Some writers keep journals of their travels, and the rest of us? Well, suffice it to say that today will mark the beginning of a new feature in this space titled: Things that I miss about Pittsburgh.

-- Post-Gazette Pirates beat writer Dejan Kovacevic, February 2007

For a guy who loves Pittsburgh, the Post-Gazette's Dejan Kovacevic sure does leave a lot -- as many as 80 times a year. But he always comes back.

While he was on the road with the Pirates, Kovacevic used the Pirates Q&A feature to compile a list of things he missed about Pittsburgh, which over the past two years has morphed into things that make Pittsburgh great. Readers joined in, and together they came up with a list approaching 120. In reverse chronological order, here is the list so far (for archival accuracy and for old time's sake, items are as they were when they were written):

Thing No. 119 that makes Pittsburgh great: It is almost impossible to imagine that the Fulton Building on Sixth Street and Fort Duquesne Boulevard was empty only a decade ago, before the Renaissance Hotel was built into it. That turned into what probably is one of the best historical venues for any hotel in the country. (Check those century-old pictures of the Downtown skyline from the current PNC Park location, and the only building you are likely to recognize is this one.)

At any rate, impressive as that building and its magnificent river-facing arch are, they might pale in comparison to the lobby.

The walls are marble, as are the staircases that run up the side to one of the most coveted banquet halls in the city, and the lower area includes the registration desk, the Opus restaurant and the Bridge cafe up front that has an amazing sculpture of the Clemente Bridge running across the top of the bar. The Opus is a good place to eat that is open unusually late, and the bar . . . well, I will leave that to those who drink.

If you want to pop in and check it out, do not sweat not being a hotel guest. The doormen are very much used to it.

Thing No. 118 that makes Pittsburgh great: We have five bridges Downtown. Not bridges leading Downtown, but bridges right in town.

I will pause here to see if the more dedicated among you can come up with them.

OK, bearing in mind I did not actual research here -- which means send in yours if I fall short -- there is most famous of all, the great Bridge of Sighs that Richardson designed to connect the County Courthouse to the old jail. It gave prisoners one last window in which to peer out to the free world and, thus, sigh. That is on Ross Street.

There also is a pedestrian bridge connecting the Convention Center to the Westin hotel, another connecting the Highmark skyscraper to the old Horne's building that Highmark now owns, another on the Point Park University campus over Wood and, of course, the Portal bridge that connects the two segments of Point State Park.

On the pedestrian route, we also have a little-known, Canadian-style pedestrian tunnel that connects the U.S. Steel building with Mellon's skyscraper for the purposes of the subway station. They even have shops and murals in there.

Again, let me know if I missed one. One might reasonably argue that Mellon's service center that connects to the skyscraper actually is a bridge in and of itself, being that Ross Street goes right through it, but that is a stretch.

Thing No. 117 that makes Pittsburgh great: We can drive a half-hour west of Downtown, step into a large metal tube and end up in Paris.

No news brightened my spirits during my few weeks off quite like hearing that our city finally has reconnected to overseas, through the Delta nonstop flight to Charles de Gaulle International, beginning June 2. It was badly needed, ridiculously overdue, after we went nearly four years since US Airways unjustifiably pulled the plug on our London and Frankfurt connections.

From a civic standpoint, this service will benefit plain old travelers, obviously, but also a local business community that includes dozens of corporations based in Europe. By getting into de Gaulle, which has tremendous connections, they can bounce just about anywhere in the world without having to go through New York or - shudder - the worst airport in this hemisphere in Philadelphia.

From a personal standpoint, I am reminded of the many trips I would make to Europe - almost all of my family, aside from my mother and those immediately in my house are there - in which I would always book directly out of Pittsburgh, just out of the civic pride. And that pride was peaked when I would be in Frankfurt or London and look up at the fabulous, huge departure boards in their airports and see Pittsburgh listed among the world's greatest cities. In particular, there was a day at the US Airways club in London in 2004, where I could see my plane by its gate and looked at it in wonderment, imagining how that big bucket of bolts was about to travel all the way around the globe with a mission of getting to our little place.

Been all over Europe, but never to France. Maybe next October.

Thing No. 116 that makes Pittsburgh great: We are mostly impervious -- clueless? -- when it comes to national or global economic troubles. One look at our Downtown, teeming with construction cranes at every corner, is in stark contrast to the completely idle equipment and unfinished buildings you see all over the place here in Las Vegas, which had been the most booming of boom towns in the country.

This, obviously, is not the way it was in Pittsburgh. Those of us old enough to remember the collapse of Big Steel in the early 1980s vividly recall seeing the giant mills along the Monongahela and Ohio rivers closing up, one by one. What once were towering monuments to what at the turn of the previous century made Pittsburgh one of the world's most powerful and wealthiest cities were flicked away in such a tidal wave that it resulted, ultimately, in what might have been one of the greatest non-war outward migrations in the history of civilization. (Quick: Name another city that lost half its population in half a century without being bombed.)

Alas, here we are today, solidly, finally touching our toes on what probably is the floor of our population loss, finally revitalizing those mill areas into useful properties from residences to shopping to other types of industry to, as we now are seeing with U.S. Steel's huge expansion in Clairton, what little steel and coke we still generate. More important, here we are, mostly watching as bystanders while the rest of the country gets hit with massive recession-driven issues, from plunging home values to double-digit percentage job losses.

What makes us different?

Well, as this piece in the Sunday paper aptly illustrated, we not only are infinitely more diversified in terms of the types of jobs we have -- to the point that even US Airways' departure or the pending shutdown of Sony's TV plant in Westmoreland County will not devastate, while certainly awful for those affected - but also are thick in businesses that, really, do not go into huge slumps. With UPMC and other medical giants, in particular, we are prominent in a business that never, unfortunately, dies down, and that is treating sick people.

The down side, of course, is that we probably will not be along for the ride with the next boom, either. Just as we avoid the valleys of this recession, so, too, did we mostly watch idly with the Internet boom -- exceptions such as FreeMarkets and Fore Systems (Slogan: "We're from Pittsburgh. We build things to last") notwithstanding - as well as the housing bubble that brought us all down.

Bottom line: Pittsburgh's economy might now make for a better reflection of its people than ever before. Not too high. Not too low. Not much changes.

Thing No. 115 that makes Pittsburgh great: The block of Craig Street that leads into the Carnegie Museum parking lot in Oakland can make for some tremendous escapism.

Want to envision Pittsburgh as a place where young people dominate the scene?

Where there is international diversity on par with any city in America?

Where an upscale restaurant can be crammed between a DVD rental place and a used-books cellar?

Find an open meter, plop in a few quarters, start down by the Starbucks at the corner of Craig and Forbes, and poke your head into each of the places that fills up this remarkable block ... and that's all it is. Go past that block, and you run into a bunch of dental offices, banks and the like. Personal favorites are the seriously grungy coffee shop across from Starbucks (sorry, I never look up at the name), the Dreaming Ant DVD supplier who specializes in foreign stuff and comes complete with an expert at the counter to help you have some clue as to what you are looking at, the always filled Chinese cafeteria and, best of all from this point of view, the dramatically upgraded Phantom of the Attic comics shop that has one of the best displays of any such place in the country, as well as one of the deepest stocks of graphic novels for those of you too lazy to buy these things monthly. I always will be an Eide's guy, but this place is well worth a stop.

If you somehow achieve all that in short order, the museum is right across the street.

Thing No. 114 that makes Pittsburgh great: As the old polka goes, we're from the town with the great football team.

OK, it remains to be seen if these Steelers are great apart from their stupendous defense, but the part that invariably is great is the support of the greatest fan base for any sports franchise on this side of the globe.

A couple weeks ago in the Dominican, Rene Gayo took us to a sports bar in Santo Domingo, aware that it was a Steelers Sunday -- home game vs. Chargers -- and saw as I was positively blown away to find about a dozen people openly and vigorously cheering on the Steelers. (How strange it seemed to see it snowing at Heinz Field from so far away, and how much all these faraway fans must miss it, I wondered.)

At our airport on Sunday, while standing in the security line, there erupted a burst of screams and shrieks from off to the right, just behind us. Given the extremely uptight nature of airport security types since 9-11, this usually would be enough to set off some serious nervousness all around. Instead, the TSA person in front of me shouted toward the nearby bar, "Who scored?" Turns out it was just an Ike Taylor interception.

On the plane flying here to Vegas, packed with 200-plus people (surely not good enough for US Airways to sustain this flight, either), the stewardess interrupted the silence somewhere over Kansas by announcing: "The final score was 20-13," followed by a dramatic pause, then, "Pittsburgh." The plane burst into applause and some high-fives. The guy next to me, who must have noticed the Downtown skyline on my laptop's background, reached across to shake my hand. It was the first we had communicated the entire flight.

Amazing.

Wilson pointed out once, late last season, that the Steelers and Penguins had made up for the Pirates being so miserable for so long, and it was an indisputable point. Let those two franchises, in particular our globally recognized and respected Steelers, serve as examples that what has gone wrong with baseball in Pittsburgh has nothing to do with the city and everything to do with the people who, over the past decade and a half, turned a once-proud franchise into a national punch line.

Thing No. 113 that makes Pittsburgh great: This will sound terribly self-serving, but it would be crazy on a lot of levels to leave the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette out of this.

Whatever one happens to think about what any of us writes or how we cover stuff, there is no denying that the PG has a historic place in the city's annals as the first newspaper in the United States west of the Allegheny Mountains. The first day of publication for what then was known as the Pittsburgh Gazette was July 29, 1786, almost exactly a decade after the Declaration of Independence (and almost exactly a century before the Pirates franchise was born).

There have been many, many newspapers in the city's history, include five and even six viable ones as recently as the middle part of the last century. Of those that had roots in the city, the PG, which never was the biggest in all that time, ended up being the only one that survived once The Pittsburgh Press was consumed in late 1992.

I could go on here about having worked here since I was a teenager and all that, but that would bore everyone to tears. Instead, here is this: The PG recently became one of the first handful of papers to cooperate with Google in some rather intensive archiving that allows you to check out every single edition since 1926. Amazing tool.

Thing No. 112 that makes Pittsburgh great: We have animals, right in our Downtown area, that some of your Pirates would like to hunt.

Mentioned to Adam LaRoche a good while back that there are wild turkeys living on Mount Washington (and they sometimes get around to Bigelow Boulevard and even as far as Washington's Landing), and his immediate response was: "Can you hunt them?"

Me: "Well, yeah, but people live up there and ..."

Him: "Hunting wild turkeys right in the city. Cool."

Maybe that should come as no surprise ...

If I haven't said this in a while, your first baseman is completely nuts.

Anyway, Saturday at PNC Park, the Pirates had just taken the field, with a few already tossing, when a perfect flying V of Canada geese goes overhead. I asked one player if he noticed. Nothing. Another, also nothing. Then, Brandon Moss trots by and asks, "Did you see those geese just now?"

Me: "Yeah, and . . ."

Moss: "Wish I was hunting!"

OK, so this must be the genesis of the term sportsmen for those who hunt and otherwise enjoy the outdoors.

At any rate, what it makes me think of is how cool, to use LaRoche's term, it is that Pittsburgh has this kind of wildlife right in the heart of town. And this is to say nothing of the ducks that now live under all three of our Sister Bridges -- documented here intensely over the years -- as well as the bass, mega-sized catfish and other watery types now populating the rivers. My children even saw a very large turtle about a mile up-river from the ballpark just last month.

This probably says something about how the city has cleaned up, but I will leave that to the environmental writers. It certainly makes for a highly livable feeling.

Thing No. 111 that makes Pittsburgh great: The long park along Fort Duquesne Boulevard, Downtown.

Nate Clark of Napa, Calif., emailed a link yesterday to the Library of Congress' collection of panoramic photos, which can dig up some great city shots (including the 1909 world championship PBC that adorns each edition of the Q&A).

Anyway, that got me thinking about a neat moment shared last week with this person I married a long time ago. (Multiple sources indicate strongly that we still are married, but I await independent confirmation when this whole baseball thing ends next week.) After a gyro stop on Sixth Street, we walked over to the portion of the park between the Clemente and Warhol bridges, and I asked her to look at the North Shore, way left and way right, to try to recall what it all looked like. The stadiums and dramatically upgraded riverfront, including the water steps, obviously stand out. But Alcoa's signature headquarters (funny how no neon sign is necessary in light of great design), the Lincoln at North Shore apartments (former residence), and the fairly new second Siemens building directly across the river did just as much to alter forever what had been ... well, does anybody really remember what was over there?

I do, specifically as it relates to all the houses.

It seems remarkable but, just a decade ago, there was an entire - though small - neighborhood directly on the site of PNC Park, closer to the first-base side. There was an extension of River Avenue along the water and two perpendicular side streets leading up to General Robinson, all filled with real houses with real people in them. There also were rows of houses along General Robinson. All were bought up by the city in one of the city's few financial contributions to Plan B.

The park itself has two tiers, the upper lined with a long, winding stone bench and some sturdy landscaping. The lower tier, which looked pretty stupid when it opened eight years ago, did actually fulfill its architect's promise that it would grow into something nice once the trees and other stuff grew up.

Oh, yeah, and that used to be a long parking lot.

The person who might merit credit for starting it all was the one laughed at when it started: Mayor Sophie.

Thing No. 110 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Matt Ness of Cranberry: PNC Park.

Sometimes, I think we take our great facility for granted. Earlier this summer, two friends and I traveled to Philadelphia and New York to watch the Pirates at Citizens Bank Park and Shea Stadium. Just sitting in these two parks, one a classic retro and another an old cookie-cutter multi-purpose, I found myself longing for the sightlines of PNC, for the wide concourses, open to the playing field, with the furthest seat only 88 feet away.

Citizens Bank Park felt too large, lacking intimacy. Yes, it's modern, but it made us feel like we were sitting in a canyon. And the lines! If you wanted any item at any concession stand, you missed one or two innings. Better to sit at home and have immediate access to the nachos.

While Shea has its detractors, I enjoyed my stay there more than in Philadelphia. The lower level was restricted to ticket-holders in that area, so lines were shorter, and there was a higher level of intimacy. But Shea is still an old facility with poor sight lines and lacked the modern features that Citi Field no doubt will incorporate.

Admittedly, these facilities have dedicated fans, fans I found myself admiring, not for the team they cheered, but for the passion they exulted. They followed every pitch, knew the count, knew the score. They even jeered us for wearing Pittsburgh apparel. While we still retain our passionate fan base here, there is a distinct difference: Conversations among fans at PNC often drift to everything but the game.

Yet, PNC just feels like home to the baseball fan. No matter where you sit, no matter your preference for food, no matter your socio-economic position, PNC makes everyone from the casual to the dedicated fan feel like part of the game. Its place on the North Shore makes it a part of the city, and not at some so-called "Sports Complex" removed from the city off an interstate exit.

One has to travel to Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia or New York to remember just how great our park is. And consider how great PNC will be in October, with 38,000 cheering for the PBC. How great that day will be.

Thing No. 109 that makes Pittsburgh great: On that thoroughly negative note, how about a little something more uplifting?

I heard someone on TV say, after Tom Brady went down the other day, that Ben Roethlisberger now is the NFL's marquee quarterback. That is exceedingly cool in and of itself. That gives poor, pathetic, "small-market" Pittsburgh, if you happen to go along with that designation for Big Ben, the highest-profile players in the NFL and NHL.

Moreover, each of these people is, in his own way, a fine fit for the city. As someone who shared a street with the quarterback and watched him and my kids play with him and his dogs, I can attest this is someone who, no matter the size of his endorsement deals, has not lost touch. A good guy, from day one.

As for the other guy, whom I only have dealt with a couple times, this video was shot by our crew yesterday.

Thing No. 108 that makes Pittsburgh great: The sweet symmetry in how the major arteries surrounding our Downtown were named after our first two major forts.

First major fort on the land that now comprises the Point: Fort Duquesne.

Second major fort: Fort Pitt.

Bridge connecting Parkway West to Downtown: Fort Pitt Bridge.

Identical bridge continuing that connection across to 279, 65 and 28: Fort Duquesne Bridge.

Four-lane road lining one edge of the Golden Triangle: Fort Pitt Boulevard, same side as the bridge

Four-lane road lining the other edge: Fort Duquesne Boulevard.

And nothing at all, anywhere, named after poor Fort Prince George, the tiny -- and original -- one built on the grounds of the Point before either of the above two.

PHOTOS: Trent Jewett, MiLB.com; Fort Pitt model from Fort Pitt Museum lobby, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Thing No. 107 that makes Pittsburgh great: Joshua Bish lives Downtown and, just to show that off, he submitted this photograph taken from his balcony. . . .

Now, imagine what that place would look like with a competitive baseball team.

Thing No. 106 that makes Pittsburgh great: Point Park University.

