"I already know what I love about being in Pittsburgh," I explain to people who didn't really ask. "Now I'm going to find out what I hate."
What's the opposite of "riveted?" Unriveted?
I already know the answer, of course. Driving in Pittsburgh makes prison rape look like The Notebook. I didn't actually make it farther than 10 minutes into the Notebook, but given the reverence 20-something women have for that movie, I'm supposing that it's a big, gooey, estrogen-besot, romantic mess.
Though not as big as Boston, Pittsburgh's even harder to navigate. Dead-ends, one-way streets, foothills and rivers cutting you off constantly, and nary a right angle to be found.
Worst of all, the town is GPS-proof. Google Maps, TomTom, Navigon, Apple Maps—all get hopelessly confused. "U-turn! U-turn! U-turn!" they scream as I'm trapped between two concrete barriers. While I was unleashing a withering blast of profanity on my last trip, the Google Maps chick was singing harmony. At any moment, I expected her to shred the little speaker with "THE FUCK IS WITH THIS FUCKING TOWN?!"
There's a redneck quotient in Pittsburgh that I expect to find less than charming. I hear them call into local radio shows, quite possibly already drunk at noon, to twang that some white guy no longer on the team will have a breakout year for the "Stillers."
Which brings us to the Pittsburgh dialect. I find it charming from afar, but the Stillers playing dawn-tawn even doe dey practiss on de souseside uh tawn? Nah, that won't get old.
When I pronounced the nearby town of "DuBois" as doo-bwah, I was corrected. It's doo-BOYZ, don't you know. And when I ordered gnocchi in a bar, everyone laughed. Silly boy, do you mean ga-NOTCH-ie?
Coming from Ahia by way of Wooshington, I will be a stranger in a strange land. I shall make a list of these things for your consumption.