How would you compare Pittsburgh to Portland OR? (York, McKeesport: violent crime, houses)

[MeinGlanzendMotorrad]

I'll take urban decay over hippie infections.

[gg]

Originally Posted by MeinGlanzendMotorrad

I'll take urban decay over hippie infections.

One thing about huge generalizations as they prove to be wrong most of the time. These are some silly one liners you like to type in to stir the pot. The only thing I get from them... well lets just say is,... your personality.

[Faer]

Originally Posted by happywithbraddock

rosie74, please understand I was responding to a person in Oregon. You've never noticed the black film/soot because you've lived here your whole life. To someone from Oregon, that black film/soot/dust is very noticeable and, for some, a deal-breaker.

It is very noticeable to an outsider. I mean c'mon, have you ever looked at the pillars to the former Wabash bridge? They are solid black. A lot of old churches too. The soot will eventually be the last standing legacy of the city's great industrial past. I am half convinced people don't clean it off because they don't want to wash away the character. About half the time I agree with them.

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by Gnutella

The soot that's on buildings is just residual pollution from factories that existed a long time ago. Depending on the building material, it's harder to clean off some buildings than others. As for particulate matter and acid rain, Pittsburgh gets it for the same reason that it's cloudier than the average city: orographic lifting. Particulate matter doesn't have to be locally sourced. In reality, much of it comes from cities to the west. Basically, all the crap that Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago and St. Louis put into the air blows in and rains out over Pittsburgh, and even if Pittsburgh produced zero particulate matter of its own, it'd barely put a dent in the amount of particulate matter or the acidity of the rain in the area. There's really nothing that can be done about this; it's just an unfortunate geographic circumstance.

Speaking of which. I saw some maps of the nuclear fallout from Nevada nuclear testing in the 1950s...for whatever reason, most of the fallout ended up around the Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania area.

Don't know why...is it just the way the rains hover across the flat lands, and then everything that didn't get dumped before, ends up on Pittsburgh?

[Craziaskowboi]

Originally Posted by Tiger Beer

Speaking of which. I saw some maps of the nuclear fallout from Nevada nuclear testing in the 1950s...for whatever reason, most of the fallout ended up around the Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania area.

Don't know why...is it just the way the rains hover across the flat lands, and then everything that didn't get dumped before, ends up on Pittsburgh?

Pittsburgh is on the windward side of the Appalachian Mountains, so there's orographic lifting that effectively squeezes out the atmosphere. You'll notice that Philadelphia is sunnier, drier and and warmer than Pittsburgh. There's a reason for that.

[rosie74]

Gee, thanks for enlightening me on the salt issue. And to think that all these years I believed salt was great for my car. I was just trying to point out that salt is used to de-ice the roads, both on the east coast and in the midwest. The PNW doesn't use salt because, well, it doesn't snow so much here. If it did, Seattle would use salt or other de-icers, otherwise no one would be able to leave the house. It snowed here in November and I had trouble driving in an inch of snow which wouldn't even register in Pittsburgh. People were taking their lives into their own hands on the interstate.

I'm trying to give the OP a realistic vision of the city, not try to make him or her believe that Pittsburgh is full of salt, soot, ash, and acid rain (which it isn't). And by the way, I haven't lived in Pittsburgh my whole life. I live in Seattle, via DC, NY, CT, and a completely different region of PA. My family is from the Pittsburgh area however, and I lived there for years.

A lot of the industrial aspect of Pittsburgh, like the Wabash Bridge or the smokestacks at the Waterfront (an outdoor mall), is preserved deliberately. The same goes for old churches being used for nightclubs, apartments, what-have-you. It is a way of utilizing what is already there and bringing it into the modern age as opposed to just tearing things down, kind of an architectural recycling.

[MeinGlanzendMotorrad]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

One thing about huge generalizations as they prove to be wrong most of the time. These are some silly one liners you like to type in to stir the pot. The only thing I get from them... well lets just say is,... your personality.

I assure you that there is and has been zero insincerity about anything I say. I mean every word unless it is an obvious joke.

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by rosie74

Gee, thanks for enlightening me on the salt issue. And to think that all these years I believed salt was great for my car. I was just trying to point out that salt is used to de-ice the roads, both on the east coast and in the midwest. The PNW doesn't use salt because, well, it doesn't snow so much here. If it did, Seattle would use salt or other de-icers, otherwise no one would be able to leave the house.

Seattle seems to get a few more snowstorms than Portland. Then you go east of the Cascades, and the roads are covered with snow and ice everywhere, but still no salt.

They throw gravel on them. So, the equipment is there, they just choose not to use salt.

They are so hyper-aware of those types of things. I mean, the wear and tear on vehicles, and roads, etc. Plus, I'd imagine salt eats away at soil and trees and other things that a PNW type of person is probably ulta-aware of, that the rest of the US may not be.

[raubre]

Add another 13" of snow to the amount I posted earlier.We just got dumped on in a 24 hour time frame.

[MeinGlanzendMotorrad]

I bought a 2000 Jeep Cherokee in 2007. It spent the entirety of its life up to that point in southern California.

It was SPOTLESS. Not a hint of rust anywhere on it.

Fast forward to now, three years and three months of being in Pennsylvania and it looks like it spent a decade in a salt mine, even with constant care.