It started with too much pride and too much booze. This summer, in Washington, D.C., reporters from Pittsburgh City Paper and Cleveland Scene bickered about whose town was better. The conversation was friendly, but combative, as any good rivalry should be, and focused on which city had better food, infrastructure, people, education, etc. Both papers know the football rivalry between the Browns and Steelers started the intercity feud, but that contest isn’t as contentious as it used to be. (Go Steelers!)
However, that doesn’t mean the rivalry should die. There are too many similarities between Pittsburgh and Cleveland to let that happen. The metro areas of Cleveland and Pittsburgh are almost identical (see sidebar), and culturally, we are equally obsessed with sports and nostalgia. Our pasts and presents are similar too. Both cities had huge economic collapses linked to the fall of heavy industry; both are staging comebacks tied to innovative fields like medicine and tech. Residents in each town deeply love their cities despite being ridiculed by the national media for decades.
This week, CP and our friends at Scene are combining forces to bring Rust Belt readers a battle pitting our two great cities against each other. Who’s got a better signature sandwich? Whose regional accent is better? Whose local booze is best? Whose music is superior? Which city’s attractions are tops? Each paper’s writers have made their case; it’s up to you to decide.
So, check out the stories in our news, food, drink, and sports sections about the Steel City’s supremacy over the Mistake on the Lake. And make sure to cut out the Scene’s contributions for lining your cat’s litter box. (Ryan Deto)
Accents
Pittsburgh
If hearing the way Pittsburghers say “out” as “aht,” or “you all” as “yinz,” doesn’t bring a smile to your face, then you’re not human. Our accent is so distinct and beloved that regional grocery-store chain, Giant Eagle, used to have video-rental stores called “Iggle Video,” corresponding to our phonetic pronunciation of “eagle.” Elocution is for suckers. Pittsburghers embrace efficiency when speaking; no one can talk more and speak faster than Yinzers. Why say three syllables in “slippery” when “slippy” will do? “Bologna” is unphonetic, so just say “jumbo.” If you want to talk proper and precise, you’re probably a jagoff from Cleveland. (RD)
Cleveland
No one in Cleveland believes that we have an accent, though we’ll quietly admit that we each have a great-aunt who pronounces “off” like “ahf.” It’s cute, and we’re all in on the gag. Plus it’s always a fun bar debate, because we’re lighthearted and easily understood people. Yinz over in Pittsburgh may as well be speaking a drunken form of Orcish. Readers: We had to hire a very expensive translator for our calls with the City Paper staff, and we’re still not sure if they’re a legit paper or some sort of 1-900 outfit with a lust for writers. (Eric Sandy)
Amusement Parks
Kennywood
No matter how old you are, every Pittsburgher knows the feeling you get when you’re on your way to Kennywood, and you see the tips of the highest roller coasters. It’s a thing of beauty. We don’t need chrome coasters. Nothing beats the old-timey charm of the classic wooden coasters such as the Jack Rabbit, Racer and Thunderbolt. And a great amusement park is about more than just the rides. The food at Kennywood is where it’s at. Around Pittsburgh, Potato Patch fries, with a healthy serving of cheese and bacon on top, are the stuff of legend. We spend the whole winter salivating over them. (Rebecca Addison)
Cedar Point
When the esteemed Golden Ticket awards debuted its 2016 list of best wood and steel coasters in the world, you all probably felt tickled to see four of Kennywood’s rides on the list. How utterly and adorably cute. The kind of accolades usually reserved for kiddie parks. Maybe a town whose idea of thrills is avoiding Jeff Reed in a Sheetz bathroom thinks that’s fun. Cedar Point, meanwhile, clocked in with seven nods from the Golden Ticket voters who probably didn’t bestow more awards for the king of all amusement parks, because they still couldn’t feel their brains or hands after getting off the iconic Millennium Force. (Vince Grzegorek)
Architecture
Pittsburgh
If we’re talking sports metaphors, sure, Cleveland might take a couple of games in a best of seven series. Frank Gehry’s Peter B. Lewis building at Case Western edges out Scogin and Elam’s Gates Center at CMU for best 21st-century building. And Koning Eizenberg’s Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh versus Farshid Moussavi’s Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland could come down to a call at the plate. But Pittsburgh’s turn-of-the-20th-century buildings, such as the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Frick Building, surpass Cleveland comparables, and our vernacular housing in the picturesque landscape is unmatched. Most importantly, the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail is our series-ending, walk-off home run. (Charles Rosenblum)
