Braddock Journey

Sunday, November 02, 2008

I’m not really sure I’m spelling it right, but Joel hosted scaraoke at Puhala’s on Halloween. Elgin and Kevin were tearing it up all night, it may have been the first karaoke night when there were arguments over who got to sing next.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Food may be one of the most difficult transitions in moving to Braddock, depending on the city of comparison. There are very few options for purchasing food, prepared or not, in Braddock. A far cry from our short time spent in Portland, but not too different from Juneau.

In general, Pittsburgh food is like a northern version of southern food - lots of really tasty stuff that’s bad for you. Heaping reubens, chicken wings of all varieties, hamburgers, pizza, pierogies. All great stuff, but we’ve found little that is so impressive we want to go out for it. We’re cooking in very often, just like in Juneau, because the variety seems limited when eating out. Sure there’s an excellent sushi place and a German restaurant, but those are things we do every once in a while. We haven’t found a place that has such good dishes that we want to go back again and again to try everything on the menu. But we’re still looking ...

Yet even when cooking at home, Braddock is definitely a town that requires transportation for sustenance. The stores in the proximity to Braddock (two Giant Eagles) offer lackluster produce and limited selections in the deli. The larger store in the Waterfront has more selection, but the store in Braddock Hills is easier to access. There is the option of driving to Whole Foods, which is a complete circus because of its unique offerings. I drove out to that area, hitting either Whole Foods or Trader Joes, maybe once every two weeks for the first month or so. Until the CSA boxes started coming in this summer, then the Pennsylvania farms began to shine. I am a huge fan of community supported agriculture, and the boxes from the Dillner Family Farm have given us an excellent sampling of local produce.

But what to do if you are in Braddock and you don’t have a CSA box? Or a car?

Every Wednesday, in season, the Braddock Farm Stand is open. Excellent locally grown produce, including enormous ocra, is supplemented with other veggies they bring in so that there is a wider variety available.

Family Dollar on Braddock Avenue has a prime selection of junk food, boxes/canned items, and a small selection of refrigerated goods.

Stambolis’ poultry shop and Bells Market are also on Braddock Avenue. You can stop into the poultry place for a cold soft drink, fish, or poultry. Bells seems to sell a lot of their combination box deals (buy x, x, x, and x and you get a free bag of potatoes!) and it always looks busy. When I was in there the produce was not impressive, but again that was before the local produce came into season and the produce at Giant Eagle wasn’t impressive either. At least there is a small selection of produce in Braddock along side the larger selection of meats.

Al’s at the start of town has general convenience store fare. And there are two bar/diners within walking distance. Heidy’s under the Rankin Bridge has great burgers a la carte for under $4. I hear their veggie burger is excellent as well. We keep meaning to try out the Green Castle Cafe on Talbot, but haven’t been there yet. 

Saturday, August 09, 2008

I fed this site into Wordle to create a visual representation of what I discuss here ...

Sunday, July 06, 2008

We’ve been hearing from adults and kids alike how fantastic the fireworks at Kennywood are on the Fourth of July. This year we were lucky enough to have access to a rooftop in the middle of Braddock Avenue. 

There were fireworks going off all around us, at one point we counted eight different shows in sight. Kennywood was the closest and easiest to watch, but they were certainly shooting up from behind the hills in all directions.

Earlier this week we were down in Florida to see Tom Waits. Even though the past week was filled with driving and visiting rather than relaxing, it was a good break from non-stop work on the house. When we lived in Juneau we became acutely aware of the insanity brought on by not getting out of town a couple times every year. Travel is more accessible from here, and there isn’t the island-fever, trapped feeling lurking at all times. Still, we’ve realized it’s equally important to take breaks and mix up the scenery a bit even though we are connected to the rest of the world from here.

We’ll definitely be taking some more short trips around this area. We loved the landscape in West Virginia and North Carolina. I can see why so many people are talking about retiring to Charlotte, but we’re more interested in the shorter drive to West Virginia.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

We were told from the start that you need to be in Braddock to find the place that’s right for you. 

Since we were jumping between vacation rentals and still had all of our things boxed up in storage, moving to Braddock was as simple as driving across the country. We returned from our Valentine’s visit to pack up, plan, and move. We were back in Braddock mid-March and on the hunt for a building on Braddock Ave or a kick-ass house.