No, I never went there, even though they now have the city's only real journalism program, to my knowledge. (Well, actually, I attended a kindergarten class there in 1972 when my family was one of about 20 actually living Downtown. And our class would have recess on a playground that was on the roof of a seven-story building above the Boulevard of the Allies, but that is an aside.)

Having seen campuses located in the hearts of downtowns around the country - New York, Phoenix, others - I used to wonder why we could not do likewise. Duquesne is close, but not really. That hill is too much for most. Pitt might as well be in another time zone, given our lack of light rail connecting Downtown and Oakland.

But Point Park not only is right Downtown. It is beginning to eat it whole.

Check out this outline of the massive recent property purchases and plans, then take a walk down Wood Street and see the beginnings of what truly will be an identifiable, signature campus with a new theater, gymnasium, dorms and dorms and dorms, and a wholly new group of people living - around the clock - right there.

For all the criticism rightly levied on the Fifth and Forbes corridors, they never were the most boring. That always has gone to the Boulevard part of the Triangle, maybe because it is the only really decent-sized road through town and the only one that, frankly, looks like all the roads in all the other downtowns around the country.

But Point Park is taking this area and giving life to it few could have foreseen even a decade ago. And connecting it, as the plan goes, into Forbes and the new Market Square, might address a long-standing lack of cohesion in our small Downtown.

Thing No. 105 that makes Pittsburgh great: A larger-than-most-think percentage of this job is planning, arranging and executing travel, from the booking, to the figuring out how to do things as efficiently -- in terms of time and cost -- as possible, to the actual act of getting from one place to another.

That prompts me, from time to time, to wonder what it would be like to be a visiting writer coming to our city. Such a perspective is difficult to dream up when the stadium in which you work is directly across the river from the building in which you lived as a newborn, so perhaps the best way is to take the perspective of others who can pull it off legitimately.

Take the New York guys who were just in for four days . . .

Series that go longer than three games, one always hopes, take place in some of the league's better locations. Well, one of these visitors, among the more ambitious types, told me he wished he could have stayed a fifth day. He bounced around by rental car to our museums in Oakland to the Mattress Factory and over into the Strip to eat.

Another, equally effusive about our Downtown, especially the riverfronts, lacked a rental car but got all about the Golden Triangle by foot and did some exercising along the water's edge. He was most impressed by the square at PPG.

In general, aside from logistical considerations that would interest only writers (lots of nearby Marriotts!), what most seem to appreciate is the very compact nature of our city's key facilities. It is something that is very rare in the U.S. to have all three stadiums within reasonable walking distance as we do, much less all of the theaters within a Jose Guillen throw of each other. And that is to say nothing of the Warhol, the Science Center, the parks, squares, fountains, inclines and everything else, all within plain sight.

The primary complaints: Too tough to find a cab (only dinosaurs are harder to find), rains too much (writer's worst logistical issue), and the airport is too far away. (To my knowledge, only Denver and Edmonton, Alberta, have major airports farther from the city core than we do in all of North America.)

Anyway, my favorite visiting writer tale comes when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Derrick Goold, fellow shameless comic-book geek, came to town a a month ago and got the personal tour of the back issues at Eide's on Penn Avenue.

Today, he will return the favor, as I hit the shelves at a St. Louis establishment of his choice for the new deliveries on Wednesday.

Thing No. 104 that makes Pittsburgh great: Everyone has their own idea of what makes Oakland special.

Some will point to the activities immediately around the Cathedral, including the ultra-cool pickup soccer that goes on - rather intensely - right around dusk every day when school is in. (All international students, too, who learned how to do more than just kick the ball and chase it.)

My favorite defining area of our second downtown is the courtyard that is carved neatly out of the spaces that join the art and natural history portions of the Carnegie Museum.

It is in the back, so it is not visible from Forbes, but it is free, which is the No. 1 priority of roughly 99 percent of Oakland's population, so they find their way. It is almost entirely made of stone, some raised, with tables and benches, all shaded magnificently by the trees planted there. And the defining trait is the waterfall that runs down the side of the natural history building, a remarkable buffer to all the noise going on out on Forbes or across the valley at CMU.

The best thing: If you sit there with a book, you look really smart and just a little eccentric.

Thing No. 103 that makes Pittsburgh great: I have yet to eat there. Honest. Went a month ago with the family, only to find it closed.

And now, regrettably, after the Pirates not only executed a package deal, not only executed a three-team deal, not only violated every tenet that had been sacrosanct in this Q&A, I surely never will eat at Downtown's very own branch of the Soup Man chain owned by the very guy from the "Seinfeld" episodes.

At any rate, for those still allowed to have soup, word is that it is outstanding, with something approaching 50 varieties, including a couple dazzling house specials. Seating is minimal, but parking is directly overhead, as it is built into the Kaufmann's -- um, Macy's -- parking garage, directly opposite the store on Forbes.

Enjoy without me.

Thing No. 102 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Ted Cundick of Salt Lake City: The people who so genuinely believe, seemingly rightfully so, that Pittsburgh is the greatest place on earth.

Despite being a lifelong Pirates fan, I've spent a total of six hours in Pittsburgh in my life. As impressive as the city and ballpark were as I drove in from the west on a Saturday afternoon, just in time to catch my only game at PNC, it is people who find so much to love in their surroundings that convince me that somehow, at some point in my life, I must find a reason to move to Pittsburgh. Despite living in four states and three foreign countries, I've never been acquainted with any group of people who seem to care so much about their hometown as you and your readers.

Thanks, Dejan, for letting me feel like Pittsburgh is a place to be proud of. Never mind our suffering through the miseries of another losing season.

KOVACEVIC: Inspired by your entry, Ted, I put a bunch of Pittsburgh links over to the left on the blogroll. And I remind readers that suggestions are welcome.

Thing No. 101 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Morgan Kelly of Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh: Piles of lamb heads.

I thought you might find Salem's market and butcher in Oakland quite fascinating. (I have no connection to the store other than being a customer). It's as if someone crammed a Marrakesh bazaar into a dingy little storefront at the corner of Bates and Bouquet. The butcher at the rear of the store sells fresh lamb, goat, beef and chicken (no pork, of course) in a ... um, direct way now relatively unknown in the U.S. I ordered lamb chops, and the butcher emerged from the cooler with an entire skinned lamb upon his shoulders. He revved up the meat saw, severed the head and discarded it onto a table piled with other lamb heads. Beyond this, the experience is quite otherworldly, particularly by Pittsburgh standards. Go on a Saturday and mingle with a variety of Africans, Arabs, South Asians, etc., and hear their various native tongues. I've taken people who've asked that I never take them again, as it is quite foreign.

Beyond that, they serve tasty Middle Eastern fare, and the meat is reasonably priced: Filet mignon is $6.99 per pound and delicious, but prepare to buy the whole filet, about 4 pounds.

KOVACEVIC: Congratulations, Morgan. You are the first to submit a Pittsburgh item with the blatant disclaimer that, when you take people, they never want to go back.

From the sound of it, I will enjoy the ambiance of this place solely through your entry.

Thing No. 100 that makes Pittsburgh great: We come up with our own names for stuff, and nobody can tell us otherwise.

The Eliza Furnace Trail is the Jail Trail no matter who christens it what. The Kaufmann's clock always will be the Kaufmann's clock. Same with the Horne's tree and Alcoa clock and a swath of other civic institutions.

Which leads me to the Eyeball Park.

Actually, I have no idea what people call the intersection of Penn and Seventh, but I do know that my family just calls it Eyeball Park. What else could you call a mini-block surrounded by giant granite benches with eyeballs looking out in all directions? In the interest of accuracy, the place is called Katz Plaza, and the Cultural Trust link I provide will give you all the background of this wonderful, one-of-a-kind public space. Although the benches are hard as, well, granite, they are warm, inviting and strangely comfortable. Although the huge, deftly lit fountain pours water around the clock, it never freezes even in the coldest weather. Instead, it lets off a sweet steam as it lands on the bottom tier, making for an even more dramatic effect.

And now, there also is a sidewalk cafe that is part of the plaza, tucked into the side of the adjacent O'Reilly Theater. Inside, there is a healthy list of all kinds of fancy but light fare and, on the Friday night last week, some strangely intense folk-pop music by a local duo that calls itself Bait & Switch. (They have a site, but one cannot link to it from a family newspaper.

The only issue I have with the Eyeball Park is that someone inexplicably replaced the really cool steel cage on the opposite street corner, the one that collected various interesting building fragments, and replaced it with these bizarre fake trees.

Good thing most of the eyeballs are facing the other way ...

Thing No. 99 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Steve Maloney of Whitehall: Few cities in the country -- or world, for that matter -- can offer a museum dedicated to one artist, in the case of The Andy Warhol Museum, arguably the best-known artist of the past century. Even if you're not crazy about the seemingly repetitive nature of Warhol's prints, or if you're not wild about modern art in general, one has to be impressed by the physical space of the building itself. It was once the renowned Volkwein Music building, where my wife made regular sojourns for piano sheet music when she was a kid.

It draws art enthusiasts from all over the world, giving our city a certain international reputation for its art scene. And having another great gallery in the Mattress Factory nearby on the North Side helps that reputation, as does having shows like the Carnegie International.

Having attended a recent show there, I can vouch for the multitude of foreign languages being spoken by visitors there. And for those who moan that our city has little to offer its dynamic young population, the museum was chock full of visitors that night, mostly of the 20-30-year-old demographic. (It helps that the Museum is open till 10 p.m. on Fridays and serves alcohol.)

Finally, it has a shop, offering unusual items specifically relating to Warhol, as well as cool Pittsburgh-specific merchandise such as Pittsburgh skyline snow globes.

The Warhol is one of the first places I take out-of-town guests, and it never fails to impress. I hope it's not under-appreciated by long-time Pittsburgh residents.

KOVACEVIC: How do you write all that about the Warhol, Steve, and not mention the little cafe downstairs -- go to the steps just beyond the gift shop -- that has the L-shape, all-cowskin couch? There is no space quite like that anywhere.

Thing No. 98 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Steve Crandell of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: The bike ride to PNC Park from the East . . . My family lives in Abu Dhabi, but I was born in Pittsburgh, and we've spent the past two summers in the area. Last August, my 11-year-old son, Sean, and I biked to a Sunday afternoon game from Swissvale. If you time it right, the traffic is minimal, the switchbacks are an adrenaline rush, and the scenic payoff has to be the best in the majors.

We started at my brother's house, at the edge of a small cliff overlooking the Monongahela. Down then up Commercial at the edge of Frick Park, through the golf course at Schenley Park, then down Swinburne to catch the Eliza Furnace Trail.

I'm starting to repeat a previous contributor but, for the pride of making the trip with my son, I figure it's forgivable.

We felt we had accomplished something, even downhill. The car traffic on Grant St. at game time was manageable, and drivers let us twist our way through Downtown at our own pace. The view from across the Allegheny to PNC Park and the immediate area around the park is entirely bike.

One more reason to feel good about ourselves: It sure beat fighting the Parkway East construction traffic.

Only problem was our choice of date, Aug 5. Rainout. Last game of the homestand, with no chance to use our ticket stubs before we had to fly back to Abu Dhabi. That made the uphill return a little tougher, but we'll be back in Swissvale in June, ready to try again.

Thing No. 97 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Wayne Zerishnek of Dawsonville, Georgia: There is a true Pittsburgh bar in just about every major city in the U.S..

When I first left Pittsburgh seven years ago, I was very homesick because of my sports teams. I found a gem in a little pizza bar in Alpharetta, Ga., called Suburbanite. What makes this great is the fact that once inside you would swear you are in the Burgh. Old photos of the glory years, Iron City Beer on tap. Not just a place where the games are played, but rather a pure Pittsburgh feel. In most places, even the bartenders have the accent.

What separates the Burgh from other cities is the fact that these types of places are everywhere.

Thing No. 96 that makes Pittsburgh great: I had this in mind even before this latest national survey backed my point that our city's drivers are the most courteous anywhere.

This might be one of those things that surprises people who rarely or never get out of the city, much like the widely held misperception that we have traffic.

The traffic that we have, meaning the 20-minute backups in front of the tunnels or the lights along Route 28, is the equivalent of being in line at the McDonald's drive-thru compared to what other cities have. On our major roads, for the most part, there is a pattern. You know exactly how far up Green Tree hill the Parkway West is backed up at exactly what time. You also know why it happened (inexplicable fear of tunnel portals among a people who have been entering those tunnels all their lives), as well as which direction the backup will or will not occur.

In other major cities, the traffic goes in all directions, with no rhyme or reason, and it backs up so hopelessly that you strain your neck trying to see 3 miles ahead in hopes of finding out why no one is moving more than an inch a minute.

And in Florida, where the cars overwhelm the roads even in the least densely populated areas and the only concept of mass transit is one in which there are two people squeezed into the same vehicle ...

Anyway, we are friendly drivers. It might not seem like it to you the next time you try the Pittsburgh Left and the driver opposite you is totally unaware of this excellent technique, but it definitely is the case.

The first time it struck me was a couple years ago, driving the 110 Freeway in Los Angeles, when I spotted a driver coming up an entrance lane and slid over to my left to create space. Well, they pulled up next to me and ... were laughing at me.

Nice.

A good friend of mine, when he moved to Pittsburgh from Florida a few years ago, had a similar reaction when he realized that he could pretty much enter any highway in the region without having to even slow down on the ramps. Only his view was that we were not really smart for allowing this, as it adds to congestion on the highways. Other cities have meters that regulate the pace of cars that can enter a highway, so he might be right.

Whatever. There are worst things to be known for than being nice, especially when it comes to the single most dangerous thing any of us do on a daily basis.

Thing No. 95 that makes Pittsburgh great: Much has gone wrong for our maligned Convention Center, from the infamous collapse to the failure to build an accompanying hotel to the failure to finish off the water side with the planned park to the failure to finance the planned pouring of water onto the sloped roof as a method of cooling.

But one feature that somebody actually finished -- just recently -- might represent the first step toward making the facility as first-class as designers had initially hoped ...

From the intersection of Penn Avenue and 10th Street, head toward the gap between the Center's two sides, in the direction of the river. As you get closer, you will see a very long, winding walkway that is surrounded by pouring water which, visually, looks as if it is streaming downhill right into the river.

Then, keep going. And going. What starts out as no big deal becomes almost a surreal experience as the walls to either side go from pouring water to having it gush out, loud enough that it is difficult to carry a conversation.

It is unlike anything I have seen anywhere. Just amazing.

That said, once one reaches the end, one is again reminded of the Center's many failures because the walkway deposits you onto this drab slab of cement that someday is supposed to become a $7 million connection to the existing Allegheny Riverfront park below the Bypass.

Oh, one other footnote: All the water for the walkway, as well as all water used in the Center itself, comes from the beloved Fourth River (See No. 28).

Thing No. 94 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Jeff Mandler of Chicago: Seat 5A.

I live in Chicago now, so getting back home often requires a flight back to the Burgh. On each of these flights, I do my best to sit in seat 5A. The seat never disappoints.

As the plane approaches the airport from the west for landing, I look out the window to my left and the Pittsburgh skyline. It looks a bit different than from the top of Mount Washington, but it is another priceless view of a great city. I don't sit too far back because the wing can block the view. As the plane continues through the descent, the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania become more apparent. It is always good to land in Pittsburgh.

Go Bucs.

Thing No. 93 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Rich Campbell of Coraopolis: Schenley Plaza in Oakland.

Up until two or three years ago, Schenley Plaza was a totally drab, lifeless slab of asphalt. I was down there the other day, and the lawn was filled with people. The tent is now up, the carousel is up and running. What a perfect place to go to a day sunny day!

They have free wireless Internet and free music six days a week. I eat at the Chinese place all the time, but there are a variety of food vendors to buy a meal or snack. At the Chinese place last week, my first time there since they reopened for the season, I didn't even have to tell them what I wanted. Guy looked at me and said, "General Tso's Chicken, fried rice, no vegetable!"

As I said, just a perfect place to spend a beautiful day in the Burgh.

KOVACEVIC: In a much more general sense, we seem, as a city, to be taking greater umbrage at huge swaths of asphalt in our midst, and the benefits of that are apparent not only with that terrific little space -- been there myself a couple times in the past year -- but also in greater-scope projects Point Park University's takeover of much of Downtown(such http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08128/879642-298.stm ).

There is plenty enough space for parking in garages, if the garages are done right. But open asphalt, especially in vital corridors such as Downtown and Oakland, make little sense.

By the way, for anyone thinking about seeing this place Rich describes for the first time, know that it is no more than a Jose Guillen throw from the various Forbes Field relics, including the remaining wall, as well as the marked space on the sidewalk where the home run actually cleared.

Thing No. 92 that makes Pittsburgh great, by John McCollister of Port Orange, Fla.: As a native Pittsburgher, I suggest that one of the unique things about the city is that its citizens historically have maintained what I call a "steel-mill mentality."

