Physical State of Matt #21: PENNSYLVANIA

After a five-month hiatus from the trip, I felt conflicted as I pulled onto the highway. It was like starting all over again, but without the frisson of plunging into the unknown. Part of me had been dying to finally hit the road again, and part of me had been dreading it. I didn't know what the next states would bring me specifically, but I already knew what the process would be like.

Even though I hadn’t had a “home” for the past five months, I had settled comfortably into being stationary for weeks at a time. It was nice to unpack and have everything accessible whenever I wanted. It was nice getting used to one bed for a while. And most importantly, it was nice to have community again. I had spent my entire adulthood since I left Ithaca dreading the idea of returning to it for an extended period, but it wasn't as awful as I thought it would be.

I'd reconnected with family and friends, including Larissa who I went to Costa Rica with in November. It was surprisingly enjoyable to have people around consistently after six months living the vagabond life.

I capped off my break with a couple of weeks and a low-key Christmas at my aunt & uncle’s place in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After decades living along the Philadelphia Main Line, they retired to a farm in Amish country they named Cooper Run after the stream running through it. 

I’ve always had a special relationship with my aunt. We have a similar silly and dark sense of humor. To be honest though, I think the fact that we’re aunt & nephew is part of what makes it work. If I were her son, we would probably drive each other to drink.

She had a major health scare a couple of years ago, so I was grateful for the opportunity to spend some quality time with her. I also took advantage of the holiday to catch up with my cousins, their new spouses, and young children.

My aunt’s youngest son, Scotty, is the cousin I met up with in Seattle on the first week of this trip.

I’ve been going to Pennsylvania since I was a kid. My grandmother lived in central Philadelphia, and my mothers’s two sisters and their families lived just outside the city. I have a lot of great memories from visits down there. I must have been to Philly a couple dozen times, but I’d never been to Pennsylvania’s second largest city, Pittsburgh. 

PENNSYLVANIA LANGUAGE

A brief sidequest on Pennsylvania language: 

I grew up in New York, one state north of PA, so in my mind Pennsylvania is clearly a northern state. It’s easy, therefore, for me to forget that southwestern Pennsylvania shares a border, and culture, with West Virginia. There is a reason why the state is a critical battleground in most national elections. 

When I was working in restaurants as a teen, there were three guys who would come in every six months to clean the hood - the giant fans that pull smoke up and out of the kitchen. As you can imagine, those things get filthy. This trio was from rural Western Pennsylvania - straight up Appalachia. They spoke with the thickest accents I have heard anywhere in the world - literally anywhere. It was a marble-mouthed jumble of syllables I had to truly focus on to even recognize as English, let alone understand it.

Delaware County (or Delco) in suburban Philly has one of my favorite accents of all time. Most people in the country were introduced to it a couple of years ago in HBO's limited series “Mare of Easttown”, and then the SNL skit that parodied it - “Murder Durder”. They say things like “Let’s get a hoeau-gie and some wooter at the Wawa”. 

Then there is the uniquely Pennsylvania vocabulary. Philly has the multifaceted word “jawn”, which is derived from “joint”. The brief explanation of its use in the movie Creed sent people to Google by the thousands. Jawn can be used in place of just about anything. It’s a context-specific noun - used kinda like the word “smurf” in the cartoon series with the same name. That show was my jawn. 

I learned a new word on this trip, unique to Western Pennsylvania. “Yinz” is used when addressing a person or people, like The South’s “y’all” or New York’s “yous”. It’s believed to have been derived from the Scottish phrase “you ones”, but I don’t think it’s an accident that it's pronounced like the end of the word “Pennsylvanians”. 

Okay, sidequest complete.

FLIGHT 93 MEMORIAL

On September 11, 2001, two planes were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and one into the Pentagon. There was a fourth plane that was hijacked that day, which was almost certainly intended for another target in Washington DC. 

photo credit: Wikipedia

The passengers aboard United Flight 93 learned of the morning’s previous attacks and made the decision to fight back against the hijackers. The hijacker flying the plane lost control during the ensuing chaos and crashed in rural Stonycreek, PA going more than 550 miles per hour, killing everyone instantly. The crash site was turned into the Flight 93 National Memorial.

