It was an early morning in Frick Park. A ghostly fog wove its way through the trees,  wrapping itself around everything it touched and suppressing all sounds from escaping. I rolled  up to the trailhead. The air was crisp and damp from the fog. The sun had just risen from the far  hillside casting a bronze light over everything. I pulled my gloves on tighter and put up my face  mask just high enough to cover my nose. The sound of a bike punctured the tranquility as I wove  my way through the damp forest. My bike left behind scars in the wet dirt as it cut through it.  Specs flew up in the air in my wake. The bike perfectly followed the line of the trail beneath it,  tilting itself on the berms underneath me. The trails of frick park weave through the hillside  intentionally, every turn, berm, jump, bridge, and drop is perfectly placed. When I looked down  the side of the hill in certain spots I could see the river below, little waves creating white caps on  the surface. There were big old industrial warehouses across the river with old docks for barges  coming off of them into the water. Carrie Furnace, an old steel mill, sits along the bank rusted  out from years of sitting vulnerable to the elements. A skeleton of old Pittsburgh. 

Frick Park is an interesting place. As the largest park within the city limits of Pittsburgh,  it is a known place where people find asylum to escape from the loud busy city. The main  section of the park, or park proper, is quite large, and when you’re deep in it you wouldn’t even  think you were in the city. The park as a whole is about 644 square acres. Lush trees grow tall  and moss-covered with creeks winding through them. Owls and hawks fight over food and deer  roam free, un-entertained by the passing cyclists and hikers. 

The other part of the park with most of the flow/jump trails sits upon old piles of slag  from the old industrial steel mills. The hills and valleys were filled with leftover debris from the  age of steel in Pittsburgh. It is barren in some spots and looks almost like an old overgrown  parking lot out of an apocalypse movie. They would ship it out of the mills on trains and just  dump it. They continued to dump completely, changing the topography of the land. Filling in  valleys and creating new hills. This also changed the texture of the dirt. It is almost like asphalt.  Loose rocky dirt that holds well on berms and rips up your legs when you fall. You get the  feeling that you are in an abandoned industrial park. But one with hills. When I ride through the  slags, as it’s called, I always see big blocks of concrete randomly littered in the woods, shopping  carts half buried in mud, and old rusted-out bodies of cars, all just sitting there as if a reminder of  the history that shaped the land. While it has a more industrial feeling it is still lush with trees,  bushes, plants, and moss. There are birds chirping, and deer running away with their fawns as  they hear me coming. Slivers of long grass fill cracks in the ground and create walls of tan and  green. Deeper in the woods everything is green.  

What people say makes this part of the park great though is the astounding quality of the  trails. It is unheard of to get this within city limits. Freehub magazine named it a premier  singletrack destination. Although some argue it’s biased. The surprising part to most people is  that a lot of the trails started out Illegal. And many of them are still unsanctioned. As I rode  through Redemption Center, one of the formerly illegal trails, at the very edge of the park along  a hillside, I came across two men digging in the dirt with hand shovels and rakes. It was still  early, the sun was barely up and beams of light were cutting through the trees and fog. I pulled  on the brakes and came to a stop with a protesting screech from the wet calibers. The men had on  dirt-covered work pants and t-shirts with bike graphics on them. “Slagforce” was written across the front pocket. I recognized their faces from bike events before and generally knew what they  were about. They both looked up with a relieved look in their eyes as if they had reason to fear  that I may be someone else. I gave them a friendly greeting and slowly continued through,  pushing my bike past a pile of loose dirt. They temporarily stopped their work to let me pass. As  I rode away I heard the metallic clang of the spade hitting a rock under the damp dirt. When  Frick Park does trail building projects and has volunteers help, the majority of the time it is in the  afternoon. 12:30 to 2. 2 to 3:30. 3:30 to 5. The park hosts these trail service days to keep the  trails in good maintenance and keep improving them. It was not one of those days. It was 7 am.  

The Slagforce website is pretty barren. It is completely devoid of any information  regarding the people who run the operation and who control the site. On the site, there are only  two options for what you can do. There is a button “Sponsor a project”, which just leads to a  faceless Venmo to give money, and a “Slag Swag” button, which takes you to a page with t shirts, hats, and other branded merchandise. The first featured t-shirt on the page has #notfrick  written across the front in hot pink. #notfrick. A casual person just glancing at this might not  think anything of it or just not understand what it means at all. But this hashtag is plastered across social media and their name.  

“It’s like half a joke. Since we are not technically allowed to build in the park, we just say  that we aren’t in the park. We say that we #arntbuildinginfrick,” Said Rob, one of the builders. They say #notfrick to jokingly take the blame away. It is more than just a joke though. It  represents a small act of defiance against the creativity-diminishing regulations of the park. Their  creativity thrives when they have no rules restraining them. They can create the best trails they  can by going in secret. It is ironic though that although what they do is technically illegal the  trails they build are many people’s favorite.

I’ve watched them work. They’re always talking some slang about an angle on a berm  being too “Soft” or too fast. Then a few minutes later they start reshaping it to fit their version of  perfect. They do this efficiently. It is evident in the time they’ve spent perfecting the craft. They  aren’t just amateurs. They ride as well and are good at it. Darren actually used to be a semi-pro  bmx racer. Although it was a lower professional level. He still is very skilled. And Rob has just  been riding since he was a kid so he has a lot of experience. This helps them know what works  and what doesn’t. What is perfect? They build what they want to ride.  

To the industry, they are rouge builders, but their trails are what keep riders coming to  parks like frick. The authorized crews come in with big budgets, blueprints, and plans, while  Slagforce comes in with a “feel for the dirt,” and a belief that “good trails don’t need  permission.” By the time the park fills up with riders, they’re gone. No credit, no names, just  fresh-cut lines in the dirt and the name Slagforce across metal nameplates. 

The hiker shook his head, as he carefully stepped around a big puddle of mud in the  middle of the trail. Wrought with tire marks. “No patience,” he muttered under his breath as his  boots sunk into the damp ground. There’s another point of view on their work. The view is that  it’s selfish and hurtful to the park. He wasn’t necessarily wrong, however. The trail was a mess.  A line of deep fresh cuts of tires and piles of mud here and there. Through a section of the park  that should have been left to dry before building anything new. The moss was torn away and  roots were ripped up from the damp earth. Water pooled in spots that couldn’t drain. Usually,  their work had a sort of craftsmanship. But this time it felt rushed. Not as slowly and fragilely  crafted. Like they couldn’t wait a few days for the ground to dry out and craft a trail that would  stay. Further down on the trail erosion had already started. A pretty small section of the trail had  slid down the hill and there was a steep gap that one had to go around up the hill to get past. The damage was more than just cosmetic. That new line didn’t last long. Within a month it had been  abandoned and Slagforce didn’t bother to fix it. The entrance was blocked off with debris from  trees and foliage. Maybe they didn’t fully think their plan through. It had consequences. The  underground, rogue mentality didn’t work out this time.  

A week later there was a meeting. An official meeting. Not in Frick Park. Not in the  woods. But in a small, cramped office. The park ranger claimed he had a lineup of complaints.  They spanned from damaged trails to dangerous features to the destruction of property. He then  went on to state how there were a lot of liability issues. 

“He asked us to work with the park,” Rob said. “We could keep building we just had to  get projects approved.” 

