My Experience in the Strip District

My Experience in the Strip District

            



When I went to the Strip District, I was glad that it wasn’t full of strip clubs like I thought it was, which would have made for an odd class trip. Instead, it’s a strip of land that is lined-up with stores.                                                                                                                                                       

The drive to Pittsburgh gives me anxiety, mainly because there are too many things going on and I don’t know the exact way like I do with all of my other destinations; the city is definitely a different experience.

We got lost, found the destination, but we had no idea where to park. I wondered if parking at McDonalds would be okay, but being afraid of being towed, I searched for another parking spot, driving along a very long, wide street where there was parking on either side; the only parking lot and parking spots were on the left, which would mean me having to cross lanes, and I didn’t want to get a ticket or cause an accident. There were hordes of people crossing and moving along the sidewalks that I drove so slow due to being afraid of hitting someone.

So I drove around and accidentally went onto the road where I’d be forced to cross the bridge, then had to drive around and cross the bridge again. So, I ended up parking at good ol’ Mickey D’s. 


                                                                                                                                               
We crossed the street and saw the Wholey’s parking lot, which made me want to face-palm myself, but hey, the parking at McDonalds was free. There was a cacophony of music in front of Wholey’s, and I turned to see a band named (I believe) The Chiodi Trio, and the music reminded me of banjos and country, which made me want to run in the store faster to get away from the sound.

When a wall of seafood smell hit my nose, I was sorry for getting into the store so quickly. It almost activated my gag reflex and made me want to throw up; I love seafood like crab and lobster, shrimp, and fish, but this seafood smell was at a whole new level, as if I was in a shipyard full of boxed seafood.

We then searched for our professor and other classmates, and didn’t find them until we went in the back of the store. Above us there were three or four singing pigs, singing “Hi Ho The Cheerio.” Below them was a balloon man who was shaping his balloons into whatever the asker desired.                                                                                                     
In the gigantic fish tanks were an innumerous amount of fish swimming, and when I looked in a box below labeled perishable, I was surprised to see live lobsters all piled together with their claws tied; I wondered if this was humane for lobsters? But what do I know about animal cruelty laws. I guess they would go bad quickly if they were dead, thus the reason for the label “perishable” on the box.                                                                                                                  
And on top of a large shelf full of ice were dead fish; the dead fish looked like they had so much emotion, which was forever shown on their countenance as they went into paralysis during death. One fish had a mouth open with sharp teeth, as if he was trying to say something, and another fish had only a tongue sticking out almost looking like he died in a cartoon.



These fish I briefly stared at as two classmates were interviewing an employee who served in Vietnam; from what I heard, he refused education and has been working there for over twenty years. If I worked at a place like that for even one year, I’d probably go insane and bash my head in; and in a moment like this, I admire the employees who are able to work these jobs, because there are many jobs like this one that I just wouldn’t be able to do.                                                                              

After Wholey’s, we toured other food places, one full of chocolates and another full of different cheeses. I rarely travel into places like these, so I was amazed and in wonder at each store I went to.                                                                                                                                             
My favorite place was the church, and its peaceful gospel music. This felt like the most peaceful place on earth to me. I loved it. I could have sat there for quite a long while.   


                                  

Eventually we went into a Mexican restaurant (unfortunately I don’t remember the name), which had a different atmosphere all-together, both in setting, music, and food. There was Mexican music playing, and behind our table in a room with machines emitted a constant screeching sound, where we discovered they make their tacos. Eventually, and fortunately, the sound stopped. Next to us was an author and professor from Point Park; he wrote about the Penn State fiasco when it happened in a book of his.                                                                                       

The steak taco I ordered was delicious, as well was the four salsas we ordered with our tortilla chips. Rarely can restaurants make me feel this way, but I want to eat there again. Under the receipt I slipped my phone number on a piece of paper for our young, pretty, blonde waiter, even though I knew she wouldn’t text or call.                                                                                               

As we walked back, everyone was closing up shop for the day, and when we arrived at McDonalds, my white ’03 Chevrolet Cavalier Sport was still there, thankfully. We had a smooth ride back, listening to music and chatting along the way.                                                                             

All in all, it was a very fun trip to the Strip. 

Research on Homestead Works, PA

Research on Homestead Works

            
The Homestead Steel works was located on the Monongahela River. According to Wikipedia, it was developed in the “nineteenth century as an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a railway 425 miles (684 km) long, and a line of lake steamships.” Eventually it was bought by Andrew Carnegie in 1883 who was a great philanthropist and had a library built in Homestead in 1896. In 1901 he sold his company to U.S. Steel. The remnants left exist near Sandcastle and The Waterfront.                                                                                                          
William Serrin, who wrote an article for the New York Times about the ending of the Homestead Steel in 1986, mentioned the history, such as the strike that occurred, and the motives of the owner and president: “Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Frick wanted to reap a greater share of the gains brought by new steel-making technologies, and they wanted to break the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers.” 