What, exactly, is that "steel mill mentality"?

It's a firm belief that a person should earn a salary only through an honest day's work, not by swindling someone through a slick, underhanded deal.

It's a willingness to reveal what's on your mind without couching your words in an obfuscation of politically correct language.

It's the awareness that you feel more at home with a close friend when you hoist a cold mug of Iron City than you would if you sip from a glass of expensive champagne.

It's rooting for a "dirty shirt" baseball player such as Jack Wilson who gives a 100-percent effort on every play. After watching him for an entire season, you conclude that he would catch a sharply hit ground ball with his teeth if that would be the only way to prevent it from reaching the outfield grass.

It's seeing a total stranger while you're walking through any airport in the country and notice that he's wearing a Pirates cap. You then take the time to approach the fellow passenger and ask: "What part of the Burgh yinz come from?"

It's embracing play-by-play announcers such as Rosey Rowswell, Bob Prince, Lanny Frattare, Steve Blass and Greg Brown as though they were members of your own family.

Finally, it's the realization that you owe very much to your parents, neighbors, teachers and religious leaders simply because they implanted into your very being a solid sense of values that tells everyone you meet from henceforth that you are a true Pittsburgher.

Now, that's something that makes you a very rich person, indeed.

KOVACEVIC: For the few of you who might not already know, Mr. McCollister is the long-time author of several books about your franchise of choice, not the least of which is his new entry, "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Pittsburgh Pirates," available at stores all over town.

Thing No. 91 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Tim Cypher of Butler: We have our own language.

This past fall, I was sitting in the hospital waiting to get some blood work done and picked up a National Geographic magazine. As I flipped through pages, I noticed an article on different dialects in the United States. Sure enough, on the map was a distinct circle with Pittsburgh at its center and a titled "Western PA dialect." (I have the picture on my cellphone, if you want. It's kind of blurry.)

Let me tell you, as a guy from Western Pennsylvania who has attended four years of college in Chicago, we Pittsburghers have a distinct accent and, oh, boy, do I miss it. One of my friends threw out the term "jag" the other day and I asked him immediately where he had heard that word. He told me there was a radio show host where he was from in central Illinois that was well known for using it, and my friend thought he invented the term. Upon a little research, it turns out the radio host was Pittsburgh born and raised.

Finally, whenever I come back home during breaks from school, I never really feel at home until I go to eat a place in Butler called Burger Hut 2. My old youth pastor and I have an unspoken agreement that, every time I'm home, he takes me to lunch there. When we go in and the waitress greets us with a smile and "How yinz doin?" -- that's when I know I'm back in Pittsburgh.

Thing No. 90 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Jim Scafide of East Liverpool, Ohio: Roberto Clemente.

More generally, Pittsburgh is a sports town, but it is the players and teams that become the fabric of the city, and no player was more emblematic of that than was Clemente.

Looking back, we tend to think the city's love for Clemente was always there, but those of us old enough to remember his playing days know that, early on, it was less than mutual affection. It took a long time for the people of Pittsburgh to understand the complex and cerebral Clemente. The love was earned on both sides of the relationship, and the city and the man were both better for the process. Once understood, Clemente became as intractable from Pittsburgh as pierogies. As the Mon and the Allegheny flow to become the Ohio, Pittsburgh and Clemente have become one.

His play was stellar, even when he was on teams with records that were laughable. We tend to remember those days as if all of his playing days were spent on those great 1960 and 1971 teams, forgetting that there was a lot of bad baseball in between.

It was a remarkably rare confluence of events that brought the talented Clemente to the Pirates at a time when Hispanic players were extremely rare in the majors, and during a time of social unrest in this country and around the world. Clemente's response to the injustice he witnessed and commitment to improve the lot of others caused him to become a leader in social causes and, ultimately, cost him his life. He became a legend: forever a humanitarian, forever a ballplayer, forever a Pirate, forever a Pittsburgher.

KOVACEVIC: The most amazing aspect of Clemente's impact on the city for me always has been its enduring nature. And this goes even beyond all the parks and roads and bridges named after him, or even the fact that, nearly four decades since he died, his No. 21 jersey remains the Pirates' best-seller in merchandise.

Seated near me on my flight here to New York on Monday were three Puerto Rican nationals, a father and two sons, who made a weekend pilgrimage to Pittsburgh to say that they got to see the place where Clemente played.

How did I know to ask?

All three were decked out in Pirates caps and No. 21 garb, just to show it off for the rest of the family when they got back here.

Thing No. 89 that makes Pittsburgh great: We get to pick the president.

Well, us and Cincinnati and the eastern coast of Florida, but that is really about it. Go over the past two general elections, and you will see that these were the areas, including Allegheny and its surrounding counties, that provided what the political types describe as swing areas, the type particularly critical within the Electoral College system that is all-or-nothing.

And this year, you might have heard from a TV ad or two, there is the unusual addition of an actually relevant primary at hand.

What makes us a swing area?

All kinds of schools of thought here, not the least of which is that the city proper is overwhelmingly Democratic while the suburbs are less so and, in some areas to the north and south, significantly leaning to the Republican side.

But that explanation is too boring. What makes us such a contrast, I always have thought, is that our Democrats have been Democrats for so long that they harken back to that party's more conservative past. So, in many cases, they might label themselves one way and vote another. Or they might wholly disregard parties when it comes to state and national elections and simply choose the candidates of their preference.

Think of it along the same lines as why we complain about all the misfortune that befell the city in the 1970s but still listen to WDVE and fill that big white tent for Foghat: We live in the past, but we are not entirely sure why.

Anyway, I am not coming close to taking sides here, but I think it does say something about our unusual social and political climate here that, somehow, we end up with a larger voice than New York or Los Angeles and other much larger cities.

Thing No. 88 that makes Pittsburgh great: We have public buildings in the strangest of places.

Consider our city's Department of Public Works building, fairly buried into a weed-strewn, grassless hillside underneath the Liberty Bridge, right by Second Avenue. The place looks like the grimiest thing on the planet, and this is where we have the headquarters for those whose sole task is to keep our city clean.

Or what about the -- now mercifully abandoned -- police station that was fairly hidden inside the pier of the train bridge that runs across Penn Avenue right by 11th Street and the Convention Center? There are no windows, and even the one door to the place has only glass block for natural light. But you can still see the little sign that shows this was some tiny police location at some point.

And lest we forget River Rescue Center, the floating station that houses all of our city's fleet of river patrols, and a far more glamorous location than the other two, to say the least.

For one, it was forever immortalized in Bruce Willis'

"Striking Distance," an entire film about our city's river patrol that, although incorrectly basing most scenes on the Mon, actually was not that bad.

For another, it retained its existing home even though the Pirates initially pushed it to get moved as PNC Park was getting built. A couple of local government leaders balked, arguing that the cost was too high and that it could fit nicely with the stadium if it had a little touch-up. So, with some deep blue paint to match the steel of the ballpark, it did -- and does -- exactly that.

Thing No. 87 that makes Pittsburgh great: In the era of the chain everything, it was inevitable that the coffee business would fall prey eventually, and it mostly has across the country. But we have more than our share of independence within the city, from personal favorite La Prima in the to the aliens-among-us environment of the Beehive.

But I will isolate on a coffee shop unlike any I have visited anywhere, a tiny, relatively hidden place Amani on the North Side.

If it were on East Ohio Street, most would consider it off the beaten path even though that corridor seems to be awakening a bit. But this place is actually off East Ohio, on a parallel avenue called Foreland Street -- 507 street address -- and you will miss it if you blink.

Inside, you find a young lady named Terra Jones. She was profiled in this piece for our paper a while back, so I will let that stand for itself. Suffice it to say that this will be the person who makes your coffee when you go. She pretty much minds the place herself and has somehow managed to come up with a menu of not just coffees but deserts that blow away -- in quality and quantity -- anything you will find at the largest chain outfit.

On top of that, she organizes community events there, including a regular showing of movies on a homemade white screen, with the schedule written in chalk right by the coffee list. Saturday is kid's day, so "The Lion King" was on tap when my family stopped by a couple weekends ago.

Now, without getting too sociological here, being off East Ohio Street was not exactly the easiest place in the world for Ms. Jones to start this business. But, as the article above details, this was what she wanted to try.

I asked her how business was going that day, and she just smiled and shrugged as she replied, "It's getting better

Thing No. 86 that makes Pittsburgh great: Hines Ward.

Has any single player in Steelers history more thoroughly embodied what that franchise espouses to represent?

The reflexive response is to go for one of the defensive guys from the 1970s, probably Jack Lambert, if only because of the aura of toughness. Or maybe Joe Greene for the same reason, along with the fact that Greene represented the pivoting point for the Steelers to turn from laughingstock to the greatest decade-long dynasty in the NFL. Or even Jerome Bettis for his punishing running style and exemplary conduct away from the field.

But stop and think about Ward for a second, solely from the standpoint of his being a wide receiver. Think about, his spirit for the game, his wide smile, knocking a defensive back senseless, genuine and palpable leadership . . . and remind yourself one more time that this a wide receiver. Then ask yourself if any franchise other than the Steelers could be so blessed but to have a wide receiver of such character and pedigree.

Finally, throw in there somewhere that this also is an exceptional football player in terms of, not only with his receiving yards and touchdowns but also for how he expands the running game down field.

It is hard to say the Steelers will have another like him, if only because his unusual combination of traits and high profile surely will inspire others, as often happens with any sport's greats. But even that, in and of itself, underscores the unique brilliance of this athlete.

Thing No. 85 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Vince Pavic of Johnstown: With all the little hidden treasures throughout the city, one of the oddest has got to be the mural painted on the wall at the end of the Second Avenue exit coming off of the Parkway East.

As one of my myriad of ways of getting to a Buccos game, the Second Avenue exit happened by accident one day several years ago. I have always wanted to stop and get a photo with the mural, and even planned on it the many times I've stayed in the city, but I always forget that it is there. Every time I go into town that way, I remember it, and it is as if I'm seeing it for the first time all over again.

It is a reminder of the rich history of Buccos baseball that I enjoy seeing a little more every time.

I wonder how many out-of town visitors have never seen it because it is in such an obscure place.

KOVACEVIC: For those interested in more, this is our newspaper's coverage of the unveiling of that mural.

I see it all the time, Vince, because it is on the way home from picking up the daughter at school. And the thing that impresses me the most is how well it has weathered after eight years. Each time, I keep expecting to see it damaged or vandalized or whatever it is that you would expect to happen to something that is under a bridge. But never. Nothing.

Here is the other thing that you might not have noticed about that mural: If you go around the side to either of the two sides of the Second Avenue ramp up to the Bluff, you will see that the cement was painted green and ivy planted inside the curbs there, to simulate a Forbes Field-type environment.

Thing No. 84 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Ron Bisbee of Hopewell: It's people like you, and me, I guess, people who love this city, this area. It's more than just that.

There's more money elsewhere, for sure. There's more glitz, more status, more whatever, but Toto, there's no place like home.

Dejan, thanks, you remind me of that all the time.

KOVACEVIC: Actually, I have had nothing to do with it lately. When was the last time I wrote one of these myself

Thing No. 83 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Jim Dilmore of Edgewood: The city steps.

One cool thing about the steps is that they retain the name of the street of which they are a continuation. The Harding Street steps off Herron Ave. in Polish Hill even have their own street sign, which can be seen via Streetview in Google maps.

Another interesting aspect of the steps is their sheer number. In his book, "The Steps of Pittsburgh," Bob Regan states there are 712 sets in Pittsburgh with more than 4,000 individual steps. If you drive around town, you'll see them all over the hills of the city, in the Hill District from Bigelow Boulevard on the way into Downtown, in Polish Hill, and especially throughout the North Side.

According to the research by Regan, the longest set is found in the Fineview neighborhood in the North Side. The stairs run along Rising Main Avenue and ascend to near the site of the old WPXI television tower. Of course, a group of us had to go out and walk it. The steps are in good condition and easily walked - except for the fact that there are 337 of them, by our count.

Here are some photos from the trip: http://pittstops2007.blogspot.com/2008/02/stop-55-fineview.html.

KOVACEVIC: One set of steps that runs from Bigelow to the Hill is labeled 30th Street, which I find endlessly amusing. Do the Google maps search on this, and it is difficult to believe.

Those steps represent the highest-elevation point of the street, and there is about a half-mile interruption before 30th Street resumes as an actual street near Polish Hill's famous church, then is cut off - permanently -- by cement barricades at the edge of a hill because down below is the East Busway. More of 30th Street can be found down n the Strip, but that ends at the shore of the Allegheny River.

Then, the punchline: Go across the river, and you will find the little bridge that is the only connection between the Herrs Island neighborhood in the middle of the river and the rest of civilization. That bridge is called the 30th Street Bridge. And, to know why, one needs only to look over at the concrete edifice that holds up nearby Route 28, just another 100 feet farther from the river. You can still see the notches where the original 30th Street Bridge, one that spanned the entire river, used to finish.

If you and your friends want a real challenge, Jim, try walking the length of 30th Street.

Thing No. 82 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Joe Deffner of Forest, Va.: We are the only Pittsburg that has an "h."

According to Wikipedia, there are 26 other states that have a Pittsburg. In addition, there is Pittsburg, Ontario and Pittsburg, British Columbia. There is also Pittsburg Landing and South Pittsburg in Tennessee and Pittsburg Township, Kansas, in addition to Pittsburg, Kansas, home of Pittsburg State University. However, I'm not considering these as part of the Pittsburg/Pittsburgh because they have another part to the name of their city.

The only others that come close, and have an "h" are Pittsburgh Landing, Idaho, and Pittsburgh Junction, Ohio. Again, I'm not considering them because they have another part to their name.

When you see Pittsburgh written, there is no doubt that it is our Pittsburgh. I'm sure most of us Pittsburghers have run into people have spelled our Pittsburgh as Pittsburg, but we'll just have to kindly let them know that we have an "h" and that makes us unique.

KOVACEVIC: On an almost-related note, I was booking a rental car for the upcoming Los Angeles trip a little bit ago, and the person on the other end of the phone asked me for my state after I had just told her I live in Pittsburgh.

I hung up and booked with another company.

Don't ever get like me.

If you do, you will buy stacks of Starbucks gift cards at Giant Eagle for the sole purpose of being able to buy a guilt-free coffee at Charlotte's airport, where so many of our city's jobs recently were shipped. The way I see it, I still am spending my money back home, and the Charlotte people get not a penny.

No, I am not making this up. If my wife ever read this feature - she has better things to do -- she could agonizingly vouch for this.

Thing No. 81 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Sam Strohm of Crafton: The entry the other week from the gentleman who pointed out the park on the South Side got me thinking about one of my favorite runs in the city. You may have mentioned this before, but I like it so much that it deserves another ...

Cross the Smithfield Street Bridge, and make a hard left through the past the Sports Garden -- it will always be the Sports Garden to me -- pass by the big steel kettle, and make a right. Follow the path along the river until it diverts you to away from the river. Follow the marked detour down Sarah Street until you cross over the tracks, and it deposits you back on the path along the river. This is where the route truly begins to shine.

Follow it along, and soon you will forget that you are in the city. In the summer, the trees are so dense that even, in the mid-day sun, you are surrounded by a cool shade. I sometimes double back and run this section twice because I enjoy it so much. It amazes me that, in a 10-minute run from Downtown, you can almost be in another world.

Follow this path under the 10th Street Bridge, and take one of the many accesses to the South Side. Back to the 10th Street Bridge, to the "Jail Trail," and back to civilization.

The other thing that I think bears a mention is the Allegheny County Park systems. So close to the city, and yet so far away. Golf, swimming, fishing, skiing, hiking, biking, all with in minutes of town. We are truly lucky.

KOVACEVIC: It will start freaking me out entirely when the readers' entries, particularly something as off-the-beaten-path as this, start overlapping my own ideas. I used to live in this area and made many a walk with my daughter through the trail you describe. It truly is amazing.

And it was on my list, which means you cost me one and now owe me another, Sam.

Thing No. 80 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Steve Gradeck of West View: I have to let you know about the West View Isaly's and the West View Barber Shop.

I recently took my nephew, Gavin, to the former for lunch, and it was exactly as I had expected based on memories of when my grandfather took me to Isaly's where I grew up in the South Hills. We had a great lunch, off a two-sheet menu at a booth surrounded by memorabilia from old West View Park and the smell of grill smoke.

Afterward, we walked about 20 feet to get haircuts. The West View Barber Shop is staffed by a prototypical set of barbers: One who talks sparsely, one who talks a lot, and one who sits comfortably between the two extremes. All were very kind to my nephew, and he got to grab as many dum-dum pops as he could get in one hand out of their bucket before we left.

After the haircut, we went back to Isaly's to grab a milkshake and, again, it almost felt like I was back in the time of my grandfather.