The first landmark after pulling into the road that winds through the memorial site is the 93-foot tall “Tower of Voices”. It contains 40 wind chimes, meant to symbolize the 40 passengers and crew members who lost their lives that day. The chimes range from 8 to 16 inches in diameter and 5 to 10 feet in length so that they create different tones as the wind blows. That day was particularly windy, so the chimes rang out boldly, but it was also bitterly cold, so I didn’t stay for long. 

A short drive led me to the visitors center and Memorial Plaza. A stone and glass deck overlooked the field where the plane had crashed. A road and walking trails wound around the field's edge. 

Inside the visitor’s center there were various multimedia exhibits. Televisions played newscasts on a loop, maps highlighted the plane’s flight paths, and a collection of shrapnel and scorched artifacts from the crash site were on display. 

The newscasts took me back to the morning it happened, to my shitty studio apartment in Little Armenia, a small neighborhood of LA. I woke up shortly before 7:00am, after both planes had hit the towers, but before either of them had collapsed. After learning about the attack from my voicemails, I sat down in front of my television and, like much of the world, didn’t move for hours. 

photo credit: CNN

The most memorable display was a simple one with several black phone handsets on boards shaped like airplane seat backs. 37 calls were placed from the Airfones aboard Flight 93 in the 35 minutes between when the plane was hijacked and when it crashed. These calls provided crucial information to the passengers and to the authorities on the ground. Three of the calls were recorded on answering machines. By picking up one of the handsets, you can listen to these three recordings.

photo credit: Caroline Miller

I was nervous to listen. I didn’t want panicked voices from people facing death to crawl into my subconscious and haunt my dreams. But, after wrestling with myself, I listened. The calls were from two passengers, a man and a woman, and a female flight attendant. I was stunned at how composed they all sounded. 

photo credit: ABC27 WHTM

They explained the situation and they told their families they loved them. The female passenger left her husband the combination to her safe where all of their important documents were stored. They all knew, or at least strongly suspected, they were about to die, and their voices carried a serene clarity. This fact has stayed with me perhaps more than if they had been panicking and crying.

PITTSBURGH

An hour and a half after leaving the memorial, I was in Pittsburgh. Driving into and around the city was intimidating. Bridges, hills, underpasses, overpasses, and merging highways kept me on high alert. Pittsburgh ranks in the top 15 of the nation’s most congested cities, and its geography ensures that the problem will be nearly impossible to fix. 

photo credit: Paul Chao, Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh is sometimes referred to as “Three Rivers” because it grew up where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to become the Ohio River. “The Point”, where they all converge, is a state park. This park and the adjacent downtown business district is known as the "Golden Triangle". Many of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods are on steep hills, leading down toward the rivers. I got a workout walking around. 

My Aribnb was in a part of town called Polish Hill, a stone's throw from The Immaculate Heart of Mary Church. The five months off must have made my booking skills rusty because I discovered that I'd selected a third-story walkup on a steep hill with street parking.

To make matters worse, the only light in the stairwell was triggered by a motion sensor on the second floor landing. By the time I climbed to the third floor with my arms full, the light would go out - every time. I couldn't see the keypad lock on the apartment door or even where I was stepping. Schlepping all of my stuff up from my car took 20 sweaty minutes of non-stop cursing. 

Pittsburgh has deep Polish roots. Many families moved there in the late 1800’s, after the unsuccessful Revolutions of 1848. The Polish immigrants were drawn there in part by the abundant supply of jobs at the steel mills. Polish food and culture proliferate in Pittsburgh to this day.

Earning the nicknames The Steel City or The Iron City around the turn of the 20th Century, Pittsburgh’s industrial dominance lasted until the collapse of the US steel industry during the late 1970’s and early 80’s. Its NFL team is still called The Steelers. 

Maybe it was from absorbing news reports from my childhood, but I had low expectations for Pittsburgh. I expected to find it a hollowed-out shell of a former industrial powerhouse, but it was vibrant and exciting - even in the dreary gray of winter. After emptying my car, I decided to take a chilly walk to dinner and see the city by foot. 

