That Sounds Like a Bad Song Title

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS ENTIRE POST!! IT'S PITTSBURGH!!! PITTSBURGH!!! NOT PITTSBURG!!! IF I READ ONE MORE FIC WHERE THE H IS OMITTED I AM THROWING EVERY DEVICE I OWN OFF OF THE CLEMENTE BRIDGE!!! thank you :)

Fun fact! Pittsburgh has more bridges than Venice! When we say City of Bridges we take it seriously

Our sports teams all kind of suck at the moment. We are aware of this. Fully and entirely. The only team that showed any kind of real promise was the Penguins (NHL) but even they had a pretty nail biting "will they make playoffs" stretch towards the end of the regular season. The general consensus for all teams' short comings is a makeup of 2 things. 1. Management/Ownership needs to be reevaluated and taken care of better. 2. Our star players are getting old as hell. I'm a Sidney Crosby enthusiast, that man can do no wrong in my eyes. I think he's still a fantastic hockey player and leader. My man is pushing 40 and just put out a statement that he wants to play one of the most physically demanding and violent brutal contact sports at the professional level for many more seasons to come. You see what I'm saying? That happens with all 3 of our main sports teams. We know they suck at the moment. We all still hold out hope that they're secretly the best team that just needs to wake up and even those of us who don't gaf about sports will die on that hill. Only Pittsburghers get to say these teams suck. Everyone else who says a bad word about the Steelers can die.

On the topic of sports, we have 2 pro soccer teams! They don't get a ton of mainstream media because soccer isn't a considered a "Big 4" sport, but our men's team are the Riverhounds and our women's team are the Riveters (their mascot's name is Nellie and there's so much history behind how she came to be, I really recommend looking her up if you're interested in learning more also she's the cutest thing ever I love her)

And on the topic of mascots! The mascot for the Pittsburgh Penguins is Iceburgh (Iceberg but spell it like Pittsburgh WITH THE H) he is (obviously) a penguin and we adore him he's everything. The Pirates (MLB) are represented by The Pirate Parrot, which is his full legal name (a wee bit disappointing and not very creative if you ask me but wtv). Steelers (NFL) have Steely McBeam, he's a steel worker. The costume is literally just a guy with very pronounced sculpting and yellow skin.

Still on the topic of sports, Pittsburgh is the only city in all of the US where all of the professional sports teams share a color palette! Black and Gold paint the city (quite literally) and they're not just representative of our super sport-rich culture (if you couldn't tell that we have one of those) but they're also the colors of the city's flag!

Food! We're a very sport dependant culture but we're even more of a food dependant culture! We loooveeee food here!

Pierogies. That's all.

That's actually not all, I have so much to say about pierogies, I love them so much and they're actually very Pittsburgh in case you didn't know! At every single Pittsburgh Pirates (here come those sports sneaking back up right when you thought we moved past them) home game, in the middle of the 5th inning, there is a sacred thing called the Pierogi Race. I highly recommend looking up videos it's spectacular and 90% of why I go to baseball games (another 5% is stadium food). Basically, there are 6 giant pierogies (people in pierogi costumes but they're real pierogies in all of our hearts) to represent different flavors of Mrs. T's Pierogies, a popular frozen pierogi brand (I recommend cheese or loaded baked potato flavor* I personally enjoy cooking them in copious amounts of butter at 3AM after forgetting to eat all day and topping with sour cream). We have Jalapeño Hannah, Cheddar Chester, Oliver Onion, Bacon Burt, Sauerkraut Saul, and Potato Pete. They literally just race around the baseball field, they have their own stats for the season. They have a cult following (ESPECIALLY HANNAH). All over you'll see merchandise for them. I personally own a T-shirt of four of them replacing The Beatles on the album cover for Abbey Road. My high school calculus teacher's brother in law was one of the pierogies (i will not say which one to not completely dox myself, just know they make about $20 per game so really they're just in it because they genuinely want to be). There has also been a food festival that occurred annually for a while before being interrupted (i believe by covid) called Pierogiesburgh. You show up and the streets are lined with different flavors of Pierogies and there are some street performers and vendors, what more can you want? They held it last year in May of 2025 after a pause but I unfortunately haven't heard anything about it this year. Very sad. Pittsburgh hearts pierogies.

