Well, the polls on election day are just 2 hours from closing but the stories keep coming in.

• Danielle writes about Pittsburgh and finding a job and starting a family on her blog One Damn Thing
• Anthony writes about making Pittsburgh his new hometown on his blog ChachiSays
• Cynthia writes about moving back to Butler, PA to figure out a new plan and realizing that this is where she wants to be on her blog MyBrilliantMistake.
  

Liz Rincon, the new Executive Director for the Pennsylvania League of Young Voters, has lived in Pittsburgh for all of a few weeks. She was kind enough to give us her perspective for the project:

Working as a professional campaigner has taken me to all parts of this country. I have worked in large cities, such as Chicago, all the way to rural Iowa. Quite frankly, I have learned something from all the places I lived, worked and traveled. However, I must say that moving to Pittsburgh, PA has been one of the more interesting locations I have had the privilege of work in.

As an outsider, the most I had heard about Pittsburgh, was one of two things, football and steel. While football seems to be more alive now than ever before, steel has unfortunately left, taking with it the people of this city. I find it interesting that such a history with this industrious town still remains in every corner you look.

I have fallen in love with the history, (while some of it is dark) and the sprit, the people and the new culture of art and education. It is a city that needs to be recognized as one of the most important cities in American history. Unfortunately, I feel that it is sorely underscored by the larger cities to the East.

I am lucky to be here and hope to become more and more a “Pittsburgher” everyday. This city has so much to offer and in my travels, I am a huge advocate. The message of Pittsburgh is clear, we have a past, but we still have a mighty future.

Sue gave us a tremendous overview of many of the facets of Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ community over at Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents.  Sue starts off with a piece of, what she calls, “a long time in gay history:”

The City of Pittsburgh has codified our civil rights and civil protections.  It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender presentation in the areas of employment, housing or public accommodation.

Sue then goes on to talk about many of the community organizations:  the PERSAD Center (the nation’s first LGBT mental health provider), the Gay & Lesbian Community Center, the Pittsburgh AIDS task force, the Sheperd Wellness Center, GLENDA, PFLAG, GLSEN, and Voices of Hope.  She talks about OUTrageous Bingo and Queer Dinners at Gypsy Cafe.

Let’s shout out to our business community.  Beyond the gay bar foundation, there are many, many local gay owned companies that serve the entire community.  Coffee houses, clothing stores, caterers, and much more.  One bakery has a monthly lesbian night. Another straight owned bar has declared themselves a gay bar (and has good pizza).  Bank of New York Mellon has a thriving queer affiliation group for employees.  And the so-called “pink dollar” is being sought after.

This reminded me of Philadelphia’s national marketing effort a few years ago to promote gay tourism.  Sue also reminds us

that the myth about gays having more disposable income is misleading.  There are many local queer families that live in poverty or just a paycheck away — just like heterosexual families.  The good thing is that Pittsburgh is still an affordable place to live and raise your family so even if you aren’t the fortunate few to live in a restored Shadyside Victorian mansion, you can still have access to all of these wonderful resources.

Sue touches on electoral politics, political groups, philanthropic resources, and media and communication.  The post is both a great read and a survey of resources… you should click through to read the whole thing.

The bloggers at AskCherlock.com stopped by and left a comment on the about page directing us to this post.  It is a great story of living in California but deciding to move back to Pittsburgh for the community that exists here.

Now here I am, many years later, recovering from SAD and still shivering in April. I can tell you, though, there is no place I would rather live. I look at our three-generation neighborhoods, houses built one hundred years ago on steep hillsides, and enjoy the excitement of a small city gaining a cosmopolitan feel through the arts and a re-staging of metropolitan Pittsburgh. We also have chipped ham, Mancini’s bread, Primanti Brothers sandwiches and people who dance happily to the polka. Best of all, there are friends who remember you when you were young and thin but like you anyway. And…let’s not forget those Steelers!

The view of the primary from Mt. Washington is taken on by Mountain Girl at 15211.org, and she starts by talking about the view itself…

The view of Pittsburgh’s skyline and three rivers from Grandview Avenue has become one of the most recognizable visual symbols of our city. In fact, it’s been the backdrop for a lot of the national news coverage leading up to the Pennsylvania primaries on Tuesday.

The view is spectacular but it represents Mt. Washington less and less for me the longer I live here. There is so much more that a lot of people don’t see.

…And she goes on to treat us to a taste of both the tangibles and the intangibles that make Mt. Washington special as a neighborhood:  the urban environment, the park that surrounds the neighborhood, the people picking up trash, honking, and waving hello.

Here in Mt. Washington we can’t ignore the view. We don’t want to ignore it. It’s part of us. But it’s not all of us.

