Posted on 04/21/2017 11:00:37 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
> That Literary Club was recently in the news. <
Interesting. I missed that. But I quit the Literary Club even before I moved from Pittsburgh. They had the nerve to ask me for a membership card when I was drinking there one evening (it was at 3 AM, so I guess it was actually one morning).
Anyway, I didn’t have a current membership card. So they threw me out. And so I quit. Not that I belonged in the first place.
My brother belonged to one called the South Hills Republican Club. He was probably the first Republican to set foot in the place since 1928.
“Mount Oliver is being taken over by immigrants from Nepal. They are actually an improvement over the prior residents. At least they all seem to work for a living.”
Yes ... Mt. Oliver is improving thanks to the Nepali. It’s having an effect in places like Arlington and small parts of Carrick as well as parts of Brentwood that started to take a dive.
There is still a TON of improvement to be made though ... I wouldn’t risk any investments there either :-) ... Pittsburgh’s overall population is anywhere from static to down a bit year after year ... what happens is people flock to the trendy areas while other areas rot.
Brentwood (just outside of the city and borders Carrick) seems to be holding steady after a decline from 1990 until roughly 5 years ago ... it seems to be rebounding ... I have no idea why :-).
Getting back to Mt. Oliver ... have you ever seen the old mansions scattered throughout the borough? It is a crying shame what the ghetto-filth have done to them ... we are talking turn of the 20th century GORGEOUS mansions that they reduced to nothing more than vandalized crackhouses.
I used to hang out in Mt. Oliver :-) ... it was always shady, but it started to nosedive in the late 80s and was a total disaster up until recently. It’s a damn shame too ... all of Brownsville Road could be top-of-the-line real estate if the City of Pittsburgh would ever get its act together.
My mom grew up in Carrick ... my grandparents moved out of there in 1980. It used to be one of the nicest neighborhoods in the area ... it is the exact opposite of that now. There are some parts that are still nice, but I wouldn’t advise any family to move there.
When we go out to dinner, Dad's rule is this: I'll buy the first round, but you're on your own after that. Damned if I'll pay $6 or more for Bud Light or other swill. When I'm out, it's Shiner Bock or something similar.
I have no qualms in saying I got spoiled in Germany. I mostly drank Konigsbacher or Bitburger. Didn't matter, wherever I went, the beer was world class.
College prepared me well for Germany. I was the rare American that could hang in there with the natives.
“And if you want to know what Brentwood will be like 10 years from now, look at Carrick today.”
Given Brentwood’s history, I can’t say that is going to hold true overall. People are quite in love with that place for some reason and will defend it to the death. While it has declined, the decline has leveled out.
Also, there’s a good chance you’ll see Brentwood become part of Baldwin/Whitehall sooner rather than later.
I grew up in Brentwood ... I hate what it’s become (never really liked it outside of friends and family prior to that), but there are plenty of signs of life left in that place.
Carrick has gotten ridiculously worse over the past 20 years while Brentwood only got “somewhat” worse. While your friend is certainly right to some degree, I wouldn’t say it’s a 10 year trend ... more like 20 or so if the current path to destruction continues :-).
So, you go with the beer philosophy "more bitter, more better"?
What “MAY” happen is that the highly gentrified (and increasingly unaffordable) South Side may wind it’s way up South 18th. Street and begin to push its way into Mt. Oliver. With some investment that business district along Brownsville could be a hopping place.
At least once a month, I'd have lunch at their restaurant next to the brewery in Koblenz. Had a nice view of the Rhine, food was great (usually jägerschnitzel), and they served bock bier every day.
Your old pal Patty, would have easily carried the cash register AND a barrel of beer all the way home.
I was going to post, "Beer will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no beer."
Then I saw it was light "beer." I've p!ssed fluids that were closer to real beer than is light "beer."
I grew up in Carrick.
You have to be really saddened by what’s happened to it then.
“What “MAY” happen is that the highly gentrified (and increasingly unaffordable) South Side may wind it’s way up South 18th.”
That’ll only happen if Pittsburgh’s population grows. Some people are bailing South Side for East Liberty and Lawrenceville (if you haven’t been in this city for a while, you will NOT recognize those two places ... you wouldn’t believe how much they’ve changed).
It’s a whack-a-mole problem ... you nail one area, restore it, then another “problem” area pops up since people vacate one and move to another with no newbies to fill in the gap.
If they’d do something about the ridiculous school taxes in Allegheny County, I have ZERO doubt that people would move here in a nanosecond. They eat up any potential gain in home market value each year at this point. You have to have some serious love for the city to choose to live there.
On the surface, my house, neighborhood looks pretty much the same.
Never was high-class, just blue-collar, largely Catholic, no Mt. Lebanon.
The city is trying to deliberately relocate the people who are being gentrified out of East Liberty to other city neighborhoods.
I take that as the Democrats running this town don’t want to lose their captive, dependent voter base to places like Wilkinsburg, Braddock or Penn Hills.
But it does create this whack-a-mole decay you describe.
Cledus Snow: [writing a note] "Send bill to Big Enos Burdette; Burdette; B, B-e-r, B-u-r...
(Trans-Am tires squeal off-camera)
"...Hell, I got to go!" (tosses notepad)
I’d pity the fool who’d try to get in his way.
Great lines...classic
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