I guess my basic point is that we have a city where a person can, even in a time of rapid development, find a simple strip of a neighborhood where they can give their nephew a taste of what it was like to grow up 25 years ago and, in turn, feel like they're keeping some sense of unique community going.

I thought this is the exact type of thing that you're trying to capture with your pieces.

KOVACEVIC: It is, Steve, although I can admit here that I have been plenty guilty of not doing much with the suburbs, being a city-dweller. I can attest to the throwback feeling of the Isaly's on East Ohio Street on the North Side, but I had no idea there was one in West View. Your sharing is appreciated.

Thing No. 79 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Patrick Weber of Allison Park: The Pittsburgh Cultural District is a 14-square block section of our Downtown that is home to at least six major theaters, and some of the world's -- that is the WORLD'S -- premier performing arts organizations. We have a world-class ballet, symphony orchestra, opera, civic light opera, Broadway series, and more.

For museums, we have renowned institutions such as the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Heinz Regional History Center and the Carnegie Science Center. Add to that list countless other galleries and museums of remarkable quality scattered around our region, and you have a truly broad cultural experience.

Last year at PNC Park, I sat behind a gentleman from Chicago. We began chatting, and he was totally overwhelmed with what our city had to offer. As he put it, Pittsburgh had become his favorite place in the country to visit. He had traveled to see the Cubs play in most MLB cities, and Pittsburgh was his undisputed favorite. In fact, his family now makes a point of traveling to Pittsburgh at least once every summer to see their Cubs and our city.

KOVACEVIC: I have written about the District in slices, usually weird stuff like the eyeball park or the collection of terra cotta ruins -- now gone -- but I always think of the District in the way that the New York Times' Brendan Lemon penned six years ago: "To describe Pittsburgh's unconventional, un-Disneyfied remodeling of its Cultural District ... is to explore how theater can help transform urban identity."

Newcomers tend to find it amazing that all of those theaters are so close together, independent even of what they think of the theaters themselves.

Thing No. 78 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Norine Minion of South Side, Pittsburgh: Like a boomerang, I always knew I would land where I began. So, when I left the Burgh over 20 years ago, it didn't matter what direction I soared off to or where I momentarily stopped, a part of me knew where the final destination would be: Back in Pittsburgh.

Prior to returning here, I longed for the sense of community, authenticity/realness, and groundedness that is not easily found elsewhere. It took my husband, a Colorado native, over a decade to jump onto the boomerang, but now that we have been here over a year, he is happy and proud to call Pittsburgh home.

It was the boomerang tag-a-along hubbie that wanted to live in the South Side.

Now, one of the things I like about this city is the diversity of neighborhoods in addition to the fierce loyalty one has to his/her own individual nook. So, even though it's been a few decades since living on the North Side, it took some persuasion from my husband -- like "You're the one who dragged me 2,000 miles to move here the least you can to do is let me pick the block where we live" -- to agree to live along the crazies of Carson Street.

The guy did well. The is a microcosm of everything that is great and bad in this wonderful city. For example, we have the worst traffic (especially with Birmingham Bridge out), but who needs a car when you can walk to the big bird for groceries, for a pretty darn good impersonation of an Italian osteria, the Beehive for a latte, the post office, UPS, the library ... well you get the idea. For everyday living, it is all here.

Another example of the best-and-worst microcosm and what really makes the South Side special are the people. Everyone is aware of the rambunctious coeds we experience on the weekends, but what goes unappreciated are the people who are here 24/7.

There's the guy who hangs out in front of his house on the sidewalk with his costume du jour. One day, he's in swimming trunks 'floating' in an inflatable swimming pool, the next he is in a Rastafarian hat with shoulder-length dreadlocks. Later, you may see him talking Stillers with his buddies down at O'Leary's Diner.

Then there is Motorcycle Charlie, who cruises Carson on his little Honda scooter blaring Christmas carols, Pink Floyd or whatever else suits his mood. You go over to 27th Street to a bowling-alley of a bar named Nadine's, and a retired professor, welder, engineer, artist arguing for over 20 minutes about who has best fish sandwich in the area. Discussing the nuances of the batter, fish, and bun with the expertise of Emeril.

Lastly, we only have to have our garage door open for a few minutes before nebby neighbors peek into the garage door opening and boldly wander into the sanctuary of our church/house, in which we live, and announce that where they are now standing is where their grandparents were married.

Only in Pittsburgh do we allow strangers to walk into our home and listen to their stories.

KOVACEVIC: I love the boomerang stories. All of you who have left -- you know who you are -- need to come home. Meet at Norine's garage.

Thing No. 77 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Rob Perkey of Crafton: Don't tell Pittsburgh Public Works but, during the summer, some of the city baseball fields have lights that stay on until 11 p.m., whether or not a team is occupying the field at that time.

When there isn't anyone on the fields, it allows for the greatest of baseball nights during the summer for someone like me. A trip to the Pirates game is sometimes followed by late-night rounds of batting practice and fungoes with my brother, a few friends, teammates or fellow coaches. There's not a better way to enjoy a Pirates victory than chatting about and analyzing the game among fans and friends while fielding grounders and shagging flies. And, well, for the losses, what relieves frustration more than swinging a bat and watching the ball fly into the trees beyond the outfield fence?

If anyone from the PWD reads this, please make Tom and Motel 6, so I can continue enjoying late-night baseball.

Thing No. 76 that makes Pittsburgh great: I am a regular at Jerome Bettis' restaurant on the North Shore. Love the food. Love the setting, especially in the summer time in sitting out on the brick-lined park above the Allegheny. Love the little team logos they put under each TV to let you know what game is on. And really love the Pittsburgh steak salad.

But you have not experienced Bettis' place until you visit the rest rooms.

Even before I heard that they were ranked among the top rest rooms anywhere in the country -- yes, really -- I remember being floored by the opulence, the unusual design and - guys only here - the pure shock of realizing that there is a one-way mirror there in which you look right out to the rest of the restaurant but, mercifully, no one can look back.

That is quite a shock for those who do not know in advance.

Thing No. 75 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Mike and Barb Jordan of Elkins, W.Va.: No question and hands down, going through the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

We went through the tunnel on our way to our first Pirates game almost 30 years ago. Since that time, we have had the privilege but almost impossible task of trying to explain to others what it's like to be transformed, through the tunnel, from suburbia to Downtown. Down through the years, we have taken friends, all four of our children, now some of their spouses, and most recently a foreign exchange student from Equador to their first Pirates game.

We can only assume that some around the city look at the tunnel with some dread. They weave their way through heavy traffic, changing lanes, almost at their destination, the clock-punching, daily grind of the job they despise. We always looked at it as the exclamation point at the end of the statement that was made almost every time we made the trip.

Thanks, Pittsburgh.

KOVACEVIC: Always worth repeating that the New York Times once called us, "the only city in the world with an entrance."

Why did someone in New York have to come up with that

Thing No. 74 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Joe Anistranski of Boulder, Colo.: Fred Rogers.

Of all the great men who have come out of Pittsburgh, it is rarely recognized outside the city that Fred Rogers may have been the one who changed the most lives. For all Andrew Carnegie's contributions to Western Pennsylvania, none could match a man in a zip-up sweater dedicating his life to the betterment of the lives of others, especially children. Mr. Rogers helped shape the lives of millions, bridging generational gaps and never once showing any signs that he was any different as a man when there wasn't a television camera filming his actions.

A link to an interesting article, for those who want a few fun Mr. Rogers facts called "Fifteen Reasons why Mr. Rogers was the Best Neighbor Ever".

KOVACEVIC: Our editorial board took up this cause over the weekend.

I might add a couple items here, in addition to the somewhat embarrassing fact I did not realize Mr. Rogers was from Pittsburgh and filmed in Pittsburgh until I was 10. This despite all those seriously revealing accents from Joe Negri, the supporting cast and many guests.

One is the outstanding Neighborhood exhibit at the Children's Museum on the North Side. Turning the clicker to make the real Trolley go back and forth is worth the admission even if you leave the kids at home.

Two is that, for all many events commemorating the show, nothing will top this. That pier has been sitting there empty and pointless for half a century -- outside of the giant flag placed there after 9-11 -- and it is about time for a use of this kind.

Thing No. 73 that makes Pittsburgh great, by Michael Hoff of Crafton: I can take a bike trail from my office in the Strip District right to the front gates of PNC Park. There are two options actually: Follow the trail on the Downtown side of the Allegheny, and cross the Ninth Street Bridge, or cross the 16th Street Bridge and take the trail on the opposite shore.

No traffic. No parking hassles. And you get a little exercise to compensate for the nachos. Even after a night game, it feels completely safe. Last year, my middle daughter and I had "Maddie Day." We parked in a trail lot near the Heinz Plant (four hour maximum) and biked to a Thursday afternoon game.

In what other city could you do something like that

KOVACEVIC: I will go a step further, Mike: In how many cities could the beat writer strap his laptop over his back and do the same thing for about half the games?

I take the same trail to and from the ballpark, and I get out of there a lot later than you do. There are people along the trail, even the not-so-well-lit part up by the 16th Street Bridge, but the only unusual thing I ever see are the three guys in wheelchairs regularly getting stoned by one of the docks. (Not saying which ones.)

Oh, and the answer to your question about how many other cities is probably more than you think as far as biking to games. Of the current stadiums in which I have covered games, I think it would be realistic in Boston, Cleveland, both of New York's, Chicago's Wrigley, Houston (they actually have bike stands like PNC does), Atlanta, Denver, San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix (unless you drop dead from the heat on the way), Seattle and Anaheim.

But no, nobody has the trail network we do. Before long, those trails you are riding will connect nonstop to Washington, D.C.

Thing No. 72 that makes Pittsburgh great: We have some excellent model train displays, and I cannot help but be reminded of that while my 3-year-old little man is back home thinking I no longer exist.

The man is very much into trains, wooden, plastic, diecast, whatever, so many of our family excursions are aimed at finding something new, and there is no shortage ...

Start with this rather strange place up in Richland. This plain-looking white house sits on the side of a two-lane road in the middle of virtually nowhere, and it is packed with fantastic, hand-made exhibits of roads, buildings, bridges and farms from our Downtown and the entire region. These are simply independent pitching in their pieces, all to a uniform guideline.

Also, from what I remembered, this 14-year-old kid who was wandering around straightening out stalled trains on the bazillion feet of track was somehow a really important cog in this.

Neat place, but especially so if you have a child.

There also is, of course, grand display on the Carnegie Science Center's second floor, an absolute masterpiece of the craft and one that gets better each year. The new entries over the past few months have included a gigantic steel mill that becomes that much more dramatic when the night simulation kicks in, a whole slew of new farmhouses and carnivals and, yes, the new Forbes Field replica that replaced the generic baseball field in the back corner.

I must say the Forbes Field, nice as it was, left me a little hollow because the artist inexplicably failed to have the proper wall. This makes no sense. The wall is the one piece still standing in real life -- a bit of it, anyway -- and having the wall would conjure images of the greatest moment in any sports franchise's history. To go that far and stop ... whatever.

At any rate, a free annual subscription to the Q&A goes out to the first reader who writes in correctly identifying the single funniest -- and best concealed -- gag on the big table ...

Thing No. 71 that makes Pittsburgh great: Until you have spent in a place that has red lights every 50 feet, that has lines of people waiting to enter even the lamest of chain restaurants throughout the evening, that has someone here, there, every which way you turn ...

Do not complain about our population loss.

For one, it has mostly become a myth, by many accounts.

We do shrink with each Census, as a city, a county and region, but those losses are getting smaller all the time percentage-wise to the point of looking like they are leveling off. Moreover, as a deeper look inside the numbers shows, the people who are leaving us, by and large, are not leaving us for sunnier climes but are simply passing away. And, because we already have an older population, they are not immediately replaced with the same number of new children.

This notion that our high school and college graduates are bolting at the first opportunity has no basis in fact. None. Our colleges and universities have never had higher enrollments. We have one right Downtown in Point Park University that is swallowing up entire blocks as it expands. And the many ventures in tech, biomeds and other stuff that is way over a baseball writer's head are doing plenty to keep students - even those not originally from Pittsburgh - sticking around.

(And don't get me started on people who think Pittsburgh is a small city because its baseball team has made bad decisions for a decade and a half.)

This recent piece in our paper got me thinking about this, and being down here served as a painful reminder of why I agreed at least with the general premise of Jim Rohr's position: Once the population loss is successfully stemmed, we do not need growth to succeed. We are just fine the size we are.

As I often say, we are like New York, but we have just one of everything rather than nine or 10.

What is so awful about having one of everything rather than nine or 10, from sports teams to theaters to museums?

Or having traffic that, despite local misperceptions, does not come close to what they have in places where it goes in all directions, not just through one half of a tunnel?

Or walking into a store or eatery, picking out what you want and buying it, all in a five-minute span?

Or having some of those same people actually remember your name?

We as a people, in Pittsburgh, agonize over some pretty dumb things. But nothing tops this.

Thing No. 70 that makes Pittsburgh great, courtesy of Chad Stacy of Verona: In the summer, when the water is low in the Allegheny, there is a sandbar that juts out from the north shore of the river in a section between Blawnox and Harmar. This sandbar is positioned at a pretty decent bend in the river, and all boat traffic has to be aware to avoid being beached.

I am a novice rower, and my club uses this section our normal training pool. To fully grasp this story, you need to know that the sculls we row are very small and actually travel backward through the water, so I can't always see where I am going.

One evening at sunset, I was enjoying a leisurely row in the middle of the river, and my mind was occupied with something other than navigation. I passed pretty close to the sandbar without realizing it until a voice broke the silence. An elderly man whispered, "Hello."

Right at the tip of the sandbar, not 10 feet from where I was rowing, was a man seated in a white plastic lawn chair enjoying the evening calm.

I stopped rowing and nodded back at the man. For a few moments, we enjoyed the same view of the river together. And let me tell you that the man who has claimed this spot as his own -- his lawn chair sits there most of the summer -- has found perhaps the single best sunset spot in all of Western Pennsylvania.

Thing No. 69 that makes Pittsburgh great, courtesy of Larry Zalewski of Mt. Lebanon: I have been a serious runner for years, and I run every weekday during lunchtime through various city neighborhoods. My goal is to discover something different about the city on each run.

Most lunchtime runners will run around the Point. How boring. My favorite route is to take the Arlington Avenue hill up into Mount Oliver and to the South Side Park near the Arlington Fire Station. The park itself is overgrown and poorly tended, but the acres of woodlands still have many challenging downhill trails.

Alternatively, I can take St. Patrick Street down to just before the abandoned South Side hockey rink.You can pick up a really cool trail from right above the rink that traverses a rather dangerous ridge that eventually leads to an open meadow, which offers yet another different visual perspective of our beloved city.

OK, I've divulged maybe too much of my secret course. I am still amazed that Pittsburgh has so much green space within walking distance of Downtown.

Thing No. 68 that makes Pittsburgh great: We are one of just 14 cities privileged to be completely documented as part of the Google Earth program.

Big deal, you say?

Try it.

From there, go to the top right of that little screen and click Street View, then find the little camera that pops up on top of our city. Once inside, click on that little yellow man and take him for a walk.

Unreal. Not only can you see every building from every vantage point, but you also can look straight up at the buildings or even the sky. It's just like taking a walk through Downtown.

You can also plot a precise point-to-point trip on Pittsburgh's public transit, also one of the few American cities where Google makes this possible.

It might be because we have local Google, which I guess is emblematic either of some good tech happenings in the region or all of the Mac Geniuses floating around the two big campuses in Oakland now.

Whatever it is, no complaints here. Anytime down here I feel like sitting down in the Eyeball Park on Seventh Street, I am one click away.

Thing No. 67 that makes Pittsburgh great: Climb to the top floor of the Carnegie Science Center, and go into the play area for little children. (But, hey, make sure you actually have little children, or it might look a little strange.) Engraved on the huge window facing Mount Washington is a challenge: Name every form of transportation you can see.

If you cheat and look over a bit, you can see the Center's answers. They come up with 14, but some of them are fairly lame, such as counting walking and jogging as two separate forms.

This is what I came up with last week while the children had almost as good a time:

Cars

Trucks

Airplanes passing over, as most aircraft coming into our airport from the south go over Downtown, then Neville Island before buzzing the IKEA rooftop.

Helicopters, either for traffic reports or LifeFlights to Allegheny General.

Manually operated boats such as kayaks, rowboats, etc.

Jet-skis

Powered boats, including ferries

Barges

Bicycles on the trail that runs in front of the

Wheelchairs

The Duquesne Incline, of course, right across the river

Should walking really count? Ah, why not?

