obligatory obscure reference

[Possibly the first in a series of articles for those thinking about moving to Pittsburgh. This is from the point of view of someone who didn’t grow up here and probably wouldn’t have moved here if it weren’t for family reasons. I’d like to think my view is somewhere between the born-and-raised, love-it-or-leave-it types and than the I’m-stuck-here-in-hell-for-four-years college crowd.]

Over on the Pittsburgh Livejournal there are regular questions from people thinking of moving here wanting to know what live in Pittsburgh is like. I was writing this as a response to one of those but decided to flesh it out a bit and put it here.

It’s true that individual people in Pittsburgh are very nice here. I’ve met some really great people in the year and a half I’ve lived here and the level of kindness they’ve shown reminds me of where I grew up in rural Louisiana.

However, some days about the only thing I can say nice about Pittsburgh is that the people are nice and the houses are cheap. Pittsburgh can be a hostile city in many ways if you’re an outsider, especially if you’re an outsider who wants or needs to rely on public transit.

It’s not an open hostility — you’ll never see a “Welcome to Pittsburgh, please go home!” bumpersticker — it’s simply that Pittsburgh is still suffering from post-steel-collapse diaspora. The folks who stayed don’t seem to be interested in changing things to keep people here, much less attract new people to the region. Simple infrastructure like street signage and public transportation are broken or failing, but people here are so used to the way it’s always been that they don’t realize how bad it’s become. Pittsburgh has great potential as a city but instead of fixing the simple things that make life easier, the city (and county and surrounding towns) spend what little capital they have building sporting stadiums and casinos and ignore the fundamental needs of the city.

If you grew up here, you don’t need the signs and you’re used to the decaying public transit system. If you live outside of a few select neighborhoods, you probably own a car or rarely leave your neighborhood. If you’re new to Pittsburgh, even driving with a map in one hand and a local in the passenger seat won’t keep you from taking the wrong exit or questioning the competence of the people who locate street signs. Sadly, taking public transit isn’t a reliable substitute, as public transit here is “the suck”, as the kids say. I’ve lived in cities with bad public transit (ex: Houston), but in those places it was simply a lack of public transit in the first place or a public transit system designed only to support suburban commuters getting into the city. In Pittsburgh, public transit is a decaying remnant of what once must have been an excellent network of buses and streetcars. Many of the buses are old and in need of repair — some even run without operating toll collection equipment and everybody rides for free on that run.

Public transit here is run at the county level by the Port Authority of Allegheny County, which everyone still calls by its previous name, “PAT”. No, I don’t know why the Port Authority runs public transit here, but they do. On the face of it, having it run at the county level is a good idea, as there are a kerjillion little tiny towns surrounding Pittsburgh that need public transit but can’t afford to operate it on their own.

I don’t know the history of PAT and the Port Authority, but within a few weeks of taking the bus I started to believe that transit here was designed and maintained not only by people who do not take public transit, but people who’ve never taken public transit in any other city on Earth. The recently hired CEO of the Port Authority has transportation experience in other cities, but looking at the bios of the nine board members I can only find one person with any transportation experience or that claims to be an active user of public transportation. That the other eight members — mostly lawyers and accountants — profess no experience nor claim to be an active user of public transportation probably explains a lot of the Port Authority’s current problems.

Making matters worse, the Port Authority’s plan for dealing with budget shortfalls is to eliminate routes, not to cut salaries, to raise rates or to figure out how to convince more people to ride buses and thereby increase revenue. Favoritism and financial problems abound — there was an article in the paper recently about how most of the PAT officials have special passes that let them drive on the bus-only express lanes so they can avoid regular traffic on the parkways. The financial scandals surrounding Port Authority pensions are outrageous and our lack of “Sunshine Laws” make it difficult to find out how bad things really are.

So on the one hand, you have an aging, failing bus system with the people in charge mostly being politicians and lawyers, not transit experts nor users of public transit and who seem to have little personal incentive to improve the transit system. On the other hand, you have a bus system that seems to have been invented in isolation from all other bus systems in the world and that is in need of not just repair, but complete redesign to make it more rider-friendly. (And on the third hand, you have a minority public opinion that considers public transit socialism wanting it to be privatized or self-supporting.)

