool name.

7. 24-Hour Amos Hall Starbucks

For a serene week or so at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year, the Amos Hall Starbucks was open 24 hours. Then, they shockingly could not find students itching to work all night, so they went back to their regular hours — 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

6. Bomb Threats

Bomb threats were happening multiple times a week on Pitt’s campus in the spring of 2012. It got so bad that the University eventually offered a $50,000 reward for identification of the person responsible. This went on until April, when a 22-year-old individual was arrested and expelled for having a hand in the influx of threats.

5. Cathy Pipe Break

Pitt gave Noah’s Ark some competition for a Great Flood in the fall of 2017. A pipe break triggered a sprinkler and the Cathedral of Learning flooded. Classes in the Cathedral that day were obviously cancelled. If you had a Monday night class that semester in Cathy, you might remember this event as one of the best surprises college ever gave you.

4. Holland Hall

Holland Hall hasn’t changed much since 1980. The rooms still have no air conditioning, and the bathrooms are still communal. One thing has changed, though. It’s no longer all female. Holland, which was Pitt’s last gendered dorm — aside from Amos, which houses the sororities — began housing male students in fall 2017. The switch didn’t cause too much of a stir among female residents, though, with one quipping, ”Whether it was co-ed or not didn’t matter to me. The rooms looked nice, and I just didn’t want to live in Towers.”

3. G13 Bridgeville Flyer

Rather than flying to Bridgeville, the G31 PAT bus fell into a 30-foot-deep sinkhole downtown. What else is there to say?

2. Snow Days

Well, one was more of a polar vortex day, actually. Pitt cancelled classes on Jan. 30 for the first time since the February 2010 blizzard. The wind chill was as cold as negative 20 degrees that day, but it still took a petition of more than 8,500 signatures for the University to finally close. The decade before 2010 didn’t see any school cancellations. The most previous cancellation before the 2010 snowstorm was in 1994.

1. Qdoba Guy

It was a normal date night in August 2016, until it wasn’t. A Pitt student attempted to jump from the roof of the Oakland Qdoba to Bruegger’s Bagels to impress his date, but instead got stuck in between the two buildings. The man was stuck in a 16-inch-wide gap between the buildings for about 4 hours. Paramedics arrived at 2 a.m. and had to drill a hole in the side of the building to get him out. He wasn’t hurt. And he made national news.