He shrugged, claiming that he built trails that people wanted to ride and the park didn’t.  Which was partly true.

“We build good trails. Fast as hell. Smooth as hell. The kind that people like. We don’t  want to wait six months for a permit to fix a berm or jump or whatever that needs fixing now.” “We’re not doing this out of some act of defiance against the system, that’s just petty. Its  simple, we just like riding bikes and building stuff,” said Darren. 

The two men both run Slagforce together. The majority of the time it’s just them two  together. Building alone with their own ideas. However, they sometimes for the official days get  volunteers to help. On these days they get whole crews of people that come out to help them  clear and perform maintenance on trails.  

“They want to help out on the trails that they love to ride,” said Rob.

“They probably do it for the same reasons as us. They never ask for credit or anything  they just like to come out and help. They find it fun you know.” Darren added in.

As I rolled away from the trails, I contemplated the work that went into building them.  The dedication that groups like Slagforce have, whether illegal or not, shaped them into  something that the community loves. Maybe there’s room on both sides for an argument. Their  passion can be too much sometimes and damage what they are trying to foster. What’s clear  though is that in Pittsburgh the passion riders have for these trails is deep. Whether it’s digging  secretly in the early morning or volunteering with the park late in the afternoon, the passion is  what keeps the trails alive.

Bloomfield. Even the name conjures up a certain Pittsburgh magic—a kaleidoscope of row houses, proud steeples, and corner cafes rich with the aroma of roasting beans. Tucked between Liberty Avenue’s frenetic bustle and the gentle lullaby of side-street stoops is a neighborhood perpetually balancing the weight of its own history with the promise of tomorrow. But as the years have rolled by, two factions have emerged to vie for Bloomfield’s soul: the Bloomfield Development Corporation (BDC)—the so-called “Ghibblinean Faction”—and the newly founded Bloomfield Alliance- the Catholic Geulphs . 

Whispers in Yinz Coffee, half-hushed discussions at the Pleasure Bar, sky-voiced retellings at Sunday family dinners—everyone in Bloomfield knows about these two power blocks. The difference? You can see it in the clothes they wear and the coffee they drink. But to truly appreciate the ever-simmering tensions, we must first meet the champions of each side—one perched under a rakish beret, the other weighed down by old-world tradition. 

Swing your gaze to the northern boundaries of “Little Italy” and you’ll find Tyler, a prime specimen of the BDC tribe. Basil-green hair sprouts from his scalp like a rebellious vine, crowned by a rakish French beret that’s tilted just so. He wears a striped button-down—lines protesting the dictatorship of solids. Draped around his neck, a scarf shines like a patchwork mosaic of repurposed sea plastics, an homage to the environment as much as an ironic nod to couture. Cargo shorts slump at his hips, each pocket brimming with half-finished chapbooks and ethically sourced coffee beans from the Brazilian Amazon. Ah, coffee. Tyler’s lifeblood. A swirl of artisanal cold brew served in reclaimed mason jars, painstakingly imported from far-flung cooperatives where, he swears, every bean has a first name. He sports tattoos so terrible that they have transcended the boundary of bad taste into a realm of postmodern brilliance. And those sandals on his feet? Strapped manifestos. To the BDC faithful, coffee is activism, fashion is a sermon, and cargo shorts? A revolution. They hold aloft the banner of progress, innovation, and a certain brand of half-ironic, half-deadly-serious quirk that sets the BDC apart. Now, beyond that swirl of kale smoothies and sea-plastic scarves, another faction stands like a fortress of flour-dusted tradition—enter the Alliance’s champion. 

But if Tyler is the herald of the new wave, Oreste is the standard-bearer of the old guard. As part of the Bloomfield Alliance, he’s the living embodiment of Italian-American pride, woven deep into Bloomfield’s cultural tapestry. Picture a black fedora angled sharply above olive-toned skin, a robust mustache reminiscent of Marcello Mastroianni, and a gold chain peeking out from beneath a crisp white dress shirt. The sleeves of his pinstriped vest are rolled to his forearm, revealing calloused hands that have kneaded pizza dough, rolled homemade pasta, and swung a bocce ball under the Bloomfield Bridge. Oreste sips espresso from a stovetop Moka pot, the demitasse cup balanced on a saucer that cradles a single, meticulously chosen biscotti. Tradition is not just alive here—it thrives. Sunday gravy simmers for hours, cannoli must never be pre-filled, and homemade limoncello glints in the evening lantern light. The Bloomfield Alliance carries this sense of storied heritage like a shield, brandished against the kale-and-kombucha onslaught of the BDC. For them, the future might indeed be bright, but the past gleams with an even richer luster. Sun-kissed row houses, a legendary pool, and a neighborhood on the edge—let’s drift to the luminous lure of Bloomfield Beach, where the drama swelled into a veritable tempest. 

Ah, the Bloomfield Beach—a shimmering mirage of summer nostalgia! Where the incandescent Pittsburgh sun refracts off the concrete and asphalt, transforming this patch of city into its very own Mediterranean fever dream. A true Riviera of cracked sidewalks, row houses, and corner stores sweating beneath a haze of heat waves rippling up from Liberty Avenue. People came, oh, did they come! Flocking from every corner of the city, every nook and cranny of Pittsburgh life, drawn as if by some primal force—except, of course, for the Bloomfield Development Corporation (BDC). Their absence? Palpable. Heavy. Like the damp weight of a thunderstorm waiting to break. That night—I remember it!—I stepped into the Bloomfield Liedertafel. A name with more umlauts than vowels, its Teutonic roots felt almost comically out of place amidst the fiercely Italian-American soul of the neighborhood. Stoic, wood-paneled walls encased decades of history, but tonight they bore witness to a tempest brewing inside. The fate of the Bloomfield Pool—would it close for the summer or not —that was the cause célèbre. A Roman forum packed to the rafters. Every local organization sent their envoys, each jealously guarding their slice of the community pie: the respected Bloomfield Citizens Council, the BDC, and a bold, brash newcomer—the Bloomfield Alliance. The Alliance! A ragtag band of neighborhood stalwarts, fresh faces, battle-hardened veterans of the community wars. They’d seen it all. Tree after tree felled in Friendship Park—gone, erased. The silence—deafening, almost conspiratorial—when not one but two beloved churches closed their doors forever. And then, the pièce de résistance: a proposal to erect a monstrous, multi-story housing complex over the hallowed ground of the Bloomfield Community Market. They were furious! And righteous! No mere complainers, this lot. They were torchbearers, pitchfork holders, guardians of a neighborhood ethos that the rest of the world seemed hell-bent on forgetting. My mother stood among them, tall and fierce, her voice rising above the din—a premier advocate for a new old way of life. 

