The Iron City
Pittsburgh is a beautiful city. It's a massive decaying ball of 2 century old urban Appalachia (Alleghenia, if you want to get technical about it). It is a bizarre feeling returning for this brief period to the eastern half of the country. This city is generally unfamiliar and yet it's earnings and dispositions are as familiar as my childhood. Pennsylvania, urban or rural, breeds such similar spectrum of hopes, aspirations and fears from Erie to Philly, from Scranton to Pittsburgh, that I can't help but to feel at home with its people, no matter how much I've dissociated myself with their culture.
The aspiration of everyday people through the keystone state to better their community toward a more functional and creatively generative home is a noble and respectable vision. In the case of Pittsburgh it is a vision which holds a great deal of potential. This city is beautiful and inspiring. This city is open to the opportunities which could easily unfold within it. This city isn't very large in area and most importantly, it's cheap as fuck. Throughout Pittsburgh, it's easy enough to find three story residential properties for as low as $50,000 and out in Braddock (8 miles from downtown) the average housing cost is $6,200 and squatting is encouraged by Braddock Mayor john Fetterman. This doesn't take into account Pennsylvania's practice of leaving left over water bills attached to an abandoned property and allowing them to accrue interest over the course of decades, making a $50,000 house require what may be as much as an additional $10,000 water bill to get the utility turned back on. Never the less, as far as housing goes, it's nothing as expensive as anything on the Urban West Coast.
The longer I'm out here, the less I feel that the G20 summit and the subsequent protests against them are altogether very important. I'm tempted to work my way into a position to earn a large chunk of money within the next couple of years to purchase some property out here to encourage artistic transit from west to east if only seasonally. Certain other business prospects have been presenting themselves to me. International import & sales from developing countries (particularly conflict torn regions such as the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi region) and such. This would probably be much more sensible as a start up out west. Ultimately, though, I think the occupation of space is an endeavor toward which much effort must be put if many of the cultural ghettos which have sprung up across the country and indeed around the world are to find any long term sustainability. The ideology of localism may provide for many pretty words and populist rhetoric, but if culture counter to that which has rooted itself in the national consciousness like an insidious tick is to sustain itself in the long term, the establishment of trans-regional strongholds is imperative.
The aspiration of everyday people through the keystone state to better their community toward a more functional and creatively generative home is a noble and respectable vision. In the case of Pittsburgh it is a vision which holds a great deal of potential. This city is beautiful and inspiring. This city is open to the opportunities which could easily unfold within it. This city isn't very large in area and most importantly, it's cheap as fuck. Throughout Pittsburgh, it's easy enough to find three story residential properties for as low as $50,000 and out in Braddock (8 miles from downtown) the average housing cost is $6,200 and squatting is encouraged by Braddock Mayor john Fetterman. This doesn't take into account Pennsylvania's practice of leaving left over water bills attached to an abandoned property and allowing them to accrue interest over the course of decades, making a $50,000 house require what may be as much as an additional $10,000 water bill to get the utility turned back on. Never the less, as far as housing goes, it's nothing as expensive as anything on the Urban West Coast.
The longer I'm out here, the less I feel that the G20 summit and the subsequent protests against them are altogether very important. I'm tempted to work my way into a position to earn a large chunk of money within the next couple of years to purchase some property out here to encourage artistic transit from west to east if only seasonally. Certain other business prospects have been presenting themselves to me. International import & sales from developing countries (particularly conflict torn regions such as the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi region) and such. This would probably be much more sensible as a start up out west. Ultimately, though, I think the occupation of space is an endeavor toward which much effort must be put if many of the cultural ghettos which have sprung up across the country and indeed around the world are to find any long term sustainability. The ideology of localism may provide for many pretty words and populist rhetoric, but if culture counter to that which has rooted itself in the national consciousness like an insidious tick is to sustain itself in the long term, the establishment of trans-regional strongholds is imperative.