A steep set of concrete stairs and a tall bridge over railroad tracks led me to the Lawrenceville neighborhood and the imposing Iron City Brewing building. This brick behemoth, which started brewing in 1867, now remains standing as a national landmark. Its owner, Pittsburgh Brewing, now produces beer in the nearby suburb of Crieghton. 

A few blocks further on was the unique brewpub that had grabbed my attention when looking for a place to eat.

Construction on St. John the Baptist Church on Liberty Ave. finished in 1902. The church survived fires, floods, two world wars and The Great Depression. The collapse of Pittsburgh's steel industry took its toll on every part of the city. For St. John the Baptist Church, it was the final straw. Financial hardship closed the its doors in 1993. 

In 1996, after an extensive remodel, Sean Casey opened The Church Brew Works, one of the surge of microbreweries in the US during the 1990’s, and it has thrived since. The brewery and restaurant use the best features of the deconsecrated Catholic church. Stained glass windows line the walls, ornate lamps hang from the high ceilings, former pews provide seating, and the bright blue apse boldly displays their brewing equipment. 

The menu was a mixture of standard brewpub fare and local favorites. I chose the french onion soup and, in honor of my stalwart chariot, the pierogies. 

The following morning, I tackled the most important task I do in each of the places where I stop - finding good coffee. Gas station coffee is usually disgusting, and hotel coffee is not much better. The Keurig cups in most Airbnbs are a step up from that, but just barely. My only two requirements for coffee are "hot" and "caffeinated", but If I’m going to truly function during the day, I need to start my day off right with a proper jolt of caffeine from a delicious cup of coffee.

One block down the hill, I found Kaibur Coffee, a casual hangout with breakfast sandwiches, eclectic decorations and a cool, geeky vibe - and great coffee. Next door to Kaibur, I found Doomed Planet Comics. They had the usual superhero staples, but also had a killer collection of used books and small, alternative publications. It was barely noon, but I had already found two of “my spots” a block away from where I was staying. I felt like I’d made a good choice in Polish Hill.

I purchased a graphic novel by Brian “Box” Brown called “The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood”. It filled in the political and capitalist context around the cartoons I watched after school and Saturday mornings as a kid. It made me think deeply about my pop culture nostalgia. I highly recommend it, especially if you're a Gen-Xer.

A walk downtown brought me to The Strip District. A lot of cities had a place called The Strip - Las Vegas being the most obvious example. Everywhere else I have ever been, you would say you are “on” The Strip, but in Pittsburgh you are “in” The Strip. I guess that's because it’s a district and not a street, but it took a little getting used to.

The Strip is a mile and half long strip of land in downtown Pittsburgh along the Allegheny River. The name is believed to have developed organically with locals because of the geography, and not because of the steel strip mills that used to call it home. It was dotted with bars, restaurants, and T-shirt/souvenir shops. 

HEINZ HISTORY CENTER

On my walk I happened across the Senator John Heinz History Center, a massive museum that houses several permanent and rotating collections. It also showcases the historical connection of the Heinz family and their food companies with the region. 

In 1869, Henry J. Heinz formed Heinz Noble & Company with his partner L. Charles Noble. He produced his first product at 25, grated horseradish, using the recipe he got from his mother, with whom he was living at the time. Six years later, that company went bankrupt. 

In 1876, he formed F & J Heinz Company with his cousin Frederick and brother John. Their first bottles of “Catsup” hit the shelves later that year. The company flourished, and in 1888 he bought out his partners and renamed it H. J. Heinz Company. In 1896, inspired by an ad he saw touting 21 styles of shoes, he came up with the company’s slogan “57 Varieties” - even though he already had more than 60 products. He felt the number was somehow significant - his lucky number was 5, and his wife’s 7. 

After merging with Kraft Foods in 2015, Kraft Heinz Foods Company is now the fifth largest food company in the world.

John Heinz, Henry’s great-grandson and the History Center’s namesake, became a US Senator in 1977. He remained in office, and was heir to the Heinz fortune, until an accident in 1991 when his plane collided midair with a helicopter above an elementary school, killing all of the pilots and passengers and two schoolchildren.