At the meeting’s helm, three figures loomed large. City Councilwoman Deb Gross—ah, Gross! A political stalwart, whose tenure had weathered storms and shifting tides—sat flanked by her BDC allies. She was a figure of experience, of gravitas, but tonight, she faced not one but two challenges: the fiery Alliance and a fresh contender for her seat, Jordan Botta. Botta! The everyman of Bloomfield, the archetype of local heroism. You’d see him as easily at a bocce game beneath the Bloomfield Bridge as at The Pleasure Bar’s legendary? Wisdom Corner, (which has even attracted those suburban intellectual “elites” from Fox Chapel) holding court with philosophers, dreamers, and neighborhood eccentrics. He was grassroots incarnate—a man of block parties, barbecues, door-knocking campaigns, and the casual “Hey, how ya doin’?” that made him seem more neighbor than politician. The room simmered, a pressure cooker of outrage and hope. Questions rained down like a sudden summer storm, drenching the hall in energy. And then—the heckler! Oh, the heckler! An older man, his face flushed with the indignities of age and anger, rose to speak. At first, he was almost coherent, railing against the neglect of neighborhood facilities, the decay of community spirit. But then—boom! Out of nowhere, the words exploded like a firecracker: “WHITE LIVES MATTER!” The crowd froze, a collective intake of breath, then erupted into a chorus of BOOS so loud it practically shook the wood-paneled walls. He stood there, defiant for a heartBEAT, then skimmered away, dishonorably discharged from the proceedings, a dark footnote in an otherwise luminous night. 

And THEN—like some medieval throwback, a Guelphs-vs.-Ghibellines meltdown in the heart of Bloomfield!—two local churches and the neighborhood Catholic school shuttered their doors (WHAM! BANG! GONE!), leaving the Alliance faithful more incensed than the Vatican on Judgment Day. Cue the howls, the wails, the Sunday-parking-lot vigils complete with altars lit by flickering LED candles because the real votives were locked away somewhere behind chains and caution tape. “We must save these sacred temples of spaghettata e spirituality!” they cried, summoning the ghostly echoes of centuries-old crusaders. And yes, by Saint Anthony’s parted mustache, the Alliance actually mailed a cherry-red Appeal to the Holy See in the Vatican—an impassioned call to rescue Bloomfield’s venerable chapels from the grim reaper of “redevelopment.” Meanwhile, the BDC? Zip, nada, bupkis! They sat on their ergonomic chairs, purring about “mixed-use expansions” and “socioeconomic synergy,” as if the entire fiasco was a cappuccino cameo in the grand drama of “progresso”. So there they stood, two warring factions all over again, Guelphs and Ghibellines reborn in cargo shorts and pinstriped vests—each crusading for the soul of Bloomfield, the Alliance raising their old Italian arms to the heavens, the BDC sipping espressos with a shrug—”church closures? Not our department, pal.” Oh the Humanity! Those damn secularized bastards! Don’t they know Bloomfield is a traditional catholic neighborhood? Dozens of churchgoers who usually commute by the nice walk across town, meeting smiling faces as they go, now extinct. All for a new church brewery, which already exists just a couple streets down in Lawrenceville. Ah the Ghibellines, always supporting the secular societies like Lawrenceville since the age of Dante!

Oh, those flickering fluorescents in the Liedertafel’s vaulted hall—mercury vapor dreams dancing on chipped linoleum, reflecting the feverish worry etched into every nervous face! The great Bloomfield Alliance organized a meeting regarding the recent uptick in crime. The club was in full roar, ladies and gentlemen, with the shrill laments of stolen catalytic converters and battered backyard bicycles reverberating to the rafters. The speakers coughed and clicked, and one by one, these outraged neighbors shook their fists at the gloom descending on the stoops: porch pirates, nighttime prowlers, all that unspeakable devilry lurking in the alley shadows. It was a J’Accuse! chorus, a carnival of complaint aimed at the big, nebulous THEM—whoever let the streetlights go dim, the patrol cars drift away, the predators roam free. And right there, turned away from the sputtering mic, draped across the back row like cats grown bored of the show, were the BDC boys—lapels unbuttoned, arms folded, eyebrows flickering with a sort of bemused, Sphinxlike disinterest. They gave the Alliance not so much as a courtesy clap. Standoffish? Aloof? Perhaps. But the message was as loud as a slot-machine jangle in a Vegas chapel: We, the BDC, are not to be moved by your porch-pirate sob stories. And oh, how the crowd loathed them for it! Then came City Councilwoman Deb Gross—a name that, to the folks grappling with stolen bikes, cars, and rummaged trash cans, sounded like a scratched record repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating: She’s the reason the BDC gets to sit so pretty! She’s the reason we’ve had to up our porch cameras and triple-lock our car doors! Yes, unfortunately the BDC-backed Gross bested Botta during the election. Turns out only focusing on Lawrenceville, the most populous neighborhood and relying upon incumbency wins you elections; BUT NOT THE PEOPLE OF BLOOMFIELD. The election honeymoon was over. The outrage now was so thick you could cut it with a butter knife. This was an outright, pitchfork-in-hand revolt. The confederation had mobilized the many “city states” of Little Italy, ready to finally unite the peninsula. Residents of Friendship Avenue, Liberty Avenue, Sciota Street, young and old, liberal and conservative, women and men, all outraged! You’d have thought Botta was Garibaldi!

Because Deb Gross—oh, proud and polished in her suited finery, perfectly coiffed, a flicker of a triumphant grin ever on her lips—was presiding yet again, stoking the promise of more cops on corners, more “LOCK YOUR CAR, DUMMY” signage, more community grants tossed out like 

so many T-shirts at halftime. But the Alliance had tired of hollow vows. They wanted real steel in the spine, real action in the soggy crater of Bloomfield’s battered pride. In that swirl of rhetorical fireworks, the poor woman stood accused by the very neighbors she’d pledged to save. She was the BDC’s golden candidate, yes, the heir-apparent to neighborhood dominion—and now, good heavens, the Alliance was after her. They demanded her explanation, her contrition, her penance in the face of stolen property, cars, and sleepless nights.

But for every protestor’s war cry, the BDC stooges offered not a syllable. Instead, they stared forward, stone-faced, as if memorizing the cracks in the Liedertafel’s plaster. Citizens hissed, groaned, threatened to form volunteer patrols—call it a righteous new neighborhood watch, maybe. And through it all, Deb Gross—her eyes flicking about the stormy crowd—managed that sweet politician’s smile, refusing to yield one millimeter of stage, doubling down on sweeping statements about “bigger police presence,” “community revitalization,” you name it. The crowd roiled, the tension soared, and from the furthest seat in the far back row, it looked like the BDC reps were folding deeper into themselves—caught between their champion’s promise and the community’s wrath, oh, how that hush roared! The real war for Bloomfield’s future, it seemed, was just beginning, and with an anger so thick you could pour it over pancakes, the Alliance rose up to claim its piece of the neighborhood back from the dream so splendidly pitched and so evidently left to rot. 

And then, as if the heavens themselves were testing the neighborhood’s resolve, came the Christmas Mutiny—a scandal so absurd it could only happen in Bloomfield. What began as a vision of festive unity—a celebration of twinkling lights and candy-cane camaraderie—descended into a farce of stolen ideas and tinsel-clad treachery. The ancient Citizens Council, wielding their decades of influence like a sharpened snowflake, swooped in and claimed the contest as their own. The Alliance, blindsided, bellowed their outrage: “They stole Christmas!” Shaken, rattled, and just a little bit scorched at the edges—that’s how the Bloomfield Alliance felt when their sparkling, peppermint-laced, Santa-Slam-Dunk-Christmas-Decorating-Contest-Extravaganza idea was suddenly snatched—SNATCHED!—straight out of their candy-striped hands. 