If you do take the bus here, one of the biggest problems you’ll have adjusting to is the bizarro-world payment system: you pay to get on or to get off depending on the time of day and the direction the bus is headed. How do you know when to pay? Sometimes the bus driver will put their hand over the fare box when you get on, meaning you’ll pay when you get off. You can only get off the rear of certain buses at certain times of the day, so figuring out how to not move to the back of the bus even tho the driver is yelling at you is always fun. Another thing to get used to is that buses with similar names and numbers go to similar parts of the city except when they go to completely different places or take an express route that skips stops.

If you’re from Pittsburgh and you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking, “It’s not hard to understand once you’ve learned it.” Here’s the thing — no other bus system I’ve ever used works this way. Visitors and tourists shouldn’t have to learn some bizarro-world method of using the bus. No one should have to “learn” to use a bus system when they move to or visit a new town. I’ve seen bus drivers yell at people for not paying when it’s pretty clear the person doesn’t speak much English and is having a hard time figuring out what it is they’ve just done wrong. I’ve been yelled at myself a couple of times — I showed my pass when I got on, nobody said anything, so I just hopped off the bus thinking things were fine, when in fact, the bus was operating in “pay off” mode, as it is called.

The schedules and bus routes are kind of confusing at first until you realize that you pretty much need to know the names of neighborhoods to know where the buses actually go. The buses I take are named after the town on the far end of the route, a place I’d never heard of until I started taking the bus. The Port Authority’s online scheduling system is good for figuring out what buses you might want to take, but to plan the details of your trip you’re often better off reading the schedules yourself. You’ll do yourself a huge favor if you go by some place like Carnegie Mellon’s UC and grab one each of all the schedules or navigate the Port Authority web site and download the PDF for each route.

And finally, there are the bus drivers. There is much urban lore about the Port Authority bus drivers, their union, and what’s in their contract. I’ve heard that they make better salaries relative to the local economy than any bus driver in America; that they get one “free” vehicular manslaughter; that they have the highest accident rate in the US; etc etc. It is true that Pittsburgh is a very pro-labor town and that the unions here are still pretty strong, so given what little we do know about financial goings on at the Port Authority, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the average bus driver makes more than the average police officer, nurse or firefighter. (I haven’t been able to find a copy of their contract and would love a copy or a pointer to an online copy.)

As far as I can tell, there’s pretty much no incentive for the drivers to operate the buses on schedule or be kind to passengers. Any kindness is because, as I’ve said before, people in Pittsburgh can be amazingly friendly and kind, even to us newcomers. I’ve met some really great bus drivers who really helped me out when I was lost or got on the wrong bus. One morning I was stuck on the wrong side of a divided four lane as my bus approached and the driver stopped and waited for the light to change so I could catch my bus.

But I’ve also had bus drivers look me in the face, close the door and pull away as I was trying to climb on board. One bus I rely on to get to school has a driver who treats their route like a race and is often 5-10 minutes early on a route that only runs once every 30 minutes or so. All the other drivers on the route keep to the schedule, so I end up going to the stop 10 minutes just in case Lead Foot is behind the wheel. (When it’s 10F outside or raining this is no fun at all, as there’s no shelter at my stop.) Drivers often let their friends ride for free or have long chats on their mobiles while driving in heavy traffic. I’ve complained to the Port Authority, but really, why should they care? There’s simply no incentive for their drivers to provide a good service so to paraphrase Ernestine, “We don’t have to care, we’re the Port Authority.”

Sadly, there’s not much of an alternative to the bus system if you can’t, won’t or simply don’t drive a car. Amazingly enough for a city of this size, there’s nothing like a functioning taxi system. If you want to go out somewhere and come home after midnight, or simply go somewhere there isn’t a bus route, be prepared to drive or have a friend drive you or possibly wait hours on a taxi after you’ve called dispatch. This isn’t San Francisco or New York or Chicago where you can just walk to a busy street corner and hope to catch a taxi. No, you’re going to call dispatch, and you’re going to wait. I was surprised to discover that a couple of people I know have mobile numbers of specific cab drivers that they call when they want a taxi.

