Note:
I want to be clear that I found the Yinzers in Pittsburgh to be a great bunch of people. I'm just not wild about the ones who chose to move to DC.
TL;DR:
Given what I have heard elsewhere and have experienced with their sisters in DC, women in Pittsburgh are surprisingly attractive and have decent attitudes. The potential for setting up good logistics via airbnb is quite good. However it is not as affordable as advertised. While definitely worth visiting for some gaming and the very high quality tourist sites, one should be careful before considering moving there.
Introduction:
I visited Pittsburgh on Veteran's Day weekend (mid November) of 2017.
I had a few motives:
I wanted to get out of town.
I also wanted to see a new city that I had never been to in order to explore it.
But most importantly, as a DC native, I wanted to find out why Pittsburgh has caused me so much heart ache and heart break over the last 16 years.
Many people from Pittsburgh and Cleveland have moved to DC over the last 20 years.
"How many?" you might ask. Enough that there were at least allegations in the local DC papers that the back when the Washington Capitals were mediocre they used to automatically decline website purchases with credit cards having Pittsburgh zip codes because they were sick and tired of playing away games at home due to all the Penguins fans in the stands.
The women who have moved from there and other places in the inner rust belt (Syracuse, Buffalo, Detroit, but especially Cleveland and Pittsburgh) contribute greatly to making gaming and dating in DC a lousy experience with their mediocre looks and their energy sucking attitudes. As well, the many Pittsburgh girls who end up in DC are often 5s who are chubby enough to become 4.25s.
Even the forum's founder, Roosh, has at least indirectly mentioned this (go to 3:28).
While the picture in the video focuses on northern Ohio and Cleveland, it becomes obvious to a DC native that Cleveland and Pittsburgh share many similarities due to so many girls of both moving to DC who have similarly poor characteristics and often mention having close relatives in both cities.
While Roosh complained about girls from NJ as well in the linked video, in my experience while they might be boring, they are at least fun, not quite as fat, and will at least eventually get to physical stuff, if not right away.
In addition to my and other DC mens' bad experiences, former major league baseball player Lenny Dykstra on the Adam Carolla Show told a story about how generally unattractive Pittsburgh women were in his playing days.
I wanted to discover what made Pittsburgh generate so many women low quality women and then send them to DC.
Pittsburgh surprised me.
Then I discovered that the forum did not have a Pittsburgh datasheet. So, I decided to make one. It might not be the best but I hope that it is at least a good start.
So let's get to the part everyone wants to hear about.
Girls:
Looks:
Pittsburgh is much more white than many American cities. As well, the girls are much more attractive than I had been told before visiting. While I did not see any stunners like I did in Nashville, there are definitely a lot of 6 to borderline 8 brunettes and blondes. They were noticeably more attractive than the women I saw in Kansas City.
As well, Asian girls are significantly more attractive than I am used to seeing in American and Canadian cities. If one were to strictly use the boner test (0 = no boner, 1 = boner), I'd say they were somewhere between 15 and 20 percent more attractive than average.
If the sisters are you thing, I have to say that I wasn't impressed and would recommend one look elsewhere to cities like Atlanta or Charleston, SC.
There are Indian Sub continent girls but I did not see any attractive ones.
I have no recollection of seeing any Latinas, Middle Eastern-West Asians, or other races at all.
While Pittsburgh has an obesity problem like everywhere else in the USA, it did not seem out of line with the American average.
Attitudes:
Again, I was surprised by my visit. DC is notorious for being a mecca of white girls from the Cleveland-Akron-Youngstown-Pittsburgh (CAYP) corridor with
absolutely rotten attitudes that contribute greatly to the city's miserable dating environment. I did not get any bad attitudes and even got some mild IOIs. I did a few openers, which didn't go anywhere but at least they were neither unpleasant nor energy sucking like opening CAYP girls in DC.
While their attitudes do not match the ones of girls in Dallas, they were at least OK.
The Competition:
If you're hoping to see 6's with trolls in Pittsburgh, you're going to be disappointed. There are a lot of tall good looking guys in Pittsburgh. That being said, I did frequently see very cute girls with average looking guys of average height. As well, those tall good looking guys tended to be a lot more friendly towards me than I am used to, which hinted to me that the competition is not too bad.
Given that I was expecting Pittsburgh to be Toronto-Lite, a nightmarish land of tall handsome intelligent men forced to develop game 1.0 and mediocre to sometimes breathtakingly ugly women, I was over all pleasantly surprised.
Where to find the girls:
The neighborhoods where I found the girls were:
There is not that much game wise in Downtown Pittsburgh except for Market Square. It's definitely worth a stop to day game girls at places like the Starbucks. I wouldn't bother with any of the happy hours there or nearby. If I was just visiting, I would make it part of seeing the downtown architecture, Point State Park, and the inclines on Mt. Washington.
