The Magical Rustbelt Tour

Went to the Vagina Monologues yesterday, deftly directed by treesahquiche and performed by a variety of talented folks. I was dying from the night before, when I stayed up just about all night writing my Stalin midterm essay, but I somehow found it in me to stay awake well past three so I could guarantee I'd be late for the psychology study at eight today.

On one hand, I was glad I was awake so early, simply because it allowed me to enjoy so much of the day. We've been enjoying uncannily great weather this week. This time last year, we were suffering through a snowpocalypse, now it is bright and breezy. Our reprieve is only temporary, unfortunately. It's supposed to snow on Tuesday.

I thought I'd take advantage of the gorgeous weather to travel to the Waterfront to pick up some yarn to knit a wedding present for my future stepmother. Getting to the Waterfront is simple. Getting out can be hell. Only one bus that passes through the Waterfront will take you back to Oakland. This bus comes once every hour or so, if it's on time. When it is not on time, you are treated to a tortuous parade of buses headed anywhere but home.

I hate waiting.

Lines don't bother me. A line moves, it's a human progress bar that slowly drains. Being totally at the mercy of someone else's leisure drives me nuts. So I struck a deal with the devil and took a bus that said it was headed downtown, for the sake of momentum. So it was that I wound up on a thirty minute tour of the outskirts of Pittsburgh. It was incredibly depressing. The shores of the Allegheny river are covered in abandoned factories and warehouses, relics of better days when businessmen packed more than one white shirt because the soot that made the sun set at nine in the morning would turn a white shirt grey before lunch.

I took some pictures downtown, but none of them turned out very well because I didn't get to downtown before dusk and the sun had more or less set.




The dark and foreboding building in the back is the Pittsburgh Plate Glass company building. If I ever direct a movie, that is where the bad guy will live.