On the other side of Pennsylvania there's Pittsburgh, the first place in which we spent the night. Pittsburgh is a city of which I had few expectations. Nor was it terribly high on my must-see list. At the same time, I have a few very vague and trivial associations with the place that piqued my interest, Andy Warhol being one. That, and that one of my adored art professors--back when I still thought I was going to be an artist--was a fellow student of Warhol's at Carnegie-Mellon, and last I knew, had left SFSU (where I went to school) to return to teach at Carnegie-Mellon. He was an inspiring teacher, one who opened a bunch of doors for me. He--Bryan Rogers--the fabulous and eccentric James Storey, and Steve Wilson (I think), formed the core of the short-lived "Conceptual Design" department in the SFSU art department.

The name is deceptive, as it was almost completely unconcerned with design, and totally concerned with concept, process, execution, and ways of thinking about media (in this case, the potential materials, tools, and devices of art), artmaking, and the presentation of art. Integral to the program were computers. This is where I started getting serious about computers; this was 1985 to 88. The program was absolutely fascinating. It was also some of the hardest work I've ever been expected to do. It was all light years away from your more traditional painting or sculpting departments (I did the painting too; I was going to double major). The work load was enormous, and many of the projects--especially Storey's--thrillingly difficult, almost more akin to mad puzzles than art, but then that was half the point: to force the student to start thinking outside of the traditional confines of "art." Brilliant, life-changing stuff those classes were. The loss of Rogers to Carnegie-Mellon and Storey's retirement were no small factors in my decision to abandon art and pursue literature. Partly I think it was because these guys set the bar so high in terms of rigor and discipline that the rest of art just seemed stupidly wishy-washy, and I wanted that resistance and challenge. Lit seemed to have it; painting didn't.

Funny...reminds me of an old dubious chestnut that nothing makes for a better atheist than a Jesuit education. At least that was the line an old ex-Jesuit friend of my dad's used to give us. So thorough, so rigorous, that you'd end up thinking yourself out of faith. Or something like that.

A n y w a y , Pittsburgh. I was pleasantly surprised. The city is situated in a way unlike most any other city I've seen, ringed on three sides by hills, and sliced into three wedges by the converging rivers. There are also a fair number of pretty, old buildings, and that one Phillip Johnson monstrosity. I'm kind of a sucker for red brick industry in decline though. The problem with Pittsburgh is the forbidding air of depression that's clamped down over the city like a wet towel. Between 1990 and 1995 alone, something like 50,000 people left the city. Property values are absurdly low; commercial and private vacancies are shockingly high. The city owns many of them. The place feels beaten-down.

It's a pity, as it really has potential. With some cleaning up and respectful redevelopment (not the Disney kind of redevelopment), it could become a lively and dynamic place again. But with 350,000 people and falling, it's not looking good.

We stayed with Scott, who is Robert's old friend from back when they were both students at the Culinary Institute in NY state. His house is amazing. It's a huge, three story Edwardian built on the side of a hill, in a quiet neighborhood. Mount Olive I think. He bought it from the city for a fire-sale price and has spent the last few years fixing it up. He's done magnificent work with it, liberally reworking the original design of the house with a lot of contemporary, artistic flourishes. It helps that he's a working artist. It's still a work-in-progress but I do believe it'll be a museum-quality piece of work when it's finished.

I look at it as symbolic of what Pittsburgh could become if, somehow, the city finds the means and economic engine to reinvent itself.

For a city so down at the heels, I did like it. Or maybe it's partly because it is so unpossessed with itself that I like it, with none of the pretension of say Philly, which, in my experience, has an unnerving habit of asserting that it's a far greater city than it actually is. Pittsburgh suffers no such illusion, is what it is, tries to get by, and dreams of a more comfortable future. It's just a decent place fallen on hard times. Kind of like a lot of hard-working Americans today.