America's most livable city according to Forbes Magazine. Pittsburgh has been featured in the top 10 of most livable cities in the United States several times over the past decade. So all you haters can suck it!!!
Pittsburgh.
by Burgh Girl 4 Life February 21, 2011
Get the Pittsburgh mug.one of the worst places in the world. the people are just plain old rude and who ever said that pittsburgh has the friendliest people they are DEAD wrong, its cloudy, the people drive to slow on the roads, the roads are messed up everywhere becuzz there either doing construction on it or there is a million and one potholes. the people are not down to earth well maybe some, the streets are littered with trash and garbage. the nightlife sucks here, there are no young people besides college students, the girls are fat and ugly and the guys are total jerks. and the people also think there all hard and there racist. there is nothing exciting about visting or living here i was born here and i absolutly hate it it seems like it ruined my childhood. this is what i experience everyday with these dumb pittsburgers.
pittsburgh
by chillax66692 May 27, 2010
Get the pittsburgh mug.A junk food, smoker infested, beer guzzling city-town full of edificial eyesores and predominantly cold glum or stale humid weather; where hanging out at McWal*nald's, grimy dive bars and going apeshit over the "Stillers" is the central activity of the majority of the population. Complementing this scene are the various putrid Pittsburgh dialects and accents.
Demographics: Approximately 70% of the "under 50" population is comprised of pasty faced neo-wiggers, "fo real" thugs, and blue collar "hard asses" who all together think they're "Pittsburgh steel tough". Approximately 25% are the back biting corporate office drones, 4% comprise the decent folks who are just trying to make it through the day with as little conflict as possible, and the remaining 1% are like the 4%, except for the fact that knowing they're stuck in Pittsburgh adversely affects their well-being so much that simply meandering through a day without conflict becomes nearly impossible.
Attractions/Activities: nebulous notions that riding "the incline" (an escalator on a hillside) and going to the Carnegie museums, Mattress Factory and The Warhol are somehow fun activities to routinely engage in. And when available: taking in a Steelers, Pirates or Penguins game - to each their own. That's all I have to say about that.
Housing: Cheap, and that's exactly what you get. Utilities and taxes are by no means cheap. In fact, Pittsburgh is at the heart of the taxbelt. You want quality housing, it's going to cost - just like anywhere else. Pittsburgh is lauded for it's cheap housing simply because it has so many cheap (construction) homes.
Economy: Pittsburgh's a great place to get a job if you know somebody or if you're overqualified and willing to settle for work that pays less than what you deserve. The only fields where one can find a job: IT, Mechanical Engineering (as Westinghouse and Bechtel are the largest employers of engineers), Healthcare, and the corporate cubicle fields of Administration, Finance and Sales. Everyone with degrees/education outside of those fields has to contend with minimum wage blue collar, customer service or sales/customer service jobs.
Roads: Scatter brained, ill conceived construction and always under construction somewhere in the city and outlying suburbs. Getting from point A to point B is about as efficient and painless as having a root canal - in pieces.
Culture: aside from the opening statement and the aforementioned tourist and demographic info, their really is nothing else noteworthy about Pittsburgh (IMO). So what you have are Pittsburgh lovers who happen to be business owners that have ventured outside Pittsburgh (and liked what they saw) and try to cash in on it, by adopting, whatever it is they thought was "cool", to here in the form of a themed restaurant or a night club.
And speaking of night clubs, having visited a number of them in "the 'burgh" and other states as well, I can honestly say that Pittsburgh has, without a doubt, the largest population of wannabes and "me too!!" 's in the country. Looking at my posted "under 50 demographic" leaves little wonder as to why.
The only redeeming thing about Pittsburgh is the fact that UPMC has some world class research facilities and Children's Hospital is among the best in the country. However, neither of those factors necessarily translate as the "essence of Pittsburgh". They just happen to be in Pittsburgh.
So to all you Pittsburgh lovers: enjoy it, love it, bleed it - because you are the embodiment of the city. Just continue to stay where you are though, because you have no business spreading your "Pittsburghese" elsewhere.
Demographics: Approximately 70% of the "under 50" population is comprised of pasty faced neo-wiggers, "fo real" thugs, and blue collar "hard asses" who all together think they're "Pittsburgh steel tough". Approximately 25% are the back biting corporate office drones, 4% comprise the decent folks who are just trying to make it through the day with as little conflict as possible, and the remaining 1% are like the 4%, except for the fact that knowing they're stuck in Pittsburgh adversely affects their well-being so much that simply meandering through a day without conflict becomes nearly impossible.
Attractions/Activities: nebulous notions that riding "the incline" (an escalator on a hillside) and going to the Carnegie museums, Mattress Factory and The Warhol are somehow fun activities to routinely engage in. And when available: taking in a Steelers, Pirates or Penguins game - to each their own. That's all I have to say about that.
