Fightsburgh, Pennsylvania

So the first day of driving went pretty much without event. Christy and I, in the subaru, all loaded down mostly with everything of hers she could fit around the very few things of mine I took. Everything she owns, just about, that she didn't already ship. The shocks must be sad because the back end is so low the wheel well hides the top of the tires. It's a car full, and it looks heavy from the outside, and feels heavy from the inside, trying to manipulate the car from lane to lane on the highway or brake at a stop light feels like steering an ocean liner compared to when the car is empty.

We arrived in the very strange city of Pittsburgh, PA on Wednesday, December 3rd. There's virtually no cops here, we've had our car parked in the same 2 hour spot for three days, people leave their belongings unattended on tables at coffee shops without worry, and nobody that I've met so far pays rent. This place is Crazy!

It's been a great visit with Dan and Jenn, and the way they live, the way this town works is pretty unique. I'd say the cost of living is low, but that would be an understatement that needs some explaining. Okay. As well as I understand it, it's like this:

Pittsburgh's entire economy and society was built exclusively and depended severely on the health of the once vibrantly booming steel industry, which created a good handful of millionaires and supported a city full of workers. Then, around the decades of the 1950's through the 70's, a transition occurred where somebody decided it would be much more economical to perform one essential step in the steel production process overseas instead of over the river. Mills closed, steel crashed, Pittsburgh fell, people fled and house after house after house stood abandoned. So today many buildings in just about every part of town remain boarded up and empty and a person can buy a house, however run down by decades of unkempt emptiness, for, seriously, like $1,000 or $3,000. That is, if a person chooses to orchestrate a money transaction at all. 

As Christy and I are prowling Wilkins St. looking for Jenn's house, we are passing very large, very fancy looking residences on the block that corresponds with the address number Jenn gave me. "I thought you said they were squatting," exclaims Christy. I thought so, but I guess not. we enter Jenn's house, a nice but nondescript row house, and look around. Clean, warm, electricity, water, a fireplace, turntables, computers, wireless internet...oh. well...I thought jenn said she was squatting, but it sure doesn't look like it. Turns out, this is what they call it here.

We've heard stories of people who tried to pay rent but gave up when they discovered the 

checks weren't being cashed. Dan's friend Morgan owns his entire building, for $Nothing.00. The community farm where Dan lives pays no rent or mortgage to occupy the two houses of their "compound" in the hill district but receives grants from the city and was recently given roughly three additional acres adjacent to the land they're already working to cultivate. Dan is moving out soon to another house further up the hill, no first or last months rent required. No security deposit, no application fee...well...no application! or second, third, fourth or fifths month rent, either.

It's all very confusing...like.... 

DOES...NOT...COMPUTE...LIVING...FOR FREE...NOT...WORKING...NO...MONEY...OUTSIDE...CONFINES...OF...CAPITALIST...ECONOMIC...SYSTEM...

It even shorts out a kid who's spent a large chunk of his life identifying as an anarchist. not the idea of squatting, I mean the idea of a whole American city in 2008 just BUILT for squatting.

"Dan's in Pittsburgh!?" my brother had no idea when I told him I'd be visiting him here. The incredulity was partly because he had no idea Dan was living east of Oregon and partly because, I think, the general sense of this place is that it's  a dirty, depressed, run-down, collapsed town (so who in their right mind would choose to live here). Which I thought too. and, well, it is. But you gotta admit, that makes it pretty awesome!!!