Cleveland
Listen: The Terminal Tower is one of the most iconic buildings between Willard and Empire. It’s a near-perfect representation of all a metropolis can be. Then — then! — we built a modern rendition on the design with Key Tower. We Googled “Pittsburgh skyline” and just got some images of an old Tower of London LEGO set strewn across a kitchen floor. We’ve got so much choice architecture in Cleveland that we literally let it sit unused, like The Arcade, a relic only to aesthetic grandeur and food-court dining. Goodness gracious, even our downtown grocery story is the stuff of Instagram architecture porn. It’s hard to match that when everything is painted black and yellow; it’s OK. (ES)
Bike Lanes
Pittsburgh
It may seem like Pittsburghers hate bike lanes, but they don’t. Mayor Bill Peduto’s 2017 mayoral campaign opponents basically argued bike lanes were responsible for Pittsburgh’s troubles, but Peduto won the primary in a landslide. Pittsburgh now has about 45 miles of bike lanes, including more than 4 miles of protected lanes. Penn Avenue’s protected lane in Downtown sometimes gets more than 1,000 riders a day. And our Great Allegheny Passage trail provides 335 miles of car-free travel from Downtown Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. All Clevelanders can do is loop the half-mile around Public Square on their training wheels. (RD)
Cleveland
Cleveland has a national reputation for imbecilic traffic engineers — one in particular — so do consider our handicap at a maximum. That said, we’ve got something called “guerilla stripers,” local transit activists appareled a la cat burglars, who paint bike lanes on streets in the dead of night to force the city’s hand. What a cool, participatory citizenry! That’s way cooler than anything Pittsburgh’s got, which as far as we can tell is just a responsive, compassionate city government that prioritizes things like sustainability and transit equity. What a bunch of squares. (Sam Allard)
Bridges
Pittsburgh
According to a 2006 study, Pittsburgh has 446 bridges. How do you even compete with that? But we don’t just top Cleveland in number alone. Our bridges are also really cool. The Roberto Clemente Bridge isn’t just named for a baseball great. On big game days, we shut it down so baseball fans can get to the ballpark. We also host entire festivals on our bridges, like the annual Picklesburgh. And currently, the Rachel Carson Bridge is home to 27,000 multicolored LED lights as part of a temporary light display run by wind turbines. That’s right — our bridges also generate energy. (RA)
Cleveland
Sure, you guys have some impressive bridges. But where’s the imagination? Where’s the panache? They’re all thematically colored to match your teams, but we’ll overlook that flaw for now. Here in Cleveland, we put up mighty statues to technological wonder on our bridges. We house old streetcar rails under ours and provide the city’s wonderful residents annual tours thereof. We honor guys like Bob Hope with our bridges, American icons who brought joy to untold scores of the Greatest Generation. And when the Public Works crew isn’t looking, we paint lovely elegies to friendship on the sides of those bridges. (ES)
Celebrities
Pittsburgh
Producing such treasures as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is just the tip of Pittsburgh’s celebrity iceberg. Fred Rogers, from nearby Latrobe, Pa., produced his childrens’ show at Pittsburgh’s WQED television station for 35 years. Film-and-dance icon Gene Kelly (Singin’ in the Rain) was born and raised in Pittsburgh. In Cleveland, getting your face onto a Chef Boyardee can of shitty pasta is enough to be a celebrity. Pittsburgh can also claim a Batman (Michael Keaton), a dinosaur wrangler (Jeff Goldblum), a pop diva (Christina Aguilera), a Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) and one of the county’s most-well known billionaires, Mark Cuban. (RD)
Cleveland
Hey, is anyone on your list named Harvey Pekar? No? OK. Celebrities come from all over, their geographical origins irrelevant to their rise, really, since it’s their talent and ego that propel them on their path to stardom. Paul Newman wasn’t a better actor or more marketable because he grew up in Northeast Ohio, anymore than Gene Kelly could credit his ascension to the A-list to his origins in Pittsburgh. Ah, but Harvey Pekar, the man who drew fans worldwide, through his comic books and frequent appearances on David Letterman. The man who was famous because of, and whose talent resided in, his city. It made him, and he made it. (VG)
