Falling in love with Pittsburgh easy as trip to airport

I spent way too much time at Pittsburgh International Airport last weekend. A number of… I spent way too much time at Pittsburgh International Airport last weekend. A number of unforeseeable incidents caused me to have to drive to the airport twice and spend an obscene amount of time there waiting for a plane that seemed it would never land.

The airport is a boring place, and combined with the anxiety I always feel with arriving planes and long-lost friends, as well as the icky feeling I get from air conditioning, I was a big old basket of bitter ennui.

At one point, during my second stint at the airport, while people-watching in the rental car section of the arrivals terminal, I noticed a tiny corner of the lobby dedicated to welcoming guests to Pittsburgh. Above the television screen looping informative tourist videos, there was a sign proclaiming Pittsburgh the “Most Livable City.”

“Ha,” I scoffed, disenchanted by the city’s inability to make planes land on time. How could Pittsburgh be most livable? I quickly dismissed the sign and its silly message.

Yet, I still had to wait. And that sign kept haunting me. It was kind of like that scene in “Clueless” when Cher realizes she’s in love with Josh: At first, I was plagued with montages of how lame Pittsburgh was, and then I admitted that this lameness was endearing. And then it actually wasn’t really lame at all, just kind of unique and unexpected for an environment claiming to be urban. Then I realized that Pittsburgh was actually pretty awesome. Then suddenly “Gigi” was playing, and there was a fountain going off, and I said, “Oh my gosh! I am totally butt-crazy in love with Pittsburgh!”

But why love Pittsburgh? For those who complain that there is not enough to do in Pittsburgh, I would like to direct their attention to the theater district, to Oakland Fridays and to the increasingly hip neighborhoods of Bloomfield and Garfield.

So what if the traffic is always bad? We need to stop guzzling gas anyway. Plus, there’s a great thriving bike scene here. And walking through Pittsburgh is a great distraction from everyday life.

There’s a lot going on in the world: civil war in places that are so far away they seem intangible, the stalled battle of immigration on Capitol Hill, Ludacris was just voted one of People Magazine’s sexiest bachelors. Yet a stroll from Squirrel Hill into Oakland makes you think not of the turning of the earth but of the scent of grass with fresh dew, wild roses and daisies growing on the hill, the sun setting against the steel of the city.

And Pittsburgh is such an affordable city. My young married friends just bought a house in a great neighborhood for a great price. And students get deals every day. From the bus system to the inexpensive eateries, it’s not hard for a student to find things to do, places to go and food to eat without breaking the bank.

But the best thing about this city is the people. Having a great school like Pitt in the middle of a great city like Pittsburgh sets up an amazing dynamic and eclectic population. Standing in the grocery market, it’s not uncommon to see a sorority girl, an obsessive Steelers fan, a young professional, a professor and an old steel worker in line with you. The people are mostly unpretentious and proud of their city in a quiet, slightly defensive manner that gives them great definition and clout. The city’s three rivers run in the lines on their faces, the steel dust beneath their fingers. They embrace their city and its history with unabashed love.

When I think about Pittsburgh, I think of a song called “Yardsale,” by this great band, The Avett Brothers. It’s swept up in folksy chords and nostalgia, the first three quarters of the song dedicated to exploring the histories of some yard-sale junk. There’s the broken guitar that may have been used by a boy to play love songs, a knife that perhaps ran someone through during the war, plastic fruit and fake flowers, etc