Oakland:
This is a few miles east of downtown. It is where the University of Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Institute, and Carnegie-Mellon University are. While CMU is notorious for its women for it being the school for the nerds not quite bright enough to get into MIT (they test self driving robots on the footpaths - no I'm not kidding), Pitt has surprisingly attractive girls. If classes are in session, it is definitely worth stopping by for day game. I didn't do any night game there so I can't definitively say if its worth staying there.
Lawrenceville:
This was described to me as Pittsburgh's answer to DC's U St. While I'm not sure that's how I would describe it, I would definitely check it out. It's a residential neighborhood with a lot of bars and restaurants and reasonable talent.
South Side Flats:
This is the biggest night life area of Pittsburgh. It's south of Downtown across the river. This was definitely the place that I saw the best night talent. I don't know how great it was for opening because it was really cold and I was tired when I was there.
South Hill Villages Mall:
This is a typical American shopping mall that is south of Downtown Pittsburgh. I actually had to buy some stuff on a tight schedule when I went, so I didn't get to do any gaming. However, there was definitely significant talent there. Interestingly, the only people I really spoke to there, were a white couple where the girl was from Western New York but had lived in DC for the last 10 years. I made a point to be polite but to end the conversation first.
I stayed in Bloomfield while I was there, which is between Lawrenceville and Oakland. I do not recommend it for gaming. The talent did not measure up to the other places that I went. I picked it because of its location. Since I wanted to explore, I do not regret my choice but probably would stay in South Side Flats next time.
Boring but important stuff:
Getting there:
Flying:
Pittsburgh has a major airport with significant service from low cost carries such as Southwest and Spirit. However, it has very few international flights. If you are coming from another country, you're probably going to have to change planes after arriving in the USA to get to Pittsburgh.
If you do fly, make sure to take the 28X bus into town and back to the airport. Uber is expensive while the bus is $2.75. Traffic can be very bad on the airport highway, especially once you get close to the city and the tunnels going under Mt. Washington. The bus uses an exclusive Bus Rapid Transit road for the part near the central city. The bus leaves about every 1/2 hour.
Also, when you leave, remember that there is an oddly located second security line. There are signs for it that will get you there. Follow them carefully because it is not in an intuitive location.
Train:
There are a couple of Amtrak trains that go to the city. However, unless you use the Philadelphia train (The Pennsylvanian), I would skip using the other train since it arrives in the middle of the night.
Driving:
Many interstate highways intersect at Pittsburgh, so if you live within 400 miles you should consider driving there. Pittsburgh has surprisingly good roads for Pennsylvania, a state which normally has infamously poor designs and endless road work. However, be warned. Yinzers drive very fast for the USA and Canada east of Chicago, and very aggressively by USA standards overall. Unlike farther out west, which has broad straight roads, Pittsburgh highways wind and are on the narrow side, especially in the central city. It can be a little terrifying if you're not used to it.
Also, make sure if you drive that wherever you stay has parking. I give an explanation for why in the next section.
Getting Around:
Driving:
I do not recommend driving to get around the city. The roads are extremely confusing due to the geography of rivers and mountains. Waze seemed to work, but I'm guessing you would still have problems if you were not familiar with the area.
Parking is also scarce due to the geography making the streets unusually narrow for the USA. Street parking is some of the worst that I have ever seen in a major American or Canadian city. Pittsburgh street parking difficulties match if not exceed those of cities such as NYC, DC, SF and Boston. I joked that there are probably ancient Italian cities with better street parking than Pittsburgh.
While I did not check, I suspect paid parking is very expensive.
Uber:
I did not see a single taxi while I was in Pittsburgh, including at the airport, so you'll have to use ride sharing. Uber is very pricey given the economy of Pittsburgh, somewhat exceeding even DC on a per mile basis. While Uber is testing self driving cars in Pittsburgh, I only saw one while I was there and did not get to use any of them.
Public Transport:
Pittsburgh buses are surprisingly good for the United States. The buses have routes that are fairly direct, do not stop multiple times per block, are clean, and generally arrive on time. They have somewhat high fairs at $2.75 a ride, so look into getting a day pass. By using the public transit function on google maps, I found using the bus to work very well during the day.
There is a street car, but it's slow. It's pretty much only useful for getting from downtown to the stadiums north of the Allegheny River and to the South Hill Villages Mall. Only if you have time to kill and are curious about what the Pittsburgh suburbs look like, would you might want to take the streetcar south. If you have a certain mindset, though, it is actually pretty interesting. Most American suburbs depend on an abundance of flat land so the modifications that the Pittsburgh metro area require are very unusual.
Where to stay:
Do not stay in Downtown. While it is not as bad as it used to be according to reports, it is largely a 9 to 5 ghetto, clearing out at night and on weekends. I would try to stay in Lawrenceville or the South Side Flats. Oakland might also be a good idea but only if Pitt is in session. Airbnb makes these places accessible, since these areas generally do not have hotels. However, be aware that the airbnb may be in poorly built housing.
