Last updated on 2/14/2023
I went, I worked, I saw, I wrote….
Did not have a typical tourist experience there, since I was working all day every day. I’ve always wondered, whenever I vacationed someplace, what it’d be like to actually live there, what the traffic would be like, what places the locals would hang out at, what the little details of daily life would be like.
In most of my summer hangouts, it seems like the locals and the vacationers live separate but parallel lives. No need for me to get up on time or worry about getting the car fixed. No need for them to worry about staying out in the sun too long or how to get halfway across the state to some scenic view. Once in a while we meet at the grocery or the gas station, but otherwise I leave feeling like I haven’t really connected with the place.
Because this was an extended business trip, I got an up close and detailed look at a city I’d never been in. Except for the fact that home was the Holiday Inn, I lived more or less like any other Pittsburgher for a couple of weeks. So I was based in a little place somewhat outside of town… so I ate every SINGLE damn meal out… so I somehow managed to miss the cultural high points (yes, there ARE SOME!)… besides that, I was a local.
We hit all the high spots and the low spots for lunch – Tailgaters, the Frosted Mug, the Whistle Stop Cafe, where the waitress wore an engineer’s cap and a train rumbled by in the middle of lunch. Places where the menu was thumb-tacked on the wall and the server was deliriously rude, and bland mass-produced lunch experiences. I find that I prefer the former.
Dinner, though… that was a different story. Michael A’s, a classic Italian place with a heavy accent. The Creighton Hotel, a little out-of-the-way joint where we took over the dining room for a couple hours. They served us beer in Mason jars. Abate’s, the seafood place where we forced the waitress to listen to our comprehensive dessert reminiscences before we actually ordered any. But she got even and told us some of hers, too. And the ever-popular Bob’s Garage, which I had to turn into a separate post.
Isn’t it weird how much of your life revolves around your stomach? What if you didn’t have to eat at all? How would you spend all the time that you spend now on planning meals, deciding what to order, telling others in nit-picky detail about what you had or regretting something you shouldn’t have eaten?
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