It’s possible to get by without a car here in Pittsburgh, but it’s not easy. I know people who manage to live using public transit throughout the year, but I’ve also given plenty of people rides to concerts or other outings that simply aren’t served properly by public transit. If you’re part of a working couple or have roommates you can probably get by with one car if you share shopping trips and whatnot. (If you’re living in the dorms at CMU or Pitt, owning a car will be very difficult due to parking costs, but you won’t have time to drive anywhere anyway.)

So my advice: if you’re thinking of moving to Pittsburgh and living anywhere outside of Squirrel Hill, Oakland or Shadyside, plan on owning or having easy access to a car. Even if you live in one of the aforementioned neighborhoods, you’ll probably end up wanting a car for those times when you want to leave your neighborhood. If you’re looking at a suburb like Mt. Leb or Murraysville and are going to work downtown you’ll probably be well served by the T and the luxury commuter buses (individual, high-backed seats with individual reading lights!) that run to and from the suburbs.

[tags]advice, Pittsburgh, public transit[/tags]

[EDIT: The answer is now a solid, “NO”. There’s no good sake selection that I can find in PGH. As of Spring 2008, the Monroeville store has a lousy selection of sake. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the change in PLCB CEO or if there was a sake expert at that location who has since left.]

… if you count Monroeville as being in Pittsburgh.

Let’s just get one thing out of the way first: the PLCB and state-owned liquor store monopoly needs to be abolished. I’ve never lived in a state where an outdated bureaucracy was allowed to control so much of what the public consumed. The previous CEO of the PLCB seemed to have an idea of how to change things for the better; but thanks to politics he’s been replaced with an inexperienced person who apparently has no desire to improve the PLCB or even continue the previous CEO’s.

Want people to move to Pittsburgh? Fix the PLCB so I don’t have to apologize or explain to visitors why our liquor laws are so insane, why it is so many of us buy wine while we’re out of state, and why I have to buy a full case of beer if I want something out of the ordinary.

So, anyway, sake in Pittsburgh.

If you’ve been to a Japanese restaurant here in Pittsburgh and ordered “sake” off the menu, you had crap. If it had a brand or adjective beside the name, like “nigori sake” or “geikkeikan sake”, you probably payed way, way too much for average sake. If you went to a burger joint and they only listed “beer” on the menu, would you order a “beer”, or would you demand to know what brand it was. If your choices were, “beer $3, Budweiser Beer $5”, would you think “wow, this Budweiser must be the good stuff?” or would you think, “Uh, what?” (The best sushi restaurant in town is BYOB with per-glass charges and no corkage, clearly they understand the situation…)

For those of us who like sake, our choices have been “drink something else” or “BYOB”. Even BYOB is problematic, as most of the PLCB stores don’t carry decent sake. What’s the point in BYOB if what you’re bringing is still crap sake?

I’ve found an exception, however, the Monroeville PLCB store at the Monroeville Mall. It is not perfect — for example, they occasionally have undated bottles of very expensive sake, so there’s no telling if it’s gone off or not and none of their sake is chilled so you have to figure out how to cool it on the way to the restaurant or plan in advance and keep it in the fridge. On the other hand, this location carries a lot of premium brands at prices similar to what you’d pay in the next state over. If you want to try a good daiginjo or a proper nigori, this is the place to go. They don’t stock nama (unpasteurized) sake, but given the shipping/handling requirements and the short shelf life, I’m not at all surprised.

If they don’t have it there, your other option is apparently special order via the PLCB. I haven’t tried this yet, but I’ve heard from some friends that it’s not too difficult with wine, so it shouldn’t be too difficult with sake.

And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, hop over to True Sake and take a look at their Learn section. The owner, Beau, has also written an excellent book on sake that can be appreciated both by the neophyte and the purported expert. Sake is a beverage I think many Americans would enjoy if they had a chance to buy good sake and drink it under the appropriate conditions.

[tags]monopolies,pittsburgh,plcb,sake[/tags]

(Update, 2 Feb 2007. Karma on 8th appears to have gone out of business. Really a shame, it was an excellent restaurant.)

I’ve been to Karma on 8th three times now and thought I should write a few words about it as I liked their food and want to see them thrive.

