Pittsburgh is the new Portland?

Pittsburgh is the new Portland. That is the news out of the Washington Post this week.  It is pretty exciting to make it onto the “in” list of what’s cool.  It appears, though, that Pittsburghers are taking the acclaim in stride.

One of the things that make it a cool place to live is that the people living here in the burg’ don’t really care much about being cool. We just want to have fun, enjoy the arts & music, and keep our tax assessments low. It doesn’t seem that the added hype is going to change things.

We’ve already made a bunch of great lists and still, we act as though we’d only just won another superbowl.  Sure, I am being smug. But only to make a point: Hipsters and other trend-setters probably don’t care about NFL football because it is so mainstream. So here is a city whose proudest moments are summarized with the phrase “More Lombardi Trophies than you.  How can we be cool?  This is a town that still shuts down for the first day of deer hunting season (killing is out of style but, butchering has made a comeback).  Football and hunting have not been urban-scene hip since the days when George Washington slept here (which is weird because football wasn’t even invented back then).

Pittsburgh is cool because Pittsburghers don’t judge others.  We complain and gripe, but we don’t  judge.

I am glad Pittsburgh has made the “in” list for 2012. It is pretty exciting.  But when it is freezing outside and you are snug as a stinkbug in the house, sauce is cooking on the stove and venison is curing in the basement, it just doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.  Pittsburghers have our list of what’s important, and everyone else has theirs.