My grandfather used to tell a joke about a magazine running a contest where the first prize was an all-expenses-paid week in Pittsburgh --- and the second prize was two weeks. With that kind of baseline, it's nice to see it getting some love from National Geographic and from the Times, though calling Butler Street in Lawrenceville a "design district" may still be a bit of a stretch. (The Coca Cafe is indeed very nice, however.)
The funniest endorsement of Pittsburgh as a travel destination I've read lately is undoubtedly the Washington Post's account of Richard Mellon Scaife's marital troubles. What makes it extra amusing to me is that Scaife and his soon-to-be-ex-wife live in my neighborhood, and I go past his house on my usual running route. (I guessed the "Welcome home, Beauregard" sign was about the dog coming back from the vet's.) While I am, of course, sad that my fellow Shadysiders are having such an ugly divorce, I can't help feeling that it couldn't happen to a nastier wingnut. The role of obscene amounts of inherited money in fostering the whole sordid spectacle is more yet evidence that Andrew Carnegie was on to something when he declared "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."
(Via Kris Klinkner in e-mail, except for the Post story, via Krugman's blog.)
Postcards; The Running-Dogs of Reaction; Heard About Pittsburgh, PA
Posted at November 06, 2007 23:48 | permanent link