The Weather:
It's said that in Pittsburgh you can experience all 4 seasons in one day. That's not much of an exaggeration. If you are going to game, make sure it's a time of year where you won't mind the temperature straying as much as 20 degrees in either direction from the annualized average. It was supposed to be in the 50s when I was there but was instead in the mid 30s, which even with the correct clothing really hurt my game.
Costs:
Pittsburgh has a reputation for being very cheap. This must be for paying rent or mortgages, because the expenses for being a visitor were surprisingly high.
Uber costs slightly more than DC. An uber from the airport to one of the eastern neighborhoods is over $40. I am not sure if this is due to Pittsburgh's awkward geography or dealing with the taxi commissions or some combination of the two.
Hotels were not outrageously expensive but I saw no deals either like I got in Atlanta. I ended up paying over $120 a night to stay in an airbnb that while very large was essentially a slum.
Gas in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsbugh was $2.89 a gallon on Veteran's Day weekend 2017. In Arlington, VA, across from DC, it was 40 cents less when I looked a week later. This is in the city that literally invented the petroleum industry and has significant oil infrastructure.
Minus chick free dive bars, restaurants serving alcohol are just as expensive as DC.
The only place where I saw savings were hole in the wall restaurants that did not serve alcohol. Their prices were about 30% less than DC.
Do not expect to get any deals beyond mom and pop sandwiches while you are there. Though it was nice to finally be able to go to proper dive bars again, since they have been pretty much eradicated from the DC area.
Food:
Primanti Bros Sandwiches:
Primanti Bros is a Pittsburgh sandwich chain that is noted for putting the fries on the sandwich. I feel bad saying this, but these are really only meant to be enjoyed drunk, for which they are great.
Hours:
A lot of the places that sell traditional Pittsburgh food close at 5PM, so do not plan on having dinner at them. I was sadly not able to have either Polish food or chip chop sandwiches as a result.
Seeing the Sites:
Pittsburgh is physically spectacular. It is a major American city that has been buried and blasted into 3 mountain ranges. If the city had not had the perfect combination of natural resources and navigable waterways at the exact right time of the American Industrial Revolution, no one would have ever built a city there. But they did and the result, a massive metropolis built around 3 rivers, cliffs and crevices, is really something to see.
If you have ever been to Chongqing, China, Pittsburgh is the American version of that city, at least before the 3 gorges dam finished filling.
It is absolutely worth taking the time to go up and down the two inclines on Mt. Washington south of downtown both during the day and at night. You should also take the time to walk around Point State Park.
Because of the wealth that Steel, Oil, Banking, and Ketchup brought to the city by 1900, there are a lot of beautiful buildings. It appears that because of collapse of Steel in the 1970s, the city did not have the money to build new buildings when other cities were having their historical architecture obliterated for brutalist eye sores, so things got preserved. Downtown has a lot of pretty buildings.
Make sure to go to Oakland where Pitt and the Carnegie Institute are. The architecture is spectacular, including the Heinz Chapel, a tiny gem of a gothic church that rivals many in Europe, and the Cathedral of Learning, which is a skyscraper styled like a gothic cathedral. The Carnegie Institute has a Natural History Museum which matches DC's and exceeds New York's, as well as an art museum which has one of the world's best collections, including one of Monet's water lilies.
I would skip CMU, which has surprisingly dull architecture.
Make sure to at least see the inclines, Mt. Washington, downtown, and Oakland including its museums while you're there.
The Vibe:
While Pittsburgh fared better than many rust belt cities during de-industrialization, it still got hit very hard.
White urban working class and white urban poverty:
Poverty isn't just a minority thing in America. There are plenty of poor whites as well, of whom you'll see a lot in Pittsburgh. Tough jobs that one is used to seeing being performed by minorities in other US and Canadian cities, such as restaurant work, public transport, construction, and road work, are often done by whites in Pittsburgh.
Really rough on the edges:
While there are spectacular buildings and churches in Pittsburgh often built on hill crests, they are often surrounded by neighborhoods where the housing stock is of very low quality. I stayed in an old neighborhood with old houses called Bloomfield. Those houses were poorly built sometime before WW II or possibly even WW I. No amount of renovation could make them very nice.
The street lighting is shockingly poor for an American city, especially once you get off main thoroughfares. I walked through neighborhoods at night in the eastern part of the Peninsula where I had to strain my eyes. When I was Ubering down highways along the rivers at night, I was surprised at how few lights I could see on the other side.
The Collapse of the Airport:
I remember changing planes a few times at the airport in the later 90s and early 2000s. At the time, it was hailed as a shining example of good airport design and for good reason. It was a bustling place that was well built and well managed.
When I flew in this time I was stunned.
I knew that USAir abandoning the airport as a hub had hurt it but I did not realize how badly. When my plane landed before 9 PM, the airport was already a ghost town. Almost all the stores were closed in the terminal. What looked bright and new in 2002 now looked faded and in need of a renovation in 2017.