Another food festival! Picklesburgh! I LOVE PICKLESBURGH! YOU WILL TOO! It happens every July, I WILL be in attendance this year, it's a festival that shuts down several streets to dedicate to different flavors of pickles. We go batshit for this. Pickles are huge in Pittsburgh. I repeat for emphasis !!!PICKLES ARE HUGE IN PITTSBURGH!!! Picklesburgh in particular lasts several days, is free to attend (pay as you go depending on vendors and things), and we have a giant disco pickle. What more could you want?

Slightly touched on in The Pitt is Anthrocon! Pittsburgh is home to the country's largest annual furry convention! It's not my scene so I don't know a ton about it, just that it's in the summer and is a pretty highly anticipated event for a lot of folks!

Our public transportation system (PRT-> Pittsburgh Regional Transit) is actually pretty reliable for the most part besides running notably late almost all the time but that's just the busses and tbh expected. There's a few different options as far as fare, the most popular being full day fare (pay once and it lasts 24 hours), week fare (pay once and it lasts 7 days), annual fare (pay once and it lasts 1 year) and 3 hour fare (pay once and it lasts 3 hours). I only have personal experience with the 3 hour fare, I walk most places and am privileged to know people who have cars if I need to go anywhere super far. For this one, as far as I'm aware you need your phone to pull up the QR code to scan your ticket so if your phone dies before you can get on the bus to het home, better find a charger bud (peep Dennis Whitaker being out too late and my boy does not have a car fic?). That being said if you're a frequent rider you can get a card that you tap as your ticket and I think it goes to your account but I don't have experience with that. You can buy your ticket and then it's good for up to a month before you activate it. Once you activate it, you start the clock and it will expire at the end of the 3 hours. While your ticket is active you can use any and all PRT vehicles including busses, the T (our train/subway system lightly discussed in season 1 of The Pitt), the Duquesne Incline, etc. The T is free in some counties (maybe just Allegheny?) but not in all counties, so it is possible that you need to pay and scan a ticket to go home even if you could get to your original destination by just stepping on the train. All ticket purchases, routes, information, etc. is available on apps, I use a combo of the PRT app and the Transit app, I just find it easiest.

For the sake of hospital stuff, shit can kinda go down anywhere and I don't know the rhyme or reason behind which hospital ambulances decide to go to. There probably is one, but there was a fan who fell a pretty significant distance at a hockey game in PPG Paints Arena and he was not treated in UPMC Mercy even though it's like a 2 minute walk to the arena and they have a level 1 trauma center. So go crazy with where your patients are being ambulanced in from and what happened because no one can tell you they would have realistically gone to a different hospital that was closer.

Side note about UPMC Mercy it's like the worst rated UPMC building because the staff is apparently kinda rude? I know people who have gone there and had great experiences with the staff but I've never been personally so... if you want to include that somehow go crazy

Pittsburgh Dad. Look him up. Watch his videos. He is a city treasure. We look forward to his content, especially once weekly during football season and ESPECIALLY after a Steeler game (side note: it's common to say Steeler instead of Steelers when following up with something like "game," "season" "merchandise," etc., I know this is a sports thing with most teams not just a Pittsburgh thing but I wanted to just say it for those who don't know)

Primanti Brothers. This is a staple, we love them, look up the almost famous sandwich varieties, there are french fries and coleslaw and they're the size of your face. No one pronounces it the way you would sound it out. It's closer to "per-mannies" and if we're trying to be fancy we'll throw in "brothers" but otherwise they could be father and son for all we care (jokes)

The city is called the Steel City for a reason, it's a pretty well known fact that we come from a rich history of steel mill work, but a lot of that has migrated out of the city. You'll hear a lot about how the mills have been shut down but I know tons of people who either work or have loved ones who work in steel mills today, they're just not based inside the city as much as they used to be. Its a labor intensive and very dangerous industry, nothing but respect to those steel workers.

