In Pittsburgh, locals call being gossipy “nebby” and Pittsburghers looooove to be nebby. And while nebbiness used to be confined to water coolers, neighborhood meetings, or chats on the porch, modern-day nebbiness can now be found online.
The nebbiest posts are usually found on Nextdoor.com — a social media site for sharing neighborhood happenings that is sometimes filled with paranoia — but nebby posts can really be found anywhere on the web: Facebook groups, Twitter, and even online comments and reviews.
Pittsburgh City Paper is setting out to collect the best, craziest, and non-offensive nebby posts from across the region, and will be sharing them on a regular basis. According to Pittsburghers on social media, some of the more memorable posts over the years have included: someone filing an official noise complaint and calling the police over a neighbor's wind chimes in Garfield, a Pittsburgh racoon causing a ruckus after getting drunk off fermented berries and crab apples, and someone allegedly leaving random fruits in a neighbor's yard in Bellevue, aka a “drive-by fruiting.”
On Sept. 24, CP found a Nextdoor post out of Lawrenceville in which apparently the whole street has been taken over by mice. It was shared in September.
“We have mice over here, the whole street,” reads the post, which CP has removed identifying information from. “I have traps with peanut butter. They don’t seem to care. They’ve bitten on the poison pods. They just won’t die. Some neighbors have them in their walls. It’s driving us all insane. Any suggestions?”
The post attracted hundreds of replies, including some suggestions on how other Pittsburghers have dealt with mice, including house cats, weathering a home with new insulation, and offering tips on certain brands of pest control devices. And with any neighborhood conversation, it also attracted the overly explanatory reply of suggesting basically checking every square inch of the house (boxing up all food items, checking all baseboard for holes, and setting traps everywhere.) One reply was on the lighter side and joked that the giant black rat snake found in Frick Park over the spring could get the job done.
CP is going to keep sharing the best nebby posts when we find them, as often as we can, but we also would love our readers to help. If you come across a funny, interesting, or particularly nebby post, please send it our way to [email protected]. We will remove any identification information from the post. (Please don’t send any racist, transphobic, or otherwise offensive content, we have no intentions of amplifying those.)