The arrivals pick up area was utterly deserted at 9PM on a Thursday night. When I flew out on a Sunday afternoon, the airport felt largely empty, with few customers at the stores and many boarding areas deserted or blocked off. Out of the window I saw an entire side of one of the airports piers that had absolutely no planes parked at it. I read later that they had even demolished its once very nice commuter plane terminal.
If you want to understand how Donald Trump flipped PA red and won the election, you would make a wise choice by visiting Pittsburgh and its surroundings.
Civic Pride: Why it's not all bad for Steeltown, USA:
Despite its problems, Pittsburgh has a lot of civic pride, and not just for the Steelers and Penguins. Yinzers love their city's colors of yellow and black and insist that many of their bridges across the 3 rivers be painted that way to the point of spotlessness. This has a big side benefit that Pittsburgh bridges do not have anywhere near the amount of rust I am used to seeing on most American bridges.
As well, they are fighting for their airport. While it may be having hard times, it is clean and everything works. They bothered to create a regular and reasonably direct bus route to and from the airport, which is far from guaranteed in the USA. A few European budget airlines like Condor and Wow now fly there. If you fly out of there, use the alternative security that I mentioned above. I at least was struck by how clever it is.
Pittsburgh still has a lot of fight in her.
Should you go?
Should you go there to game?:
Probably. It definitely should not be your first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or even sixth choice if you are considering the entire United States but if you are within 6 hours driving distance or can score cheap plane tickets then I think that it would be worth trying. Thanks to airbnb and the nature of Pittsburgh's housing stock, it would not have the logistics problems that I have run into in otherwise more promising cities like Dallas.
Should you move there?:
That seems iffy to me. I'd be very wary of wages not matching the cost of living even after one considers housing prices. As well, the quality of much of the housing stock is very poor in the neighborhoods where you would want to live in order to game. The girls, while much better than I expected, do not justify making sacrifices to your career and/or material well being.
Should you go as a tourist?:
Absolutely. The city is a wonder to see. It's filled with breathtaking views, great museums, architecture, and other sites while providing a true slice of Americana. The nightlife, while not earth shattering, was quite solid. However, go when the weather is reliably warm.
Should Roosh go?:
The forum's founder made the problem of DC women known world wide. A very big reason for this is the seemingly endless swarms of frumpy fives from the Cleveland-Akron-Youngstown-Pittsburgh (CAYP) corridor who move to DC.
If Roosh wants to pull a Jason Bourne, he could come back to this part of America to have his V Ultimatum, where he investigates the heart of the rust belt (CAYP) in order to discover a significant part of what created him.
I do think that a very big reason of what makes the DC dating scene so bad is hidden somewhere around the 3 rivers and the shores of Lake Erie. My inability to gain any insight into why during the trip disappointed me greatly in what was otherwise a great weekend getaway. My only thought is maybe CAYP women have to go through 4 years of SJW-Cultural-Marxist nonsense at Penn State, Ohio State, or colleges like Oberlin to become the refuse sent to DC. However, that's just me guessing.
While I would love to see Roosh go, I'm not sure it could be easily done. Unlike Toronto, which smacked him in the face within hours of his first arrival, just staying for a few days or even a week I doubt would be enough time to figure it out. He would have to stay for at least a month in either Cleveland or Pittsburgh in my estimation while trying to make connections to the CAYP diaspora in DC and also make contacts at Penn State and Ohio State. Essentially, he'd have to be willing to put in the work and resources necessary to write both "Bang Pittsburgh" or "Maybe(?) Bang Cleveland". I'm not sure that's something he would really desire to do or even find feasible. That being said, if he ever wants to fully understand DC and his origins, a big part of that lies at the source of the Ohio river.
Conclusion:
Pittsburgh girls are no where near as bad as some have described. Physically, they are generally at least OK to reasonably good and their attitudes, while not the greatest, are decent. Their sisters who have moved to the DC area are not a good reflection of them. While there is competition that can't simply be dismissed, I suspect that a decent study and practice of game is enough. Pittsburgh certainly has none of the severity or brutality of Toronto-Occupied-Ontario or Denmark.
At least in the USA, the city is easy to get to and the cost of visiting, while not cheap, is quite bearable. Using airbnb, good logistics for someone visiting should be possible, but be aware of the general low quality of housing. One should be cautious about moving there for the long term due to possible hidden costs that might not be immediately obvious.
If you want to see a really spectacular place with some exceptional and uniquely American sites while gaming as well, Pittsburgh would be a great choice, but go when it is reliably warm.
... And somewhere hidden in the hills and mountains along the 3 rivers lies part of the making of RooshV ...
I want to be clear that I found the Yinzers in Pittsburgh to be a great bunch of people. I'm just not wild about the ones who chose to move to DC.
