Now that Anthony Bourdain has done his usual hatchet job,
or insightful tour depending on your perspective, of Pittsburgh and our dining
scene, let’s take a step back from the always fraught and fleeting waters of
celebrity and return to the topic that originally spurred me years back to
start blogging about Pittsburgh: the need for more jobs and higher incomes in
this great city.
In the midst of Pittsburgh’s frenzy over “Parts Unknown”, a
second frenzy was afoot both in the Burgh and across the country: Amazon’s HQ2
competition. I believe HQ2 is simply one
of the world’s wealthiest corporations looking to find out what government body
will pay them the most amount of money.
Period. This is not even a “pay money
in exchange for jobs” scheme. If a
company is growing profitably, the jobs are a foregone conclusion – no one
needs to chip in. In addition, the
location of those jobs will develop organically from what makes the most sense
for the organization. No, I believe our
reportedly civic-minded CEO Mr. Bezos [recall it was he who “saved” the
Washington “Post” by purchasing it] is rubbing his hands with anticipation to
find out which governments [State, local] will pay how much to Amazon in order to
“win” this competition.
And that disgusts me.
Therefore, at the risk of being considered a false prophet
when I highlight continued growth in the Pittsburgh economy, or not
sufficiently chauvinistic to champion an economic PR win for the City, let me
say I hope Pittsburgh [and any other city one cares about] is not selected for
HQ2. My bets are on two cities that seem
to have most of what Amazon is seeking: Atlanta and Dallas. They are large even by international
standards and thus have a workforce of sufficient size that 50,000 jobs would
only produce a minor blip in employment statistics. Both have true international airports with
connections to all six inhabited continents.
And while Atlanta has a more developed mass transit system, Dallas [and
the State of Texas] has the deep pockets to come up with many hundreds of
millions if not a billion dollars in corporate welfare [or extortion].
What I hope for is an expansion of Amazon’s current
Pittsburgh offices. A thousand? Two thousand?
Even five thousand highly paid, highly technical Amazon employees in
Pittsburgh would be a boon to the City.
In my humble opinion, fifty thousand of those [too often entitled,
elitist and gentrifying] techies would be a burden, especially in a metro area
of Pittsburgh’s modest size.
Finally getting back to Mr. Bourdain, let us talk TV programming
and what he sells. Pittsburgh’s newfound
sheen is merely Pittsburgh catching up to other well-regarded American
cities. There’s nothing new to report
here. It’s being done all over the country
from Providence to Salt Lake, Milwaukee to Nashville. “Parts Unknown” producers need to come up
with some sort of “hook” to keep the show from sounding like a travelogue puff
piece. The best travel writing does
that; think Paul Theroux as the curmudgeonly observer. So yes, there is a true culinary renaissance
in Pittsburgh exhibited by some generally acknowledged groundbreaking restaurants. But heck: go to San Francisco and New York
and Miami for REAL glitz and glamour.
No friends, Mr. Bourdain had to find something different about
Pittsburgh that would keep him and his show in viewers’ minds until the next
episode. So wrestling and grunge bands
and old steel mills as backdrops filled the bill. Are the decaying
neighborhoods and the people left behind in a new economy a bit of lazy
journalism on CNN’s part? Well it’s not
journalism; it’s an entertainment show.
One other thing Pittsburghers should come to grips with is
the City’s history. That history is as
heavily industrial as it gets – maybe as it ever will get. It was dirty, sooty
and smelly as well as dangerous and life threatening or at least life-shortening
at times. It resulted in areas of the City that still have little to no charm.
New and clean and pretty will always beat dirty and smelly and nasty. Pittsburgh will never be the California coast
or the picturesque parts of the Deep South. So don’t expect every report on the
City to be a glowingly enticing travel piece.
It can’t be.
All of this comes with the price of fame, Pittsburgh. Get used to it.
