Christmas was good. I had my last day of work on Wednesday. I sat on my butt Wednesday evening, Thursday and Friday night — I didn’t even feel like going out or bothering with the crazy shopping crowds. Saturday morning, I ventured to my vacation home. Traffic blew. I knew it would. But I got there almost six hours later and met up with old high school friends and their significant others. I left them behind and drove to Pittsburgh to meet up with other friends.
Pittsburgh is a fun, cool city. Don’t believe whatever else you hear. I decided that even though it’s small and a little hokey (yes, big hair and mullets are frequent sightings, and people proudly wear their Steelers parkas out to classy clubs), it’s a city with a lot of personality (such as big hair, mullets, parkas). You really want to stop people and ask them, “Really? Why do you think that your haircut is OK?” You want to immediately submit their name and photos to “Fashion Court” or whatever those makeover shows are on the Style Network. But it’s all really funny.
I used to hate on western Pennsylvania and all its podunk towns and under-cultured people. But man, sometimes I really miss it. And I love going to the vacation home because while DC has class, money and education — the ‘Burgh’s got spirit. (It also has class, money and education, but it’s not commonly associated with the city.)
So Christmas came and went. It was good to be with family and all that great stuff. I then left the western part of the state for the eastern part. College friends Gen, Lori and I had yummy sushi in Bethlehem. We got tipsy off the sake and visited a coffeehouse nearby where I beat Lori in a sudden-death showdown of ’90s Trivial Pursuit. (She’ll argue that it wasn’t fair; that the rules were arbitrary. I still won.) Afterward, to the Bethlehem Brew Works, a surprisingly good brewpub with a really good selection of fancy Belgian beers. Like all my first-time experiences at a brewpub, I ordered a sampler sans the oatmeal stout. I liked them all.
The Brew Works is downtown, in a converted shopping mall. I could do another post on how much I love seeing this. If I could build a time machine and be a college student again, I’d have passed on journalism and delved into redevelopment planning stuff. Not of the big cities and the g-word (gentrification). But of once thriving small cities and towns that suffered over the years as people stopped using trains or factories shut down.
I’m getting excited, so I’ll save that as a post for another day.
Anyway, we got tipsy at the Brew Works. Actually by the end of the night, I was tipsy. We woke up the next day and headed to NYC. That will be a story of its own. But as you can see, we made it to Times Square and I tried to proposition a giant M&M.
Hey, there M&M, wanna go home with me? I bet you taste great!
P.S. UGH WordPress! Why do you not let me make a nice caption for my photo?
