Road trips are my jam.
Daughter needs to get out to Penn State for new student orientation on a Monday evening smack dab in the middle of a red hot American summer? That’s not a chore, that’s opportunity knocking. Summer rustbelt roadtrip, baby! I smell formative life-experiences and car cooler funk.
We took a week and in addition to checking out State College, we spent a couple nights in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, exploring cities that I’ve spent too little time getting to know. These could be cities where my daughter gets a job and chooses to settle down in someday. Heck, maybe these are small, livable, affordable places that I myself should consider relocating to when I retire. (ha! yeah, right! retire from what, unemployed trying-to-make-it-on-Substack-earnings guy?)
Ok, wow. I didn’t intend to get into a discussion about my existential life-choices and stunted career path. This was just supposed to be about sharing some fun pics I took on my trip. Deep breaths….stay focused, Ed. Steering us back on track.
But this is totally something I do when I travel. I mentally “try on” other cities and towns, asking myself what it would feel like to live there. Is that weird? Do you do that when you travel?
Anyway…we had fun! We did a little sightseeing and checked out the terminal market in Cleveland, wondering the entire time why Chicago does not have a spectacular every day food market along these lines featuring local growers, producers, and artisans. We must’ve had one here at some point, but, like most things in Chicago, we probably tore it down to build a highrise.
(Fun sidebar fact - these type of permanent farmer’s market buildings in cities are usually called “terminal” markets because they were located at the ends (or termini) of railway lines, which allowed produce and goods to be transported directly from rural areas to the heart of the big city.)
Traveling around the Midwest, visiting cities like St. Louis, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, one thing that’s readily apparent is how much less they have torn down their old buildings and homes. I find it much prettier and indicative of the region to see so much of the older construction with local brick, old-school ornamentation, and early 20th century design aesthetics. Even in the poorer neighborhoods, the old buildings are better maintained than I’m used to seeing in Chicago.
These cities take better care of their old things than we do in Chicago because they value them more.
After the postwar boom of the 50’s and 60’s, rust belt cities started falling on hard times. They didn’t experience the same growth and expansion in the professional sectors as Chicago did and as a result, older buildings and areas of town weren’t subject to as much redevelopment. As a result, lots of parts of these towns feel like they’ve kind of frozen in time.
We were shocked to see how small the downtown areas in Cleveland and Pittsburgh were, and how easy it was to find free open street parking just a block or two from touristy downtown destinations like the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame.
Similarly, we would drive five minutes from downtown and find ourselves in the middle of what looked like an old bombed-out war zone. Or in front of Larry Flynt’s Hustler club behind some massive grain silos. Hello?! Wrong turn much?
We were astonished that these sketchy areas could still exist in such close proximity to what we assumed were inflated property values normally associated with close-in downtown urban real estate.
In some ways, especially with regard to the vibe and character of the city, these towns have benefited from their rust belt economic struggles. Because the old steel, coal, and auto industries are still milking every last dollar out of their sunken costs, many haven’t yet sold out to developers. Therefore, whole chunks of these towns have yet to be swallowed up by gentrification and mall-ifcation like we see here in Chicago in areas like Fulton Market and Wicker Park.
So that’s something I enjoyed about both Cleveland and Pittsburgh. They feel like cities that are kind of existing in an earlier time. Still somehow managing to live in what I thought was a bygone, quainter, more innocent era.
A time back when regular, working-class folks could afford to live in a city and do stuff.
Both Pittsburgh and Cleveland have a more blue collar, accessible vibe for that reason than Chicago does. At least, to me, as an outsider visiting, these were my impressions. We went to a Pirates game at PNC Park on a Saturday night and the tickets were $28, so that speaks to what I’m talking about. I found free, legal street parking only about a 20-minute walk from the ballpark.
We made a bunch of other fun stops along the way as well, and I’ll have a few in-depth posts about them coming soon, but in the meantime, here are some photos I took on our Rust Belt road trip that make me happy so I wanted to share them.
Congrats on your daughter going to Penn State!! Sounds like an awesome road trip. Downtown Indianapolis used to have City Market that was a lot like the terminal markets you're describing, but it too got lost.
If you're interested in Chicago urban history, I personally liked the book Never a City So Real about Chicago. A more scholarly book about the South Side is Ghosts in the Schoolyard.
The beautiful masonry is dangerous in St. Louis because you are driving and taking in the scenery aaaaaaand there's a crackhead.