Rust Belt Philosophy

As willing as I am to advertise my strengths, I flatter myself that I'm equally forthcoming about my weaknesses. I am, for instance, a really abysmal historian: names and dates mean nothing to me; big-picture explanations appear to be dependent on theories of psychology, economics, and so on, which are of course always changing; the quality of historical evidence underwhelms me; and ultimately it's not clear that the field has any inherent value at all and so I have no particular eagerness to engage in it. But even I would have noticed the sort of event that would justify this comparison:

"Pat Mooney, of the ETC group, a technology watchdog with a special interest in synthetic biology, said: 'This [the creation of the first artificial organism] is a Pandora's box moment - like the splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep, we will all have to deal with the fall-out from this alarming experiment.'"

Chapter 1: Lunch in Breezewood, or, Why I Prefer Cities
So Swarthmore, where my sister recently completed her BS in chemical engineering, lies just to the west of Philadelphia. What this means is that the drive from here to there goes through a part of the state frequently referred to as being Alabama-esque - and not in the good way. (Is there a good way to be Alabama-esque?) My contingent stopped for lunch in Breezewood on a strip of stores and restaurants that has corporate logos plastered all over the place in much the same way that a smallpox victim has pustules plastered all over their body. That, however, is pretty much standard practice no matter where you go these days. What really put me off my ease in Breezewood was the unapologetic conflation of "cheap" or "chintzy" with "charming" or "cute."


These toy trucks might have been neat 40 years ago when people were just discovering plastic, but now they are significantly less so.


It's also very hard to have any sympathy for people who knowingly choose to purchase John Deere merchandise. Selling this stuff, moreover, may constitute some sort of grave moral wrong - does it really matter that people want to buy it? Aren't there some economic transactions that are never worth it for the consumer?


And then, of course, there's the proselytizing and the conservatism. Poor taste - even John-Deere-shotglass poor taste - is bad enough, but somebody had to put up the money to distribute these creepy things all over the place and I'm damn near certain that I would like to live as far away as possible from anybody who might do that. Part of me would like to disappear out into the sticks somewhere, it's true, but first I would need to find some sticks that aren't filled with warning signs like these.

Chapter 2: "You're good to a-go-go"


Readers who remember my series on Israel will probably remember that I made sure to photograph all of the exteriors of the hotels in which we stayed. I had initially planned on doing the insides as well, but the rooms were too small (and my camera's lens angle too narrow) to get anything done there and hotel lobbies all tend to look equally bland. This place we stayed in Philly, though, was a major exception. It probably doesn't look too different from the outside, but...


...this place was absolutely dying to be hip. I have to give them credit for some things, like this little patio space...


...but overall the whole thing struck me as really over-done. It also didn't help that their confirmation email had a stupid subject line, that they'd botched our reservation, that they'd sent us the wrong address (which makes a GPS very hard to use, for the record), and that they'd neglected to mention the $7/day parking fee. Their business model also apparently relies on convincing their customers to buy random shit for no particular reason, like some "girlie" cosmetics or travel-size board games.



(For the record, I think you can get those games for about $15 if you don't make the obviously poor decision to do your shopping in a hotel lobby. As for the cosmetics, I've got no idea.)

There were also, mysteriously, unmarked rooms.


That little (faux-)wooden panel on the right is where the number's supposed to go - this one, if I recall, should've been 415. This didn't bother me too much, but I think you can expect to see something similar as the focal point of M. Night Shyamalan's next film.

Interlude I: the area

Security and privacy are important issues for a lot of people, but the whole big-brother/Facebook-is-stalking-you thing just never hit home with me. Or, at least, it didn't until we ran into this security camera.


Nothing special, right? Just a security camera. But look at what it was pointed at:


If you don't see anything here worth monitoring, you'd be right. I will spend the entire rest of my life not knowing why somebody felt the need to keep tabs on this random patch of parking lot - which would be fine, except for my creeping suspicion that if you can convince somebody to monitor this you'll be able to talk them into anything.