Karma on 8th is not in the nicest looking neighborhood of Homestead, but the owners have put a lot of effort into fixing up both the inside and outside of the building. They’ve put even more effort into assembling a talented kitchen and wait staff and creating a good environment for having a great dinner.

My favorite dishes are the Boursin Crusted Chicken and the Chicken Marsala. Both have the right balances of seasonings and sides and are reason enough to visit on their own. The pasta specials are creative and equal to the regular dishes if you’re looking for something out of the ordinary. The Caesar Salad and Hummus Platter are both excellent and could easily be a meal on their own if you’re looking for something light. The only let-down has been the Cajun Salmon. It was a bit bland and underwhelming — when I see “Cajun” as an adjective for fish I expect spicy and hot. Given that it’s damned near impossible to get anything other than wings “spicy and hot” in this town, including at Thai restaurants, I can’t really hold this against them.

The service at Karma on 8th is excellent. The wait staff manages to be present when needed without fawning or constantly interrupting with pointless questions. Unlike the bartenders at some of the other restaurants in town, the folks here know that a Martini is made with gin and served up by default and not with vodka and served on the rocks.

If you’re looking for a late evening, there is music and drinks after 10 in the upstairs loft where one can kick back in an overstuffed chair and have a conversation without having to shout or jockey for a bar stool.

One other thing to like about Karma on 8th — the restaurant is completely non-smoking. None of this “we allow smoking at the bar which happens to be right next to the non-smoking tables”, either, there is no smoking allowed inside the building. There are now two places in Pittsburgh (the other being Eleven) where one can go for a drink and not come home smelling like an ashtray.

[tags]Karma on 8th, Pittsburgh, restaurant, review[/tags]

When I hear people talk about Pittsburgh, they will often say how friendly the people are. In the year or so I’ve lived here, I’ve generally found that to be true. Save for being yelled at (in yinzer) by a security guard who thought I was trying to park illegally and who continued to yell at me after I pointed out I was a customer of the parking lot’s owner, individual people have been pretty nice. When I moved to San Francisco, I was surprised to discover that people in a city were nice and personable, and it’s much the same here in Pittsburgh. It’s rare that someone is outright rude to your face here and you’re not a freak of nature if you’re chatty with the person next to you in line outside a concert. Granted, it gets taken to extremes in some cases (like the notorious “Pittsburgh Left”) but pretty much everyone I’ve met here has been kind and helpful on a personal level.

When it comes to business and customer relations things change quite a bit. It’s been my experience that Pittsburgh business owners are often not friendly when it comes to business and customer relations and from what I can tell, that doesn’t seem to bother many people here. (The area is also unfriendly to visitors or newcomers at a systems level, but I’ll save that for a different entry.) I don’t mean that the local governments aren’t interested in having businesses locate here or that they are hostile to business in general, I suspect that local governments very much want businesses to move here and stay. I’m talking about the sort of unfriendliness that results from impolite business behavior and not caring about your customers and even taking their business for granted.

A few examples of what I’ve experienced:

“Special order something I don’t normally stock? Why would I want to do that?”
I am unable to get anyone here in Pittsburgh to sell me a set of Medico locks. I don’t know if it’s because I only want three or if it’s because they have to be special ordered, but none of the locksmiths I’ve talked to have ever followed through on call backs. I’ve visited stores in person and left phone messages stating my clear intent and willingness to pay for the order in advance, but I still can’t find someone who wants to take my money. I had a similar experience trying to order office furniture — the local store was the only authorized distributor, I knew exactly what I wanted, was willing to pay in advance, and yet it took almost a month to simply place an order. If there’s a concern about returned items, it’s trivial to charge a restocking or return fee, or to simply say that no returns are allowed on special orders.

“I decided to take a long holiday on short notice, hope that wasn’t a problem.”
The local Mail Boxes Etc closed down for all of the Thanksgiving weekend without giving what I consider a quite reasonable one week notice. Of course they’ll be closed on Thanksgiving, but closed on Friday and Saturday as well? Many businesses are open Friday (including mine) and many of us work on Saturdays. I use MBE so I can have expensive items shipped overnight and “signature required” and not have to worry about missing the delivery because I was in the shower or out on an errand. When I see that the MBE has signed for something, it’s trivial to run over and pick it up a few minutes later. Right now I have several packages waiting for me, at least one of which I needed for work over this weekend. Had I known the MBE was going to be closed over the holidays, I’d have made other delivery arrangements. (And had I known they did this sort of thing before I rented my box, I’d probably have rented a box from someone else, someone willing to keep reasonable business hours.)

