Pittsburgh is famously a “city of neighborhoods”–ninety of them, to be precise. Going through the full list, it was both enlightening and exciting to think of how much of The ‘Burgh hasn’t yet been Orbit covered–let alone the parts of town we’ve never even been to or couldn’t place on the map. How could we have never even been to Esplen or New Homestead or Summer Hill?
For this speculative journal’s New Year’s resolution 2017, we’re beginning a brand new project to visit and cover each and every one of the city’s defined neighborhoods*, Orbit style.
The twin sycamores of Sheraden
To qualify for the series, the story must be fully of and about that place. If we include a single photo from somewhere in one of our collections on a theme, that doesn’t count. Similarly, an interview with someone who happens to live in a neighborhood would only register if that person’s particular work specifically related to the place.
Many parts of town have already been visited–Oakland, Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, The Hill District, Woods Run, and Downtown each have a bunch of stories to their names. For these, we’re grandfathering them into the series retroactively.
We even started a little early. Our trips to the amazing former Broadhead Manor project in Fairywood and Loretto Cemetery in Arlington Heights late in 2016 were prompted simply because we’d just never been to those parts of town and they seemed interesting. [SPOILER ALERT: they are.] We’ll be doing a lot more of that in 2017.
Former Broadhead Manor public housing project, Fairywood
One of the late Victorian photo headstones of Loretto Cemetery, Arlington Heights
Here’s where we could use your help: If you know of anything particularly Orbit-worthy happening anywhere–but especially in these un-covered territories–please let us know (via the Contact page) and we’d love to check it out.
* We’re counting the neighborhoods in a slightly more practical way for reporting purposes, so the total target number isn’t quite a full 90. This is all explained on the 90 Neighborhoods project page.
Pittsburgh Orbit 
Summer Hiller here. Literally all that goes on in this little suburban feeling sliver of city is the same cops hanging out at a sad BP that closes earlier than is useful for much longer periods of time than my tax dollars are comfortable with, and people at the four way stop it sits at displaying their complete ineptitude at how a four way stop works. The BP touts itself as a Gas Station/Italian Restaurant on their Facebook page: baskets of shrimp and fish sandwiches from a gas station/Italian restaurant combo decked out in hokey K-mart swag and lazy cops are just what I want to put in my mouth), so you should probably check the place out.
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B: Challenge accepted! Thanks for the tip!
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