Speaking of disturbing things:


I don't ask much of my readers - at least, explicitly - but this seems like too good an opportunity to pass up: some time in late December of this year, we should all send "happy holidays" emails to SayMerryChristmas@gmail.com. If you need reminding, I'll happily create a facebook page/event/other digital reminder and link it here. If not, ask your family and friends to join in - it'll be fun!

(As for Tag Greason, I have no comment - I dunno who that guy is or why his name sounds, incredibly, like a Palin family reject.)

Chapter 3: The Nouement

That's a synonym for "build-up," right? It had better be.


The morning before the graduation, Swarthmore held a baccalaureate ceremony. I had never heard of that, but it apparently (and unsurprisingly) means "yet another opportunity to people to dress up in stupid clothing and give speeches." Hoo-ray.


For some odd reason, not many families decided to attend this gratuitous speech-fest. I wonder why.

One of the speakers read this poem by Wendell Berry, who, if this is any indication, is a blowhard.

"Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus [for the record: this word is not pronounced "hum-us" but rather "Hume-us." It is very confusing to refer to hummus appearing spontaneously underneath trees.]
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection."

Praise ignorance! Love the lord! Women are all about childbearing! I know some random shit about nature but evidently not nearly enough to work it into a coherent account of, well, anything! Gag.

The next speaker took the Stupid Ball and ran with it, starting his speech with a student who had hung himself down by the creek and then immediately pivoting into something about beavers. What do beavers have to do with a student's suicide, and why did this man feel the need to describe them as "balls of flesh and whimsy"? I cannot say for sure, but I strongly suspect that it had something to do with his possession of a PhD in divinity. One day I may well meet a doctor of divinity whose brain has not been rotted in the pursuit of that degree, but that day has not dawned yet.

Still, the towering heaps of gibberish presented at this particular ceremony did have one silver lining: despite having visited the campus before, I'd had no idea that there was a creek there. That gave me just enough of an excuse to duck out for a few minutes.


Alas, although I did eventually locate the creek I did not encounter a single ball of flesh and whimsy.


On the other hand, there were also no students strung up from the trees, so I guess I broke even according to the official Swarthmore baccalaureate ceremony.


For a school attended mostly by far-left hippie types, this came as a bit of a surprise - and not a pleasant one. I've never understood the appeal of this tradition - anybody interested in explaining it?


Anyway, so this is the creek. It is, as one might predict, very creek-like.



It's a very nice campus, all things told, but a little small for my tastes. Part of this goes back to that I'd-like-to-disappear thing: with only a few square miles to work with, and with the buildings taking up a fraction of that, things would probably get pretty cozy pretty fast. But hey, different stokes and all that.

Chapter 4: Campus Miscellanea

Happily, not every single second of our time was planned, so we did spend some time just meandering around. One of the must-see items on Swarthmore's campus - and maybe this says something about the relative excellence of Swarthmore's Campus - is the giant chair.


I mean, really - it's a big chair.


Yeah, there's a chapely thing in the background; yeah, it's kinda nice. But how often do you see a lawn chair that's eight feet tall?


This car was just begging to have its picture taken - I couldn't resist. Regular readers will also know that I have trouble resisting statues, so:


I think maybe this was supposed to be one of those statues that moves around and spins and whatnot, but if so it was not doing its job.

Interlude II: rose garden


I don't really count this in my favor as a photographer. I mean, how talented do you have to be to make roses look good?


As pretty as it is, this garden is just sort of stuck in the middle of some random lawn somewhere. I guess maybe they didn't have space for it anywhere else, but it's still a very odd landscaping decision.



Chapter 5: Receptions & Still More Official Events

After the free time and before dinner there were, naturally, a few events at which to be seen. I assumed you all wouldn't be too interested in pictures of crackers and cheese - if that's mistaken, do let me know for next time (seriously) - so I took more landscape/nature-type pictures instead.


I was really hoping that this plant was named after one of my favorite animators, Hayao Miyazaki, but no - "this particular cultivar is named for the Miyazaki Agricultural Experiment Station at Miyazaki University in Japan." It wasn't particularly likely, that connection, but Stephen Colbert has a spider named after him, so why not?


