The Mexican War Streets (Pittsburgh Field Trips)

Despite having grown up in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, I had never been to the Mexican War Streets, a neighborhood on the North Side built around the time of the Mexican-American War in 1848. To get there we had to go through the Fort Pitt tunnel, which opens up to one of the more dramatic views of the city (or any city). We arrived at the Mexican War Streets, where my mother's friend Barb and her relationship partner had lived for many years. The neighborhood has long been riddled with problems associated with urban blight -- decay, crime, unemployment, neglect, drugs, lack of city services, corruption, etc. -- but like many such areas around the country is now being rehabilitated, as more people of means flee the cultural wasteland of suburban America and move back to the city. If the houses of the Mexican War Streets were in Brooklyn, they would already be worth millions of dollars, of course. (And be largely filled with very rich white people, since you can't completely separate issues of class and race in this country.) Downtown is just a twenty minute walk.
Gentrification -- and all the good and bad that process implies -- is slower in Pittsburgh than in Brooklyn, or even Harlem, simply because there aren't as many people in Pittsburgh exerting pressure on the market. Incredibly, there were no double-wide strollers or bearded hipster clones clogging the sidewalks. Like an obnoxious New Yorker, I asked Barb how much a row house in the Mexican War Streets typically lists for, and she said around $400,000 at most, if it was restored, and much less if not. I instantly started plotting ways to sell our house in Washington Heights and relocate to the Mexican War Streets.  This building, which dates to 1872, was once a firehouse and was most recently a pottery studio. We walked to the Garden Theater, an old movie palace that for many decades showed x-rated films, but is now being reconverted into something more palatable. Let's hope they concentrate on showing films by European masters such as Visconti instead of current Hollywood fare, which represents a different kind of indecency. We arrived at Randyland, a compound of buildings purchased many years ago by a local waiter/outsider-artist named Randy, who in the gay tradition has obsessively decorated every inch of his property. The courtyard was filled with swans, lions, and alligators, co-existing peacefully. A group of German tourists relaxed around a glass table. Parrots bathed in the fountain. Randy insisted that he had no training as an artist, which is one of the criteria that defines the market for his work. We were just interested in looking, not buying, however, which he seemed to understand. Like many artists, he was filled with plans to capitalize on his artwork, which was both inspiring (because the art was so enjoyable) and dispiriting (because some of these plans involved Kickstarter). My mother and Barb posed with the artist. We left Randyland and walked along a back alley, past a series of art institutions (The Mattress Factory and City of Asylum) that wisely purchased urban property when it was still affordable. Obviously such things could never exist in, say, Greenwich Village, where each of these houses would now cost ~ $5 million. I wondered if, in the event I'm unable to find a buyer for my second novel, I might consider publishing it on the facade of our Washington Heights townhouse. Or maybe it would be better to do it in the Mexican War Streets. If we could ever figure out how to leave New York, it seemed that Pittsburgh would be a good place to once again call home.