TL;DR:
Given what I have heard elsewhere and have experienced with their sisters in DC, women in Pittsburgh are surprisingly attractive and have decent attitudes. The potential for setting up good logistics via airbnb is quite good. However it is not as affordable as advertised. While definitely worth visiting for some gaming and the very high quality tourist sites, one should be careful before considering moving there.
Introduction:
I visited Pittsburgh on Veteran's Day weekend (mid November) of 2017.
I had a few motives:
I wanted to get out of town.
I also wanted to see a new city that I had never been to in order to explore it.
But most importantly, as a DC native, I wanted to find out why Pittsburgh has caused me so much heart ache and heart break over the last 16 years.
Many people from Pittsburgh and Cleveland have moved to DC over the last 20 years.
"How many?" you might ask. Enough that there were at least allegations in the local DC papers that the back when the Washington Capitals were mediocre they used to automatically decline website purchases with credit cards having Pittsburgh zip codes because they were sick and tired of playing away games at home due to all the Penguins fans in the stands.
The women who have moved from there and other places in the inner rust belt (Syracuse, Buffalo, Detroit, but especially Cleveland and Pittsburgh) contribute greatly to making gaming and dating in DC a lousy experience with their mediocre looks and their energy sucking attitudes. As well, the many Pittsburgh girls who end up in DC are often 5s who are chubby enough to become 4.25s.
Even the forum's founder, Roosh, has at least indirectly mentioned this (go to 3:28).
While the picture in the video focuses on northern Ohio and Cleveland, it becomes obvious to a DC native that Cleveland and Pittsburgh share many similarities due to so many girls of both moving to DC who have similarly poor characteristics and often mention having close relatives in both cities.
While Roosh complained about girls from NJ as well in the linked video, in my experience while they might be boring, they are at least fun, not quite as fat, and will at least eventually get to physical stuff, if not right away.
In addition to my and other DC mens' bad experiences, former major league baseball player Lenny Dykstra on the Adam Carolla Show told a story about how generally unattractive Pittsburgh women were in his playing days.
I wanted to discover what made Pittsburgh generate so many women low quality women and then send them to DC.
Pittsburgh surprised me.
Then I discovered that the forum did not have a Pittsburgh datasheet. So, I decided to make one. It might not be the best but I hope that it is at least a good start.
So let's get to the part everyone wants to hear about.
Girls:
Looks:
Pittsburgh is much more white than many American cities. As well, the girls are much more attractive than I had been told before visiting. While I did not see any stunners like I did in Nashville, there are definitely a lot of 6 to borderline 8 brunettes and blondes. They were noticeably more attractive than the women I saw in Kansas City.
As well, Asian girls are significantly more attractive than I am used to seeing in American and Canadian cities. If one were to strictly use the boner test (0 = no boner, 1 = boner), I'd say they were somewhere between 15 and 20 percent more attractive than average.
If the sisters are you thing, I have to say that I wasn't impressed and would recommend one look elsewhere to cities like Atlanta or Charleston, SC.
There are Indian Sub continent girls but I did not see any attractive ones.
I have no recollection of seeing any Latinas, Middle Eastern-West Asians, or other races at all.
While Pittsburgh has an obesity problem like everywhere else in the USA, it did not seem out of line with the American average.
Attitudes:
Again, I was surprised by my visit. DC is notorious for being a mecca of white girls from the Cleveland-Akron-Youngstown-Pittsburgh (CAYP) corridor with
absolutely rotten attitudes that contribute greatly to the city's miserable dating environment. I did not get any bad attitudes and even got some mild IOIs. I did a few openers, which didn't go anywhere but at least they were neither unpleasant nor energy sucking like opening CAYP girls in DC.
While their attitudes do not match the ones of girls in Dallas, they were at least OK.
The Competition:
If you're hoping to see 6's with trolls in Pittsburgh, you're going to be disappointed. There are a lot of tall good looking guys in Pittsburgh. That being said, I did frequently see very cute girls with average looking guys of average height. As well, those tall good looking guys tended to be a lot more friendly towards me than I am used to, which hinted to me that the competition is not too bad.
Given that I was expecting Pittsburgh to be Toronto-Lite, a nightmarish land of tall handsome intelligent men forced to develop game 1.0 and mediocre to sometimes breathtakingly ugly women, I was over all pleasantly surprised.
Where to find the girls:
The neighborhoods where I found the girls were:
- Market Square - a pedestrian square downtown
- Oakland - home of the University of Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Institute, and Carnegie-Mellon University
- Lawrenceville - a residential neighborhood several miles NE of downtown
- South Side Flats - a night life neighborhood south of downtown across the Monongahela river
- South Hill Villages Mall - a shopping mall many miles south of the city.
There is not that much game wise in Downtown Pittsburgh except for Market Square. It's definitely worth a stop to day game girls at places like the Starbucks. I wouldn't bother with any of the happy hours there or nearby. If I was just visiting, I would make it part of seeing the downtown architecture, Point State Park, and the inclines on Mt. Washington.