This stuff just looks like grass to me, but the rest of my party was really enamored of it.


There's some really nice architecture there - this one appeals to me pretty much just because of the dome on the right.



Later on that night - and still before the actual graduation itself - there were fireworks. Really.


This was by far the most appreciative fireworks audience I have ever been a part of. I have a hard time believing that the ancient Chinese were more impressed.


As for the graduation itself, it went smoothly, if lengthily. Since my sister would prefer not to have her photo displayed here, though, you'll have to live without pictures of it. Bit of an anticlimax, I guess, but there it is.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this image, which I could apparently have been arrested and/or fined for taking:

Halfway through Clayton Cramer's article about Rand Paul, I thought to myself, "This is going great!" Aside from a few cloddish remarks about how great the south would have been if not for all the racist laws, Cramer's opening paragraphs are full of good things: he attacks Thomas Sowell, dispenses with the libertarian myth of "a population of rational actors prepared to look out for their own economic interests," cites points in favor of government intervention, and even makes the good-faith gesture of acknowledging that civil rights legislation "isn’t an abstract concern" but an issue that actually affects the lives of real people. So far, so good, right? But that was only half one.

In half two, Cramer manages to make no fewer than three really unintelligent arguments. The first of those goes like this:

"Many liberals argue that such laws have an 'educative' function – that by punishing stupid and destructive behavior, such laws teach people that racism is wrong. They send a strong and unmistakable message that the majority has standards of appropriate behavior that everyone must follow. If you want to argue that CRA64 [the Civil Rights Act of 1964], representing majority will in the U.S. in 1964, is a legitimate use of governmental power, then a lot of other laws that are 'educative' in their effects are equally legitimate: abortion bans, marijuana prohibition, and laws against homosexuality.  Antidiscrimination laws impose the majority’s moral code on the minority (as do all laws)."

Incredibly, Cramer manages to overlook the biggest piece of this puzzle. Not only was the Civil Rights Act supported by a majority and intended to enforce a particular standard of behavior, that standard of behavior actually should be enforced by the government. What makes that kind of legislation right, in other words, is the fact that it is, well, right. Nobody is arguing that CRA64 is a just law for the sole reason that 51% of U.S. citizens believed that it was at the time, and yet that's precisely the claim that Cramer sees people as making.

His second error is much more straightforward. "Racism," he says by way of arguing in favor of CRA64, "is offensive and contrary to scripture." While I would love to spend all my time trying to figure out how a libertarian can cite a text as openly oppressive as the freaking Bible, Cramer cannot justify his policy suggestions through a reference to any holy text - you know, as a result of that pesky constitution thing we have going. Nor does it really matter that racism offends him - if he's serious about that Bible thing, cheeseburgers offend him, too. Until the day arrives when Cramer becomes our iron-fisted overlord, he needs a better reason to support CRA64 than "My favorite book said racism is bad and now racism makes me angry." It shouldn't be too hard to find some really good reasons to support non-discrimination laws, but apparently Cramer would rather just list some of his likes and dislikes for us.

Though those two arguments aren't exactly A-plus efforts on Cramer's part, he saves the most bizarre revelation for last. Rand Paul's blind obedience to his pet philosophy "is a fine argument to make as an abstract principle," Cramer says in an apparent attempt to stretch the meaning of the word "fine," "but it isn’t a path to political victory." Was that really what this was all about? A whole article about the relative costs and benefits of anti-racism laws was set up just so that Cramer could make a conclusion about Rand Paul's chances in the upcoming elections? This demonstrates an amazing lack of understanding on Cramer's part about what the fuss has been about. Very few of the people who object to Paul's position want him to gain office. In fact, I'd venture to say that the vast majority of his critics would strongly prefer it if he didn't find "a path to political victory." Moreover, even if we were all for some stupid reason fixated on setting the over/under on Paul's vote total, Cramer should have enough sense in his head to recognize that that is at best a secondary concern. The point of debating policy isn't to become the next FiveThirtyEight, it's to identify good policy. Put another way, Cramer's reasoning here makes about as much sense as telling somebody who wants to host SportsCenter to spend their time practicing basketball: if you find somebody refining a skill or idea, odds are pretty damn good that they want to end up with a superior version of that skill or idea and not just the ability to make book on it.

