The cool rust belt city

Traitorous as this would be considered by Forest City residents, I'm starting to fetishize Pittsburgh.

I know. WTF. Isn't that the city once dubbed "hell with the lid off"?

But George Romero is from there, and that creepy Romero vampire movie Martin was about Pittsburgh. (Watch that if you haven't--it's crazy as a bedbug and intensely creepy.) In Night of the Living Dead, Johnny and Barbie are from Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh has romantic crumbling bridges and the Incline, which is an angled scenic rail car. It's rusting, but in a cool way. (As for uncool rust: a major bridge in Cleveland is partially shut down because of incipient collapse now. God knows how they'll pay to repair it.)

Pittsburgh has an iconic hot dog establishment called the Dirty O.

The Whiskey Rebellion even took place round about Pittsburgh. George Washington busted in to kick ass in person.

Their version of you-plural is yins. No shit.

Pittsburgh is just cool. Run down, smallish, but with character. Anyway, "hell with the lid off" sounds badass. Compare that to "the mistake on the lake."

This could be interpreted as some pretty weak escapism. The population's dropping even faster there.