Living in the Strip District (Philadelphia, Erie: house, move to, residential)

[Blackbeauty212]

BrianTH - I completely agree that in a couple of years, once Central E Liberty is brought back to its full potental it will be Pittsburghs true version of the East Village....

like how Carson st is to the to bar/nightlife scene....Penn Ave will be the same in a few years...The Arts corridor will be all the way up and down Penn Ave into E Liberty.

Right now E Liberty is a work in progress and its wonderful to see the transition.

[gaelgirl]

Originally Posted by Blackbeauty212

BrianTH - I completely agree that in a couple of years, once Central E Liberty is brought back to its full potental it will be Pittsburghs true version of the East Village....

like how Carson st is to the to bar/nightlife scene....Penn Ave will be the same in a few years...The Arts corridor will be all the way up and down Penn Ave into E Liberty.

Right now E Liberty is a work in progress and its wonderful to see the transition.

Great post. And so true. It's really exciting.

To the OP, they are developing the strip district. There are some really nice lofts there and expensive, too.

[BrianTH]

And in turn I agree it is quite exciting to see East Liberty redeveloping--some terrible mistakes were made in the past, but they are slowly being undone and hopefully East Liberty is now returing to its rightful place as Pittsburgh's "second downtown" (well, maybe third now, after Downtown and Oakland).

Edit: By the way, I was just recently reading about the plans to open a Hotel Indigo in East Liberty:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09024/943328-460.stm

As explained in that article, this a boutique hotel chain which specifically opens only in urban areas where hip restaurants and shopping are nearby. That is quite the endorsement of the new East Liberty. They've also gotten a grant to get a LEED Silver Certification (following up a LEED Gold for Eastside):

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_619670.html

And there is so much more in the works--as much as has already been done, in a couple more years I think people are really going to be astonished with East Liberty.

[Tiger Beer]

I guess what I remember most of East Village (1998-2000 for me) was that it was just ethnic restaurant after different ethnic restaurant...and your bars imbetween them...just lined up and down the streets...and then walk into Union Square during the daytime to the bookstores, movie theater, etc.

But mostly I haunted those bars and restaurants all weekend every weekend...all night long I guess now that I'm older, I'd just be haunting all of the many different ethnic restaurants - so varied in the East Village when I lived there.

Sounds like Friendship/Garfield/E.Liberty might be more of an earlier 'East Village' time? Since I was there in 1998...the wave of gentrification probably already hit. And yeah, it was completely unaffordable, and not able to live anywhere near there. But being that NYC subways were 24 hours, it was easy to just be there anyways without living there.

I guess I was thinking that Pittsburgh might have a strong equivalent...I guess thinking of many ethnic restaurants all over the place (although actually, that probably applies to most of NYC).

[Blackbeauty212]

Ethinc Resturants can be had all over Pittsburgh...They're not all in one location that true...but they're there...Try Oakland/South Side/L'ville/Shadyside/Sq Hill all have tons of Resturants.

E. Liberty is still very much in the Gentrifying stages, but it is progressing.....Penn Ave Arts Corridor is already ecompassing a 20 block area, once it spreads to E Liberty few blocks down Penn it'll truly unmatched.

Shadyside already has a Very Village feel to it in the parts that Border E. Liberty, and that is already spilling over into E. Liberty...So you have the Arts coming from one end, and the Trendy/Hip coming from the other end, when those two meet...You will a completely revitalized Nabe. To live in Central E. Liberty will cost a premium to say the least.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to add the East Village has two of my favorite beer places in NYC (McSorley's and Burp Castle), and Friendship has one of my favorite beer places in Pittsburgh (The Sharp Edge, which like Burp Castle features Belgians). On reflection, I'd also note that given the growing restaurant and bar scene in East Liberty (including some ethnic restaurants and a hipster bar, Kelly's), if you put Friendship, Garfield, and East Liberty together you would get something even closer to the East Village.

I don't know why this is such a source of irritation for me, but it is: while the flagship Sharp Edge bills itself as being in Friendship, it's actually in East Liberty. It makes it seem like they're ashamed to be a part of their own neighborhood. I guess they didn't want to scare potential customers away or something; they started doing this long ago back when nobody wanted any part of any section of East Liberty. But I still wish they'd embrace the neighborhood they're in instead of claiming to be in one they're not, especially with the improvements that have been made in the southern part of East Liberty lately.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Tiger Beer

I guess what I remember most of East Village (1998-2000 for me) was that it was just ethnic restaurant after different ethnic restaurant...and your bars imbetween them...just lined up and down the streets...and then walk into Union Square during the daytime to the bookstores, movie theater, etc. . . . I guess I was thinking that Pittsburgh might have a strong equivalent...I guess thinking of many ethnic restaurants all over the place (although actually, that probably applies to most of NYC).

Yeah, we don't quite have something like that (yet), although probably Squirrel Hill has the most concentrated collection of ethnic restaurants at this time.

Sounds like Friendship/Garfield/E.Liberty might be more of an earlier 'East Village' time? Since I was there in 1998...the wave of gentrification probably already hit.

I was most familiar with the East Village from 1993 to around 1996 or so (starting at which point my former college friends were basically driven out of Manhattan and into Brooklyn). It was definitely rougher around the edges back then (and Alphabet City was considered quite rough indeed). But particularly in and around St. Mark's Place, it was still a very fun neighborhood, and I really see the Penn Avenue/East Liberty scene heading in that direction. Anyway, that era is what I had in mind when making this comparison.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Drover

I don't know why this is such a source of irritation for me, but it is: while the flagship Sharp Edge bills itself as being in Friendship, it's actually in East Liberty.

This is actually a matter of some dispute. The "official" borders of Friendship (meaning per the "official" Pittsburgh neighborhood maps) make it seem quite small, including just the blocks between Negley and Graham. But in the entire time I have been in Pittsburgh, the conventional definition of Friendship among the locals has been much bigger, including everything out to about Gross Street and, most relevantly to this discussion, the handful of blocks east of Negley short of Penn Circle where The Sharp Edge is located.

Defined in the latter way, Friendship takes up a small chunk of what is "officially" East Liberty and a larger chunk of what is "officially" Bloomfield. But as I heard the story, the only reason the "official" definition of Friendship is so narrow is that the Census Tracts in the area didn't line up with the conventional local definitions, but Pittsburgh defines the "official" neighborhoods along Census Tract lines. And it is certainly true that the "official" Friendship is just one local Census Tract (#807 if you are curious).

Personally, I am more than happy to keep using the conventional local definition of Friendship and to more or less ignore the "official" definition. My basic argument would be that if you are actually in the area, it is quite clear the conventional local definition lines up with a collection of blocks that were developed in a similar way and today continue to form a cohesive community, whereas chopping it up in the way defined by the Census and the "official" map makes no intuitive sense.

[Drover]

I've heard about the "colloquial" version of Frienship extending to Gross Street, or even as far west as Mathilda by some accounts. I never heard about it extending east of Negley, much less all the way to Penn Circle. I have a hard time accepting that a street located one block from Penn Circle -- for better or worse, basically the heart of East Liberty -- is part of Friendship, colloquial definition or otherwise.

[Blackbeauty212]

Its always been in my book, that once you cross Negley going East, you are in E Liberty. Negley is the hard line all the way from Centre to Stanton ave