Pittsburgh nation explained for Seattle

[PghUSA]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nati...tsburgh29m.html

Pretty well done article, though true to form Mark Madden needs to take a poly sci class before he opens his big mouth on stuff. I like how Pittsburgh is being compared to Seattle with its rivers, hills and economic rebound.

Hope this lets those westcoasters realize what Pittsburgh nation is compared to other fan bases with this piece. A dispora of greats fiercely loyal to their hometown and what it stands for.

[mjcatl2]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nati...tsburgh29m.html

Pretty well done article, though true to form Mark Madden needs to take a poly sci class before he opens his big mouth on stuff. I like how Pittsburgh is being compared to Seattle with its rivers, hills and economic rebound.

Hope this lets those westcoasters realize what Pittsburgh nation is compared to other fan bases with this piece. A dispora of greats fiercely loyal to their hometown and what it stands for.

Here is another fascinating (and fair) piece on both cities by the Seattle Times.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/virgin/257045_virgin26.html

But Pittsburgh can boast what may be the best nighttime entrance to a city anywhere -- emerging from the Fort Pitt Tunnel to see the rivers, the bridges and the city lights of the Golden Triangle.

The corporate roll call in Pittsburgh includes such instantly recognizable names as U.S. Steel, Alcoa, Westinghouse, Heinz, PPG, Mellon and Gulf Oil, every bit the match of Boeing, Weyerhaeuser, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Microsoft, Costco and Amazon.

[PghUSA]

That is why, every bluemoon, a poster states Seattle and Pittsburgh aren't comparable, I wonder about their methods.

That is a great article Mj, but what is really the night-and-day difference between the two cities IMHO seems to be the concentration of hometown pathos for the NFC teams city and the deep and wide pathos and affection worldwide for the Steelers' city, as referenced in the Seattle article trying to explain the masses of black and gold fans everywhere. I was pleasantly surprised when ESPN tried to describe it to a world that may never be able to fully grasp Pittsburgh nation's significance in world affairs.

[Sundodger]

That is why, every bluemoon, a poster states Seattle and Pittsburgh aren't comparable, I wonder about their methods.

No, I said that Pittsburgh is more comparable to Portland than it is Seattle, and that is the truth.

[PghUSA]

This won't be the thread for that discussion . . . suffice to say for the next 10 days the world isn't voting for that statement SunD . . . if it ever did when taking all possible comparables (not just a few standouts).

As far as the topic goes I found these two articles in the PG that might also aide some curious Seattle folks to explain how the Steelers and Pittsburgh are almost one and the same:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06029/645718.stm

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06029/645719.stm

[TheGerbil]

Interesting articles but I think they make it sound like Pittsburgh has recovered less than it actually has. I don't believe this city is "declining." Our economy may be growing slowly but it is growing steadily, every year. The population loss is much smaller than it once was, and more young people are sticking around.

They make it sound like we're still fighting high unemployment, which is not true. I am glad they pointed out some positives about the city but I just wish they would have avoided words like "declining." It puts the wrong image across. I agree that Pittsburgh is in many ways going through what Seattle has gone through, but I think these articles made us sound farther behind in the cycle than we actually are.

I also wish they would not have said "the 320,000 people who live here" because that is grossly misleading. Makes us sound much smaller than we are, since that is just the population of the city proper.

[Death To Johnstown]

Pittsburgh is really a city of about 900,000 (right now), at the very least - about 500,000. Maybe someday geography via consolidation & annexation, will show that.

I'm not sure i'll be alive when that day finally happens, but it should happen...

[Evergrey]

I saw a study recently (can't remember the link, sorry)... that put Pittsburgh in a category of population loss/economic growth cities. By contrast, Cleveland was a population loss/economic loss city.

So despite Pittsburgh's continued population loss... the city and region have rebounded remarkably on the economic front. Wage growth in PGH has been much faster than the national rate in recent years.

[TheGerbil]

I remember that Evergrey. It called Pittsburgh a "wealth city" or something like that. Doesn't sound depressed to me!

If only people knew...

[mjcatl2]

This billboard could have been in Pittsburgh in 1985:

[PghUSA]

Mj, I see your point, fact of the matter though was that billboard WASN'T in the 'burgh in '85. I think more then the economic woes it represented a kind of "can't wait to forget about this place" mentality . . . much different from the loyal dispora of Pittsburgh nation throughout the world right now, some haven't been back for years but like a country forced into economic exile from itself Pittsburghers remain fiercely loyal to an identity almost as if it was a national race. What surprised me is that there are seven Steeler bars in the city of Seattle . . . most folks in them haven't spent more then a week in the 'Burgh since the Reagan administration but would be insulted if anyone inferred they were not true Pittsburghers. That is the type of loyalty that only a few choice nations know of.

[mjcatl2]

I merely was pointing out the similarities between the two cities. It was not a commentary on Pittsburgh.

[PghUSA]

^^Mj thats cool, but again I tend to disagree, you are correct both Seattle and Pittsburgh both went through long periods of decline and outmigration . . . difference is unlike Seattle or Miami (where people couldn't wait to leave and forget), Pittsburgh has SPREAD out with loyalists everywhere. In Orlando there are about a dozen Steeler bars--and this was 2 years ago, theres 7 Pittsburgh bars in Seattle! Go to a season game in Baltimore or New York or San Diego or Dallas and theres a "this is Steelers country" banner. Media day at the SB the Pittsburgh press times--according to ESPN--have standing room only while only a few dozen attend Seattle press conferences. Pittsburgh didn't really shrink, it took over the world in many ways.

[TheGerbil]

(Putting PghUSA's points aside for now, but I do think they are good points).

Yeah, you could say that a billboard like that could have been up in Pittsburgh in 1985. But what bugs me is that some people think it could be here now. And of course that is totally untrue. We are still recovering from the steel industry collapse in a lot of ways. But by no means are we in a decline right now. The storm is over, the rain is drying up. We're just waiting for people to look out their windows and notice.

[mjcatl2]

The Post did a story on Seattle (Feb 3rd) and again, one can help, but think of similarities with Pittsburgh:

(free registration required)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0202167_pf.html

Just as the perennially mediocre Seahawks have stunned legions of local doubters by muscling their way into the National Football League's showcase game, so has this city's economy -- wobbly with a high-tech hangover for half a decade -- startled hometown folks by taking off at a sprint.

Hometown folks taking off? What? However, it's significant to point out, at the end of the day (or decade I should say), Seattle has posted metro gains every decade.

Between 2001 and 2003, 4.5 percent of the city's jobs disappeared, compared with a 1.6 percent decline nationally. Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago, and nearly 15,000 aerospace jobs disappeared. Hundreds of dot-com companies went broke. Office furniture was given away in downtown parking lots.

It goes on to point out that job gains last year were 3.6%, more than double the national rate.

When it comes to the economy, this has always been a streaky town. Residents are accustomed to big booms and bad busts. They even find them amusing, in a stoic, quasi-masochistic kind of way. After Boeing layoffs in the 1970s, a billboard here read "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights?" And booms produce complaints, about traffic, conspicuous consumption and slick-looking interlopers from California.

That billboard sounds familiar... as do some of the nimbyisms.

Anyway, none of this is to pick on Seattle,which the article mentions many of the booming aspects (for example there no available construction cranes due to all of the activity), but to illustrate cities that have similar big industry struggles and issues... and can still grow during even the lean years.