There were interesting active exhibits, but what pulled me in the door was the one on the seminal children's program "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood". 

The genesis of the show was in 1953 on Pittsburgh's public television network WQED when Fred Rogers created "The Children’s Corner". 1961 he moved to Toronto and made a similar show called "Misterogers". He then brought the show back to Pittsburgh in 1966 as "Misterogers' Neighborhood", where it aired regionally in the northeastern US. It was cancelled after one season until a public outpouring pushed them to find new source of funding. 

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, with the backing of the Sears Roebuck Foundation, aired nationally on NET (National Educational Television), the predecessor of PBS. The first 65-episode season was shot in black and white. 895 episodes of Mister Rogers Neighborhood were produced in total, which aired until 2001. 

In 1969 Fred Rogers testified before the US Senate Subcommittee on Communications to help secure funds for national public broadcasting. His passionate, but measured, testimony single-handedly melted Senator John Pastore in six and a half minutes. It’s one of the most remarkable bits of public speaking you'll ever see, and it exemplifies what a singular man he was. The world could use more people like Mister Rogers, especially now. 

If you haven’t seen it, watch the documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”. If you don’t bawl your eyes out, you have no heart and we can't be friends.

I have a personal connection to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. For the 1986 episode “Brave and Don’t Know It” Mister Rogers showcased a new “neighborhood playground”. This elaborate construction was actually built at my elementary school, Belle Sherman. I remember the buzz around school the day he came to shoot the episode. You can watch that episode here. The playground is featured right after the opening. 

Many years later, for the 1999 episode “Making and Breaking Toys”, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood came to Ithaca again to feature the ball machines that local artist George Rhodes made. These elaborate “audiokinetic sculptures” are Rube Goldberg-inspired perpetual motion machines that are still on display in places like New York’s Port Authority and Boston’s Logan Airport. 

My dad worked for George periodically over the years helping build the machines. When the crew of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood came through to shoot the episode, he had the opportunity to be featured in it. I had already moved to LA, but my dad raved about what a saintly man Fred Rogers was. You can view the full episode here. My dad comes in around the 11:00 mark. Yes, his name is Spider, but that’s a story for another time. 

One final Mister Rogers story: In the earliest years of the show, he employed a local filmmaker fresh out of school to shoot short documentary segments like How Light Bulbs are Made, and Mister Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy. This young filmmaker was George Romero who, in 1968, made the genre-defining micro budget horror film “Night of the Living Dead”. 

Romero always said glowing things about of Fred Rogers and his time working for him. The filmmaker had a reputation for being a wonderful guy himself. After Mr. Rogers saw George's second feature, "Dawn of the Dead", he called Romero to tell him that the film was "a lot of fun".

MOUNT WASHINGTON

Of all the places around Pittsburgh the locals recommended I go, Mount Washington came up the most. This neighborhood sits atop a hill with a killer view of The Point and downtown. 

I rode to the top of the hill in one of the iconic features of Pittsburgh, the Duquesne Incline. Incline trains, or funiculars, consist of two counter-balanced cable cars that carry goods or passengers up and down a steep hill. Probably the best known one in the US is Angel’s Flight in downtown Los Angeles, which has the dubious honor of being the shortest train ride in the world. It travels just 298 feet and climbs 96 feet. The Duquesne Incline, for comparison, travels 794 feet and climbs 400 feet. 

The Duquesne Incline follows the track of a coal hoist that ran as early as 1854. For the kingly sum of $47,000, it was subsequently rebuilt to carry passengers and opened to the public in 1877. It ran until 1962, when it closed in disrepair. In 1963 it was rehabbed by a group called Society for the Preservation of The Duquesne Heights Incline. They have been running it since 1964. 

The entire experience of riding the incline was a throwback to a different era. The tickets cost $2.50 each way - cash only. An ATM stood in the waiting area for those who never carry it anymore.

When the car arrived, I boarded it and we began to lift with a clunking and grinding of gears that vibrated through the wooden car. The other car passed us close on the left at the midpoint of the three minute ride. At the top of the track, we shuddered to a gradual stop with the same grace we had started with. 

