walk down memory lane

In an effort to distract myself - and my obsessive nature - I have been scouring the internets looking for information.  I remembered that Google Maps has a pretty cool street view feature so I decided to see how many locations I could find from what now seems like a previous life.  If you'd interested in knowing more about me - where I came from and how I got to where I am today - read on.  If not, wait for my next post.

I moved to Western Pennsylvania at the end of my junior year of high school.  Because it was still over a year before I could go to college, I lost my California residency which meant going to any CA university was going to be prohibitively expensive.  So, knowing that I had to stay in-state, I went to the University of Pittsburgh, rooming with a "friend" from my new high school.  We were assigned to live in Tower B at Pitt, basically the home base of almost every liberal arts freshman.

That Five burger place or whatever it is wasn't there when I went to school.  That area was occupied by a bar called Zelda's.  Long-time Pitt grads will remember it with fondness.  It was THE bar for underage drinking.  I tried to go once after leaving a party but thankfully the bouncer told me I was too drunk to be out and about and he sent me home.  I say thankfully because that night the bar was busted and hundreds of Pitt students were arrested for underage drinking.  Fines and hours of community service ensued.

Toward the end of my 1st semester I started going to parties at the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity at Carnegie Mellon University.  A girl on my floor met a couple of guys in the fraternity on the Gateway Clipper Fleet and she became obsessed with spending every weekend there.  She would drag a couple of us along if we didn't already have other plans.  I went for several weeks, not really loving it ... but some of my friends started dating the brothers there and they were convinced I would get along with a guy named Alan, also from California.

We met on January 26, 1996 in the basement of his off-campus fraternity house.  That front window was his and Andy's bedroom.

When his fraternity had destroyed this house they moved down the street to an even grungier one.  Unfortunately, due to events that would transpire, I ended up moving in as well.  Thank goodness Alan had the top floor pretty much to himself and the room was big and spacious.

I was really sick the semester I stayed with him there and one night while they were having a party, I was upstairs in bed, hopped up on Nyquil or Theraflu or whatever it was that was supposed to mean I'd be back in class on Monday morning.  Well, the cops showed up and they demanded everyone come outside.  I had no idea what was going on as I was IN BED but they even made me go out on the front lawn and talk about what I was doing at the party.  They were such a-holes to everyone.  It was clear - at least to me - that I wasn't drunk, but rather, very sick - fever, sinus infection, sore throat, the works.  But no, clearly I was just shit-faced. 

I moved from this house into another house with my friends E and S.  S was insane, but she was nice and she had an extra room available in her apartment - so what if it was (1) in the basement, (2) extremely dark and (3) had 6 foot ceilings.  It was $137.50/month and it was (1) not in a fraternity house and (2) a room of my own.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of this house as Google Street view didn't go down there since it was on a square.

From there, my friend Z and I moved into what was the area's ghetto in a Charles J. Greve apartment.  Anyone who lived in Pittsburgh in the 90s knows this name is synonymous with SLUM LORD.  Our place was so shitty, but it was CHEAP and so that meant we could have a place with just two of us.  This is where I learned the term "grubbage kids."  This term applies to any kid who is dirty and a pain in the ass and always wanting to talk to you b/c its parents can't be bothered to pay any attention to it at all and so it always tries to come into your apartment and get food or watch TV.  I felt bad for the kids, but man were they a pain in the keister.

The room with the fan in the window was my bedroom.  The kids used to always stand there and put their faces up against the window on the right to see in. 

At one point my sister moved in with us and we shared the room.  Then she and Z moved out and moved into a different place around the corner and Alan moved in.  It was $25/month to park his car here.  When I tell people in SF that they are shocked.  It's more like $250/month to park in SF.

From there Alan and I moved into some luxury digs - the King Edward Apartments up in North Oakland.  We looked at several places but this place was NICE.  Eleven hundred square feet, living room, dining room, sun room, giant foyer, walk in closet and bathroom ... I LOVED this apartment.  The view from our sunroom (the big picture windows on the right side of the building here ... the one at the very top of the pic was ours) in autumn was gorgeous - fiery reds and oranges as far as the eye could see.  And when it snowed and everything was icy and white?  GAWJUS.  Alas, it held some bad memories for us because it's where our cat Charlie died.  It'salso where we got Dakota.

And then I graduated, Alan got a job out in the suburbs and we moved into one of those village like apartment complexes where every unit is the same and there's a clubhouse and a pool.  I liked the pool.  No pictures of it though ... Google streets know there'd be no reason to go looking at it.

So this concludes our trip down memory lane and shows you a bit about where we lived while in Pittsburgh; sometimes it seems a lifetime away.

Comments

[Jenny]

I think the Charles J Greeves building was bought by someone else. The outside looks too nice, and this was the man who didn't seem to think it was a problem that the ceiling above the shower leaked - it was like a double shower.

[Heather]

It's a Five Guys in that picture - and it wasn't there the last time I was in Oakland a few months ago. They have good burgers, and what I'd consider a 'O' style of serving french fries, meaning a gigantic, unhealthy mound of fried craziness (they have them here in Virginia), so I do have to wonder now if they got rid of the 'O' as they were threatening to do. That would make me sad, I do still require my yearly cholesterol and fat intake from O fries with cheese and gravy. Mmmmm.

I was on Henry Street last month, I had to stop to see CMU HR on Craig Street, and I ended up parking pretty much in front of the house. It looks the same, just a little more respectable, haha.