Mike Madison at Pittsblog tells us that the strength of the region is not the people or neighborhoods or anything else that may come and go.  Our strength and our greatest amount of weath is instilled in place:

Great cities are great in large part because their citizens invest in the wealth of place. Pittsburgh was founded 250 years ago at an aquatic confluence that gives it enduring and uncommon wealth. If Pittsburgh has been a great city, that’s because those who have lived here and those who visited were stewards of that wealth. They drank deeply of Pittsburgh’s hills and valleys and rivers, molding their lives to the land and the water rather than molding the land and water to their lives.

He also warns us:

The risk inherent in this… is that place and our metaphors of place can be fixed and inflexible. The hills and valleys and rivers don’t change, or don’t change much. Attachment to place often means attachment to the past… If Pittsburgh uses the wealth of place as a foundation for growth, rather than as a ceiling imposed by history… then Pittsburgh can turn weakness into strength.

Pittsburgh’s economy has transformed to include a large segment of the knowledge-based economy, but our geography does not undergo such transformation.  How we grow as a region will depend on how we interact with our place.  Mike Madison’s post is worth clicking through to read.

It’s Spring in Pittsburgh, and Elizabeth Perry at woolgathering takes the opportunity to reflect on the city and her appreciation for the people in it.

In a city the size of Pittsburgh, small groups working together can have a significant effect – in neighborhoods, in institutions, in politics, and in business.  Drawing every day has taught me about the way a gesture, repeated, can have a powerful cumulative effect.  I see that happening in the city around me.

See Elizabeth’s beautiful post and drawings by clicking through.

Jim at Cleveburgh Diaspora discusses what it means to talk about what is authentically Pittsburgh:

I’ve followed the media representations of the state’s human geography. The negative stereotypes range from Rust Belt to Redneck. Overall, the cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have faired well, the islands of cosmopolitanism at either end of the state.

He argues that the essence of our identity is too nuanced to nail down, except

that the only true Pittsburgh to be found is in a football stadium parking lot of a Steelers away game

Jim acknowledges that the city has a long way to go, but I think that he’s dead on when he talks about the space that we have in the city for economic (and political) opportunity.

In Pittsburgh, political innovation is not forthcoming. Yet to consider Pittsburgh chained down to its past would be a mistake. Unconventional political and economic spaces are wide open, rich with opportunity.

Pittsburgh has had to learn how to keep what is best about the old, and to transform itself by combining that with the new.  I would argue that we have much more than unrealized potential; we are already starting to grasp that.  Our area is the second fastest growing area for venture capital investment.  Whatever it is that is “authentically Pittsburgh” is constantly being re-visited, re-worked, and re-born.

Click through to read the whole post.

In his contribution to the project, Rick at Pittsburgh Art and Gallery Info highlights the Pittsburgh Art scene…

The obvious art gallery magnates like the Mattress Factory, the Andy Warhol Musuem, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and the Silver Eye Center for Photography continue to place Pittsburgh in the national and international spotlights.

…what’s gone on lately…

Pittsburgh experienced a truly amazing phenomenon with hundreds of art exhibits for the NCECA Ceramics Convention which brought over 5,000 members and collectors to the city… Pittsburgh was immersed in ceramic art and many local exhibits went on for the month.

…and what’s upcoming:

On the immediate horizon of events we have one of Pittsburgh’s newer art galleries, the Green Building Gallery, hosting an Obama Art Auction Fundraiser this Sunday, April 20 which brings together many Pittsburgh artists and their work to raise money for Barack Obama.

Pittsburgh’s arts scene on the whole is truly outstanding:

I find myself wanting to endlessly write about all the art events and developments happening here in Pittsburgh and in truth there are so many events it’s hard to get a handle on everything, another testament to this region’s arts scene.

Click over to Pittsburgh Art and Gallery Info to read the full post.

Char typically writes the kind of bittersweet and occasionally (ok, often) sarcastic observations that we absolutely must have to get through the day over at Pittsburgh Pist-Gazette.  In her contribution to the Primary Pittsburgh Project, she does not disappoint:

In her day job, Char sells real estate:

When I deal with newcomers to Pittsburgh, I’m forced to look at our city anew through their eyes. Forced to realize that in this day and age all books are judged by their covers and ours sometimes doesn’t make the best first impression.

She quickly gets to the punchline:

So when newcomers inevitably ask me why I like it here so much … I’m sometimes hard pressed to adequately express, in three words or less, the real inner-beauty that makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh. If they only have time for the three-word answer, my reply is “It’s the people.”

Click through to read Char’s story about “Mr. Science,” the man who bought a house under foreclosure in the Upper Northside so that he could live closer to kids who he often worked with in nearby Northview Heights.

A funny thing about Pittsburgh is that our housing market is not so impacted by national market trends.  Property values are growing, but housing remains affordable.  But why do people choose to locate or stay in Pittsburgh?  More often than not, the answer is “it’s the people.”