If you imagine riding backwards up the first climb of a rickety wooden roller coaster, you can begin to get an idea of what it was like. I simultaneously marveled at the sturdiness of the massive old machinery that ran it, and also braced for the car to vibrate apart at any moment. 

The building at the top housed a small museum and gift shop. Glass windows gave visitors a view of the massive wheels - or guide sheaves - that ran the funicular. 

A short walk uphill from the incline’s top station was a viewpoint with breathtaking views of the city. A massive sculpture, called “Point of View” perched there, depicting George Washington crouched face to face with the Seneca leader Guyasuta. Although Guyasuta initially allied himself with Washington in 1753, he later sided with the British during the Revolutionary War. 

The proximity of the figures to each other and the dour look on Washington’s face is meant to communicate the intensity of the conversation they’re having. To me, his snarl looked like distrust and open contempt, and it struck a questionable chord.

As evening settled in, I went to Monterey Bay Fish Grotto, a fancy seafood restaurant on the top two floors of the Grandview Point Apartment Building, right across the street from the “Point of View” sculpture. I arrived shortly after they opened when the place was still nearly empty. I was given my choice of tables on the bar level, so I took the one in the corner with an unobstructed view of the Pittsburgh skyline. 

That was probably the most spectacular backdrop I have ever had for dinner anywhere. I wish the quality of the food had matched the vista, but unfortunately it was just…okay. 

NEW YEARS 

New Year's Eve was one of my favorite holidays in my 20s and early 30s. As I got older the “amateur hour” aspect of going out on NYE took some of the fun out of it, but I still looked forward to it each year. Apart from it being a holiday that encourages getting drunk and staying up late, I always liked the sense of renewal and hopefulness it has. 

My former partner is a morning person and I’m a night owl. When we moved in together, New Years Eve was not a thing we really celebrated anymore. We’d stay up until 9:00pm, when the ball dropped in New York. Then we’d call it a night and comfort our dog Arya who got completely freaked out by the fireworks people in the neighborhood would light off. 

My first New Years after my separation I spent in a quiet cabin in the woods on Mount Hood, recovering after closing the most complex deal of my career just before Christmas. This year, I wanted to have a "proper" NYE celebration to ring in 2025 and to mark the restart of my trip. On top of that, I had taken a break from drinking since Labor Day, and I was ready to tie one on. 

I checked out the local events calendar. There was a party where DJs were spinning EDM, but it seemed a little low-rent. There was a “Roaring 20’s” party at a speakeasy-style cocktail bar, but I didn’t have the proper attire. Where I ended up was a perfect little dive bar half a block up the hill from my Airbnb called Gooski’s. 

photo credit: Imbibe Magazine

In 2018, Thrillest rated Gooski’s one of the 33 best dive bars in the United States. My favorite spot in Memphis, Earnestine and Hazel’s, also made the list. Thrillist said that Gooski’s was their “pick for the best dive in a city blessed with more of them than most towns twice its size.” Not that anyone at Gooski’s would give a shit…

It was reminiscent of the bars I used to go to in Ithaca when I was a young punk rocker of…ahem…21, but much, much cooler. The outside was a nondescript beige brick building with a plain sign and red door covered in stickers. Through the front door, the cramped vestibule was tagged from floor to ceiling. The carcass of a payphone, circa nineteen ninety-whatever, still hung on the wall. 

Walking into the bar, I was smacked in the face by a wall of cigarette smoke. I didn’t realize you could still do that anymore. The patrons were the finest collection of freaks, musicians, misfits, and weirdos that you will ever meet in one place - I felt instantly at home. 

Behind the bar, a pair of grizzled bartenders poured stiff drinks and served beers from a surprisingly deep selection. They, of course, also had $3.50 tall boys of PBR, Hamms, Montucky, and others for the more budget-conscious customers. A small kitchen in the back served chicken wings and their legendary pierogies, which I didn’t order because the place was mayhem. The plainly stated rules were written on the mirror behind the bar for all to see. 