Oakland:
This is a few miles east of downtown. It is where the University of Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Institute, and Carnegie-Mellon University are. While CMU is notorious for its women for it being the school for the nerds not quite bright enough to get into MIT (they test self driving robots on the footpaths - no I'm not kidding), Pitt has surprisingly attractive girls. If classes are in session, it is definitely worth stopping by for day game. I didn't do any night game there so I can't definitively say if its worth staying there.
Lawrenceville:
This was described to me as Pittsburgh's answer to DC's U St. While I'm not sure that's how I would describe it, I would definitely check it out. It's a residential neighborhood with a lot of bars and restaurants and reasonable talent.
South Side Flats:
This is the biggest night life area of Pittsburgh. It's south of Downtown across the river. This was definitely the place that I saw the best night talent. I don't know how great it was for opening because it was really cold and I was tired when I was there.
South Hill Villages Mall:
This is a typical American shopping mall that is south of Downtown Pittsburgh. I actually had to buy some stuff on a tight schedule when I went, so I didn't get to do any gaming. However, there was definitely significant talent there. Interestingly, the only people I really spoke to there, were a white couple where the girl was from Western New York but had lived in DC for the last 10 years. I made a point to be polite but to end the conversation first.
I stayed in Bloomfield while I was there, which is between Lawrenceville and Oakland. I do not recommend it for gaming. The talent did not measure up to the other places that I went. I picked it because of its location. Since I wanted to explore, I do not regret my choice but probably would stay in South Side Flats next time.
Boring but important stuff:
Getting there:
Flying:
Pittsburgh has a major airport with significant service from low cost carries such as Southwest and Spirit. However, it has very few international flights. If you are coming from another country, you're probably going to have to change planes after arriving in the USA to get to Pittsburgh.
If you do fly, make sure to take the 28X bus into town and back to the airport. Uber is expensive while the bus is $2.75. Traffic can be very bad on the airport highway, especially once you get close to the city and the tunnels going under Mt. Washington. The bus uses an exclusive Bus Rapid Transit road for the part near the central city. The bus leaves about every 1/2 hour.
Also, when you leave, remember that there is an oddly located second security line. There are signs for it that will get you there. Follow them carefully because it is not in an intuitive location.
Train:
There are a couple of Amtrak trains that go to the city. However, unless you use the Philadelphia train (The Pennsylvanian), I would skip using the other train since it arrives in the middle of the night.
Driving:
Many interstate highways intersect at Pittsburgh, so if you live within 400 miles you should consider driving there. Pittsburgh has surprisingly good roads for Pennsylvania, a state which normally has infamously poor designs and endless road work. However, be warned. Yinzers drive very fast for the USA and Canada east of Chicago, and very aggressively by USA standards overall. Unlike farther out west, which has broad straight roads, Pittsburgh highways wind and are on the narrow side, especially in the central city. It can be a little terrifying if you're not used to it.
Also, make sure if you drive that wherever you stay has parking. I give an explanation for why in the next section.
Getting Around:
Driving:
I do not recommend driving to get around the city. The roads are extremely confusing due to the geography of rivers and mountains. Waze seemed to work, but I'm guessing you would still have problems if you were not familiar with the area.
Parking is also scarce due to the geography making the streets unusually narrow for the USA. Street parking is some of the worst that I have ever seen in a major American or Canadian city. Pittsburgh street parking difficulties match if not exceed those of cities such as NYC, DC, SF and Boston. I joked that there are probably ancient Italian cities with better street parking than Pittsburgh.
While I did not check, I suspect paid parking is very expensive.
Uber:
I did not see a single taxi while I was in Pittsburgh, including at the airport, so you'll have to use ride sharing. Uber is very pricey given the economy of Pittsburgh, somewhat exceeding even DC on a per mile basis. While Uber is testing self driving cars in Pittsburgh, I only saw one while I was there and did not get to use any of them.
Public Transport:
Pittsburgh buses are surprisingly good for the United States. The buses have routes that are fairly direct, do not stop multiple times per block, are clean, and generally arrive on time. They have somewhat high fairs at $2.75 a ride, so look into getting a day pass. By using the public transit function on google maps, I found using the bus to work very well during the day.
There is a street car, but it's slow. It's pretty much only useful for getting from downtown to the stadiums north of the Allegheny River and to the South Hill Villages Mall. Only if you have time to kill and are curious about what the Pittsburgh suburbs look like, would you might want to take the streetcar south. If you have a certain mindset, though, it is actually pretty interesting. Most American suburbs depend on an abundance of flat land so the modifications that the Pittsburgh metro area require are very unusual.
Where to stay:
Do not stay in Downtown. While it is not as bad as it used to be according to reports, it is largely a 9 to 5 ghetto, clearing out at night and on weekends. I would try to stay in Lawrenceville or the South Side Flats. Oakland might also be a good idea but only if Pitt is in session. Airbnb makes these places accessible, since these areas generally do not have hotels. However, be aware that the airbnb may be in poorly built housing.