This has also happened with sales reps a couple of times — I’m told I’ll get a quote in the next day or two, then three or four days later I call back to discover that the rep has gone on vacation. Either it’s not worth the bother to get me the quote before they leave or they just take it for granted I’m going to buy from them no matter what.

“Yeah, I can do that.” Weeks pass. “You know, I haven’t gotten around to that yet.”
Business cards are easy, especially when the customer has InDesign/EPS files all ready to go. Yet, somehow, it took me 4+ weeks to get a local shop to make my cards. I could have gone to Minuteman/Kinkos, but I really wanted to support a local shop. I got all sorts of great explanations for why my cards were delayed, but they never came with firm dates or offers of a discount. The only reason I didn’t cancel the order and go somewhere else is that I wanted to see how long it could possibly take someone to print a simple set of business cards.

“Customer Service? We don’t carry that.”
I’ve had several really poor customer interactions with locally owned and operated businesses and I think it’s because customers here have lowered their expectations far below the national norm. Having to repeatedly call a business to find out if they can sell me something is apparently not terribly unusual here, nor is waiting for a sales rep to end their personal conversation and find out how it is they can help me. When I complained to a business owner that their employees trashed the job site and that I spent the better part of an hour cleaning up their garbage (cigarette buts, soda cups, etc), I expected someone would call me back and at least apologize. Sure, they already got my money and I signed off on the work, but does it occur to them that they might want me for a future reference?

Here’s the thing that makes me really cranky about this — before I moved out here I only sat foot in a national store as a last resort. I’m used to crappy customer service from chains and national stores, and excellent customer service from locally owned businesses. I’d always go to local hardware, metal and lumber suppliers before going to Home Depot, Airgas, Graybar, or Grainger. I didn’t mind paying a few percent more if it supported a locally owned and operated business and the service was typically better than I’d get from some place where I was just a customer number. But given the negative experiences I’ve been having with locally owned businesses I’m starting to think I might be happier as a faceless customer account number with a national chain.

This isn’t to say that all my experiences with local businesses have been bad. I’ve had many good experiences with local businesses and trades, but all of the significantly negative experiences have been with locally owned outfits who really don’t seem to care much about getting or keeping my business. It’s gotten to the point where I now assume I’ll deal with a national or regional business when I need something, and that’s not an assumption I like making. When I start buying welding consumables in the near future, I want to support a local business, but I’m ready for the reality that I might be driving past many locally owned shops on my way to Airgas.

So what’s the fix?

I don’t know that there is a “fix” for people being inconsiderate or unfriendly. How do you convince someone to be friendly or professional other than by setting a good example? For my specific problems, there are a few things that might make me feel better, but will those things really improve things for their other customers and businesses? Will complaining to MBE’s corporate office do anything other than piss off the people who own the local franchise? If I call up a business’s owner at home and say, “Hey, I wrote a letter to your company about your employees trashing a job site, why didn’t anyone respond?”, is that really going to accomplish anything? I’ll probably contact Medico and ask them to put me in touch with a locksmith who actually wants to sell me a set of locks, but what if they point me at the people who already don’t want my business? Do I rat them out to Medico or just find a locksmith in a nearby town?

One thing I am considering is letting local businesses know why I’m not dealing with them any longer and instead going with a national chain or mail order. On the chance that the owner is interested in keeping me as a customer they’ll have a chance to fix the situation, or maybe once they see how much money they could have made on a sale they’ll be more attentive to future requests.

I keep hearing people say that Pittsburgh has a lot of potential and a lot of opportunities for new business. I used to think that simply meant real estate and labor were cheap, but now I’m thinking it might also be a polite way of saying something more subtle: “There are a lot of opportunities here because your competition probably isn’t very interested in working to get customers and keep them happy. All you have to do is keep the doors open and treat the customers well and you’ll succeed.”

[tags]business, Pittsburgh[/tags]