I have decided for my blog post this week to review one of my fellow classmate’s blogs called “A Newcomers Guide to Pittsburgh” (corynewberry.wordpress.com). I specifically am going to review on his most recent post “The Bad, Ugly, and the Worse”. I personally found this blog rather interesting because I understand where he is coming from. I have lived in the Oakland neighborhood on two different occasions for about 2 years total and I would have to say that if you’re living in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh you are really going to have nothing too good to say about the area. The way I see Pittsburgh is there are various different neighborhoods and each neighborhood I feel caters to different types of people (if you don’t believe me take a look at my current blog and you will understand). I had recently moved out of the neighborhood about a week ago and I must say that it was one of the best decisions I had ever made. Oakland in the daytime is a great neighborhood with all the hospitals, tons of amazing food, and the sprawling student life at every turn, but when night falls it becomes a whole other territory.
Oakland aside I know the same sort of stuff happens in the Northside and other various spots within the city, I believe the way Pittsburgh is laid out does not help because it’s so tightly packed that it’s easy for a beggar to travel quickly to various places and set up shop and hustle unsuspecting people into paying them money, that being said I still think this happens only in select areas. My advice, though it does feel really hard sometimes to do because if you’re anything like me you can’t help but feel bad for the people asking you for money, is to completely ignore them, I know this sounds terrible but in my experience I have also been scammed out of money too many times to be fooled again. By all means if you believe that the person begging needs the money more than you do than you have free will in this decision but so many times that not have I given a beggar money outside of the Rite Aid in Atwood street and they have asked for more money, and when I deny them any more than I get harassed as I walk away.
If anyone has ever been to the 711 in the Northside after about 11pm or anywhere that is close to the casino you will see that conning happens so often that it is almost disheartening. I personally had an incident where I was biking and someone was on the bike trail off to the side with a really inadequate bicycle trying to flag me down. The time was about midnight and I believe it was a Thursday, I thought I would be the face of friendly Pittsburgh and pull over to give him a hand (I believed he may have had a flat tire). After pulling to the side to help him he asked me to follow him over to the bushes and then attempts to rob me without any firearm or knife or anything, luckily for me this man was heavily intoxicated so I was able to just get on my bike and pedal as fast as I could to avoid any possible danger.
I must say I am glad that this blog has some positive things to say about Pittsburgh in that the people are generally nice, I have been living here for quite some time now and through it all I have some negative things to say about this city but a lot of positive.
History of Pittsburgh 