A battle ensued, where workers and townspeople fought against the 300 Pinkerton men Mr. Frick brought in, and then 8,000 state militiamen broke the strike; as a result, the union was destroyed. Thirty-five were killed in the battle. Like the saying goes, lions write history, not the sheep, and it’s usually the companies and their leaders, not their workers, who write history and control the natural order of things.                         

In an article by Mark Roth in 2006, he writes that the U.S. Steel company was sold to “Park Corp., which tore down most of the buildings, sold tons of metal as scrap and transformed what had been America's busiest steel complex into a desolate moonscape.” The area turned into the Waterfront, “a shopping center with restaurants, a movie theater, apartments, offices and an array of big-box, department and small stores.” 







The writer reports Mr. Stout, who says people should remember how the company treated their workers. The company would lay off workers who were within months of receiving their early-retirement pensions. Just another instance of a company taking advantage of their employees for their own gain.                                                       

My grandfather used to work at a Steel Mill (not sure if these are related in any way?) until he retired over two years ago. I guess at least he got to retire at his Steel Mill.                                                                                     

Memory

Element of Writing and Travel Writing: Memory

            

One aspect I enjoy in nonfiction is memory, how the writer recalls it, selects certain details or remembers only a few certain details, the intensity or shallowness of the memory, and what parts are important and not important.                                                                                                      

When I wrote a memoir, I thought it would be easier than fiction, but I quickly discovered that it had its own difficulties. What do I include, and what do I not include? I’m starting to see the same thing in travel writing. Not only is the memory important, but so is the writer’s knowledge and skills in how to effectively bring out the details and story of that memory. The odd thing is, the more you remember, well, the more you remember; specifically, one memory can unlock other memories that the person didn’t mean to recall.                                             

As an example, in my last two travel writing trips, I referenced a video, pictures, and my notebook. The video was an extended memory of what I already saw but could never recall, allowing me to view each painting; my own memories would have failed me in this assignment, as recalling painting isn’t easy. After the second trip, I referenced certain things in my notebook, pictures I took, and a video. All of these re-activated memories that would have never been recalled if I didn’t have all of these extended memory reference materials. I would have forgotten about the lobsters and fish without the pictures, and I even forgot to add my favorite part of the trip, the church, to my writing until I started writing this piece. So interestingly enough, writing this also helped unlock other memories.                                                                                                    

When writing nonfiction, it is so unbelievably important to have things to reference, be it a notebook, tape recorder, pictures, video, or anything else. Without these, the nonfiction piece will lack a certain something, and will feel empty instead of whole, as if there should be something there.                                                                                                                                     

If writers want to remember something, they need to make and event emotional, meaningful, or focus on a certain important detail. When I was writing about my relationship, I easily remember all of the emotional parts, and the parts that I felt were meaningful to me. With the travel writing, I thought a certain painting or the church brought out emotion in me. I remembered how the flowers felt meaningful to me in the painting and how important the music was in that church. I remember the details where the woman was painting and the holy stairs in that center of the church.                                                                                                                               

All of these things can aid memory, and I think it’s important that writers use everything in their arsenal that they can. 

Quick Tips About The Strip District

Tips About The Strip District

            

I’ll be honest: Every time I’ve heard someone talk about the Strip District, I thought they meant that there’s a line of stripper clubs and other dirty things in that area. Knowing nothing about it, I’ve always associated it with dirtiness (because of the word ‘Strip’).                             

No joke.           

                                                                                                                                   

The neighborsinthestrip.com site tells me that the Strip District is, “a narrow strip of land in a flood plain confined by natural boundaries: the Allegheny River to the north and the extension of Grant’s Hill to the south.”                                                                                                   

Oops.                                                                                                                                                   

Here is a quick and easy tip I found: “The produce district runs from 16th to 22nd streets.” So there is produce on seven streets. Got it!        

Seems easy enough to remember.                               

The website visitpittsburgh.com states that the Strip District has “low, low prices and tremendous selections,” but doesn’t every store say it has low prices? And compared to what?    

So yeah, there's some quick tips about The Strip District, along with clearing up its name issue for anyone who knows nothing about it!                                                                                                           

My Favorite Element About Travel

Post About Element of Travel or Writing

            

One aspect of travel that interests me in both a positive and negative way is the unknown—or essentially, whatever unknown factors can potentially happen on the trip, or mishaps.           

The great thing about mishaps is that they make for great story. One moment you have nothing to write about and boom! You now suddenly have pages and pages of story all because of one incident. 

If something bad happens to another person, I’m not saying that writers feel a schadenfreude joyousness, but happy that they can use their writing skills to help others by making it a story, or in other instances, happy to inform their audience or at least entertain others.             