The first house we wanted to check out was one we saw on Craigslist, listed at $14,000, on Talbot Avenue. It was a red brick Victorian-style house that looked amazing. Turns out another couple had already started the process of purchasing it and was awaiting the title search. So we began looking at a place on Parker that we heard about through word of mouth and some available spaces on Braddock Ave.

Our first attempt to purchase property here was the former NAPA building. Decked out in 70s flare, carpeted walls and mirrored ceilings, it had two small apartments on a former mezzanine and a full two floors of open space below. We could envision a movie theater in the former parts storage area and loved the idea of having a garage with an entrance from the alley and a 3,000-square-foot flat roof. The next day we started the process of contracts and title searches.

It was a long journey of giving up and fighting and giving up from there. The title still listed the deceased father, and there was no estate filed for him. Technically the entire family owned a portion of the building because of the way the original title had been set up. This meant the son trying to sell it really didn’t have the option. He couldn’t even give away the building. Unfortunately the roof had started leaking, and that building will probably now end up like so many others on the avenue.

The best thing that came out of this was finding Diane Cipa for title searches.

After all of this, John brought us back to the house on Talbot. It was again up for sale, the guy who was buying it was now looking at a garage being converted to live/work space. We walked through, half in awe and half in fear. It was a lot of work. The house had been empty for four years. All of the pipes were ripped out, most of the fixtures, and even some of the mantels. But it was solid, all of the woodwork looked great, and there was so much potential.

We danced around it for a while. Watching for something else, not sure it was a project we could take on. It was a visit to Michigan that finally sent us running toward the house rather than away.

My grandparents purchased an old house on Heritage Hill years ago after there had been a fire in the attic. They worked on it for years, but now it is gorgeous. We showed my grandfather photos of the house. He and his friends were excited by the cabinets, the steam heat, the pocket doors ... all the beauty we could also see under the destruction.

When we arrived back in Braddock we asked John to take us through again. It put the fear into us for sure, but there was also so much potential.

Yes, we bought the house.

John negotiated the price down to $5,000 for us. A price that doesn’t even seem possible. We estimated about $30,000 would make it not only livable but exactly how we wanted it. That turned out to be off ... but that’s a topic for another story…

I’ve been getting this weird feeling of similarity between Braddock and Juneau for a while…

The similarities I like are the ability to know people in the local government, participate in it and cause change, and get to know your neighbors. The parts I don’t like are corrupt officials who take their small town positions of power to work for imagined monetary benefit at the expense of the people who live there.

Worst case scenario for Juneau now is that the emphasis on tourism and government has deteriorated other avenues of making a living. The majority of downtown has been out-priced for locals who want to run a shop or live there. It’s filled with Caribbean jewelers and other people who profit on the tourism and leave town without putting much back. I hear cruise ships are cutting back their trips into Juneau by about 1/3 next year because of fuel prices. The legislature is slowly migrating north. Juneau will no longer be able to maintain what it is now without employment for the 30,000 who actually live there.

Braddock is like fast-forwarding 30 years into Juneau’s possible future. The mills were a booming business, Braddock was the main shopping district for all of Pittsburgh. High living. The mills wanted to expand so they started buying up the ghettos. Then they started closing down, and the city wanted the rest of the ghettos cleared out so they put bans on opening businesses on the main street and literally locked the gates to the city parks and basketball courts. Police began harassing the kids for loitering in front of their own homes. They succeeded in pushing people out. No work, constant harassment. The town went from 20,000 to 2,000 with bouts of gangs and extreme violence. Since building values are lower now than they were in the 1970s, it doesn’t seem like anyone could have profited much from all of this scheming.

It’s a sad connection. I wish there was a case book for small local governments so officials could learn from history and maybe try not to repeat the same mistakes.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

It’s been almost exactly a year since Kevin and I sold our house in Juneau, Alaska, and hit the road. At that time we expected to settle in Portland, Oregon, almost immediately. Instead we’ve been on the road, and in the air, as we searched for a place to call home. There was something about Portland that was too done for us. After wandering around Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Washington, Alaska, and Oregon for nine months we finally met Braddock, Pennsylvania. This site is a chronicle of our journey to and within Braddock.