Phantom City

Ghostly city of glowering skies and old bridges.  Steep city of rivers and hills, almost stately in its deer path logic, everything emanating from a single point where two rivers form a third.  The major streets are like rays of light spreading out away from the cone of land that is their source.  That triangle--the Point--is both the city's figurative and literal starting place.  In the mid-1700s, it was the site of the colonial fort and village.  Now it's a green riverside park in the shadow of the most sinister-looking towers.  

The skyline has an evil look to it, too many sharp peaks and angles, like the towers of Mordor or Isengard.  But, oh the lovely architecture in this dark city of gargoyles and stone angels.  The cavernous, ornate theaters and music halls with their lofty balconies and galleries.  The public squares and parks with their statues and fountains.   It's a city of sculptured cemeteries, where the dead repose in the gritty splendor of their elaborately sculpted tombs.  The rosettes, the flying buttresses sheltering the earthly remains of long-forgotten souls.  The glorious churches where the hour is always twilight.  The mansions of the robber barons of bygone days, standing all in rows along tree-lined streets.  The synagogues, and onion domes, and spires.  The curious antique stores, and dusty used bookstores, and gray-lit coffee shops where cats sleep on old "davenports."  The Arab, and Vietnamese, and Italian, and Central American supermarkets.  The museums, and universities, and hospitals.  It's an inimitable city of glories untold. There are cities more beautiful--though only few on this continent.  There are cities more chic and refined--though this one truly holds its own in terms of culture.  But I don't know any other American city with the same mysterious "noir" mystique as Pittsburgh.  Sometimes I think I'll just wander into its tangle of narrow streets and disappear from all the responsibilities of this life.

I think all things "Batman" are lame, but it's really no wonder the latest Batman movie was filmed in Pittsburgh.  It's a mysterious city with an old, jagged charm--a haunting kind of beauty that borders on the morbid.  I live in the dull outer orbit of this grand old city, but I venture here rarely.  Life just gets in the way.