The Ducky Tour boat, which deserves its own category being capable of land and water travel and having an entry point close to nearby PNC Park

Just to tie the Center's list of 14, I offer the giant balloons that go up at the Regatta

Q: Just a question about Thing No. 67 yesterday: Did you not see the trains across the river? What about the buses on Carson Street? -- John Mangan of Overbrook,

A: KOVACEVIC: Yeah, I totally blew that list, as you and other readers pointed out.

And this was the doozy: What about the submarine that is nothing less than the Science Center's signature element?

Too much sun can be unhealthy for one's brain.

Thing No. 66 that makes Pittsburgh great: As if the number itself were not enough of a reminder as to what this installment should describe, I happened to run into Craig Patrick in our airport yesterday morning after not having seen him since my hockey days. (He looks and sounds great, by the way.)

There is only one Mario Lemieux, and our city will never see another like him. Not in any sport, in my view.

Arguments can be constructed - good ones - that Honus Wagner was Pittsburgh's greatest athlete. Others can point to Roberto Clemente, Billy Conn, Joe Greene or our myriad high school quarterbacks who went on to become NFL Hall of Famers, from Dan Marino to Joe Montana to Johnny Unitas. The kid wearing No. 87 across town surely will be mentioned in this category someday, too.

But I throw out the high school QBs and limit the category to athletes who competed for one of our three professional teams, and I cannot imagine any way Lemieux is not No. 1 and will not remain No. 1, if only for this variable: People inside the game, with the exception of those in Canada leery of seeing a French speaker usurp Wayne Gretzky, generally accept that he was the most talented player ever to play the game. And that is a mantle no one else in our city's rich sporting history can claim.

Add to that his having spent his full career in Pittsburgh, his tireless charitable work, and his singular, almost regal association as the many-times anointed savior of a franchise, and no one else compares.

I consider myself very fortunate to have covered a small part of Lemieux's career, including his one-of-a-kind comeback. And I take pride as a Pittsburgher in that, anytime I am in Europe, common citizens there can identify two things about our city: Lemieux and the Steelers.

Thing No. 65 that makes Pittsburgh great: This one comes courtesy of Zach Duke, who, along with his wife, just bought a house in the North Hills and, in addition to wearing No. 57, is officially qualified ...

It has a personality. It's a town with a lot of good people, hard-working people, and that's what I like most about it.

Everywhere you go, there's something different in each place. We mostly go to places in the North Hills, but we also get down to Penguins games, to the South Side some but not much, up to Mount Washington sometimes for the view up there . . . it's just got a personality to it.

Thing No. 64 that makes Pittsburgh great: If the best stuff in life is free, then this one certainly qualifies for the list.

There is a new parking garage catty-corner from the home plate entrance of PNC Park, and it is nothing special in and of itself, of course. In fact, I am sure I never would have noticed it if that were not the place I am assigned to park when covering home games.

One night late last season, though, an unusual crowd in the garage forced me to park all the way on the top -- 10th -- floor. Before the game, I thought nothing of it. Just grumbled some. But afterward, huffing back to the car with the laptop slung over the shoulder, I took pause for a moment and looked around. Then, I walked over to the visually open corner of that upper floor, the one facing the ballpark.

It was fantastic.

I know there are all kinds of views of the city, different angles that give different feels, and some have greater impact than others. Trust me on this one. The city skyline set against the foreground of the ballpark and the new Equitable building and the recently extended water steps to the river ... felt like a whole new experience. I thought enough of it, in fact, that I dragged my wife up there a couple weekends ago after a dinner at Jerome Bettis' new restaurant. (Neat in its own right.)

No need to pay, either. Just walk into the garage, get in the elevator and press the 10th floor.

Extra bonus: If you look straight down from one of the back corners of that garage roof, at least for a little while, you can look down about 60 feet into the ground. That's where the German boring machine is digging the current portion of the subway under-river.

Thing No. 63 that makes Pittsburgh great: We are having a birthday, celebrating 250 years since the city's incorporation.

Yeah, I know, who cares? Sounds like a cheap excuse for some community development people to throw lavish parties and sound terribly self-important even as they sleep through Candy-Rama's closing Downtown.

But one might gain a better perspective of the meaning of this birthday by watching "The War that Made America", the magnificent documentary illustrating Pittsburgh's key role in the French and Indian War and why we all are speaking English right now and part of the United States rather than some greater Quebec. I bought the DVD early in the offseason and committed to watching the whole four hours in one night, entering it with more a sense of obligation than eagerness, and was simply blown away.

If you think you know about our city's origins without having seen this, you probably are wrong.

Thing No. 62 that makes Pittsburgh great: This item, unfortunately, needs to be placed in the past tense, as Candy-Rama closed its final Downtown store Nov. 14.

And that development most definitely is not great, so please pardon me in advance from straying from the general theme of these things.

I took the kids to Candy-Rama -- and went there myself as a child -- more times than I could count, and those trips were highlighted each year by the annual pre-Halloween splurge where they picked out the candy that would be distributed from the house. And, of course, the setup within the store made this the ideal place, with the children being able to reach up into those rickety white bins and ram as much sweetness as possible into the plastic carriers.

These are the places that make us what we are.

This year, when the children and I went to check out, the store manager at the register told me about the imminent closing. I was in disbelief, largely because I knew it was the last operation, but even more so because the new skyscraper going up across the street surely would lead to a boom in business.

Turns out that was the problem. As the manager and, later, the store owner explained, their comfortable little niche in that corner of Fifth and McMasters, with the $600 rent and quiet but steady clientele, is on the verge of giving way to things that are much bigger and about five or six times more expensive when it comes to rent.

I wrestled with this one for a while, especially because of having the extra brain space freed up by the lack of baseball in my life. And there were no easy answers. Few would dispute that the new buildings, residents and, in the case of the new skyscraper, the sustaining of local businesses is vital to the city.

But at what cost?

Local historic preservationists regularly thrust themselves in front of wrecking balls to save abandoned buildings. But, when a real, breathing civic institution was on life support, not a peep was heard.

That business took up a space roughly the size of your kitchen, and no one in any public or private entity stepped forward.

I have never met Morgan Kelly of Squirrel Hill, who penned this letter to the editor for our paper Nov. 20, but it merits a fresh look. Scroll down to the second one, too.

Thing No. 62 that makes Pittsburgh great: This, like the Candy-Rama rant coming tomorrow, comes a little belated, but I am increasingly intrigued by the growing crowds for Light-Up Night each year.

Make no mistake: It is a tremendous event and, unless, I am mistaken, there are no more than two or three other cities in the country that organize the turning on of every single light in every office window to create a night-time image that, especially given our skyline, is beyond breathtaking. Truth be told, it is one of my favorite days of the year, and one I embrace in every way.

But all these people ...

Again, I get it. The ice rink, the skaters ringing the tree with the candles for a half-hour before the tree is lit at 6 p.m., the reflections in the surrounding PPG buildings ... all of it is fantastic. So are the gingerbread houses donated by children and miniature trains and the free stuff given out in Market Square, the lighting of whatever they want to call the Horne's tree and, of course, the windows at Macy's. All of it is great.

But each year, no matter the weather, the crowds just keep getting bigger and bigger, thick enough to the point that you can barely move through some areas. The Downtown Partnership estimated the crowd this year at 100,000, and that sounds quite low to me.

I have no answers for this, and I certainly am not complaining. Just puzzled.

Are we turning Light-Up Night into something that is almost the level of a local holiday? Are we that much of an event town, as often accused, that we show up anywhere the group goes? Are we starved for mass gatherings in the absence of Fireworks Nights or bobbleheads?

Or is it simply that the overwhelming majority of the non-city types visiting Downtown are unaware that almost all of these festivities continue for the next six weeks, plus free parking, plus free horse-carriage rides?

I am all ears on this one.

Thing No. 60 that makes Pittsburgh (last one of the year) great comes, as promised, from new team president Frank Coonelly, who kindly accepted an invitation to share his initial impressions: "I have not been able to read all of the previous installments of this feature, but there is one quality of Pittsburgh that should not be overlooked in this forum. One thing that truly sets Pittsburgh apart from the many places I have been. One thing has been a constant every time I have visited Pittsburgh or talked to someone that was from Pittsburgh and moved away.

"That one thing: The people.

"Pittsburgh is a great city, and its people are proud of it. That was made clear to me over and over again by my college teammate on the hockey team who was a Pittsburgh native. After spending so much time with him, I felt like I knew everything about the city.

"Following my formal introduction last week, everywhere I went, I was stopped by someone who recognized me from the media coverage. Each person could not have been friendlier. The one thing I heard over and over again (in addition to ideas on how to improve the ball club, of course) was how much my family and I are going to love it here. The pride is obvious.

"Growing up and living in Eastern Pennsylvania, this pride is something I can attest to. In fact, I use to commute two hours each way to the MLB offices in New York just to remain a resident of our state.

"The quality of the city and its people were a major factor in my decision to take this position. I could not be more excited to move my family to this region.

"Now, am I as excited to learn how to navigate the streets? That might be another story.

"Dejan, thanks for the opportunity, and thanks to your readers for their loyalty to and support of the Pittsburgh Pirates."

Thing No. 59 that makes Pittsburgh great: The view from Mount Washington is considered, rightly, our premier tourist attraction. But there is no better place from which the city skyline and its various framings can be viewed than the West End overlook.

It always surprises me, the number of Pittsburgh lifers I hear say they never have been up there. It is head-on, Point-first, the way the city should be viewed. It has no parallel for fireworks watching. And the experience is that much better now that it has been upgraded with enough amenities that you can make a neat trip out of it as opposed to just snapping a couple pictures and bolting.

Thing is, if you ever go, try a road route than the one I use. I go up Carson Street, make a left through the Corliss Tunnel, then another quick left onto this insane, uphill, winding, jagged, who-thought-of-this sequence of streets that take you up the hill. I have no idea what their names are, and they would not help you, anyway. Just take whichever road keeps you going up, and hold on tight. The turns you make can come at 30-degree angles, the climb you make at times is even steeper, and the handful of residents hardy enough to live on this thing put these jagged rocks in front of their houses to keep interlopers from crashing into their living rooms.

I know because one of those rocks took a bite of my bumper two summers ago.

And I kept going.

Just remember: If it happens to you, too, I had nothing to do with it.

Thing No. 58 that makes Pittsburgh great: The upper part of Penn Avenue within Downtown used to be known for our last truly urban bowling lanes many years ago and, more recently, for ... well, nothing. The architecture of the tall, skinny buildings that line the blocks between Ninth and 10th streets remained striking, but the street level was mostly barren and the windows above that mostly boarded up.

It is not exaggeration to say no section of the city has made a more dramatic transformation in the past year-plus.

There now is a Courtyard Marriott hotel, a fully occupied apartment building where GNC headquarters used to be, several other smaller buildings being converted to lofts, a slew of restaurants, a violin shop, art galleries and, judging from the cranes and construction still in that area, much more on the way. Already, it is vibrant day and night, almost as much as the theater area just a few blocks down.

I appreciate this for two reasons: One, anything that makes Downtown better makes everything in the region better.

Two, most of the visiting baseball teams, the players and other employees stay in that part of town, and a good percentage of them bypass the bus and simply walk over to the yard. And it is from them that I am hearing how much better their impression is of Downtown than it used to be, no doubt because that is the part they see.

I have not had the chance to spend much time there myself -- that is what offseasons are for -- but I am told by some in the Brewers' party that the rather large restaurant at the base of the Marriott is one of the finest they have experienced in terms of food and atmosphere.

Thing No. 57 that makes Pittsburgh great: High school football weather.

In other cities, they refer to it as autumn. In our place, it is the time when you first have to break out the jeans and jackets before heading out to the nearest local stadium on a Friday night. The air is clean and crisp, and the feel is unmistakably football.

Turn on any baseball game that does not involve the Pirates, and my mind is likely to wander very quickly. Ditto for the NFL and the Steelers. Finding a nationally televised hockey game anymore is next to impossible, so that limits my hockey viewing to the local affiliate, as well. And college sports? For other folks, I guess.

But stick me in any random stadium on a Friday night, and I am totally into it. I love the style of play, the intensity and, above all, the one-of-a-kind passion and pride that can come only with playing before an entire audience comprised almost entirely of family, friends and neighbors. Think about it: What else can match that? Major-league players talk about getting stoked when they have six acquaintances in the crowd. What about when it is 6,000?

I went to Gateway but, because of friends made in other places, developed quite an attachment for Penn-Trafford, especially when they turned the WPIAL on its ear a few years back with the run-and-shoot offense. But I can get just as much into one of those sparsely attended City League games on a Thursday afternoon at South Stadium (You have not experienced true high school football until you hear some of the City cheerleaders' rhymes) or a classic rural environment such as Kiski Area, where the band and the kolbassi is king and the football comes second.

To this day, when people ask the most dramatic sporting event I ever covered, I still mention a Riverview football game several years ago that was filled with late touchdowns and lots of tears from the losers and winners. And this extended from the field to the crowd. Never saw anything like it.

If I ever can dig up the story from that game -- this was before the PG went online -- I will see if I can publish a copy here.

Thing No. 56 that makes Pittsburgh great: Matt Morris likes it.

OK, so every city looks good on a $9.5 million salary. But Morris, who somehow was aware of my borderline obsession with Pittsburgh, pulled me aside the other day to mention that he and his family had spent some quality time driving around town -- aimlessly, from the sound of it -- and were genuinely impressed. He mentioned the riverfronts, the buildings, the and, in particular, his wife's fondness for ll things related to the Strip.

This is preaching to the choir, obviously, but I always appreciate a newcomer's perspective, even on those rare occasions when it is negative. I often wonder myself what it could be like if I were covering some American League team and came to Pittsburgh for the first time, what kind of an impression it would make.

We tend to do quite well, from my experience in talking to fellow baseball travelers, mostly because of the Fort Pitt Tunnel-Mount Washington views, the skyline and the baseball stadium itself. It surely helps that PNC Park is the side of Downtown that is much farther along than First Side or, certainly, the Market Square/Fifth/Forbes corridor that only now is getting its first tangible jolts of redevelopment. And it also helps, I think, that there is so much activity in the immediate area of the ballpark.

Visiting players seem to like it, too. I can recall, off the top of my head, Billy Wagner and Alfonso Soriano each mentioning to me it was one of their favorite stops.

Hey, on that note, have I ever mentioned how insecure we all are and how pathetic it is that we all need to hear this stuff?

Thing No. 55 that makes Pittsburgh great: We have lots of songs about us. Somebody somewhere thought to illustrate our city's history in this manner.

It is very much considered cheating to not click on the audio link to hear the kids singing.

I will wait here will you click.

OK, done?

Now, I could not find a full audio file for this, but I was riding in a cab in Denver a couple weeks ago to the airport there, and I mentioned to the driver that I was from Pittsburgh. (I am not making this next part up, I swear.) The guy reaches down by his right leg and pulls up a trumpet and begins playing this song I had never heard, then acts surprised when I tell him so. He tells me it is a Guy Mitchell tune "Pittsburgh Pennsylvania" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh,_Pennsylvania_(song) -- from the 1950s. Here is a piece of it I found on Amazon sampler page (http://www.amazon.com/Heartaches-Number-Guy-Mitchell/dp/B000001AVS ).

That is way, way before my time. But I am quite proud to say that the Clash mentioned Pittsburgh in "Clampdown," a union song on the best album ever made. And Talking Heads, who had half of their four members from our city, mention Pittsburgh in "Life During Wartime." And, quite recently, Morissey ... well, he wished death upon everyone in our fair city in "On the Streets I ran"  on the disc he put out last year. I heard something really rotten happened to him the last couple times he toured here.

Still, the one that stands head and shoulders above the rest, from now until the sun burns out, will be the Charlie Daniels Band's "You just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and I think you're finally gonna understand" from the classic "In America." Nothing that I write here could do that verse quite like this.

And hey, while on the subject, is anyone aware of a site that lists all the songs that mention Pittsburgh in them? I seem to recall stumbling across one a few years back, but I could not find it for this entry.

Ed. note: You can't forget "Living in America"  by James Brown; Bruce Springsteen has a song that was only released on the Tracks boxed set called "A Good Man is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)," a song which the Boss has only performed live once; Bruce helped his buddy and local rock icon Joe Grushecky co-author the excellent paean to the Mon Valley, "Homestead"; the Lemonheads have a song called "Pittsburgh" though the city is never mentioned; if you wanna go hip-hop A Tribe Called Quest had the the immortal line "I'll skate on your crew, like Mario Lemieux," as well as CamRon with the equally good "I know some stealers but they ain't from Pittsburgh," and just about everything from the very up-and-coming hometowner Wiz Khalifa, whose album is excellent.

Thing No. 54 that makes Pittsburgh great: Our Downtown is protected by all kinds of really mean-looking creatures.

Architecture going back for centuries has included gargoyles and animals aimed at fending off evil spirits, bad luck, or simply just to add to the design, and our older buildings almost go overboard with the stuff.

