(Since we can't embed video on this site, here's the soundtrack for this post.)

Practically every other piece at the Post-Gazette's "The Big Story" blog paints Fort Pitt downtown Pittsburgh as a ghost town -- with the exception of a massive police presence. I know if I were visiting downtown Pittsburgh for the G-20 today from out of town (or out of country), I wouldn't exactly be getting the warm & fuzzies from scenes like these:

 
Apparently, I'm not alone as a Russian native has remarked the following about our police state fair city:

Hours after his arrival here, he also remains amused -- or bemused -- by the security precautions he witnessed Downtown and the check-in route he experienced while walking and shuttling by bus between the Omni William Penn Hotel Downtown to the Mellon Arena for security screening and back Downtown to the convention center.  The only thing he's ever experienced that was more efficient, he said in jest, was a failed coup d'etat in his native country.

The Infinonymous blog has a funny take on how other nations may be viewing da Burgh today:

If Emulation Is The Highest Form Of Flattery, Singapore's Secret Police Must Be Blushing

 Some might find Pittsburghers' outside-looking-in status to their own city mirrored in a secluded group of twenty deciding the financial fate of the world. 

Just saying...