The bathrooms, whether intentionally or not, were doing their best impression of the legendary 1970’s CBGB bathrooms in New York’s West Village, though the ones at Gooski's were nowhere near that bad:

CBGB Bathroom - photo credit: Riot Fest

In the back room, past a pair of surprisingly well maintained pool tables, was a small stage for bands. That night however, a DJ played a selection of classic punk, industrial, screamo, and metal loud. Very fucking loud. At midnight, everyone paused briefly for a lackluster countdown, then went right back to their shouted conversations. 

I loved it there. In fact, I would put Gooski’s up there on my Mount Rushmore of dive bars. But even if I lived in Pittsburgh I couldn’t go every week. Just like you can’t live on cheeseburgers alone, it's a good thing that you can definitely get too much of.

The next morning, I woke up with a pounding headache, my clothes reeking of smoke. New Year's Day is for college football and nursing hangovers. USC had flamed out that season, so I focused on the hangover. I chased some Advil with a shitty cup of coffee from the Keurig, and went questing for breakfast. 

I am a diner aficionado - I love a greasy spoon. A really good diner, like the late, great Original Pantry in downtown LA, can be divine. The problem with finding one is that you have to kiss a lot of frogs, and a bad diner can be dreadful. I found a well-reviewed spot called Johnny’s Diner across the river and took a drive.

photo credit: Restaurant.com

I don’t know who the 610 crackheads on Google were who gave this place a 4.7 star rating, but Johnny’s was hands down the worst diner I have ever been to. I sat at the counter, which I like to do as a solo diner. The short order cook took up the entire gap between the counter and the griddle, her palpable indifference radiating out in waves. 

An uncomfortably long time later I finally got a cup of dishwater coffee and placed my order - cinnamon raisin french toast with a side of ham steak. What was put in front of me ten minutes later didn’t resemble food. The french toast was somehow both burnt and cold, its half-melted butter plopped awkwardly in a little pile on the plate. The scorched ham had the consistency of a pencil eraser and the flavor of a charcoal briquette - the easy light variety. 

I have been served many questionable meals in my time, and dutifully cleaned my plate. But I just couldn’t with this one. Even if my head hadn’t been pounding like a bass drum and my mouth hadn’t tasted like a minty corpse, I still couldn’t have done it. After just a couple of bites, I paid my bill (at least it was cheap) and left. 

Rather than trying to find another diner, I went to Prantl’s Bakery for their famous burnt almond torte. I didn’t know what to expect, but I figured if The Huffington Post called it “The Greatest Cake America Has Ever Made”, it had to beat Johnny's cinnamon raisin french toast.

Prantl’s is located in an area called “Deutschtown”, a neighborhood with - you guessed it - German roots. Fun fact, the Pennsylvania Dutch were not in fact from The Netherlands, but were so named because they spoke a dialect of German (Deutsch). 

The burnt almond torte is made from layers of airy vanilla cake filled with pastry cream, then covered with more pastry cream and coated with toasted, candied almond slices. I got an individual raspberry almond torte, which had so much sugar I had to eat it in three sittings - and I've got a king size sweet tooth. Damn, I’m drooling as I write this. 

Rather than trying to be human, I decided to walk across town to a local game shop, Mimic’s Market, for a couple of new brushes. The brisk air would clear my head, and I could spend the rest of the day quietly working on a mini. 

The walk ended up being longer and much colder than I had anticipated. It took me across Bloomfield Bridge, which crossed a wide valley with train tracks running along the bottom of it. The valley had created a wind tunnel, blasting me with frigid air that numbed my fingers. By the time I finally got back to my place, I had to thaw out my hands for an hour before I could paint at all. 

Work in progress - before shading and highlights

My final morning in Pittsburgh, I awoke to find the city covered in snow. Hauling all of my stuff back down the dark stairwell and then up the icy hill to my car was a treacherous chore, but I completed it without breaking my ass. 

I had enjoyed Pittsburgh much more than I had expected to. My days had been full and the stop felt worthy of my momentous first week back. I have no idea when my travels might take me back to Western Pennsylvania, but I would be happy to visit the city again - maybe in the summer this time. 

As I pulled out of my parking spot to start the mercifully short drive to Maryland, I noticed that the leftover coffee from Prantl’s I’d left in the car was frozen solid. This seemed like a portentous sign considering the weather forecasts were predicting a nasty winter storm.

Yes, and…

Matt