The most famous, for sure, are lions guarding the Dollar Bank branch -- still doing banking -- on Fourth Avenue. The building is 137 years old, built of for bragging purposes because it was very expensive at the time, and it has the two lion sculptures that everyone must pass on their way to the front doors. The clear message: We are rich and tough enough to take care of your money. But that is the easy one.

Take a look, too, at the tall, thin buildings that still line the rest of Fourth Avenue, which was our version of Wall Street back at the turn of the previous century when Pittsburgh was second only to New York among the world's wealthiest financial centers. The best intersection -- actually, maybe the best intersection in the city no matter what your criteria -- is at Wood and Fourth, where three of the four buildings are so remarkably ornate that one wonders if the people involved in their design a century ago might have been in some kind of rivalry.

One is the Arrott Building, one of Pittsburgh's many Frederick_J._Osterling gems. In addition to a wild exterior (above the Subway marquee, anyway), one can find a set of laughing gargoyles holding up the roof. As one scholar once wrote, why would anyone bother putting something so fantastic so high that no one would see it? And how might the poor guys forced to suspend themselves and carve those gargoyles in 1901-02 have felt about it?

Right across Wood is the Bank Tower, a building I have mentioned here previously because of the coffee shop built into a bank vault on the main floor. This one looks kind of worn on the outside, but it has a great surprise on the inside. Walk through the lobby -- past the coffee shop to your left -- and look up at the spiraling marble staircase that runs up 10 stories and is exposed the whole way. It one of the city's most dramatic sights especially from one of the upper floors.

Across the corner is the old Union National Bank building, now being changed into 61 condominiums called the Carlyle. Those are selling fast enough that three other buildings in the immediate vicinity are being changed into residential use, too.

The gargoyles get to live there for free.

Thing No. 53 that makes Pittsburgh great: We are a terribly insecure people.

We always want to know what everyone thinks of, and we always are surprised when they like us, they really like us.

A history buff might suggest that has to do with the city's polluted industrial past. After all, who could brag about a place that was immersed in darkness in mid-afternoon?

Someone else might say that the mass exodus of jobs in the late 1970s and early 1980s, one of the greatest in American history, contributed. After all, how happy could anyone be with a place that was being virtually abandoned?

Whatever it is, it most surely applies.

Eve Picker, a loft developer in the Downtown and Strip areas, hails from New Zealand. Way before it became cool -- or profitable -- she was buying up vacant buildings and converting them into residential properties. And, as I recall from the one conversation I ever had with her, she was doing so with a sense of bemusement that so few people here seemed to appreciate what he had or, potentially, could have. As she put it, it took an outsider to come in and show us. There is a lot of that going on.

The Uruguayan guy who designed convention center was inspired by the flow of the Three Sisters Bridges, a view he glimpsed from driving atop the Fort Duquesne Bridge. Might someone here have noticed that?

The travel writers around the country who come here and glow about the place point out things in a way (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/06/travel/journeys-36-hours-pittsburgh.html?sec=travel) some of us never could see or, in some cases, never have taken the time to see.

It is a somewhat endearing trait, in a way, that we care what others think about us. But it also illustrates plainly that we do not think enough of ourselves.

Visiting San Francisco last week and now here in Denver, these are two places where you can ask anybody about these cities, and they will do everything but sing and dance in describing them.

We need to do more of that. No rose-colored glasses are needed, either.

Thing No. 52 that makes Pittsburgh great: There is a banged-up, corroded white van parked along the street, and it is leaking water from the interior on all sides.

It is stationed in the middle of a park that is fatigued, to be generous, with many of its top attractions fenced off and shuttered. The guy standing outside it is selling cherry liquid poured onto shaved ice in a Dixie Cup for $1.

And the line wraps halfway around the block.

To understand the Ice Ball Man and how he and his descendants have been in business, you would need to consult a true North Sider like our very own Stats Geek, Brian O'Neill. I am not one of those, so I visit the Man, buy the Ice Balls out of respect for the tradition, appreciate the guy who hand-shaves the ice right in front of you . . . and still shake my head at the whole thing.

We are, as a people, very fractured for being a medium-sized city. As former PG editor John Craig used to write, people who live on the South Side never have been to the North Side. Or, if they are going there, they ask if they need a passport. Our mannerisms, behavior, even dialect vary from hill to hill, valley to valley.

The Ice Ball Man is one I just do not get.

But the kids love him.

Thing No. 51 that makes Pittsburgh great: Yes, we have the tallest fountain in the United States and, by the time the engineers get done with the Point State Park renovation in time for 250, we might get back to having the tallest in the world. (Best of all, plans show they will not keep you out of the wading area with this version. No more chicken-wire fence wrapping the basin.)

But we also have two other fountains within a Jose Guillen throw of that one that are quite neat in their own way, each of them fairly new.

In the PPG Place square, once known only as home to the Tomb of the Unknown Bowler and now best known for the winter skating rink, the boards get taken down in the summer and replaced with a hundred or so fountains that jet right out of the cement all in unison, as high as 25 feet. Mostly, it is a cooling area for kids, but many grown-ups choose to have lunch close enough for the mist to hit them.

Across the river at Station Square, there is a dancing fountain between the Hard Rock Cafe and the train tracks that, while only mildly interactive, is cool in its own way t moves to the music -- sometimes symphonic, often rock, always tolerable -- as programmed by a computer. I hear they have these in Vegas, so it hardly is unique, but it still stands out in our little world.

Thing No. 50 that makes Pittsburgh great: Bryan Diana.

You probably do not know him, and I did not until the flight to Denver on Sunday night when he was in the seat next to mine. But we ended up engaging in one of my more memorable conversations with any Pirates fan in quite a while.

He is in his early 30s, from McKees Rocks, and he and his younger brother are obsessed -- and I mean obsessed -- Pirates fans to the extreme of being not only season-ticket holders but also saving up for one or two trips a year to see the team on the road.

Some of his friends make fun of him. Even fellow Pirates fans question his wisdom in going to games as often as he does, particularly when some have chosen to make statements by not going to games. But, as he put it to me, "I love to watch baseball, and the Pirates are my team, so how can I just stay away?"

No, he is not ill-informed. Far from it. He was breaking down for me the first round of this past draft in a way that only Baseball America people should be able to do. When I mentioned a low-minors prospect by last name only, he knew who I was talking about.

No, he is not delusional about the team's shortcomings. He could detail each one.

Nor is he blind to the larger situation at hand. He made it quite clear to me -- and, apparently, to his season-ticket rep -- that, unless Bob Nutting makes significant changes in the team's front office, he will not be back in 2008. At least not as a season-ticket holder.

Bryan does not post on blogs or message boards, nor has he ever written to this forum, so you will never have heard his voice or his viewpoints about the Pirates. But I found them to be more reflective of this team's true base of diehards -- a base he estimates at 30,000 in actual people, half that in terms of people who attend games -- than any I have heard since the days when I sat in those blue seats myself.

It was extremely refreshing.

Thing No. 49 that makes Pittsburgh great: All that remains of the old concrete bowl.

Three things remain that were original to Three Rivers, to my knowledge, and only one is in its original location.

The two obvious ones are the statues for Art Rooney Sr., which has its own plaza on the river side of Heinz Field, and the other is the Clemente statue that was moved outside PNC. (Honus Wagner originally was in Oakland, although he spent time outside Three Rivers, too

The other is the Gate C marker -- you know, those huge cement pylons -- that still stands prominently outside Heinz Field, close to the Chief.

Home plate? Not sure. It would not fall into the current footprint of Heinz Field -- remember when that and Three Rivers stood side by side for a short while? -- so it probably could be marked somehow. But I have not heard that someone did that yet.

Anyway, in lieu of home plate, I always felt two things should have been marked from Three Rivers:

1. Second base. That was where Clemente stood and tipped his cap to the crowd for the greatest single baseball moment there.

2. The exact spot where Franco Harris caught -- yes, caught -- the Immaculate Reception.

All else failing, someone could have at least had the courtesy to leave up the tattered remains of the right-field wall after Turner Ward ravaged it.

Thing No. 48 that makes Pittsburgh great: We are better than a bunch of rocks.

Anyone remember the USA Today survey of the 10 most beautiful places in America Well, the Pittsburgh skyline -- as viewed from Mount Washington at night -- finished second, which probably should have been some point of pride considering no other urban setting made the list.

But what came first?

Some rocks here in Arizona.

Now, I will admit never having been to Red Rock Country in Sedona, which I understand is quite the haul from here. And I am willing to concede that they might be really nice red rocks and all, but come on. How long can rocks sustain one's interest?

Anyway, from the sight standpoint, and as long as I am citing out-of-town newspaper accounts of our place, the one that always will resonate with me came when the New York Times many years ago described Pittsburgh as "the only city with an entrance."

Neat way of thinking about it.

Drive in from the Parkway West, and there is absolutely no indication of what is to come. Not only does the back of Mount Washington hide everything -- even from the top of Green Tree Hill -- but there also is virtually nothing around that stretch of road. Just trees, a rail bridge and a couple off-ramps. It looks almost like one of those nothing-but-nature stretches of the Turnpike.

Then, boom.

Every other city, probably on the planet, you can see coming for miles. Ours smacks you in the face.

Things No. 47 that makes Pittsburgh great: A reader wrote last week from an upper floor of the Grant Building in reference to the two Grant Street parks detailed in this space, and it reminded me of a civic treasure yet to be detailed here . . .

Ask the average Pittsburgher about the Gulf Tower, and they will tell you how the lights atop the building represent something about forecasting the weather, even though that has not been the case now for a long time.

But ask them which building actually does tell you something at its top, you likely will get a blank stare.

The Grant Building, all 37 stories of it, once stood much more prominently in the city's skyline than now, especially with nearby Oxford blanketing it from most angles. But it still carries the same claim to fame now that it did when built in 1930.

The rooftop has a radio antenna -- once used by KDKA Radio -- that also includes an aviation beacon. But that beacon did not remain static or simply blink, like those little red lights you see on the U.S. Steel Tower and other tall structures. Rather, it clicked on and off to spell out P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H in Morse Code.

And still does.

The idea at the time, according to the books, was to give nautical traffic -- especially up the Mon -- a way to know that Pittsburgh was ahead, and it is written that it could be seen from up to 150 miles on a crisp night.

Thing No. 46 that makes Pittsburgh great: Most everyone knows that, every year on Oct. 13, a group of intensely dedicated Pirates fans gather at 3:36 p.m. by the last standing portion of the Forbes Field wall, listening to the broadcast of the greatest hit in baseball history.

And all through the year, people visit the wall, too, and, for those of us too young to have been there, try to picture what the place must have been like. It is an experience anytime you do it. The marker at the top says 457 feet, which really is how far away the left-center gap was. And, for those somewhat new to following the Pirates, it is that gap that inspired the deep gap in the same part of PNC Park that often is called the North Side Notch.

But not as many, it seems, are aware of two other nuances there . . .

One is that, if you cross the street in the direction of Posvar Hall, look down at the sidewalks. You will see bricks lined on the inside that trace the wall, as well a marker that shows the exact location where Maz's ball cleared the wall. (Contrary to some misinformation one often hears, the part of the wall standing is not the part where Maz hit the ball. Not too many guys were that strong.)

The second is even better. Go inside the Posvar Hall and walk through the hall, keeping your eyes down the whole time. Eventually, you will run across a rather ragged-looking clearing in the floor where the original home plate is preserved, still stuck in the soil and everything. There are no signs to help you here, either. Just start out in left-center, go over to Maz's marker and figure it out for yourself.

Thing No. 45 that makes Pittsburgh great: Or poor, lonely Blockhouse

While Point State Park undergoes its massive face lift, it remains open. Really. No, you cannot access it by the Hilton. Nor can you even get onto the Fort Duquesne Bridge bike ramp to go over. But it is open. What you have to do is go to the little parking lot over by the PG building, then follow the signs that lead to the Fort Pitt Museum, which also is open, by the way.

Once you get to the Block House, you almost surely will have the place all to yourself, except for the lady who now is the caretaker of our city's oldest structure.

Some people have Mecca.

Others have the Pyramids or Stonehenge.

We have an old munitions depot the size of your kitchen that once was deemed so unimportant that a warehouse was built over it.

Still, it is our shrine and, solely because of that, I always have treated it as such. The family and I are regular visitors, always getting the full tour (which takes about 30 seconds), and always take care to explain its significance within the scope of Pittsburgh's enormously underappreciated role of opening the West to American expansion and, in a more critical way, of making sure that no one ever had to find a French derivative of yunz.

Anyway ... when you go, ask the lady about the trees outside the building, and see if she brings up how these trees allegedly have genders. I know nothing about trees, but I never have heard of plant life coming in he and she forms, so this was all new to me. She tried to explain it to me, and it zipped right by me like a Buddy Carlyle fastball. Maybe you will get a clearer version.

Q: Hi, Dejan. I'm the "lady" at the Fort Pitt Block House. (Technically I'm the site's curator.) I appreciated that you mentioned the Block House in your Pirates Q&A yesterday.

You are correct that the building is Pittsburgh's oldest structure and the only thing original to Fort Pitt; although it wasn't a munitions depot it was a defensive position for soldiers guarding the western wall of the fort.

Just to let you know: The trees outside the Block House are no more ... both the boys AND the girls. And, really, ginkgo trees DO come in both male and female varieties.

You are also correct that the Block House can be viewed in about 30 seconds but I can regale you with its history for as long as you can stand it. The next time you visit, ask me about the building's use as a speak-easy, the families that called it home for 109 years, the battles won to save it from the clutches of Henry Clay Frick, and the untimely death of our first curator back in 1911.

Rod Serling couldn't have written a better story -- Kelly Linn of Downtown Pittsburgh

KOVACEVIC: Thing No. 45(a) that makes Pittsburgh great: The lady at the Block House reads the Q&A!

Thing No. 44 that makes Pittsburgh great, this one courtesy of my long-lost wife: The barge-turned-park down by the Steelers' practice complex.

First, a caveat: There should be no pride taken by anyone in our city's many abandoned, overturned, rusted-up barges littering the edges of our rivers, especially those nearest the city. Those are the responsibility of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and there should be great shame that they have been allowed to fester in certain spots as long as they have.

On the other hand, it is simply fantastic to see how one of those barges was converted.

If you walk on the riverfront trail along the south edge of the Mon, just past South Side Works, keep an eye on the river's edge as you approach the practice facilities for the Steelers and Pitt for a small rectangular slice of land that juts out into the water. There is a small bench there, but it is otherwise nondescript. Then, lean over and look down.

Someone -- not sure where to give credit here, though I understand the Steelers were instrumental in the planning of the area -- thought to use one of those old barges to create a mini-park. It was filled with dirt, landscaped and assimilated right into the rest of the shoreline.

That whole trail, actually, is becoming more and more dynamic and interesting by the day. Just wait until Hot Metal Bridge's bike ramp is open and the SouthSide Works is done.

Thing No. 43 that makes Pittsburgh great: Industrial apartments without peer.

Wife happens to be an addict of HGTV, and I will embarrassingly confess to watching enough of those shows that I just might ask Clive Pearse for his autograph if I saw him.

More embarrassing -- and keep this to yourself -- the two of us have been known to scout new living quarters all through the Downtown area, despite having absolutely zero intention of living in any of them. (Even the kids feign interest.)

That means we have been in every new place going up Downtown, or at least a model, as well as all the periphery stuff in the South Side and up the Allegheny River.

And nothing, nothing, nothing comes close to apartments now open in the old Armstrong Cork Factory.

For those unfamiliar with the place, it was designed by Frederick_J._Osterling, one of the great architects of more than a century ago, and it was ornamental above and beyond whatever a cork factory should look like. The factory itself closed 30 years ago, and place sat empty, collecting vagrants, birds and failed plans by developers.

This story details how the place got built but, to grasp what they did with the interior of that place, you have to go see for yourself.

Even if you are not serious about buying ...

Thing No. 42 that makes Pittsburgh great: That stupid spinning triangle on the blank atop the old Horne's building.

When visiting writers come to PNC Park, the most common question I get -- one just last week from one of the Dallas guys -- has nothing to do with the Pirates. Rather, they want to know what those colors on that white billboard are supposed to signify.

My initial answer: Nothing.

When I get some weird look, I go on to say that the sign is a creation of the Cultural Trust, designed in part to elicit exactly these types of reactions, but much more to call attention to Cultural District, which some national publications now say is one of the finest in the United States. The triangle, obviously, symbolizes our Downtown, and the various colors ... well, it's art, and art has colors, right?

Do not overthink it. We have an arts community, and they want you to know we are there.

Thing No. 41 that makes Pittsburgh great:

It is not in Florida.

Well, actually, the real reason I flew home yesterday -- rather than go straight from L.A. to Miami -- was for the Little Man's third birthday, not to avoid a day in Florida. But it makes such an easy target.

