A friend just moved back to Pittsburgh from Ft. Lauderdale. He was getting hit with increased rent, his auto insurance is very high (double what he pays in PA), and his renters insurance went through the roof. Seems that homeowners insurance is going to blow up in Florida since the last hurricane. Also, sea levels are rising near the coasts and will start too contaminate the ground water in the not too distant future.

Used to go up a lot with friends when I was in my 30s, but haven't been since they tightened the regulations to cross the border after September 11.

It's a fantastic international city. The saying was it that it was New York if the Swiss ran it. You can find cultures from all over the world with the food, traditions and lifestyle. Fantastic public transport, so you can dump the car and get around by subway, trolley and buses.

The drive is not bad if you just think of it in three segments: Pittsburgh to Erie, Erie to Buffalo, and Buffalo to Toronto.

And Sears was the major sponsor of the show back then. If it got out, Sears would have pulled the sponsorship and the show would have ended. Sounds extreme today, but police were still raiding gay bars in 1969 and people went to jail, which ended careers inst.

My favorite, too. There are hundreds of books about Pittsburgh, but this is the most comprehensive.

There is a picture of Skunk Hollow in Stefan Lorant's book "Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City." It was a wretched place.

This isn't the 1969 picture. The scene was re-shot several times over the years for new shows. If you find the original clip, you will notice both of them are much younger.

I read the story of how that came to be in Southern California. The original freeways were built before interstate numbering. So they were simply named "the Hollywood Freeway" and "the Santa Monica Freeway," etc. When they were designated with numbers, people just inserted the number after the "the." So now it's "the 5" and "the 405," and so on.

All four lanes will open next month or so when they finish the details and clean up on the bridge. Until then, it's two lanes.

Μight be rough finding one. Believe it or not, there are transit aficionados who collect anything transit-oriented. The old maps were probably scarfed up soon after they were taken down from the stations. You could also check with the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington County. They may be able to give you some leads.

Wow, how long did that take??

I think the airport has a service that starts stranded cars with dead batteries. At least they used to. They may be able to help with situations like this.

A complete "Who's Who in Pittsburgh" in paperback. You don't need a battery to use it. It's crazy.

The turnpike skirts the eastern and northern suburbs of Pittsburgh, so I don't think you have to worry about heavy traffic, other than commuter traffic on that section. You won't be going into the city.

Great photo. Almost everybody walked or took a trolley or bus to work in the mill back then. The Aliquippa works of Jones & Laughlin Steel stretched for 7 miles along the Ohio River 25 miles from Pittsburgh and employed 15,000 people at its peak. The town of Aliquippa was built by the steel company and each ethnic group had its own neighborhood.

Wow, so you do have to essentially pay $50 (for the photo) so your kid can see Santa. That's outrageous.

Great shot. This was eventually roofed in to become the interior of the mall. And that Penneys was a big deal when it was built. It was one of the new "super" Penneys. When this store opened, the downtown McKeesport and Braddock Penneys closed.

Ross Park Mall charges $50 to see Santa???!

I've been going to Baum Blvd. Auto for 20 years and no complaints. Small local shop with personal service. It's on Baum near Millvale Avenue.

Some of the Post-Gazette reviews of concerts there in the 70s took note of the "blue haze of Marijuana smoke" over the audience. You could actually get high there and nobody said a word.

That was my thought, too. It's been well documented over the years that any plan to make the Terminal a public market was a nonstarter and the Penn Avenue merchants would have fought it. So the developer looked for other businesses that would add to the variety without taking business away from Penn Avenue.

The deal was that the Penn Avenue merchants/grocers/bakers/ fish markets/cheese shops did not want the terminal to be filled with shops in direct competition. That's why it's not like Union Market or Reading Terminal. Stores that would be in those markets already line Penn Avenue.

I've seen pictures of big snows in the 50s where the neighborhood people were all out shoveling their streets. I don't think the city would mind.

People knew the city wouldn't be able to get to every street for a few days so they took it upon themselves to do it. Of course, a lot of people didn't have multiple cars in those days, so there weren't as many cars parked on the streets.

Still a MAC machine to me. As I leave it with money, I say, "Thanks, Mac."

The Burke Building is the oldest existing office building and it was built in 1836. It's on Fourth Avenue next to PPG Place. Other than that, I think the only structure that would have been there in 1817 is the blockhouse. The Great Fire took most of the downtown in 1845. Anything that survived would have been torn down by now.

Ahhh...the holidays...the time of year when we forget the stresses of the rest of the year. Leisurely shopping for a great dinner from your favorite butcher and baker, strolling down the street to small shops as the snow gently falls on a beautifully decorated shopping street. All is calm. All is bright.