But, oh, yes, let’s rewind. Picture the row houses of Bloomfield lining Liberty Avenue—taut, tidy, and oh-so-tightly-packed—where every winter the bulbs flicker, the tinsel sparkles, and the sidewalks smell like pine needles and powdered sugar. Enter the Bloomfield Alliance, with their annual “Ho-Ho-Ho, Let’s Deck These Halls” plan. They had it all mapped out: 

1. Candy Cane Countdowns in every shop window, 

2. Window Wonderland murals displayed with new-fallen snow, 

3. A grand finale of twinkling lights, reindeers, Santas on stoops, la-di-dah, and sugarplums in your coffee.

Glorious! 

Gorgeous! 

Gone?! 

Because the Citizens Council—the venerable Bloomfield Citizens Council—yes, that venerable cadre of the older generation (the ones who’ve lived through eight or nine or maybe nine-and-a-half incarnations of Pittsburgh’s sports fortunes, wave after wave) apparently got wind of these sprightly plans. Swoop! Out they come, pinning on holiday badges, claiming the idea for themselves—THEMSELVES!—like some tinsel-bedazzled version of identity theft. 

All because one Linda Vacca (Bless her holly-jolly soul), a leading luminary of the Bloomfield Alliance, innocently confided her Clark Griswoldian vision to the Council. And then? A hush, a whisper, a grin—poof! The next day the older, more aged group (like a fine cheese or maybe a stale fruitcake, depending on your perspective!) took the plan, sprinkled “Citizens Council Official Seal” all over it, and, in a stunt worthy of cunning elves, broadcast it as their brilliant Christmas Contest. 

Cue the outraged howls from the Alliance faithful—“New mutiny!” they hollered.

● “What nerve, what gall??!” 

● “Those Conniving old bastards! 

● “They haven’t done anything in years, now they steal our ideas!” 

Yes, that’s the line. The cry of the outraged. The deck-the-halls denizens of Bloomfield Alliance fully armed with scowls and sharpened plastic candy canes, ready to stake their rightful claim. Meanwhile, the Citizens Council? Probably sipping cocoa, cackling, “Oh, hush, it’s just a misunderstanding… Merry Christmas, dear.” Spouted the president of the BCC. 

And so the row houses stand witness to what might be the great Bloomfield Christmas Contest Controversy of the century. Tinsel tension. Reindeer rivalry. Santa subterfuge. So ring the jingle bells, folks—the bloom and the field are about to see some real holiday fireworks. 

Peace on Earth? Pshhhh. Not on Liberty Avenue, not this year! 

Still, Bloomfield endures—because for all the squabbles, the neighborhood’s heart beats stronger than any single faction’s agenda. Whether you’re a Tyler or an Oreste, a staunch BDC proponent or an Alliance devotee, a Citizens Council loyalist or an separatist in Friendship( Yes, Friendship is rightfully Bloomfield territory), Bloomfield has room for every espresso style and every brand of holiday festooning. On Liberty Avenue, you might find them sitting side by side—Tyler in his sandals of protest, Oreste in his polished oxfords—both sipping coffee, debating the future of Bloomfield. And if you listen closely, you just might hear the faint jingle of Christmas bells or the giddy shouts of kids at the pool, reminding everyone that the story of Bloomfield is still being written, day after day, year after year, generation after generation. But if you ask me, Per la nostra patria di Bloomfield! Proteggiamo la nostra eredità, la nostra storia, e il nostro futuro (For our homeland of Bloomfield! Let us protect our heritage, our history, and our future!)

“Από την Ελλάδα έφυγα πικραμένη. Οι υπεύθυνοι δεν θέλησαν να αναγνωρίσουν το ταλέντο μου, όσο πραγματικά άξιζε . . .” I left Greece bitterly. Those in charge didn’t want to recognize my talent, no matter how much I deserved it. 

— Maria Callas 

Greece’s motionlessness, its stillness, makes many believe that it is a place without change; that is what attracts people here—if not the slew of historical sights and tourist traps which people have decided, are best viewed when Athens effectively becomes an oven. People love the peace they find sprawled out on their cotton beach towels, wearing their linens, watching foreign yachts pass on the horizon over the distinctly beautiful blue of the Mediterranean. This is a fantasy: a fantasy of Greece as the quintessential locus of the “slow life”; Greeks do not live slowly, inefficient might be more accurate, and Greece as a functioning, living place is not always stagnant and scenic like the postcards courteously passed out by uncles at family reunions as a memento for their recent trip to Santorini. No, indeed Greece has changed a lot in the past few years: new roads, new resorts, mass movement: movement into the cities, movement into other countries’ cities, movement into other continents’ cities, movement of other countries into our cities, movement of foreign companies onto our coastline. Over the past two decades, hotels and resorts have piled up in every corner of the nation: Santorini, for example, has practically become a singular massive resort while previous residencies of even the most touristically insignificant locations are, too, open for business. Massive tourism has morphed our coastlines, towns, and cities from what our nostalgia tells us was a haven to centers crawling with lobster-red irreverent tourists. Resorts serve as a tentative enclave encompassing the nearest beach while surrounding communities fill with nothing but ghosts; all the young people move out for new opportunities. Now, the towns are like time capsules, many buildings eerily untouched: the only residents left work in small cafes, gas stations, or some peripheral restaurants. To foreigners, the apoptosis of these places certainly would seem like motionlessness, like a slow life; it is easy to think so when you, yourself, are the motion. 

Outside of this fantasy, there are two real versions of Greece; The past and the present. My mother was born in the vibrant past; her childhood was “magical”: our family was a family, our home was bustling, culture and tradition held people together, and there were young people everywhere in the villages. When asked directly about her childhood—what Greece was like when she was young—she would dodge the question. Nonetheless, stories and bits of information spill out sometimes. Through laughs, she’d recount funny sayings certain family members had and their mannerisms. These were the ones she revisits the most; she most notably and consistently mentioned comedy between the Allagianis twins—one now a Professor in America, one a Greek engineer—as they’d comedically (and ironically) call each other villagers and the poor English of her maternal grandmother, as she’d mispronounce the only English word she knew, potato chips, as “paterros ndzeeps”. She’d list her friends from way back when: their quirks, where they ended up, how it fell apart, how it held together. 

The newer version of Greece is a shadow of that. Unlike the emigrants from abandoned, atrophied villages among islands and countryside, my mother and her family spanned (and still span) a small municipality just south of Athens; the difference between the past and present was visible, but the area was not nearly as abandoned as Cycladic and Peloponnesian villages. Still, the way my mother described her childhood town makes its current state seem dreary in comparison. Lagonisi, where her mother’s house lies, has become one of those places where children who’ve ventured abroad for more opportunities return to take care of what their dead parents and grandparents left behind. Old ladies sit on their porches like watchtowers, monitoring the dirt roads they live on. Families segregate at the slightest fracture, like pepper to dish soap. The area’s urban status prevented its apoptosis, keeping it genuine to an extent innocent American tourists wouldn’t tolerate; a busy highway with drivers harboring little to no self-preservation, and slightly menacing hordes of men dressed as Russian gopnik copycats breaks the illusion a bit. 