And admit it: Reading Q&A cheap shots aimed at the Sunshine State brings back at least some of those warm, fuzzy feelings you had about your baseball club back in spring training.

At least one or two?

Thing No. 40 that makes Pittsburgh great: Lunch in the bedroom of a brothel?

The best thing about eating at Papa J's on Boulevard of the Allies, Downtown, is the food. They do Italian as well as anyone in the Triangle, and they do it without inspiring you to think about a second mortgage.

But right after that comes the bizarre setting for the place, an old house that is nearly a century and a half old and once provided services far beyond food to its customers. There is dining - and a bar - on the ground floor, with all the original ornamentation and fireplaces still there, but go upstairs on the creaky steps and you can choose one of two bedrooms up there for additional seating. Again, all original.

In the summer, for those already familiar with the insides, there is the best outdoor seating deck of any place in the whole of Pittsburgh, with an ivy-layered rooftop that looks over our historic First Side district.

It always is amazing to me how few people know about this place ...

Thing No. 39 that makes Pittsburgh great: The top floor of the U.S. Steel Tower, or whatever they are planning to our tallest building sometime soon.

Knowing the tourist attraction that the Space Needle is in Seattle, I cannot help but recall the many, many trips I used to make to the 62nd floor of the Steel Building (Can we just agree to call it that in perpetuity?) to take visitors or newcomers to the city up to the old Top of the Triangle restaurant, where one could perform most incredible scan of an area any human can imagine. Favorite time was around 2 p.m. because the lunch crowd was gone, and you pretty much had the whole place to yourself for the cost of a Coke and some fries. And it was just as easy as walking into the lobby, pressing the button on the elevator and picking a seat.

Everyone understands why that access was diminished after Sept. 11, but it remains a great shame that the Triangle folded and nothing has replaced it from the civic-treasure standpoint.

David Bear, our newspaper's travel writer (who actually writes about places he visits on his travels, unlike the baseball writer), has called upon UPMC, the building's new primary tenant, to open that floor - or even just part of that floor -- to the public. I cannot express the sentiment better than he did, so I will not try.

Thing No. 38 that makes Pittsburgh great: One cannot help but think - and drink - coffee in Seattle, so this entry will focus on coffee.

The place that got me pathetically hooked on the iced mocha is La Prima in the Strip (and the late, lamented branch Downtown). And it remains, to this day, despite countless attempts in countless cities, the only place that does the drink right.

But the place that got me started on coffee was the one place in Pittsburgh most might recommend solely for the atmosphere. And that, as anyone who has spent more than a month in our city would know, is Beehive on the South Side.

The Beehive's coffee is rich and rewarding in much the same way that water is rich and rewarding. But the ice cream is quite good, the pastries and stuff have been upgraded to some extent, and the atmosphere . . . well, that actually is enough.

Buy a coffee (or just get a bottle of water), find a space on one of the used chairs, listen to whatever music they feel like playing for you that day, watch out that the guy with the Mohawk at the table next to you keeps his spikes out of your drink, stay for 90 minutes without ordering anything else, pay a total tab of $2.75, and you will blend right in.

Oh, and wear a Cure tour shirt or something similarly annihilistic.

Things No. 37 that makes Pittsburgh great: It is among the most tired cliches related to our city to point Primanti's as a civic institution. So, while wanting to mention it out of fairness without being cliched, I will try to get more specific.

What makes it wonderful is not only the bizarre but somehow workable nature of the multilayered sandwhiches, not only the way they pile enough on there that it only fits in your mouth after being steamrollered, not only the natural grunge to all of its various locations (save those at the ballpark, of course), but also the manner in which society conducts intself responsibly once inside.

With that in mind, 10 rules of thumb to keep yourself from looking like some tourist.

1. Do NOT look at the menu, people. Show some dignity. Do you look at the menu at McDonald's?

2. Do NOT ask for extra fries on the side. If you want more, you will get them between the bread like everyone else.

3. Do NOT try to make small talk with the people working. They are way to busy for your silly chit-chat.

4. Do NOT criticize the artwork. Could you really draw a better Bill Cowher jaw? And so what if Mario Lemieux was not left-handed?

5. Do NOT ask where the line starts. There is no line. Look around and take a mental picture of who was there before you.

6. Do NOT ask how long they are open. (Strip only.)

7. Do NOT tell anyone you know about a Primanti's in Fort Lauderdale. Talk about something that never should have been exported.

8. Do NOT ask for straws, lids, napkins and anything else you can find for yourself. Right by the tip jar.

9. Do NOT ask someone to clean your table. How long will it stay clean, anyway?

10. Do NOT ask if anyone famous has ever eaten there. We are all one when inside that place.

Thing No. 36 that makes Pittsburgh great: When one thinks of our city's great burial grounds, they no doubt think of Allegheny Cemetery and others of its scope. But the oldest can be found in, of all places, the shadow of our tallest skyscrapers.

Head up Sixth Avenue, between Wood and Smithfield, and walk up a set of steps directly across from the Duquesne Club. (Sorry, no valet parking on that side of the street.) There you will find two grand, old churches, among the surprisingly many still operating, still serving active congregations Downtown. In the small area between and even to the sides of those churches, there are dozens of flat gravestones marking the burial sites of people who lived in the city even before it was incorporated into a city 249 years ago.

Most of them, it would clearly appear, are Native Americans, judging by names like Proud Buffalo and the like. And, in some cases, those names have a brief inscription, usually denoting that those Native Americans happened to be friendly to others living in the area.

It is an astounding sight, given its environs, and absolutely no attention is called to it, particularly being that the ground is about 10 feet above street level. If you do not walk up those steps, you would never know it is there.

Early English and French settlers of Pittsburgh had wildly fluctuating relationships with the Native Americans of the region, though, and the friendly spirit in which this site apparently was created lies in stark contrast to another, perhaps better known -- and not at all marked -- Native American burial ground, which most believe was right in the area of Three Rivers Stadium. (That whole piece of land used to be an island, actually.)

Oh, and when you are done with the burial ground, built into the back of one of those two churches -- maybe the strangest addition of all to this already peculiar block -- is an excellent little hot dog shop, fronting Oliver Avenue.

Thing No. 35 that makes Pittsburgh great: It will rain on the first day of the Three Rivrs Arts Festival. No matter what the forecasters, Doppler radars or anyone else says, it will rain.

A couple years ago, all of the weathermen, even those who have lived here long enough to know better, predicted completely clear skies for the opening day of the Three Rivers Arts Festival. And I recall going down there for the extra-special occasion of the Psychedelic Furs giving a free concert in Point State Park, looking up and seeing no clouds at all and thinking, "No way. It's coming. It has to."

Sure enough, just before the Furs took the stage, this Charlie Brown cloud -- all alone, meant only for us -- comes drifting over the Park. And down it came, a steady drizzle for about 30 minutes. The Furs, fittingly, opened with "Heaven," a song to which the accompanying video was shot entirely in the rain, and everything was right with the world.

Tonight's featured act -- blues band Robert Randolph & The Family Band. Take an umbrella.

Thing No. 34 that makes Pittsburgh great: There is nothing "great" about homelessness, of course, but give serious ups to the homeless person who has erected his or her own personal library inside a bridge pier. Walk or bike on the river trail that runs under the North Shore side of the Andy Warhol Bridge, and look right within the actual steel structure. There, in a narrow, horizontal slot, you will find a mattress and a long, neatly filed row of books, about 6 feet long.

I never have seen the person, but he must exist because neither have I seen a book out of place. And someone other than me must admire it, because the Public Works crews that clean up after the messier homeless camps seem to leave this one alone. Even all through the winter, when all that tends to be living in that area are the seagulls, geese and ducks, that library stays immaculate.

Something to think about when stereotyping those on the streets ...

Thing No. 33 that makes Pittsburgh great: Made a big mistake in taking the children down into Panther Hollow a month ago. Now, they want to go every day.

For anyone who wants a picture of how much of the city proper is committed to parks -- and why city tax collectors are so depressed -- check out all the green on a map. And none of the major parks seems more overwhelming than Schenley, mostly because of the Hollow.

By the time you head down any one of the multiple trails, it takes no more than about three or four minutes of walking, and you might as well be in Elk County. Sure, there are other walkers or joggers, depending on the day of the week. And you can tell that some conservancy groups come down to plant stuff, clear the fallen trees and care for the many arched stone bridges. Otherwise, it is about as serene as one can get in a city of 300,000-plus.

The lake itself is . . . a little strange. Some people like, I am sure, but I have little use for a cement-lined, not-all-that-clean body of water down there that seems of little use to anyone. But, for anyone who is interested, it can be accessed not only from the Hollow trails but also from the much more traveled jail trail (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05245/564197.stm ) that runs from Downtown and, now, the South Side.

My view of that whole area is that it is better off untouched by human hands, at least the ones that came after whoever built those arched stone bridges.

Thing No. 32 that makes Pittsburgh great:

What strikes me the most about St. Louis is the effort that is being put into restoring its downtown area through reinventing old commercial buildings into residences, largely because it reminds me of what is happening back home.

Much, much faster and on a much greater scale than most people realize.

That new 18-story building you see when looking from PNC Park to the other side of the Andy Warhol Bridge (http://www.theencoreon7th.com/ ) is an apartment complex "that is charging top dollar in rent. It is 98 percent booked. There are roughly a dozen other projects involving for-sale condos, too, and all of them are pacing so well that the developers are looking for other buildings and other properties. And that is to say nothing of the $1 billion plan (="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06192/704890-53.stm ) the Cultural Trust has for the entire block bounded by 7th and 9th Streets and Penn, most of it residential.

As someone who has lived in or near Downtown most of his life -- including in an apartment on Stanwix Street at birth -- I can attest that this is ... unprecedented, really.

I hear and read some say that we are bringing people back to Downtown. That is false. People were not living there even in the city's population heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a giant workplace and shopping area. Last time any significant amount of people were living in Downtown Pittsburgh was before the Great Fire (http://www.gendisasters.com/data1/pa/fires/pittsburgh-fireapr1845.htm), really.

It is amazing to try to picture what it will mean to the Triangle's vitality, especially when added to the college students at Point Park and the Art Institute who are having hundreds of Downtown dorms built for them on the previously super-sleepy Boulevard of the Allies quarter.

At the risk of jumping on a soap box, I think we focused way too long on trying to restore Downtown to what it was 50 years ago and took a little too long to look around the country and see that people everywhere are moving into urban areas, partly for the lifestyle, partly for removing long daily commutes from their lives. Denver is a wonderful example of a city our size that is way ahead. There are many others, too.

We tend to react to stuff a little late in Pittsburgh, which can be cool in some ways (Where else does Poison still perform?), but this trend would have been neat to start about 10 years ago.

Thing No. 31 that makes Pittsburgh great: The overlook at Washington's Landing. It has one of the most unconventional and serene views of the city, stressing the flow of the Allegheny and the nature on its edges as a framework for.

As much time as I spend there -- and it is quite a lot -- the contrast of so much in the distance against such quiet never stops impressing me.

Beneath the stone benches is a stone sculpture etched into the ground delineating our Point, its three rivers, the various bridges and their relation to Herrs Island, where the Landing residential community sits. It takes a while to get it, but you will.

Two ways to get there: One is to drive onto the 30th Street Bridge (http://www.ce.cmu.edu/Brownfields/NSF/sites/Washland/ramp.htm) -- yes, 30th, not 31st -- and into the community. The other is to bike or walk up the old converted rail bridge (http://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail.aspx?trailid=XMR015-022) that used to ship cattle on and off the little strip of land. But be careful on that bridge. There is a goose up there that has been nursing eggs for about two weeks now, and another goose who hangs out nearby -- the father, I presume, though I will await DNA tests -- will go all Lou Piniella on you if you disturb her.

Thing No. 30 that makes Pittsburgh great:

If you have young kids or simply remain at young at heart and want to visit the toy store of your dreams, steer clear of the suburban carbon cutouts and check out S.W. Randall on Smithfield Street, Downtown (http://pittsburgh.citysearch.com/profile/8619841/pittsburgh_pa/s_w_randall_toyes_gifts.html).

It is right across from the old Gimbels building -- do we ever refer to anything by its current name? -- and housed in an old Victorian tall-skinny building with a doll-house facade. Hard to miss. If that does not suffice, look for the excellent year-round toy-train display in the window.

Inside, it is almost all wooden toys, model miniatures and lots and lots of Thomas fare on the main floor, puzzles and a comprehensive train department on the second, and a doll department on the third that is not to be believed. Even if you are not a 7-year-old girl, it will blow your mind. All handmade, all magnificent.

Best of all are the people who work there, year after year. Unlike the high school kids manning the registers in the suburbs, these are expert adults who are real enough people that they will have no problem telling your kids -- sternly -- to be careful with their stuff.

It is a true Downtown treasure, but one I very rarely hear mentioned by anyone.

Thing No. 29 that makes Pittsburgh great, comes courtesy of Nicolas Lewis of Bellevue, a longtime reader I had a chance to meet at PirateFest: "Using your student ID to travel Downtown by bus, walk over to the Clemente Bridge and watch SkyBlast at PNC Park, all for free."

If I might add to that, Nic, there is one specific spot on that bridge where you can get a clear view of home plate and the mound, just to the right of the batter's eye. It makes for a lousy way to watch a game, assuming you are interested in seeing where the ball might go, but, hey, free is good.

Thing No. 28 that makes Pittsburgh great: I apologize to the reader who sent me an e-mail detailing the one way you can actually see the fourth river rushing under Downtown. His e-mail was lost in the crush of all the complaints about Bay's throw last week.

I will try to pass along his tale, anyway . . .

He once worked in the Highmark Building (Fifth Avenue Place, whatever you want to call it), and said that, if you drive to the lowest level of that building's parking garage and ask the attendant to remove a certain manhole cover at the facility's lowest point, you can see a torrent of water going by. And this, according to him, is our beloved aquifer.

Well, this was just too good to be true, so I wanted to check it out before writing about it and drove there Sunday, my last day before this fine trip. But the garage was closed.

So, I am leaving it up to any among you. You have the directions. Take a look, and let me know what you find. I am way too impatient to wait until I get back to do it myself.

Thing No. 27 (and 27A) that makes Pittsburgh great: This two-part entry comes from regular contributor Norine Minion of the South Side.

1. The back door of the Pretzel Shop on the South Side. For one whole dollar, you get a bag of 'broken' (most of them are still whole) pretzels. Better yet, you see in front of the fire (great in the winter) all those golden beds of dough browning in the oven.

2. Driving into Oakland on Forbes Avenue at night with the Cathedral of Learning looming dead ahead. It's like driving into Gotham City. You can picture Bat-signal beaming into the Oakland sky. Or, as my 5-year-old niece says, "Looks like a giant butterfly."

Thing No. 26 that makes Pittsburgh great: Its long-dormant baseball fan base, the one that used to chant for its team while walking down the spiral ramps of Three Rivers.

Thing No. 25 that makes Pittsburgh great: Thai tea.

And fittingly, we have a tie.

(Waits for groan to subside.)

My slight preference goes to the Thai tea at the Lemon Grass Cafe on Sixth Street, Downtown, but it holds only a slim lead over that of Thai Me Up on Carson Street, South Side.

Whichever way you go, the stuff -- non-alcoholic -- is bound to keep you awake for about three days, so powerful is its content. Cannot recommend it highly enough, unless, of course, you are either a) sensitive to sweets or b) about to drive Rialto Street.

Thing No. 24 that makes Pittsburgh great: Rialto Street.

At some point in the next decade or three, PennDOT will get around to a multi-zillion dollar expansion of Route 28 from the North Side to Millvale. There will be wider roadways, emergency ramps, and the eternal red lights will be gone thanks to fancy new intersections.

And no one will touch Rialto Street, the absurd primary path that connects the 31st Street Bridge to Mount Troy.

For those who never have driven ( ) it is hard to describe the feeling of impending doom that comes with doing so. It is narrow enough to fit one car, but it is two ways. It is steep enough that only rockets should be permitted to go up, and nothing should be permitted to go down.

Someone, I guess could widen it by simply removing adjacent steps that are never used. Or they could level off the 90-degree angle. But no one touches the thing.

Maybe they are as afraid as the drivers.

Seriously, do not try this. I want no fatalities on my hands.

Thing No. 23 that makes Pittsburgh great: We have birds that fight birds from Cleveland.

For all the stories that get reported about the falcons that live atop the Gulf Tower and the Cathedral of Learning, none stands out quite like the ones where the birds get into these (http://www.paconserve.org/rc/pittvideo.html) death-match scraps at high altitudes to battle over territory or, of course, females. We had one in our paper just a few days ago. Seems these birds love living that high, and the real estate up there is as rare as the air.

