I liked Pittsburgh from day one. It has a lot of advantages of big city living—go to the opera, go to clubs—but it’s safe and affordable. I live in Shadyside, on a street with lots of families and kids. It’s nice to come home at the end of a day and see some little girls jumping rope.
In the beginning, your social life centers around your classmates for the most part. Our class would get together once a month. Someone would send out an email and we just went through the alphabet. We started with A—let’s all meet at the Attic, which is a club here in Oakland. Then it was “B—blues night” ...then “C—meet at the Carnegie Museum’s free concert in the sculpture garden.” We worked our way all the way through the alphabet.