Housing: Cheap, and that's exactly what you get. Utilities and taxes are by no means cheap. In fact, Pittsburgh is at the heart of the taxbelt. You want quality housing, it's going to cost - just like anywhere else. Pittsburgh is lauded for it's cheap housing simply because it has so many cheap (construction) homes.
Economy: Pittsburgh's a great place to get a job if you know somebody or if you're overqualified and willing to settle for work that pays less than what you deserve. The only fields where one can find a job: IT, Mechanical Engineering (as Westinghouse and Bechtel are the largest employers of engineers), Healthcare, and the corporate cubicle fields of Administration, Finance and Sales. Everyone with degrees/education outside of those fields has to contend with minimum wage blue collar, customer service or sales/customer service jobs.
Roads: Scatter brained, ill conceived construction and always under construction somewhere in the city and outlying suburbs. Getting from point A to point B is about as efficient and painless as having a root canal - in pieces.
Culture: aside from the opening statement and the aforementioned tourist and demographic info, their really is nothing else noteworthy about Pittsburgh (IMO). So what you have are Pittsburgh lovers who happen to be business owners that have ventured outside Pittsburgh (and liked what they saw) and try to cash in on it, by adopting, whatever it is they thought was "cool", to here in the form of a themed restaurant or a night club.
And speaking of night clubs, having visited a number of them in "the 'burgh" and other states as well, I can honestly say that Pittsburgh has, without a doubt, the largest population of wannabes and "me too!!" 's in the country. Looking at my posted "under 50 demographic" leaves little wonder as to why.
The only redeeming thing about Pittsburgh is the fact that UPMC has some world class research facilities and Children's Hospital is among the best in the country. However, neither of those factors necessarily translate as the "essence of Pittsburgh". They just happen to be in Pittsburgh.
So to all you Pittsburgh lovers: enjoy it, love it, bleed it - because you are the embodiment of the city. Just continue to stay where you are though, because you have no business spreading your "Pittsburghese" elsewhere.
by Krakken January 15, 2008
Get the pittsburgh mug.Overall, Pittsburgh is a gloomy, depressing place to live thanks to its glum weather and sense of overall decline. On most days, you will find a gloomy, overcast sky overlooking rusty bridges, grimy roads and tired old buildings that have not been maintained since 1787.
It takes about three months or more to learn how to navigate the highly confusing road network, which appears to have been constructed crudely out of bits and pieces of streets built at random. It was apparently one of the first attempts to build a road network and so every possible mistake was made here.
Almost all roads are two lanes (one on each side) and so a single sluggish dumptruck can ruin your afternoon.
On the other hand, driving the winding roads can be a joy in any kind of sporty car because they are so challenging. Until you meet that dump truck, anyway. Strangely, again, most residents don't take advantage of the driving fun; most of them drive brand new pickups or rusted out old American cars.
People really do use "Pittsburghese", an ugly, ungrammatical dialect that has invented phrases like "The car needs fixed" and "Yinz". Yes, unlike some of the entries I have read, these really are used. I have heard them many, many times, unfortunately.
Even though the road network is horrible, public transport is worse, with an expensive and sluggish system. However, if you're a student or college faculty member, you can ride it for free.
A house that would sell in Los Angeles for $500,000 could be found in Pittsburgh for about $150,000. But don't be too cheerful about it; few homes in Pittsburgh are as nice to live in as even a humble Los Angeles tract home. Houses are badly designed to let as little light or view in as humanly possible. Most people close their curtains tightly against any sign of light and so artificial light is heavily used even during the day. This is thanks to a tight-knit social environment that features snoopy neighbors.
There are nice architectural details in many of the old houses, but unfortunately they are not designed with any sensitivity to light, the site or views. So you might have a magnificent hillside with tons of houses, but none of them take any advantage of views or natural beauty. For the most part, the only views will be of someone else's living room -- or, to be more precise, their living room blinds.
Real estate taxes are extremely high - in fact, that $500,000 house in LA will have significantly cheaper taxes than your $150,000 house in Pittsburgh. This and the cost of heating oil during the winter goes a long way to make those housing costs look much closer than you might think.
It may seem promising that the city is on the water, but it's a grimy, ugly waterfront that consists mainly of rusted-out steel mills and decaying industrial plants. Due to the frequent flooding and all that old creaky industry that was on the water, there's very little housing on the water or even with a view of the water.
If you have good personal relationships and connections, you can go far, and the business environment is relatively undemanding - even highly mediocre, if not downright awful stores and restaurants can thrive.