Cultural District
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh’s downtown is modestly sized, but culturally, it’s as loaded with talent as the Steelers’ receiving corps. Our symphony regularly tours Europe, and our ballet and opera companies are top-notch. The district boasts three accomplished theater troupes, three grand performance halls, an art-house cinema, several cutting-edge art galleries, a comedy theater, and the newly reborn August Wilson Center, focusing on African-American culture. It’s got a nationally known museum of cartoon art. And every summer, thanks to Anthrocon, there are more furries on this little patch of real estate than can be found in some developed countries. (Bill O’Driscoll)
Cleveland
Playhouse Square is the largest theater complex in the United States after New York’s Lincoln Center. The theaters there — the Ohio, the State, the Palace — are not only aesthetic marvels; annually, they host more touring Broadway productions than any other city east of Chicago. The local theatrical energy is electric as well, with adventurous community theaters emerging in the past decade. That’s all alongside Cleveland Public Theatre, one of the country’s most highly regarded theaters for new and experimental work; and, of course, Karamu House, in Fairfax, the oldest African-American theater in the United States. In Pittsburgh, we understand they’ve given up on live theater because they all decided it was too hard to memorize their lines. (SA)
DIY
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh’s DIY scene has always evoked reactions of starry-eyed fascination. We’ve got artfully crafted flyers, plus venues ranging from houses to warehouses and galleries to bars plus a cooperative all-ages space. Local labels range from tape labels to full works with PR folks and marketing campaigns. There are so many good bands here, there’s not enough space to write about all of them. Any given night, there are multiple shows happening. How much time do you have? I’m just scratching the surface. I’ll sit here all day and tell you what I love about our DIY scene. It’s that damn good. (Meg Fair)
Cleveland
For a time, Cleveland played host to one of the great underground punk venues in the Midwest: Speak In Tongues, which now bears legendary status in local lore and which spawned several awesome DIY spots around town. We now hang out at Now That’s Class or any number of house shows, where dedicated guys and gals put up touring bands and pass around a beat-up Tribe hat for gas money. We’re not sure what passes for DIY in Pittsburgh, if only because we’re too busy cleaning up the basement from last night. (Don’t you Pittsburgh people all have toilets in all your basements? That’s actually pretty cool.) (ES)
Museums
The Andy Warhol Museum
As if it weren’t enough to celebrate the life, works and legacy of a native son who’s merely one of the most influential artists ever, The Warhol is North America’s largest single-artist museum. Visitors from around the world traverse seven floors of exhibits, ranging from archival material from Andy’s childhood to his epochal soup-can paintings and beyond. Catch his groundbreaking film and video works on demand, see temporary exhibits noting his inescapable influence on latter-day giants like Ai Weiwei, and even — if it’s rock ’n’ roll you’re into — learn about Andy’s crucial role in the career of a little band called the Velvet Underground. (BO)
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
We could go on and on about the literal district of museums on the eastside, but we’ll narrow the focus now to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Its iconic design (from world renowned I.M. Pei) is instantly recognizable to anyone who’s spent a night of teenage joyriding with the Stones on the stereo. It’s a Day-One agenda item for any visit to Cleveland, and we’re damn proud that it stands tall at the top of our city. Whattaya got? Warhol? A can of Campbell’s chicken noodle? If soup is art for you people, then maybe we should just get back to the football talk. (ES)
Music
Jazz