Taken as a whole, these three blunders seem to point to a giant hole in Cramer's thinking: abstraction. He apparently feels more comfortable talking about intentions, emotions, and results than about morality, legality, and political philosophical validity - but somehow this doesn't stop him from bowing out of conversations that hinge on morals, legal structures, and the philosophy of politics. A little humility goes an awfully long way, especially when it comes to having your name on the byline of an internet post; all of us, including Cramer himself, would have been better off if he had just opted to employ the better part of valor.

That makes two days that support themed posts here at Rust Belt Philosophy - I guess now I have to go for all seven. Suggestions, anyone?

Anyway, so here's the deal: your contemporaries have completely given up on the idea of keeping some part of life technology-free. If this doesn't appeal to you, count your lucky stars that you were born when you were instead of 10-15 years in the future. Why? Because

"Japan [where else?] has hosted the world's first wedding to be conducted by a robot.

The automated creature, known as the I-Fairy [keep in mind that this is in Japan], oversaw the wedding of Tomohiro Shibata and Satoko Inoue in the capital, Tokyo.

...During the ceremony, I-Fairy - which has flashing eyes and plastic pigtails - instructed the groom to lift the bride's veil for the kiss."

Can't you just imagine leafing through your parents' wedding photo/hologram album and learning that they were officially wed by something with "flashing eyes and plastic pigtails"? Because I can't.

Even if hypothetical-future-you doesn't have parents who were wed by what sounds like a marginally cuter HAL, your hypothetical-future childhood will certainly not be able to escape the creeping tentacles of high technology. If for instance you seek the (bigoted and) nature-loving embrace of the Boy Scouts, you may well be encouraged to earn - and I am not making this up - the "Video Games Belt Loop and Academic Pin." (Incidentally, I cannot in any way vouch for the presence of the word "academic" in that quote - your guess is as good as mine as to its intended meaning.) In order to earn said loop, you will have to

"1. Explain why it is important to have a rating system for video games. Check your video games to be sure they are right for your age.
2. With an adult, create a schedule for you to do things that includes your chores, homework, and video gaming. Do your best to follow this schedule.
3. Learn to play a new video game that is approved by your parent, guardian, or teacher."

In case you're wondering how this relates to the mission of the Boy Scouts, an organization that highly values tradition and other old-timey notions, a look at their mission should help:

"The BSA provides a program for young people that builds character, trains them in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and develops personal fitness."

Hm. Or not.

Presumably you already have an adulthood filled to the brim with gadgets, so all that's left is to demonstrate that your end-of-life period will also take place under an onslaught of digitization. Easy enough: would you believe that your cause of death may one day be a computer virus?

"Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading had a chip inserted in his hand which was then infected with a virus [the chip, not his hand].

The device, which enables him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone, is a sophisticated version of ID chips used to tag pets.

In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems.

If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said."

The idea here is that wireless devices need security just like every other kind of device. If you can put a virus on some, say, bluetooth-enabled thing - which you obviously can, they're computers just like everything else - that virus could then be accidentally transmitted to all other devices that communicate with that initial device. What kinds of devices could be affected, you ask? Oh, nothing serious. Just "pacemakers and cochlear implants" for a start - and then, depending on which specific pieces of technology you own, your car, all of your computers, your cell/smart phone, and any number of Sharper-Image-style "lifestyle" items. And while there's not a particularly high risk of injury if your cat's wireless water fountain malfunctions, you probably don't want your car to experience one of Microsoft's patented Blue Screens Of Death while you're coasting down the freeway.

So although I very much appreciate your pageviews, maybe you ought to take this time to escape out into the wild while you still can. You know, read a book that's actually a book, play capture the flag in a medium that doesn't allow respawning, that sort of thing. Because whether you like it or not, you will have plenty of time to geek out later on.