I was finally able to find a few decent restaurants, but most of best ones are the chains like Bravo and P F Chang's. I can highly recommend Pan Asia on Route 51, Cambod-ican on the Southside, and Thai me up, also on the Southside. Most of the other places I have tried have been terrible. Let's just say that this place is a poor restaurant town compared to pretty much anywhere else in the US and leave it at that.
For groceries, Giant Eagle's Market District is actually pretty nice, much to my surprise. Most Giant Eagles offer mediocre food at high prices, so I routinely make the lengthly trek to my closest Market District, where I can get better food at the same prices. There are a whopping two of these stores in the entire Pittsburgh urban area. There is one Whole Foods Market, close to Downtown Pittsburgh.
Otherwise, Giant Eagle is bad, Foodland is worse, and Wal*Mart pretty much rules by comparison. It's pretty darn sad to live in a place where Wal*Mart rules.
On the upside, this is a very honest place. If your car has a broken lock, and you have to leave your key in the ignition you need not fear; it will be there when you come back. I have left my laptop computer on a chair in the bookstore, only to see it there when I returned for it in a panic half an hour later.
Otherwise, I haven't found the people to be particularly impressive. This is a clannish town that feels suspicious of strangers. In fact, people often will stay in their native clan areas and not go elsewhere. There are many people who live in the South Side, for example, who will not visit the North Side or Downtown or anywhere else no matter what. The horrendous road network (see above) does not encourage exploration or leaving areas that you are comfortable with.
If you want people who are "honest" and "genuine", I suppose this isn't bad. But if you like people who are adventurous and love innovation and new things, you will not like it here at all. If you want people to seek out great places to eat or wonderful experiences, you'll find people here just don't care; they would rather go to the places they have been to hundreds of times before -- even if those places are abysmal in every way.
Most people here are sports fans. The Steelers are definitely an addiction here, since they are just about the only world-class institution the city has to offer. Even I, the #1 non-sports fan, have caught myself caring about whether the Steelers win just because so much of the city's mood depends on it.
So, in summary, a gloomy, depressing place that's losing population and gets just a little poorer and a little grimmer every day. A cheap cost of living doesn't help when you feel that your life is seeping out of you every passing day. Living here is empathetically not recommended, no matter how cheap it is.
It takes about three months or more to learn how to navigate the highly confusing road network, which appears to have been constructed crudely out of bits and pieces of streets built at random. It was apparently one of the first attempts to build a road network and so every possible mistake was made here.
Almost all roads are two lanes (one on each side) and so a single sluggish dumptruck can ruin your afternoon.
On the other hand, driving the winding roads can be a joy in any kind of sporty car because they are so challenging. Until you meet that dump truck, anyway. Strangely, again, most residents don't take advantage of the driving fun; most of them drive brand new pickups or rusted out old American cars.
People really do use "Pittsburghese", an ugly, ungrammatical dialect that has invented phrases like "The car needs fixed" and "Yinz". Yes, unlike some of the entries I have read, these really are used. I have heard them many, many times, unfortunately.
Even though the road network is horrible, public transport is worse, with an expensive and sluggish system. However, if you're a student or college faculty member, you can ride it for free.
A house that would sell in Los Angeles for $500,000 could be found in Pittsburgh for about $150,000. But don't be too cheerful about it; few homes in Pittsburgh are as nice to live in as even a humble Los Angeles tract home. Houses are badly designed to let as little light or view in as humanly possible. Most people close their curtains tightly against any sign of light and so artificial light is heavily used even during the day. This is thanks to a tight-knit social environment that features snoopy neighbors.
There are nice architectural details in many of the old houses, but unfortunately they are not designed with any sensitivity to light, the site or views. So you might have a magnificent hillside with tons of houses, but none of them take any advantage of views or natural beauty. For the most part, the only views will be of someone else's living room -- or, to be more precise, their living room blinds.
Real estate taxes are extremely high - in fact, that $500,000 house in LA will have significantly cheaper taxes than your $150,000 house in Pittsburgh. This and the cost of heating oil during the winter goes a long way to make those housing costs look much closer than you might think.
It may seem promising that the city is on the water, but it's a grimy, ugly waterfront that consists mainly of rusted-out steel mills and decaying industrial plants. Due to the frequent flooding and all that old creaky industry that was on the water, there's very little housing on the water or even with a view of the water.
If you have good personal relationships and connections, you can go far, and the business environment is relatively undemanding - even highly mediocre, if not downright awful stores and restaurants can thrive.
I was finally able to find a few decent restaurants, but most of best ones are the chains like Bravo and P F Chang's. I can highly recommend Pan Asia on Route 51, Cambod-ican on the Southside, and Thai me up, also on the Southside. Most of the other places I have tried have been terrible. Let's just say that this place is a poor restaurant town compared to pretty much anywhere else in the US and leave it at that.