Where would modern jazz’s rhythm section be without Pittsburgh? Nowhere, that’s where. From the early work of drummer Art Blakey, bassist Ray Brown and a handful of pianists — Errol Garner, Horace Parlan, Sonny Clark — to modern drummers like ex-pat Jeff “Tain” Watts and hometown denizen David Throckmorton, the Steel City has contributed far more to the music’s foundation than the Mistake by the Lake. We’ve birthed countless horn players (which could fill this space), not to mention the musicians who nurture on and off the bandstand, from Roger Humphries and Nelson Harrison to Joe Negri. While the ’Burgh loves its past, we’re not resting our swinging laurels either. (Mike Shanley)
Rock ’n’ Roll
We’re known almost singularly on the national stage for rock ’n’ roll, and we back it up nightly in any one of our 174 music venues across the city. Hell, we even host shows in living rooms and basements and ad-agency offices. We’re home to one of the greatest concerts of all time — Springsteen in ’78 — and yet still our local bands very nearly outstrip the Boss of his title on the reg. We might not have Nashville’s Broadway Avenue, but neither does Pittsburgh. You guys might lay claim to some serious jazz heavyweight DNA, but we’re a blues town: We’ll always take our 12 bars with stiff drinks at 12 different bars — and we’ll do it in one evening. (ES)
Social Justice Leaders
Pittsburgh
Cleveland probably only has one important figure (like its one measly sports title in 50 years), but our social-justice reach is far reaching. Without Rachel Carson, it’s easy to imagine a world where everyone’s a climate-change denier. Carson’s book Silent Spring is often credited with kickstarting modern environmentalism. Without Pittsburgh native August Wilson, it’s easy to imagine a world with far fewer powerful black voices. Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning plays gave theater-goers empowered African-American characters willing to tackle racial stereotypes. And with the 1892 Homestead strike, the modern labor movement was born. (RD)
Cleveland
“No matter how events of the [1960s] are reported or analyzed, Cleveland will always be the first major American city to have elected a black mayor, and Carl Stokes will have been that first black mayor.” — Estelle Zannes. Mic drop. (SA)
Universities
Pittsburgh
Do they still have polio in Cleveland? Didn’t think so. You can thank the University of Pittsburgh’s Jonas Salk for that one, who developed the vaccine in ’55 and gave it to the world gratis (that means free, for our Ohioan friends). Down the street, Carnegie Mellon University is leading the world in robotics and artificial intelligence, while churning out Tony Award-winning actors. Credit where it’s due: Oberlin’s a pretty good school. Facts where they’re needed: It’s 40 miles outside the 216. Quite a reach there. Why not rope in Xavier and Ohio State while you’re at it? (Alex Gordon)
Cleveland
The university landscapes in Cleveland and Pittsburgh are remarkably similar, with one key distinction: Cleveland’s colleges are much better. Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon is ranked slightly higher than Cleveland’s Case Western in the U.S. News and World Report rankings, but nobody reads U.S. News and World Report anymore because it’s become a destitute sell-sword publication good only for stroking the egos of colleges and hospitals and used cars. Cleveland State is on the rise, while Pitt’s only claim to fame is being named after the smelliest body part. Oberlin, natch, is the wokest of the woke. (SA)
Waterfront Recreation
Pittsburgh
To be honest, we didn’t think a backward town like Cleveland would have such a cool new sport like standup paddle boarding, but after some research, it appears you do. But you know what you don’t have? Surfing. Oh wait — you have that too? And you do it on a lake with real waves instead of the manmade ones we create off the back of a boat? Whatever. Our three rivers still beat your one. And none of our major bodies of water have ever caught on fire. (RA)
Cleveland
Pittsburgh’s downtown is called the Golden Triangle, which is a truly aberrant sexual reference we’d rather not discuss just now. It’s got rivers. Big deal. Cleveland has a river too, and a lake. A Great Lake, complete with beaches and other lakefront amenities, like sailing. Like the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers in Pittsburgh, the Cuyahoga River offers watersports like standup paddle boarding, kayaking and the like. But Cleveland has an additional extreme-sports edge: Watercraft users get the thrill of dodging the Great Lakes freighters that chart their southward course toward ArcelorMittal Steel on a daily basis, making for sublime photo ops and a perfect blend of commerce and recreation that dramatizes the city’s diversified resurgence. (SA)
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2017.