The Weather:
It's said that in Pittsburgh you can experience all 4 seasons in one day. That's not much of an exaggeration. If you are going to game, make sure it's a time of year where you won't mind the temperature straying as much as 20 degrees in either direction from the annualized average. It was supposed to be in the 50s when I was there but was instead in the mid 30s, which even with the correct clothing really hurt my game.
Costs:
Pittsburgh has a reputation for being very cheap. This must be for paying rent or mortgages, because the expenses for being a visitor were surprisingly high.
Uber costs slightly more than DC. An uber from the airport to one of the eastern neighborhoods is over $40. I am not sure if this is due to Pittsburgh's awkward geography or dealing with the taxi commissions or some combination of the two.
Hotels were not outrageously expensive but I saw no deals either like I got in Atlanta. I ended up paying over $120 a night to stay in an airbnb that while very large was essentially a slum.
Gas in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsbugh was $2.89 a gallon on Veteran's Day weekend 2017. In Arlington, VA, across from DC, it was 40 cents less when I looked a week later. This is in the city that literally invented the petroleum industry and has significant oil infrastructure.
Minus chick free dive bars, restaurants serving alcohol are just as expensive as DC.
The only place where I saw savings were hole in the wall restaurants that did not serve alcohol. Their prices were about 30% less than DC.
Do not expect to get any deals beyond mom and pop sandwiches while you are there. Though it was nice to finally be able to go to proper dive bars again, since they have been pretty much eradicated from the DC area.
Food:
Primanti Bros Sandwiches:
Primanti Bros is a Pittsburgh sandwich chain that is noted for putting the fries on the sandwich. I feel bad saying this, but these are really only meant to be enjoyed drunk, for which they are great.
Hours:
A lot of the places that sell traditional Pittsburgh food close at 5PM, so do not plan on having dinner at them. I was sadly not able to have either Polish food or chip chop sandwiches as a result.
Seeing the Sites:
Pittsburgh is physically spectacular. It is a major American city that has been buried and blasted into 3 mountain ranges. If the city had not had the perfect combination of natural resources and navigable waterways at the exact right time of the American Industrial Revolution, no one would have ever built a city there. But they did and the result, a massive metropolis built around 3 rivers, cliffs and crevices, is really something to see.
If you have ever been to Chongqing, China, Pittsburgh is the American version of that city, at least before the 3 gorges dam finished filling.
It is absolutely worth taking the time to go up and down the two inclines on Mt. Washington south of downtown both during the day and at night. You should also take the time to walk around Point State Park.
Because of the wealth that Steel, Oil, Banking, and Ketchup brought to the city by 1900, there are a lot of beautiful buildings. It appears that because of collapse of Steel in the 1970s, the city did not have the money to build new buildings when other cities were having their historical architecture obliterated for brutalist eye sores, so things got preserved. Downtown has a lot of pretty buildings.
Make sure to go to Oakland where Pitt and the Carnegie Institute are. The architecture is spectacular, including the Heinz Chapel, a tiny gem of a gothic church that rivals many in Europe, and the Cathedral of Learning, which is a skyscraper styled like a gothic cathedral. The Carnegie Institute has a Natural History Museum which matches DC's and exceeds New York's, as well as an art museum which has one of the world's best collections, including one of Monet's water lilies.
I would skip CMU, which has surprisingly dull architecture.
Make sure to at least see the inclines, Mt. Washington, downtown, and Oakland including its museums while you're there.
The Vibe:
While Pittsburgh fared better than many rust belt cities during de-industrialization, it still got hit very hard.
White urban working class and white urban poverty:
Poverty isn't just a minority thing in America. There are plenty of poor whites as well, of whom you'll see a lot in Pittsburgh. Tough jobs that one is used to seeing being performed by minorities in other US and Canadian cities, such as restaurant work, public transport, construction, and road work, are often done by whites in Pittsburgh.
Really rough on the edges:
While there are spectacular buildings and churches in Pittsburgh often built on hill crests, they are often surrounded by neighborhoods where the housing stock is of very low quality. I stayed in an old neighborhood with old houses called Bloomfield. Those houses were poorly built sometime before WW II or possibly even WW I. No amount of renovation could make them very nice.
The street lighting is shockingly poor for an American city, especially once you get off main thoroughfares. I walked through neighborhoods at night in the eastern part of the Peninsula where I had to strain my eyes. When I was Ubering down highways along the rivers at night, I was surprised at how few lights I could see on the other side.
The Collapse of the Airport:
I remember changing planes a few times at the airport in the later 90s and early 2000s. At the time, it was hailed as a shining example of good airport design and for good reason. It was a bustling place that was well built and well managed.
When I flew in this time I was stunned.
I knew that USAir abandoning the airport as a hub had hurt it but I did not realize how badly. When my plane landed before 9 PM, the airport was already a ghost town. Almost all the stores were closed in the terminal. What looked bright and new in 2002 now looked faded and in need of a renovation in 2017.