The bad thing about mishaps is that they can ruin your day or harm you financially. For instance, when I recently used the UPMC garage in Pittsburgh, one of the pay stations wouldn’t accept my credit card. So I tried the other one. Guess what? That one didn’t work. There was an ATM machine nearby so that I could get cash to use instead; I didn’t enter the amount in twenty dollar increments, so I had to try again. Do you want to guess what happened when I went to try again? The machine was suddenly and magically out of order. So I pressed the button for the security guard who told me to use the pay station in the garage.                                                                     

I hope I don’t have to tell you to guess what happens next. If you guessed that the pay station wouldn’t work, then you are correct! So I had to call the security guard to let me out—he seemed pretty bothered by it, and he told me the routine and mechanized, “I am sorry for your inconvenience,” or something like that.                                                                                                          

The janitor I spoke to while waiting thirty minutes to try and figure out what to do, told me that the machine charged his credit card three times. When I looked at my bank statement the next day, I saw it was charged twice. So I looked for a number online, left two voicemails for two different people, and hoped the statements would be removed.                                                                 

Fortunately, they were removed without any phone calls (not sure how that works).                       

Lesson learned? Bring cash if you’re going to use a pay station.                                                            

But the unknown can be exciting too. What’s going to happen next? Will my phone die and instead of using my G.P.S., will I have to consult an old-fashioned map or, god forbid, ask for directions?   

Will I find a cool new restaurant or place that I’d love to go to next time?                                      

The unknown, or the journey itself, is always one of my favorite parts about traveling, because, like Ralph Waldo Emerson once famously said, “Life is a journey, not a destination.”             

Live in the moment. Don’t live for the destination. 

Westmoreland Art Museum

Westmoreland Art Museum

           

Having rarely traveled or been to museums before, I knew this would be an interesting experience. I have never been much of an art guy—I took an art class in high school and didn’t really enjoy it, because I don’t see much in pictures—so I really didn’t know what to expect.                       



After glancing at the photos, I admired their beauty. Being an artist (a writer) myself, I understood creativity. Later on when I was touring the second floor, there was some art that I didn’t get. I saw logs on a stick. Logs on a stick, I thought. I don’t understand. I then turned to see a gigantic poster crumpled in many different ways, with random color splotches all over it. A crumpled poster is art? I wondered.                                                                                                              


But at the second floor, the art was more straightforward. I recorded a video of the entire first floor so I would be able to look back and study the art more closely and try to think about how the art makes me feel. Some of the paintings made my head feel jumbled, with many of them being abstract art with seemingly random placements of colors and shapes. Many of the paintings made me feel cold, due to their soft blues or wintery and autumn settings.                                


After seeing the simple objects, I couldn’t understand what the artist saw in needing to paint an everyday, simple object, such as the three flower pots. It made me realize that it is important to appreciate the smaller things and admire the beauty of even the everyday objects we see every day.

Each time I went to look at a painting, I couldn’t help but only stare for a few seconds and move on to the next painting. I could stare at one for minutes and not really understand what else I can get out of it. The painting of the cows grazing in the snowy fields was one of them.                      

But I would always keep in mind the question, how long did it take to paint this picture? I imagined an artist painting for days and days, throwing it away and painting for another week before getting that one painting just right.                                                                              

There were a few paintings were their beauty reached deep down into my heart. One such painting had sunflowers at the front, with other groups of flowers in the middle near a white, two-story house which was between two dark trees. I think the angle and the flowers is what did it for me. There was one painting that was only a vast field of sunflowers; again, I could feel the paintings beauty—feel it, not only see it with my eyes—and I stared at this one longer than others.                 

When I passed by a painting of a set of keys I thought, A painting of keys? What? I wondered a similar sentiment when I passed by photographs of coffee pots, where there was there sets of the same blue pot, but mainly at different angles and with a shade of a lighter color for the background.                                                                                                                                      

A photograph of a couple holding an umbrella as they walk down the sidewalk between a pond and autumn trees with street lights nearby really caught my eye.                                                           

Every time I continued seeing a painting of an everyday, simple object, I thought, What is it that the artists see in these that they would spend their valuable time of their life painting these?                                  

When I continued walking around, I saw guys in matching clothes, almost acting as guards, and were pretty intimidating. The sculptures and statues I saw, I truly admired.                        

My favorite part of the trip was probably when the artist lady, Sue Pollins, was telling the story of how a photographer won a contest by taking a picture of her hand. I thought, What? And it just sent me into further confusion about art, not understanding how a picture of a hand could win over all the other different kinds of photographs. Her painting of the fruit on the table was very beautiful.   

I recorded my time inside the Westmoreland Art Museum, and after watching the video, it seemed like art to me, capturing each photograph for a few seconds so I can have a quick look at each one, just the way I like it.  

(Want to see a tour of the first floor of the museum? Check out my YouTube video, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pKiftu7wck  )