The most mourned factor of this apoptosis is how it has broken apart the communities within the villages: the communities Greeks hold so dear. Constant economic collapse, political unrest, dictatorship, and Western influences have come to define Greece anew; they built a more individualistic future, of children self-concerned with survival. My mother’s generation, the new generation, was born into the dictatorship, out of a civil war. Many of the more educated Greeks, like my mother and her immediate family, left Greece young; what was to come was foreshadowed. The junta was oppressive: transportation and industry were improved at the cost of our seas, and our voices. During the Junta the rural countryside, via new highways, connected to Athens and by proxy the world. Eventually the Junta was not sustainable, so, the economy dug deep into tourism. The country was now interconnected, and globally connected, and people joined an emerging hyper-capitalistic workforce from the West. People were (and are) paid poorly and education was arduous and, in ways, bureaucratic. My mother, after the dictatorship, then visited Greece every summer to meet with her cousins and friends who would almost all seek new horizons in Athens or New York. No matter where they stayed they largely abandoned the family as they knew it. That is, they abandoned the parts they didn’t like (and good on them for it). The new Greece is too preoccupied with its own needs, work, and individualism to hold together, centralized. 

There is an idea that these changes, the trot into a comparably more individualistic Greece, are killing Greek culture, and is something we should lament. That idea is seen in the faces of the older generation, silently and more kindly, but it is heard by patriarchal ethno-nationalist organizations that pop up whenever a boom occurs to spout bullshit. It is a type of bullshit that certain Americans spout, too: “As parts of our world become globalized (at a much slower rate than most countries mind you) we lose our culture and families to (dun dun dun) immigrants” is the essence of the argument. One day, after having returned from Greece the previous weekend, I was being driven home after getting my driver’s license by the proctor and, naturally, he began to speak—to fill the space. Eventually, he started on Middle Eastern immigration to Europe, how the most common baby name in the UK was “Muhammed”. Big whoop. This is not how (most) Greeks think. Greek culture morphs and survives and has survived as a liquid thing, living alongside many nations, and being influenced by many nations. Communities as they were known in Greece, yes, die out, but the fissures that crack them open are made, not by immigrants and emigrants. They are made by the Greeks themselves. 

One evening, right before Greek dinnertime (10:00 PM), I departed from Lagonisi, just an hour south of Athens, to a restaurant on the very edge of Glyfada—a city witch acts to Athens as Beverly Hills acts to LA. I looked out from the car’s window into the sea, not far from the coastal highway we drove on. Getting in touch with relatives was practically like pulling teeth, but that night an uncle finally bit the bullet and invited us out for dinner. My mother took this time in the car to air her grievances towards the family. “I mean, everyone knew we were coming, and no one contacted us at all,” she said, at some points with a bewildered inflection in her voice. “I mean, when Diana and Andi came to New York, I booked a flight to go see them! We live in Pittsburgh and I flew to New York! Now we’re in Athens and they can’t even take the metro, or a taxi, over to meet us for dinner? I’m grateful for Vlassi (the uncle who set up plans that day) for trying to see us but no one else can do anything.” She continued, exclaiming how we are in Greece 1-2 times a year, and yet most of our (nauseatingly large) family was, seemingly, unenthusiastic to see us. 

I agreed with my mother. It was sad that family could be so available yet so lazy. It was worse for my mother. She had been close with these people since childhood, they were the only ones she expected to see; it would be akin to one failing to invite one’s best friend to their birthday party, or some other important social event. Newer Greeks often left their family behind, cutting off those who were too troublesome. People were busy, and interaction between extended family was abolished in the day-to-day, and even the week-to-week. This was something different. We came twice a year maximum to the cities where they lived and over a week there was no time offered up for a coffee unless it was begged for. 

“Your grandmother, and her generation, ate so much shit to keep everyone together. And it’s my generation’s fault for ruining it—I mean, we have been so selfish, we don’t care about each other.” This is how my mother put it; no one eats shit to cohere a big family.

My grandmother is a 91-year-old woman who needs assistance day-to-day. Assistance and company. She has caretakers, but our family is undoubtedly broken; people don’t come around as often as they used to. This is hard for her, I’m sure. 

My mother is adamant not to reach that point: being fully dependent on others for something so basic as walking. She sometimes repeats her Scandinavian euthanasia scheme to me, telling me to not let her become so immobile, so codependent, so still. 

To that effect, the one thing that hasn’t changed is the Greeks’ comfort with death. Many would find this unsettling, but it is not a love of death, no, my mother cannot even handle cypress trees for they remind her too much of funeral grounds, but it is an acceptance and familiarity with it. It comes with our pragmatism. I am comforted by cypresses. Though they, too, remind me of cemeteries, I am brought a sense of comfort when I imagine them in rows and clusters around the cemetery of Athens. It is a motionless place, a still place, a time capsule, and it is one of few such places in Greece. That is why I cherish it. 

“I want to be able to describe the brilliance of the world just before the sun sets, when it falls on the grass, and how green the grass looks, and all the other beautiful things I’ve seen, for it’s a shame for them to last only as long as I am looking at them.” 

— Margarita Liberaki, Three Summers

When I drifted awake I saw gray. The walls, slightly lightened by the crack between the  curtain and the windowsill. My mouth, dry, as my nose was stuffed so I had been breathing  through my mouth in my sleep. My ears, hearing the oddest sound, some kind of song that I  couldn’t make out. I rolled over, threw my legs off the side of the bed, and did my daily ritual of  getting up quickly and attempting to convince myself that I was awake, as my brain wished to  slowly drift back to sleep, putting the pieces together: it’s my birthday. I open the door, my dog  jumps up and starts to scurry down the stairs. She’s obviously been awake for a while. The  music, still playing, gets louder as I walk down the stairs. Louder and louder it plays, as I walk  through the dining room, and see my mom, standing there with her phone in her hand recording  me. Her phone light is on, my reaction as I walk into the kitchen. Music blasting, waffles  cooking, elves on the light fixtures and lights on full blast. The room is a daze, unlike any  morning I’ve experienced this year, as an average morning for me is silent. A shower, breakfast,  and a dark cup of coffee, its pouring what seems like the only noise I’ve made all morning: and  that’s how I like it.  

But today, loud music, noise, all the lights on, interaction not even 5 minutes after I’ve  woken up. It’s startling, even draining, to talk to someone so early. But that’s what birthdays  have become, at least for me, is making people around you as happy as you are. Birthdays are no longer magical, they’re no longer the most awaited event of the year, aside from Christmas, and  they’re no longer just about you, even if your parents may think they are. It seemed as though the  more quiet and isolated I became while eating, despite that being my everyday habit, they  became slightly more sad, as if they expected more, more anything, more of “me”. So I put on a  happy face, I hugged, and talked, and socialized, despite just wanting my normal schedule. But I  knew that this wasn’t about me. My parents, specifically my mom, had put in a lot of work to  make this morning special, hoping that I would enjoy it, that she would enjoy it. And I realized  then, that my hypothesis had been correct; That as you grow older, Birthdays become more and  more about making the people around you happy, not yourself. 

But as I remarked on the events of the morning throughout the day, wandering through  the halls of my school and brain, and experiencing the way my friends acted towards me, the  same as always, their joking and laughing serve as reminders that birthdays can be normal, are normal. Remembering the way my family treated me, I harkened back to my previous  hypothesis, and realized that I was wrong. The only reason my family was upset this morning is  because I hadn’t had the reaction they were expecting. They weren’t disappointed with me, but  rather with themselves, as they realized they didn’t know me as well as they thought they had, at  least in that respect, and in reality they weren’t doing it for their own enjoyment, as I would  notice later in the day, but verily and honestly attempting to make me feel better. When I began  thinking deeper about my presumptions from the morning, multiple things were happening that  would reshape how I thought about the experience. 

