Fellow Pittsburgher. The evidence is all around the city. Odd as it may seem, the soot-covered buildings are actually kind of beautiful in their own way. It mar

Fellow Pittsburgher. The evidence is all around the city. Odd as it may seem, the soot-covered buildings are actually kind of beautiful in their own way. It marks the passage of time and the city's own evolution, which wasn't exactly a sure thing when the steel mills first started to close. But it has to be cleaned eventually lest we eventually lose the building facades instead. A few years back, I was walking past a church downtown that was in the middle of being cleaned. The difference between the side that had been pressure-washed, and what remained to be done, was striking. Far more than just seeing the finished product. You look at something like that, realize that people lived and breathed it in daily for years, and you're almost surprised that anyone survived long enough to clean up the city's air in the first place.