For groceries, Giant Eagle's Market District is actually pretty nice, much to my surprise. Most Giant Eagles offer mediocre food at high prices, so I routinely make the lengthly trek to my closest Market District, where I can get better food at the same prices. There are a whopping two of these stores in the entire Pittsburgh urban area. There is one Whole Foods Market, close to Downtown Pittsburgh.
Otherwise, Giant Eagle is bad, Foodland is worse, and Wal*Mart pretty much rules by comparison. It's pretty darn sad to live in a place where Wal*Mart rules.
On the upside, this is a very honest place. If your car has a broken lock, and you have to leave your key in the ignition you need not fear; it will be there when you come back. I have left my laptop computer on a chair in the bookstore, only to see it there when I returned for it in a panic half an hour later.
Otherwise, I haven't found the people to be particularly impressive. This is a clannish town that feels suspicious of strangers. In fact, people often will stay in their native clan areas and not go elsewhere. There are many people who live in the South Side, for example, who will not visit the North Side or Downtown or anywhere else no matter what. The horrendous road network (see above) does not encourage exploration or leaving areas that you are comfortable with.
If you want people who are "honest" and "genuine", I suppose this isn't bad. But if you like people who are adventurous and love innovation and new things, you will not like it here at all. If you want people to seek out great places to eat or wonderful experiences, you'll find people here just don't care; they would rather go to the places they have been to hundreds of times before -- even if those places are abysmal in every way.
Most people here are sports fans. The Steelers are definitely an addiction here, since they are just about the only world-class institution the city has to offer. Even I, the #1 non-sports fan, have caught myself caring about whether the Steelers win just because so much of the city's mood depends on it.
So, in summary, a gloomy, depressing place that's losing population and gets just a little poorer and a little grimmer every day. A cheap cost of living doesn't help when you feel that your life is seeping out of you every passing day. Living here is empathetically not recommended, no matter how cheap it is.
by David H Dennis December 14, 2008
Get the pittsburgh mug.A stupid, ugly, smelly, run-down, depressing city in western PA. The only people who think pittsburgh is cool are people who have never traveled out of the greater alleganey county area, or are from a place much more boring (like delaware)
I meet some dip wads who think pittsburgh is the greatest place on earth. I asked where they were from and they said delaware.
by ifky302 January 5, 2008
Get the pittsburgh mug.a horrible city in south western pa.the people think they are all cool, but they are dumb...... they use random words that don't make any sense and think they are the most getto place in the world. they are also pussies they also think ignorant means rude, ignorant means dumb / unknowing
pittsburgh slang: yins (you all) gumband (rubber band) ride (drive: will you ride me up the hill?) red (clean) sweeper (vacume cleaner)
by nightshad3 December 27, 2010
Get the Pittsburgh mug.A crappy old city located between some dirty rivers (which often have cars or bodies in them). Pissburgh basically is full of rednecks (ever hear the saying "Pennsylvania: Philadelphia on one side, Alabama on the other"). Pissburgh is full of racists too. Everyone in the city claims to have such huge pride in their city but they don't. That is why Iron City went out of business (because everyone is cheap and just drinks Miller Lite, which is a hypocricy in itself because everyone is racist and Miller Lite donates to the Negro College Fund). That is also why the Penguins might leave town (Pissburghers don't like hockey too much becaues it is too complicated of a sport to get drunk and watch, and also cause the Penguins never play defense). Pissburgh claims to be a big drinking town but in reality no one here can handle their liquor, which is why Pissburgh is one of the leading DUI cities in the country. Pissburgh has no good job opportunities. Pissburgh claims to have their own language (yinz, n'at) but in reality NOBODY TALKS LIKE THAT except when they do it on purpose. Pissburghers want to have their own identity SO MUCH but whether they like it or not Pissburgh is a below average run of the mill city. For example, people think when you get a sandwich with french fries on it that is called ordering it "Pittsburgh style" but in reality NOBODY who doesn't live in Pittsburgh has ever heard of that. Pissburgh was rated one of the worst cities for singles, and it certainly is. All the girls are ugly and all the guys are uneducated rednecks. Pissburgh's number one radio station is KISS FM, which is basically a bunch of retards singing over the music while it plays. During winter Pissburgh's roads are the worst, because there are about 2 salt trucks that drive around when they feel like it. Pissburgh is full of hypocrits. They blast Barry Bonds for using steroids every chance they get, but when the true subject that the Steelers used steroids in the 70s comes up, they turn their heads. Basically, Pissburgh is a second rate city full of idiots who wish they had their own culture and language but they simply do not.
by Bill Coward July 31, 2008
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