The meal I requested was made, and the cake was prepared, and the whole family came  together not to celebrate their accomplishments of celebrating and preparing such a great day for  me, but genuinely celebrating me. It truly reminded me of being small and innocent; like a day in  elementary school, when my chores were few and homework was almost nothing, and little me  had not a care in the world except for when my bedtime was. Unwrapping my presents, seeing  the Xbox One I unwrapped that night in 2016, a gift from my grandparents, thinking to myself  about how lucky I was to have them, to have everything. Thinking back on that day,  remembering the magic with which I celebrated that machine, a cover of Madden 16 on the box,  Odell Beckham Jr. making perhaps the catch of the century and a letter from Grandma and  Grandpa, Grandpa gone four and a half years now: the same controller in my hand. So much had  changed since then, too much, yet not enough. 

And when I thought back to how my sister’s birthday was celebrated, 5 days before the  real event, on a cold night in late November, celebrating her life, I again realized, this time from  an outside perspective, one of love and duty, that I wasn’t trying to make myself feel better about  her birthday, but making sure she felt as good as she ever would. I realized that when I went to  Target that day, a few hours before celebrating, scanning the aisles to find the perfect gift,  eventually settling on a book, one of deception and murder with a red cover, that I wasn’t  proving to myself that I was a good brother, like my original hypothesis would have predicted,  but I was making her the centerpiece of my day. As I drove home from Target, buckling my  seatbelt with a satisfying click, hearing the engine whirr to life as I turned the key, and hearing  the crunch of ice as I braked at the stop sign, I thought about one thing: her happiness.

But her day was different. She spent the morning at her boyfriends, did an interview for  one of her residencies, hoping she would find a fit and uncover her true desire for either surgery  or family medicine, picked up the two boxes that she bought for me and came home after a  somewhat less stressful day than she had been used to these past few months, the time of bone grinding 12-hour shifts and the least interesting work she would do in her medical career, and  she was content. She didn’t have any misgivings over the way she would be spending her  birthday, because to her birthdays are just normal days, worth celebrating, sure, but not important  enough to interrupt any productive day. She made coffee and scrolled on Instagram, much like  any other day. When she got to the clinic she saw her first patient, an older man with chronic  heart failure who doesn’t take his medications because he doesn’t like to do what he’s told. He  smells vaguely of cigarettes, an irony considering he carries around an oxygen machine… that he  also doesn’t use. He’s a large man, over 260 lbs, needing a walker to perform basic tasks. He has  a beard, gray, like the feeling in the room. A feeling of helplessness, as he wants help but doesn’t  want to help himself, and she wants to help him but knows it is futile if he won’t take his  medicine. He lumbers into the room, shifting from side to side, and sits down as she examines  his body, starting with his arms, and moving to his chest, his heart and breathing, and finally she  gets to his legs: legs covered with sores. The sores of desperation. Sores that seem to hold the  last bit of hope that his body still has, waiting to burst, as if the body knows: I have a rendezvous  with death. She checks his insulin, as the man is also diabetic, although any multitude of things  could be responsible for his poor health, at least one is his insistence on eating fast food weekly,  despite everything his doctors tell him. His face is wrinkly, white hair thinning, large nose and  cracked lips, large eye-bags and a beard as scraggly as he is sick: terminally. She reads her  measurements and calls her supervisor, as this man is going to the emergency room. Onto the next one. And although today is her birthday, or at least the day masquerading as her birthday,  she doesn’t think about that, because there’s nothing special about today, other than the fact that  she’ll go home and spend time with her family, like she does most every night when she’s in  town, which she wishes she could do more when she’s not. Nothing special, except a warm  chocolate cake that she eats twice a year, once on both of our birthdays. Nothing special. 

On a typical day she sees about 10 patients, ranging from kids and babies to the elderly.  Many with chronic diseases, their body slowly failing, as they “let their chronic problems get the  best of them.” The waiting room is depressing, the floral colors failing to cheer up the fatal  issues that fray their nerves and fight their body. But as they transition to the solitary room with  the exam table and crinkly paper, the fight or flight reflex lessens. Problems are counseled and  patients are both happy and sad, and the work can be draining, especially because many patients  don’t take the medication that they need. “High blood-pressure patients need to take their  medicine” she repeats for the third time, clearly frustrated with the inability of the patients to  support themselves. But this is a typical day. 

On her drive back to our house, she thought of many things: car payments, her boyfriend,  and her medical career. She got home and sat on the couch, again, scrolling on instagram, like  any other day. She remembers the dinner, crab pasta with breadcrumbs. She remembers laughing  with me as I failed to blow out my candles. She remembers slowly drifting up the stairs, laying in  bed on her phone before placing it on her nightstand and passing out from the exerted energy of  the day. She thinks back on the day with indifference, remarking that she doesn’t “really remember what happened” because it was just “a normal day.” Unlike my changing ideas from  the beginning of the piece, her thoughts were constant and consistent: just a normal day. 

Birthdays are something special. They are something of warmth and love and care. They  are something of beauty. And they are also something of cold, snow, and frost. Something that  drains and numbs. Depending on the day, they may be looked forward to, or dreaded, or  something altogether different that you hadn’t expected to feel. Sometimes they are a surprise.  Birthdays are one thing here, another there, and a third thing in between. They are another  normal day. Maybe this story has not been about birthdays, but about perspectives. Maybe it’s  not about feeling good or bad, but simply about feeling. Birthdays, after all, are just another day  closer to when the first meadow-flowers appear.

Gram, or Graham, no one knows for sure except for him (and his mother) is in four bands. The pride and joy of the Taylor Alderdice drumline, junior in high school, outside of Dice he spends almost all his time hanging around adults with musical inclinations who contrast sharply with his childish senior friends.

A city where the weather has a worse temper than the people who have to endure it, Pittsburgh is the place where people, specifically those who seemed to want a watered down version of Chicago, come for the walkability, as there is no chance the public transport drivers are the reason that made them believe that this city was the right place to settle down for their family. Under what felt like a constant game of summer in Death Valley or winter in Siberia, Pittsburgh was simply put, average, besides a collective group speech impediment culminating in ‘yinz’, and a Pittsburgh left, a phenomenon even I have adapted, maybe from spending too much time on the bus when I was suffering of a lack of license; the bad driving and the blue lights that turn on past eight inched their way into my reflexes, allowing me to rest my mind on autopilot while touring my city each day. 

I put my car in reverse and pull out into the remains of a broken street. For the past four months Bayard – the strip of concrete between Winchester Thurston and the Scientology church, my street – has been practically ‘un-get-out-of-your-driveway-table’. A test of my patience each morning, I spend more time on trying to find alternate routes to dodge the men and women in their annoyingly yellow vests arguing with me about the veracity of me being a resident, than noticing the changes of my street.

For a while, Bayard used to be the street between Winchester and a plethora of tasty – hip restaurants, but now, under new management, or no management at all, Pie for Breakfast remains a distant memory of Legume, a once fancy place to impress friends from out of town, nowadays reduced to a glorified burger joint. Recently, I realized that I have to define it as being the associate of a mediocre 7-11 and a vape store, the only landmarks teens bother to carve into their brains. I wonder when I myself became desensitized to its decline; maybe I just never noticed until I couldn’t get out of my driveway. 