Okay, so maybe this means that I pay too much attention to commercials, but has anyone else noticed that companies now have multiple ongoing ad campaigns? Geico has the lizard, the caveman, that irritating money thing with the googly eyes, and I think one more, and Old Spice has this "look again" thing, that guy who yells nonsensical things about his muscles, and that "freshershest" joke. Are we as commercial-watchers becoming more intelligent (no way, right?) or are there just that many more people working in advertising? Or is this trend not so new as I am making it out to be?

So, starting from about a base level of 2, this...

"You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, Inc..."

...jumps straight to a 7.

"...a 501(c)3 nonprofit ministry that brings its hard rock gospel into public schools..."

And then about an 9.5.

"...has been deepening its long-running ties to the Republican Party of Minnesota. Long a cause célèbre for Rep. Michele Bachmann..."

And then somewhere up around 9.8.

"...You Can Run (YCR) had a booth at the GOP convention in April, and the group’s frontman, Bradlee Dean, [says] that Muslim countries calling for the execution of gays and lesbians are 'more moral than even the American Christians.'"

And now I have to wipe blood and bits of skull off of my screen.

Try to really understand how impressive this is. The batshit-crazy right-wing nutjobs in this country are willing to say and do anything to "protect" themselves from Islamic terrorists,* up to and including allowing strangers to basically take and then possess naked pictures of them. Those same nutjobs will cry and throw a fit whenever anybody mentions terrorism but doesn't specify the religion of the terrorists in question because Islam is, according to them, an ineluctably evil, violent religion that needs to be identified as such. Islam itself, some of these people go so far as to say, is an enemy of and a threat to the United States.

Except when it comes to killing teh gayz. So long as you're killing teh gayz, we can all get along.

It's incredible, isn't it? I don't know how many of these people exist - enough, obviously, to make this into a news story - but there is only one acceptable number of people who believe that murder is more okay  than sex between mutually consenting adults, and that number is zero. There are only two possible reasons why full-grown human adults would behave so stupidly: either they have fully bought into a system of thought that rewards anti-rationality and severely punishes even the most fleeting glimmers of sense, or Christian rock really does literally corrode your brain.

Think about this the next time you're tempted to vote Republican.

*And I do only mean Islamic terrorists. White Christian terrorists, for example, either get a free pass or are heroes.

A friend of mine recently finished his PhD program in something sciency and intimidating-sounding - and then decided he wanted to move to San Francisco. Why anybody would want to cross the country to move to a place with a high cost of living when they don't have any work prospects there is a little mysterious to me, but that's probably why he was the one moving and not me. At any rate, in order to celebrate his accomplishment and see him off, he decided that he and some of his friends ought to rent a limo and drive around the city a bit. So we did.

Believe it or not, this is (was) his backyard. One of the very nice things about Pittsburgh is that you don't have to drive some ridiculous distance in order to find nature. There are all the great parks, for one, but also there are backyards like this one that are only a couple miles outside of downtown. Uh, but having said that, he could probably have stood to do just a little more upkeep.

Our first stop was Washington's Landing, previously mentioned here.


Pittsburgh has all kinds of views like this one - hillsides with buildings here and there. Gabriela Quintero (of Rodrigo y Gabriela) said when she performed here recently that these views reminded her of Europe, which was a kind thing of her to say. I myself typically see European hillside/building shots that are much more building and much less hillside than this, but I'll take it.

Next up was the North Side a.k.a. North Shore, home to the Pirates' and Steelers' stadiums ("stadia"?) and also our new casino. Also residing on the North Shore? A really creepy statue supposedly of Fred Rogers that was so misshapen that I couldn't get a good shot of it. So I settled for this police statue instead.


Apparently every person-shaped statue within a 5-mile radius of downtown must by law be facing the skyline. I mean, I guess it'd be a little incongruous for it to be facing directly away from the city, but I feel like this is just a little heavy-handed.