The arrivals pick up area was utterly deserted at 9PM on a Thursday night. When I flew out on a Sunday afternoon, the airport felt largely empty, with few customers at the stores and many boarding areas deserted or blocked off. Out of the window I saw an entire side of one of the airports piers that had absolutely no planes parked at it. I read later that they had even demolished its once very nice commuter plane terminal.
If you want to understand how Donald Trump flipped PA red and won the election, you would make a wise choice by visiting Pittsburgh and its surroundings.
Civic Pride: Why it's not all bad for Steeltown, USA:
Despite its problems, Pittsburgh has a lot of civic pride, and not just for the Steelers and Penguins. Yinzers love their city's colors of yellow and black and insist that many of their bridges across the 3 rivers be painted that way to the point of spotlessness. This has a big side benefit that Pittsburgh bridges do not have anywhere near the amount of rust I am used to seeing on most American bridges.
As well, they are fighting for their airport. While it may be having hard times, it is clean and everything works. They bothered to create a regular and reasonably direct bus route to and from the airport, which is far from guaranteed in the USA. A few European budget airlines like Condor and Wow now fly there. If you fly out of there, use the alternative security that I mentioned above. I at least was struck by how clever it is.
Pittsburgh still has a lot of fight in her.
Should you go?
Should you go there to game?:
Probably. It definitely should not be your first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or even sixth choice if you are considering the entire United States but if you are within 6 hours driving distance or can score cheap plane tickets then I think that it would be worth trying. Thanks to airbnb and the nature of Pittsburgh's housing stock, it would not have the logistics problems that I have run into in otherwise more promising cities like Dallas.
Should you move there?:
That seems iffy to me. I'd be very wary of wages not matching the cost of living even after one considers housing prices. As well, the quality of much of the housing stock is very poor in the neighborhoods where you would want to live in order to game. The girls, while much better than I expected, do not justify making sacrifices to your career and/or material well being.
Should you go as a tourist?:
Absolutely. The city is a wonder to see. It's filled with breathtaking views, great museums, architecture, and other sites while providing a true slice of Americana. The nightlife, while not earth shattering, was quite solid. However, go when the weather is reliably warm.
Should Roosh go?:
The forum's founder made the problem of DC women known world wide. A very big reason for this is the seemingly endless swarms of frumpy fives from the Cleveland-Akron-Youngstown-Pittsburgh (CAYP) corridor who move to DC.
If Roosh wants to pull a Jason Bourne, he could come back to this part of America to have his V Ultimatum, where he investigates the heart of the rust belt (CAYP) in order to discover a significant part of what created him.
I do think that a very big reason of what makes the DC dating scene so bad is hidden somewhere around the 3 rivers and the shores of Lake Erie. My inability to gain any insight into why during the trip disappointed me greatly in what was otherwise a great weekend getaway. My only thought is maybe CAYP women have to go through 4 years of SJW-Cultural-Marxist nonsense at Penn State, Ohio State, or colleges like Oberlin to become the refuse sent to DC. However, that's just me guessing.
While I would love to see Roosh go, I'm not sure it could be easily done. Unlike Toronto, which smacked him in the face within hours of his first arrival, just staying for a few days or even a week I doubt would be enough time to figure it out. He would have to stay for at least a month in either Cleveland or Pittsburgh in my estimation while trying to make connections to the CAYP diaspora in DC and also make contacts at Penn State and Ohio State. Essentially, he'd have to be willing to put in the work and resources necessary to write both "Bang Pittsburgh" or "Maybe(?) Bang Cleveland". I'm not sure that's something he would really desire to do or even find feasible. That being said, if he ever wants to fully understand DC and his origins, a big part of that lies at the source of the Ohio river.
Conclusion:
Pittsburgh girls are no where near as bad as some have described. Physically, they are generally at least OK to reasonably good and their attitudes, while not the greatest, are decent. Their sisters who have moved to the DC area are not a good reflection of them. While there is competition that can't simply be dismissed, I suspect that a decent study and practice of game is enough. Pittsburgh certainly has none of the severity or brutality of Toronto-Occupied-Ontario or Denmark.
At least in the USA, the city is easy to get to and the cost of visiting, while not cheap, is quite bearable. Using airbnb, good logistics for someone visiting should be possible, but be aware of the general low quality of housing. One should be cautious about moving there for the long term due to possible hidden costs that might not be immediately obvious.
If you want to see a really spectacular place with some exceptional and uniquely American sites while gaming as well, Pittsburgh would be a great choice, but go when it is reliably warm.
... And somewhere hidden in the hills and mountains along the 3 rivers lies part of the making of RooshV ...
![[Image: 1b4273f6931db054a253d524a131b3d6--aerial...rgh-pa.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1b/42/73/1b4273f6931db054a253d524a131b3d6--aerial-photography-pittsburgh-pa.jpg)