The first thing that Gram told me when I picked him up was that it was uncomfortably warm outside. The exact thought crossed my mind, happy to realize that forgetting my jacket, a sin when being subjected to Pittsburgh’s mood changes, didn’t quite matter today. I could repent on this November Sunday, a day that I had no idea would take me the wrong way in the first ten minutes.

I went my usual route, my usual speeding habit, but my unusual miss of the street. I overshot a house I never fail to notice. Has it really been that long? 

The house stood self assured, uninvited, the demise of the street. While the construction workers had been my greatest nemesis each morning, I would not mind if they took their sledgehammers to this house, as a contribution to suddenly ‘better the community’. An absurdly large cube with windows and no blinds, contains a resident which is on the receiving end of an unshatterable grudge. I was convinced it was an object the universe had placed strategically, an object to test my irritability, my pettiness, as it would be so easy to waste some extra gas and take Beechwood instead.

Further down the street, past the cube, and up the hill, stands a house with paint peeling off the outside walls, and the ghost of my bike in the driveway – the backdrop of Gram’s weather report. The house once used to be lively but now it was tired, sick of standing. Flower beds empty and bare, basketball hoop untouched, the family that Gram so badly wanted back, and almost had, lingers, even his favorite cat now gone. 

I ironically first met Gram back down the street, in the object of my greatest hatred – the venue where the ‘city kids’ took center stage and banished everyone else to the nosebleeds, as since the moment Shady Side Academy slipped out of my mouth, before I could even mention my zip code, I became blacklisted as the entitled brat Lili (my neighbor) that was corrupting her. While Central, Ellis, and Winchester, all private, are in the accepted zip code range of 15200s and 15210s, battling over the 5th avenue title, Shady Side Academy resides across the river, as if the Highland Park Bridge was the green mile for a crime punishable by death, at least, social death. While I don’t remember much of the night I met Graham, as I spent consoling my next door neighbor for the loss of her boyfriend, the attendant of the cube house and the receiving end of my grudge, I vividly remember briefly crossing Gram. It wasn’t until January rolled around, where both of our lives seemed to be just as ruined as my street, when I learned his real name.

Strawberry Pretzel Salad and a butterscotch oreo mix could only be found in the comfort of four, slightly annoyingly yellow walls. In the place that seemed to be most like Pittsburgh, a Belgian boss, and me, a fake ‘city kid’, resided in the nucleus of its culture, completely contaminating the black and gold. My boss needing to go get oxygen (half a pack of cigarettes), empty summer days and rushed winter nights, my side hustle was a juxtaposition to common belief, particularly as this ice cream shop attracts virtually all adults. While the occasional family would sample each flavor – one kid licking the glass, the other gunning directly for cookie monster – college students, those who will never leave the city and those who suddenly disappear all get their ice cream at the expense of me fielding questions about picking up smoking when returning home, the scent from my boss finding its way into the fibers of my clothes. These yellow walls create a portal, a vision to the future, the grown up city kids, leaching on ice cream that was really made in Mount Lebanon. 

Parallel to the yellow ice cream time machine, Gram hustles in a place that needs a null explanation besides the anxiety that comes with trying to order a box combo at one in the morning. If I am the one who manages the ‘city adult’ mid life crisis, Gram oversees ‘city kid’ social hour. The only under 18 employee, Gram breaks corporate policy by working at Canes, and trying to chip away at his manager to accept his song requests, Graham’s higher up deflecting it onto his even higher ups. Through weekly arguments with his employees about sneaking his friends during the uncomfortable sliver of time where an establishment is clearly trying to close and its real closing time, Gram has even the people in the kitchen peeking out their heads through the metal screens to hand him his order without him asking anything besides, ‘can you play Subterranean Homesick Alien?’

They don’t. They never did. It’s the damn higher ups, it always is.

As Gram directed me toward a seemingly abandoned warehouse, I began regretting my decision of letting him show me his favorite spaces. Some were familiar– Forbes, where the terrible trombone playing never stops, Mr. Lee’s classroom, even Whiteman park; but even as unpredictable as Gram was, this seemed a bit odd. Pulling directly into a parking spot spray-painted with a stern ‘no parking’ sign, but I was too reluctant to maneuver my car somewhere else, as I thought, ‘who would even be here?’ Yet again, I was proven wrong.

While the outside looked broken and bare, once I entered what seemed like an undercover high security fort, I was surprised to see that all four floors were bustling with people. Dimly lit, the building’s grey stone stairs snaked between orange bricks leading me to a thick metallic door, a door which stood in the way between me, a conversation, and a realization.

Offices pioneering new technology, movie studios, and a closet for Gram. Even though the space wasn’t big, Grams’ fidgety energy and refusal to sit down filled it completely. Christmas lights were hung haphazardly from the ceiling, drumsticks littered the floor, and a piano displayed physics homework on the sheet holder instead of music; it seemed to me like Gram’s mind was suddenly made tangible – a chaotic product of the rhythm that his dad had drummed into him since he was a child.

When he was five, Gram hated his piano teacher and the piano even more. Quite un-partial to classical music, and very un-partial to practicing, at first, Gram was a musical failure next to the likes of his father. Drum Corps International veteran, ex-professional trumpetist, Gram’s father had been stirring the ingredients of a talented drummer into his son’s brain since birth. Even though Gram was quickly stumbling about his studio, playing with random things, this rhythm became very apparent to me; the way in which he chose his pauses, the organization of his thoughts. While it was all an improvisation, like the jazz he so greatly admired, there was a beat to it, a clear purpose. If his dad pitched it to him, Sunburst School of Music made Gram hit the home run. A rite of passage for young Pittsburgh musicians, the place where Gram would meet his future band mates, and where he found the drums, Gram’s programmed rhythm made him outshine the older kids. Now, the understudy dubbed fit to have a contributing role, Gram took the initial, ‘he’s actually really good’ and made it even better, to the point where he not only graduated from Sunburst early, but perfected the art of asking for rides to his 4 different band practices. Originally a child around highschoolers, currently a high schooler around adults, Gram has no business being half the places he finds himself, always seeming out of place, yet exactly where he needs to be – his own higher up.

Dice comes with its own story – to me it evokes the moment when someone spoils a horror movie; I know the whole story, but would have never gone to see it in the first place. As Dice should have been my alma mater, coming to the end of highschool, I now realize the grudge I held against it, the guilt I hoarded for the daily trip across the Highland Park Bridge each morning, now triggered my detached nostalgia for the community it houses. Dice itself is upright, unlike some of its students. With radiators that sound like Gram decided to have a solo within them, the known consensus is that it’s a school that beacons people to be great, just for them to only make okay out of it, a concept that seemed relatively foreign at Shady Side, with a few notable exceptions. Is it bad to say I was a bit jealous, upset that I couldn’t be as free even though I lived just mere blocks away?

While I have never perceived Gram himself as a degenerate, his friends fit the Dice stereotype perfectly, therefore guilty by association. Always in the foreground of their shenanigans, there is not a single moment I would catch his friends not being busy breaking lamps, or bullying people off Forbes, the self appointed child kings of the street. At a moment in time, to me, they were the true ‘city kids’, those who made ‘okay’ out of things rather than ‘great’ out of them, people who would do just enough to get by and then feverishly attend to their immature tasks.