But nothing tops the one about the legend of the bird that tried to muscle its way into town from Cleveland and ended up being, as Monty Python's John Cleese would say, an ex-bird.

Thing No. 22 that makes Pittsburgh great: The weather.

Yeah, weather.

For those people who have more than one mood, it seems somewhat symmetrical that the environment functions in the same way. Give me a sunny day, and I will bike the trails (http://www.atatrail.org/"). Give me a rainy day, and I will crack open a window to listen while kicking back to read. Give me snow, and I will take in its unparalleled peace.

But give me "Groundhog Day," and I will gradually go insane.

Not that it matters much. Our had a story (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07034/759154-258.stm) a little while back in which it was forecast that, within the next 100 years or so, our weather gradually will be like Alabama's is now.

Our paper had another fine piece about our number of sunny days on the Sunday Next Page that I would be remiss in not sharing.

Thing No. 21 that I miss about Pittsburgh: The cheese lady.

I do not know her real name, and I never want to. But she is one of the handful of incredibly well informed and passionate people who work behind city's preeminent cheese counter at Pennsylvania Macaroni in the Strip. And she is personable, too, passing out cheese to children and referring to just about everyone as "Dear Heart."

I am sure these people exist in other cities, but I take pride in the ones we have. And I consider this one to be a civic treasure.

Thing No. 20 that I miss about Pittsburgh: Our fountain.

If I start talking about what one little area of land means to me, the time I have spent there, the way I took my wife there straight from the airport on the day she first arrived in the U.S. . . . well, I will not. Way, way too sappy.

Suffice it to say that it is a great point of pride -- no pun intended -- in being the world's tallest fountain when on full power (which is rare because floods have beaten up the old motors, according to a guy in that little control room there). And, above all, it is a majestic yet understated central focus to what makes our topography so dramatic, so breathtaking from every angle.

And it soon will be much better in time for the city's 250th anniversary in 2008, as plans from the Point State Park task force will detail.

Bigger, taller, prouder.

One can only hope that any upgrades made do not change the source of the water for the fountain, because then we all would be unable to explain to people how we actually have four rivers down there and not three.

Thing No. 19 that I miss about Pittsburgh: Our seagulls. Yes, our seagulls.

Ever want to blow a visitor away with something about Pittsburgh? Tell them we have seagulls.

We do not have many, though the ornithologists among us might correct me on that. Maybe a dozen. Maybe two dozen. Whatever the number, I have noticed one dominant set of seagulls -- and they are mean enough to be dominant -- that lives atop the Giant Eagle on the South Side but, for some reason, flies across Downtown to hang out by PNC Park above the Allegheny. Perhaps it is because so many people pass by with food for the geese and ducks over there.

Geese and ducks?

Yes, we have them, too, up and down the Allegheny.

Try picturing that within that black-and-white, Smoky City footage you can find in Rick Sebak tapes.

Thing No. 18 that I miss about Pittsburgh: If you ever show up to a Pirates game early -- really early, before the surrounding lots get filled -- walk from PNC Park in the direction of Heinz Field and look down for white-painted bases and lines.

These markings represent the work of a few baseball historians dedicated to making sure that Exposition Park, the Pirates' home from 1891-1908, has its small place in the modern consciousness.

Just about everyone knows about Forbes Field's still-standing wall, and there are even some who know about home plate that is hidden inside the hallway of a nearby Pitt building. But few know about this place.

Those of us interested in the Pirates' 121-year history can rattle off all kinds of stories from Exposition Park, obviously culled from books and other second-hand or third-hand accounts, such as this one about the flood that reached second base. But there is something far cooler than that about just standing there and picturing that an actual ballpark was once there with all these minimum-wage miners and steelworkers wearing the uniforms of the Pirates.

You also can find a state historical marker nearby, at the base of the fantastic water steps down by the river, that commemorates the first World Series in 1903, half of which was played at Exposition Park.

It is nice, too, that Three Rivers has some small piece standing with the Gate D marker by Heinz Field. But I was very much in favor of preserving the tattered bits of the right-field fence that Turner Ward crashed through in 1998.

Thing No. 17 that I miss about Pittsburgh: Someone told my wife in the past few days about this feature -- have I mentioned that she never reads the Q&A? -- and she responded by asking me to mention Frank Curto Memorial Park.

If you never have been there, you have plenty of company.

It is right in the heart of town, it might have the most breathtaking view of perhaps any urban park in America, is fully furnished and ... well, you can't get there from here.

The best way to describe how to get to this place is this: Drive along Bigelow Boulevard from Oakland in the direction of Downtown, but do it slowly. It is a long strip along the right side of the road, nestled into the steep hillside below the Hill and above the Strip District and, with the speeds generally traveled on Bigelow, you will miss the only entrance ramp if you blink. There is no bike or foot access of any kind, unless you count this decrepit set of steps that descends from the Hill.

I never have been there. But then, I never have seen an actual human there, either.

Thing No. 16 that I miss about Pittsburgh: As of tomorrow night, nothing.

I am heading home and, as happens each spring, Paul Meyer will take over the beat for two weeks. This happens for two reasons: One, I use the time back home to write the material for our annual baseball preview. Two, Meyer has a chance to become familiar with the team and its issues before covering 40 or so games in the regular season.

I will be back down here for the final week of spring training, with coverage -- and the Q&A -- resuming March 26.

In the interim, in addition to the preview stuff, I will attempt to remind the children that they have a father, especially the 3-year-old boy to whom I must be a distant rumor after 25 days away from his train set. The girl, now 6, seems to understand. But there is much explaining -- and making up -- to do for the younger.

And this, I feel compelled to point out, is absolutely nothing to the amount of time that the manager, coaches and players spend away from their families, something that incessantly amazes me, especially the many with very young kids. They have no one to spell them for a series or two, no opportunity to simply take a day off and go for a bike ride or walk or whatever to be a good dad. I know they make a zillion dollars and are lucky to be adults playing a game, but there is no compensation for that lost time, for having to hear about special moments over the phone. And there is no sport like baseball that puts that kind of demand on those involved.

Thing No. 15 that I miss about Pittsburgh: One of the best features of PNC Park -- and one I often point out to visitors -- is that those little square-ish windows lining the street area are modeled directly after the best building in the city, maybe the best building in the country, in the Allegheny County Courthouse.

Glowing about the Courthouse is akin to saying the Beatles had a couple of hits or Salomon Torres is a swell guy, so I will forgo that in favor of advising anyone who visits the place to go beyond just walking around the place or going into the fabulous courtyard.

Check out stairwells. If that sounds boring, take me up on it and let me know what you think.

Anyone is free to go inside the building. You only have to pass through a metal detector, but that should be no problem if you leave your heavy weaponry at home.

Thing No. 14 that I miss about Pittsburgh: The Three Sisters bridges that cross the Allegheny, most do not know, are the only side-by-side-by-side identical bridges on the planet, as well as one of the rare metal-girder suspensions anywhere. (Take a look, and you will see what I mean. I am no bridge expert.) They were built in 1925-27, and that distinction as well as their history is almost enough to make you forgive whoever decided to tear down our own version of John Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge that still could have been spanning that same spot.

On a personal level, they are my favorite walking and biking bridges, being so close to my house and the ballpark. But I have to add here that I am bothered every time I look at the lighting improvements that were made a couple years ago to the Roberto Clemente (Sixth Street) bridge while nothing was done for the other two, the Andy Warhol (Seventh Street) and Rachel Carson (Ninth Street) bridges. I understand it costs a pretty penny -- Duquesne Light donated those for the Clemente -- but to have one of the Three Sisters looking different than the other two diminishes their unique distinction of uniformity.

On the brighter side, it is a wonderful thing that the Clemente Bridge has become, exactly as envisioned, linked visually, aesthetically and culturally to the ballpark. And we should never forget that it was Mayor Sophie's vision in the 1990s that gave birth to the concept, while so many laughed at her.

Thing No. 13 that I miss about Pittsburgh: There are ducks in the middle of Downtown.

No, not on the pond that two centuries ago covered the area now known as Market Square. And no, not real ducks. They are little rubber ducks and frogs and a fish or two, and the only significance they bear is that they sit in a small, churning fountain inside the courtyard of the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club () on William Penn Place.

Overwhelmed by skyscrapers on all side, it is incredibly easy to overlook the oldest houses standing anywhere in the Downtown area. (No, the Blockhouse, does not count. It was not designed to be a house.) Most of the houses were lost in the Great Fire of 1845, and this one originally was built in 1890, remodeled in 1930. It actually is six connected houses that some college graduates made into a club. Not sure what goes on in there now, but it looks kind of ritzy from the courtyard windows.

At any rate, the boy loves the rubber ducks, so we are regulars there. And even if he did not, I always have found it immensely cool to see some of the structures Downtown that have remained standing -- 140-year-old churches, Indian burial grounds from Colonial days, etc. -- despite have buildings of 30-54 stories stealing all their sunlight and spotlight.

Thing No. 12 that I miss about Pittsburgh: The dinosaurs. But then, everyone in town is missing them until they return to the new hall sometime next year.

For those who do not know, our city has the second-largest set of dinosaur fossils -- and some of the most complete of individual species -- of anywhere in the world. Which is yet another of those curiosities that comes with having had such enormous individual and corporate wealth at the turn of the previous century. Andrew Carnegie financed many expeditions and came away with a collection that was unrivaled at the time.

And when you are done with the dinosaurs, one of the city's coolest collections of coffeeshops, restaurants -- and, as an added bonus for us total geeks -- a comics shop is right across Forbes Avenue with the Craig Street corridor.

Just watch out for the meter maids. They make the Manatees look like good people.

Thing No. 11 that I miss about Pittsburgh: The Penn Hills Dekhockey Center, the one, true original dek surface in the city and longtime home to some of the sport's top talent in North America.

I spent a large chunk of my life on that surface, including what must have been 1,000 games played, and would give anything to get back out there for another full season or even a faceoff. But, in addition to having limbs that no longer move as painfully slowly as they used to -- even slower now -- committing to a team is kind of difficult around road trips that span Seattle, Anaheim and Miami in 10 days.

Be sure, though, that will not stop me from taking the kids out there when they get old enough. (Lucky for me the wife never reads this thing.)

Thing No. 10 that I miss about Pittsburgh: Seeing my favorite local band, Seven Color Sky. If you have not checked them out and you have any appreciation for the excellent, innovative music from the 1980s, you owe it to yourself to do so.

A couple of years ago, they opened for the Psychedelic Furs on the lawn of Point State Park in what was one of my more enjoyable nights in the past few years.

Down in Florida for spring training, there is one radio station that claims to play music from that time period, but it seems to have this near-obsessive focus on Pat Benatar. Now, I like Benatar and have a special appreciation for the work of guitarist Neil Geraldo. But I do not, to quote www.purple-twinkie.com,celebrate her entire catalog.

Prepared for this in my third spring, I brought down all 14 of my XTC discs and change every two days. Now, that is a catalog to celebrate.

Thing No. 9 that I miss about Pittsburgh: If it is Wednesday -- and it is -- then it has to be my weekly visit to Eides on the Strip/Downtown edge.

In the three locations it has known over the past three decades -- one of which was facing Federal Street on the current site of PNC Park, the other on Penn in Downtown -- I have been going every week since junior high school for my fix of comics. And, incredibly, so many of the faces among the workforce there remain the same all these years later. Their expertise in the industry is without parallel, and they share it without the snarky stereotype of those comic-book guys you see in Kevin Smith movies or on "The Simpsons." (Eides Entertainment, 1121 Penn Ave., eides.com.)

Thing No. 8 that I miss about Pittsburgh: Much as I enjoy the PPG ice rink and all that it has brought to a previously dormant part of Downtown, I always find myself feeling that no one should ever take credit for it. Rather, there should be universal public shame that an idea so good, so obvious, should have taken two decades to be conceived.

Especially at night, especially during a snowfall, it is an urban scene unlike any on our planet. The ice is a perfect match for the glass cathedrals that surround it, the reflections of the electric tree make it seem almost engulfing, and that combined with the candle-holding choirs that perform there on Light-Up Night ??? just nothing like it. And you can find large clusters of people there, including countless children, at all hours of the day and night, even up to midnight on weekends.

Thing No. 7 that I miss about Pittsburgh: I will turn this floor over to my old friend Bertie, a regular in the Three Rivers red seats a few years back:

Michael Orpen-Palmer of Winchester, England: I will never forget the first time I came to the 'Burgh in 1999, and the two stunning views that greeted me as Cara drove me in from the airport. The first was, of course, emerging from the Fort Pitt Tunnel onto the bridge, the second the view from Mount Washington, where we lived then. ??? Having done much traveling throughout the northeast U.S. as a coach driver, I have not found anywhere to rival the charm and scenery of the 'Burgh.

Thing No. 6 that I miss about Pittsburgh: I could not explain where this place was with a machete over my head, but I will tell you about it anyway.

There is a graveyard somewhere up in Spring Hill, which is tough to find in and of itself. It is, from my understanding, the highest actual land in the city. And, being so close to Downtown, it offers a view that makes Mount Washington seem like looking into an alley.

A local magazine did a piece on the place a few years ago, and the author was asked by the people who run the graveyard not to give directions because of concerns the place would become some kind of makeout spot. (Sounds kind of grisly for a graveyard.) The only way I know how to get there is to get into my car and drive up a mess of winding, steep and narrow -- but, of course, two-way -- roads.

I have been there more times that I would admit, once in about a foot of snow, just to see what the whole area would look like in that weather from way up there.

Thing No. 5 that I miss about Pittsburgh: I can bike out of my garage and ride to the Carnegie Science Center or Point State Park or the park along Fort Duquense Boulevard without crossing a single street, thanks to our riverfront trails. (Actually, I have to cross the street in front of my house, if that counts.) This makes for some extraordinary riding, especially when I have the wagon and children hitched to the back.

This network only is going to become more expansive in the next three years, as it is nearing the point where all of the South Side, Oakland and even the West End Bridge will be in play. And did you know that, if somebody finds a way to build a trail through or around Sandcastle in Hazelwood, you will be able to bike all the way to Maryland on the trail?

Thing No. 4 that I miss about Pittsburgh: The mechanical room under the Duquesne Incline.

I take the family up the Incline about four or five times a year, and the experience has gotten much better since the mechanical room at the top station was opened to the public. For two quarters, you can walk down a set of steps to see the giant gears and pulleys that work this thing. Depending on your viewpoint, it will either amaze you or terrify you when you see that one rope upon which you are dangling your well-being.

What is guaranteed, though, is that the little boy in your life will love it. Great boy stuff.

Thing No. 3 that I miss about Pittsburgh: Sunset beyond the West End Bridge, while standing at the Point.

If you don't know, you don't know.

Thing No. 2 that I miss about Pittsburgh:

If you never have stepped inside a bank vault, then you probably never have sipped java in one, either.

There is this exceptionally cool place Downtown on Fourth Avenue at the corner of Wood Street (previously called The Fourth Avenue Cafe, not to be confused with The Vault on the North Side). It is a coffee shop on the ground floor of one of those great, old financial buildings on that street. wIn the back of the shop is a vault, with the gargantuan door still there, and there are tables, chairs and some other coffee-shop type stuff in there. On top of all that, the coffee that was poured there -- for those of us who care -- is from La Prima Espresso in the Strip, and if there is better on this planet, I am still looking.

Thing No. 1 that I miss about Pittsburgh: Our unrivaled airport. I have been to Heathrow, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Amsterdam and just about every major airport in the U.S. and Canada, and the only facility that even comes close to ours in terms of efficiency (especially now with the added security lines), getting in and out on time, keeping the runways clear, shopping and just about everything else is Tampa, where I landed for spring training.

I would call it the PNC Park of airports, except that an upgraded business/laptop area is direly needed.

Dejan Kovacevic, the Post-Gazette's Pirates writer since Jan. 1, 2005, has covered sports for the newspaper since 1990. That includes eight years on the NHL beat, six years on high schools and colleges before that and the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. Born in 1966 in downtown Pittsburgh, Kovacevic attended Gateway High School in Monroeville and Duquesne University before beginning freelance work for the Post-Gazette, his only full-time employer. Kovacevic's link with the Pirates began at age 6, sitting by his grandfather's side and listening to Bob Prince call the games on a palm-sized transistor radio. He attended countless games at Three Rivers Stadium and PNC Park, and his interest in the team extended to reading more than 25 books about the franchise's lengthy history and that of its many individual luminaries.Chief among Kovacevic's other interests is the study of Pittsburgh's history, with a focus on the Downtown area. He has collected superhero comics since childhood, with an ambition of owning every appearance of Green Lantern. He once played guitar in two local bands and retains a passion for music of the new wave/punk era. He grew up playing baseball, carrying into Pony League, but switched to deckhockey as a teenager and spent a decade and a half on local rinks, mostly in Penn Hills. He is married with two children.

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