When I saw those two women down by the river I sort of flashed back to that one picture in Frick Park of the two women sitting on the hill under the trees and thought to myself, "I know! I'll take more pictures of pairs of people!" So I did. Hopefully those work for you, cause there are more coming.


This might get a little redundant, but the point of the limo was to go around to all the places that had a nice view of the city, so...


This is about the closest we got to one of the inclines. Those little trams ferry people up and down the hill - I think that one is Mount Washington? - for commuting and sight-seeing purposes. If you happen to watch NFL games, any time the Steelers play at home the network tries to have a shot of the inclines. (Why they don't do this for baseball or hockey games I have no idea.) Anyway, they're pretty neat - one more thing to do if you come to visit.


Told you so. Incidentally, bridges are relatively iconic for Pittsburghers, which explains why I thought it was sensible to take a picture with just a random bridge in the background instead of skyscrapers or whatever else. Also, you might be able to just make out that tapering piece of land extending into the rivers - that's The Point, and in warmer weather/better economic conditions it has this big fountain that is also relatively iconic. Or, at least, it's iconic when it's on - when it's off, probably not so much. (Actually, they dyed the fountain pink one year for breast cancer awareness or something, at which point it looked an awful lot like something out of a B horror flick.)


Here's that casino I mentioned. This is a fairly nice picture, but I'd rather not have a casino around in the first place. But hey, on the plus side, maybe this will give Ben Roethlisberger something to do in his free time besides harassing women.

Next up was the West End lookout, which up until that night I did not know existed. And more's the pity - the view is great.


Then the monotony of all the skyline shots started to get to me and I took this picture:


Make of that what you will.

After a late dinner in an average middle eastern place, we went to the Mt. Washington lookout, which is by far the better-known vantage point.


I dunno who decided to install this disco cross on this church, but I love it - kitsch at its best. I might have to do something with the resulting photo, though, because the contrast between the building and the sky was much more stark when I took it. Or maybe this is just my monitor - how does it look on your setup?


Anyway, apparently the overlook we went to is the Paul F. Jones overlook, named after...Paul F. Jones. And do you know what that calls for? It calls for True Story Time! Back in elementary school, our history teacher made us play this "baseball" game where the class split up into two teams and everybody had to answer trivia questions. If you got the question right, that was a "single"; if you got it wrong, that was an "out." The twist was that we came up with the questions ourselves, so there was an incentive to make them as hard (and, presumably, educational) as possible.

I, however, was much too lazy for so paltry an incentive to work, so I came up with questions like, "Who is Robert Morris University named after?" (There's an outside chance that it was actually "After whom is Robert Morris University named," but I don't want to give myself that much credit.) So the game goes on for a while, and eventually that question comes up - and, wouldn't you know it, the kid on the other team actually got it wrong. In your face, educational system.

But yeah, it's the Paul F. Jones overlook, so hopefully Paul F. Jones would have appreciated views like this one.


So that's about it for limo night, and hopefully the last time that 80% of the pictures in one of these posts are of the same thing. Back on Earth Day a friend and I went to plant shrubs - not trees, shrubs; they made very sure to emphasize that - in Panther Hollow park. I didn't really get any pictures of the park what with the manual labor and whatnot, but here are a few shots of nearby Oakland.


This is the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, subject of Rufus Wainwright's "Tower of Learning" and future subject of one of my photo posts. Probably.


And this is the main branch of the Carnegie Library. It might not be much to look at - it's pretty standard, buildings-wise - but libraries are awesome and cannot possibly receive enough praise. When's the last time you borrowed something from your local library? You should go do that. Like, now. Right now. Go!

To wrap things up, these are just a couple random shots I took while meandering around the Strip District one night.


Monroeville used to have the best video game arcade, but then systems started to dominate the market and all the arcades closed down. I know that you get a more diverse experience on a system and that they're arguably more economical, but I really miss the vibe of those arcades.


I think that's the Heinz History Center or something - whatever it is, I thought it gave this random alleyway a sort of cyberpunk/post-future dystopia feel. As always, your mileage may vary.