It was strange to observed the types of people Gram used to fill up the missing parts of himself, the sister off at college, and now his ex-step-siblings… Gram loved people endlessly, but it always seemed like he was left in the dust, choosing the exact opposite types of people to cope with. The extent to which he went to put on a show to the people he felt a relative sense of not dread but boredom, even when it was clear that the only show he wanted to be putting on was with his funk, or rock, or jazz, or rock funk jazz bands, was heart wrenching. Yet, once Gram found his rhythm, it became clear to me how Gram fits into Dice, the way he fits into everything really – by not fitting in at all. This year, either skipping gym to sit in AP Music Theory, or being dubbed Western Pennsylvania’s top drummer, even though it took him three years and four band programs at school alone to get there, Gram realized what school he went to, or the people he felt forced to surround himself with didn’t define him, didn’t put him in a box but rather gave him the tools to make a community of his own, even in a watered down city. 

I had no such realization besides the fact that driving had not been kind to me lately – tucking my car behind a van, I just knew I was going to get towed.

Just a week after it being ‘uncomfortably warm’ I was shoving my face within the warm grasp of my scarf, as me and my friend Olivia braved the cold. I would be indifferent to my car being ticketed or taken away, I felt as though I would expect nothing more from this week. Suffering from chronic sleep deprivation, and with no motivation to leave my green walls, I was tempted to seclude myself and just listen to music in the confines of my own room, I didn’t need to put my car in danger. I locked the doors and walked out of the wired gate.

Even though I was only five minutes from Bayard, it felt like I was in a different world, as the city felt unfamiliar tonight. Murals and sculptures lining the sidewalks and building walls, even in the dark their shapes and colors were different than the grey, torn apart put back together again Pittsburgh I was used to, it felt like time would move slow here, especially when your condensation clouds your vision for a moment.

We found ourselves in front of a yellow painted door with three paper plates, the tape messily holding them hostage, not letting the wind take them down the street. Pushing the door inward, I revealed industrial lights and a cement floor covered with glass, a broken wooden stair standing by its side. I seriously started to think this isn’t where we had to go, but the plates said 2nd floor Poster Child with Blue Condition and I hadn’t broken 3 traffic laws– a Pittsburgh left, disregarding a one way, and a very illegal park job – for nothing; I was promised a good show.

This house was so weird. Olivia, my best friend who would go on any adventure with me as long as it ended in froyo, was even more skeptical than me. I don’t blame her. While I may at least bare the 15213 zip, Olivia’s phone number could’t even claim the 412 area code. The wood groaned under our weight, the staircase lit dimly with a singular lightbulb. As I inched my way up to a bend, waiting to have accidentally walked into just a regular person trying to cook or watch TV, I suddenly felt like I was breathing different air. Decorate rugs lining the floor, plants and pictures growing across every surface, the red wall standing assertively with a big hole without a door. The room itself was alive, even without the crowd mushed on the inside of the empty door frame. I felt as though I lived here, suddenly MY mind was made tangible and it wasn’t even my doing, even the first floor, the debris started to make sense: the house was a 4 story work of art.

In the cutout, a room lit purple, outlined by couches and folded wooden chairs, even the floor space was occupied. Gram saw us immediately, but I was too busy being punched in the face by the no apple pay sign, leading my now broken nose to the fist fight of trying to download venmo with a show about to start any minute.

Exiled to the wrong side of the door frame, me and Olivia claimed a couch and tried not to seem out of place. A man with the blazer part of the suit on top and blue jeans on the bottom walked in and out his hands twitching, hair a mess. My card declined. It was looking like we might have to camp outside, and looking back on it, it probably would have been the best view.

I was still left speechless by the house. I didn’t know things like this existed in Pittsburgh, a place where I thought all culture was in the past, every cool thing buried in the soot that once used to define it. A lady was next to us on the couch. Quietly sitting on her phone looking up to the blazer man every time he walked back out, she was the one to first break the silence, ‘does it sound like someone singing super high pitched or am I finally losing it?’ Her glasses were perched on her grey hat, asking us before she even really saw us. We listened. Surely it was someone hitting a high note, or someone throwing the cat out of the 3rd floor window. We talked to her for a while, rambling on about how much I liked the space, it wasn’t just small talk. Eventually I asked her if she had been here before and she said she’d just cover for us, by the end of the night she had a certain liking for us.

When I took off my rose-colored glasses, I felt that my realization ended up plaguing me as once I learned the power of up-and-leaving, bridges were not burned but still grilled. I separated myself from something I had known for years, I realized I couldn’t live in a bubble anymore, especially around people who truly believed the rest of the world would reflect the sheltered life they had led until now. I didn’t become barbaric, completely isolating myself from civilization, but it took a long time to become okay with the fact that I can outgrow people, even without an explanation.

Finding myself sitting on the ground I felt as if I didn’t belong, a perpetually out of place city kid, infiltrating an event that they couldn’t even cover. Mic feedback and people standing right infront of us, the music started.

I was impressed from the first chord, something Gram had been doing a lot of lately. It wasn’t that I didn’t have faith in the skill, but the atmosphere added a different dimension to the talent.

More people started to stand in front of us, to the point we had to throw looks between people’s legs to get a single shot of Gram’s foot hitting the bass drum.

I took a moment to let the music be the background to my people watching. A few people I didn’t have to make assumptions about, I knew them, the very people who had their preconceptions about me, the ones that never got past them. My chest tightened, I felt like an imposter; even if I clawed my way out of the Shady Side buble, over time I had forced myself into a new one, a bubble that was fueled by my internal fraudility, a bubble that never let me explore past Forbes. It was at this moment that Tilly walked in the door.

Gram and Tilly were the closest I’ve ever got to clawing out of the constraints thrown at me. Both hailing Dice, both people I connected to based on passions and shared experience, Tilly up and pushed me to the front of the semi-circle crowd. Three songs in, and I couldn’t be more impressed. Em brushed past me tugging his cord behind him like a tail, Casey synced her movements with mine, and Gram put on the show he actually enjoyed. Even though I thought I looked out of place, I finally felt as though I belonged somewhere, even just temporarily – I knew here, people were just for the music, not for the judgement, maybe something I had been ignoring in the city for so long.

I was too harsh on Pittsburgh, on the city kids. While I had experience with the recipe I deviated from, I tried to make sense of things by applying stereotypes to things with completely different ingredients, in the end, mixing it to the point it blew up in my face. It was strange, almost embarrassing that Gram, a year younger than me, a fake-degenerate, reached this epiphany before me. From chasing those who you think you should be friends with, to leaving in secret to go be around people whose company you actually enjoy, to do things you actually love rather than what you’re expected to, Gram clearly had a firmer safety net than I did: music talent. Slowly but surely, several almost-parking tickets, faith in random doorways, and becoming friends with the woman that owns the venue, while I may not have a set community like Gram to defer to, I now realize even a state of limbo has its pluses.

Back in 6th grade, in an effort to save a dyslexic kid from embarrassment, Graham (his real name) allowed himself to become a unit of measurement – wearing it proudly until it defined him. It was sort of an idiotic detail, one which seemed insignificant until I realized that it might just be the singular thing that will never change in our lives: people were always confused about his name, and they always would be. Gram is a unit of measurement for the ineffability of life. People come and go, and some even end up in limbo, but Gram taught me that any moment can instill life, as long as someone’s passion lands.