Westinghouse Sign
The Westinghouse Sign was a large, animated, electric sign advertising the Westinghouse Electric company and located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. The sign was best known for the huge number of combinations in which its individual elements could be illuminated. The sign was removed in 1998 when the building on which it was mounted was demolished to make way for the construction of PNC Park.
The various corporations which have carried the Westinghouse name have erected countless signs and other promotional devices during the past 140 years, including many in the corporate hometown of Pittsburgh. A cubic Westinghouse sign stood in downtown Pittsburgh for approximately thirty five years and was so familiar that it was allowed to remain in place until 2002, even after the building it marked the Westinghouse Tower was no longer owned or occupied by Westinghouse.
Cloud Factory
The Cloud Factory is an affectionate euphemism for a boiler plant which billows steam from below its twin stacks in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, the 1988 debut novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Michael Chabon. Bellefield Boiler Plant, the actual name of the facility, is located in Junction Hollow (affectionately known as “The Lost Neighborhood” also in Chabon’s book) behind Carnegie Mellon University in the Oakland district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Built in 1907 to provide steam heat for the Carnegie, it was designed in the Romanesque Revival style by the architectural firm Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow. One of the smoke stacks measures 150 feet and the other more than 200 feet. The plant has burned both coal and natural gas but will cease using coal on July 1, 2009. Its steam system expanded in the 1930s to service the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. Today it pumps heat to most of the major buildings in Oakland. It is owned by a consortium made up of the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Carnegie Mellon University, the Carnegie, the City of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Pittsburgh Left
The Pittsburgh Left involves two cars facing one another waiting at a traffic light or other stop signal: one turning left and one going straight. The left-turning car will execute its turn through the intersection before the car going straight passes through the intersection, where normally it would yield. Permission to do so is either given by the car going straight, or sometimes taken by the left-turning car by starting through the left turn early enough so as not to obstruct the straight-going driver. This practice is seen as courteous, because a very small delay for the oncoming vehicle can eliminate a long delay for the left turning vehicle and those blocked behind it.
In practice, Pittsburgh drivers often make the Pittsburgh Left by anticipating the green signal after cross-traffic has stopped or cleared, but before the actual signal change. This practice is so common that straight-going drivers in the area are accustomed to pausing a moment before proceeding on green, for their own safety.
Ed: This is not really as prevalent as the article makes it seem. One day, while driving to the store, I had a straight-going driver beep at me and gesture that I should turn left in front of his car. So I did.
Pittsburgh Rare
Funny story: The second time I was in Pittsburgh, I went to a real hamburger restaurant. Thinking I was in Applebees (or similar), and they would always overcook my hamburgers, I decided to order medium-rare. It was, how do you say, most definitely medium-rare. Apparently, ‘Burghers like their meat fairly uncooked:
A Pittsburgh rare steak is one that has been heated to a very high temperature very quickly, so it is charred on the outside but still rare or raw on the inside. This has the effect of intensifying the meat’s flavor by cooking, without destroying the flavor of the uncooked meat. It can also produce a slightly crunchy layer on the outside that will complement the soft interior. The degree of rareness and the amount of charring on the outside may vary according to taste. The term ‘Pittsburgh rare’ is used in some parts of the American midwest and eastern seaboard, but similar methods of sear cooking are known by different terms elsewhere, including Chicago-style rare and, in Pittsburgh itself, black and blue.
Kind of looks like an oblong Dyson sphere.
Pittsburgh rare – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
P.S. Inkscape is totally awesome.