Because of the mills, Pittsburgh used to have a MAJOR pollution problem. Like turning the street lights on at noon because the smog covered the sky major. It's much much much better today, even if its not perfect (it's a city you can only ask for so much)

In the winter, if there's an especially cold freeze, people try to walk across the major rivers, especially the Allegheny. This is idiot behavior and I would love to see a hypothermia patient fic where the Pitt staff just can't deal with this shit anymore because why would you expect this ice to not Crack and drop you in the water bud?

Weather is so unpredictable. There are times where I'm outside in a tank top and I'm sweating and then the next day I'm shivering in my heated jacket.

I know that we've only really seen summer/nice months in the show, but winter is a different beast man. Feet of snow. Plus everyone is depressed because the part of the country is already one of the cloudiest and least sunny and then you add a sunrise at 10 am and a sunset and 3 pm on top of that and everyone is just so vitamin D and sun deprived it's not pretty.

There's a gas station called Sheetz. I need you to look that one up. We love Sheetz (not wawa someone will try to tell you they're the same thing they are not Sheetz supremacy all the way) they have a little something called MTOs. Heaven. (App Sampler with Mozzarella Stickz, Boneless Bitez, and Mac and Cheese Bitez plus ranch to dip is my own personal go to. If I'm feeling like I deserve it I also get a strawberry lemonade Piña colada refresher as a treat.)

Fuck Philadelphia. We hate those guys they suck

The difference between neighborhoods is super stark sometimes. That can be a whole separate post, there's tons of information about their differences all over the place. The one that I will bring up though because I think it might be kinda cool for fics is South Side. It used to be much worse, it's definitely gotten better, though it's not really some place you want to be walking around with nowhere to go (especially if you're fem presenting unfortch). The reason I think this would be good for fics is the night life apparently goes crazy there. I don't really mess with that scene but that's where a lot of bars are of all different kinds and parties stuff are held all the time there. Like I said though, not really some place you want to be alone or in a small group after dark. It's definitely a safety in numbers place even with all the improvements in the recent years

Pittsburgh does have a distinct iconic accent, but like many city based accents it's starting to phase out. That being said i know tons of natives with the accent and tons without the accent. If you don't know what the accent is, look up Pittsburgh Dad or just some videos of the Pittsburgh accent. In The Pitt, Dana has a Pittsburgh accent, but it's not a perfect example, it's almost like it's mixed with something else (this coming from someone who's been around it all my life so it's a bit easier for me to spot the inconsistencies)

The accent is different than the dialect. The accent is just the way things are pronounced but the dialect is how things are said. I could do a whole separate post about Pittsburghese (the language of my people) but that's a lot of work for me right now so here are some key things to know about talking like a native Pittsburgher (or Yinzer)

Yinz=y'all/you guys

Jaggoff=jag for short, rude idiot face stupid head jerk. Don't say anything about it deriving from the term "jack off" it makes us all aware of how dirty we sound all of a sudden

Buggy=shopping cart

Sweeper=vacuum

To be=does not exist. The to be verb isn't usually a thing in most Pittsburgh sentences. For example "the door needs to be shut" is "door needs shut" "this needs to be decided" is "this needs decided" "the team needs to be sold" is "god dammit this team needs taken away from these jagoffs" way more efficient. Just cut to the chase. Now it's important to note that this is strict to the "to be" term as a whole, so while the sentence "he needs to be intubated" would become "he needs intubated," the sentence "we need to intubate" would not become "we need intubate" since there is no be to go with the to and that sentence would be nonsense as a result.

Back on sports, hockey specifically, it's not improper or uncommon to call the Penguins the Penguins, it's more common to just say the Pens. I think this is less of a Pittsburgh thing and more of a everyone-has-a-shortened-version-of-their-team's-name-so-it-sounds-better-to-chant thing, but I wanted to throw it in here just to put it out there. It's also a big thing to say "it's a hockey night in Pittsburgh" when there's a home game. Again, might not be exclusive to us, but it is common.

This was very fun to make and I'm sure I have more to say that I just forgot to write down (it's 4AM) but I hope it's helpful to someone and I might make more lists as I remember things :)