Meet the Pittsburgh Ranters & Ravers
To start, the Pittsburgh Ranters & Ravers are a few Pitt grads (plus others) ranting and raving about whatever the heck they feel like.
About Jamie, the First Ranter Raver
Hi! I’m the founder of Pittsburgh Rants and Raves. I’m a self-proclaimed nerd with interests ranging from random Pittsburgh facts (I was a Pitt tour guide for 3 years), quotes of the day (one to live by: Carpe Diem) , movies, books, music (support local music), and so much more. I hope to get to use this blog and my other interest (writing) to meet others with similar interests.
Let me introduce myself and tell you the story of how I came to live with my family in one of the most interesting cities in the world,
If you like this blog, please do comment or befriend me and the other contributors to let us know your rants and raves, especially if you like us. Hatemail should be sent in a private email (thanks for your courtesy!) 
But, I hope you do enjoy the blog and would love to hear your rants and raves about it. Also, I’d love to post anyone’s rants and raves on anything related to Pittsburgh , so please email Jamie@PittsburghRantsandRaves.com for more information on how to contribute.
My Trek to Pittsburgh:
I was born and raised in
Through field trips around the city with the program, I saw a world different from the one I had grown up in with unlimited resources devoted to medicine (my interest at that time), technology, education, and more – this world was within the same state, but found on the opposite end. And, I saw an infinite number of possibilities.
The rest of that summer, my parents and I trolled
I was sold. In the end, I only applied to two schools, Pitt and another I randomly chose off my list of visited schools because I was told it was ridiculous to only apply to one college. To make what has already become a long story short, I began my freshman year at Pitt, quickly became a Pitt Pathfinder (giving tours of the University and the city to all interested freshmen - watch for fun Pittsburgh facts throughout the blog!) and am now living, working, and raising a family in the wonderful world of the ‘Burgh.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ MY BLOG EVEN THOUGH I DIDN’T GROW UP IN PITTSBURGH
Some of you resident Burghers who speak more Pittsburghese than I do may begin reading my blog with a bias.
Who is this outsider that moves to our beautiful city and feels that she has the right to ‘rant and rave’ about this town and its inhabitants?
But, the purpose of this blog, for me, is truly to point out the unique and lovely city of
The Pittsburgh Ranters and Ravers may rant and rave – but, it is to bring
After living here and appreciating the city, I can confidently say that Primanti’s is one of my favorite restaurants and I noticed lately that I am saying ‘yinz’ at an ever-increasing rate!
About Becca, Another Ranter Raver
Becca’s Life Story
Hi! I’m Becca, one of the Ranters & Ravers for this site. One thing you may notice about my entries (and this biography) is that they might be a little fragmented—you’ll see in due time that my brain is just plain all over the place. Thanks, in advance, for bearing with me, and thanks for reading!
How I came to know and love Pittsburgh…
I grew up in Rostraver Township, a rural suburb of Pittsburgh that’s about 25 miles southeast of the city. Born and raised in the Pennsylvania countryside, Pittsburgh always seemed like a ‘big city’ to me. Not par with LA, Toronto, Chicago or NYC by any means, but damn near close—we’ve got a lot of stuff going on!
Every time I had ever gone into the city from Belle Vernon (the greater area of which Rostraver Township is a part), the experience was always enjoyable. At an early age, I was exposed to the Cultural District, as well as landmarks such as Point State Park and the Inclines. The museums, the zoo—you name it, I was there! Pittsburgh was like a travel destination that was delightfully close-to-home. Pittsburgh was the biggest, most appealing contrast to what I was used to when it came time to decide where to go next. Granted, if I’d had any say in the matter, I would have gone straight to the Pacific after high school; however, my parents put a 300-mile radius boundary on me, and so I endured four and a half years at Pitt, changing my perspective from that of a visitor to that of a resident.
My parents’ spacious home sits on a little over 2 acres of green grass with trees, bushes, and rolling hillside. Their only neighbor across the street is a field that stretches as far as the eye can see, that never pastured any animals in my lifetime. The other neighbors (these ones are people) are out-of-sight. People rarely walk on the road. It’s pretty low-traffic. Lush with flora and fauna, it was a small town, but bigger in comparison to other local towns. My high school graduating class contained 197 students. In another nearby town, my high school boyfriend’s had around 50. There was only one crazy person around—Crazy Norris. He stuck to the Wal-Mart area of town, and was often sighted on a bike, with a dog on a chain (an actual chain, not a dog leash) and a machete. Yes, a machete. He might have been so crazy that he wouldn’t have lasted in Pittsburgh without being taken away. But interaction with him was so limited and infrequent that he was more of a legend than a person.
In contrast, my first dorm room was probably smaller than this little office room in my apartment where I sit now. It was on a hill, alright—Cardiac Hill! Across the street, the University of Pittsburgh’s Biomedical Science Tower 3 was just undergoing its first phases of construction when I moved to town. There was no natural grass in sight, there was trash everywhere, bums (some with sombreros and some ‘pregnant’ ladies who were notorious for having been pregnant and in need of bus fare for years) were constantly asking you for money, and swarms of people and cars were vying for road space and sidewalk space every fifty minutes or so. Ah, Oakand. What a stark contrast to my rural upbringing. There is a sort of sordid pleasure I get from Oakland…it’s kind of like the Tijuana of Pittsburgh. Regardless, living there for five years (and learning there for five years) showed me a completely different side of Pittsburgh, but not the reality of Pittsburgh living, as up until my last move, my parents were paying my rent and my registered address was at their home.
Now I’m a resident of Mt. Washington, and have been for about seven months. It’s had its ups and downs—one thing I can say for sure is that you always need to think long and hard about a place and its owner before you decide to spend a lot of money on it every month. And, never live in a first-floor apartment. For the most part, it’s worth the trouble…There’s nothing like having the view from Grandview to look at for the whole commute to work Downtown (10 – 15 minutes, briskly by foot). What a great start to the day! And what a pleasure it is to be working Downtown. I don’t know why I say it, but I love Pittsburgh. I always have, and I always will. I knew it was worth my while to stay local and discover everything Pittsburgh had to offer that I didn’t get to experience during my earlier years.
I currently manage membership for a local non-profit organization, which is funny because I didn’t study much business in college. I was a Spanish major and a communications major, and am pleased that I can use some of my communications knowledge for my current position. In general, I’ve always had this way of just ‘falling into’ jobs—many for which I’ve had no experience, and some that were cut out for me.
From age 12 to 17, I worked every Sunday at a Presbyterian church (after playing at my mandatory Catholic mass to appease my mother), playing the piano for the services. That was my first paying job—what a great one in comparison to the standard choices for kids my age at the time. In addition, I played at a dance studio to accompany the ballet classes. If only I could get back into that business—it was so fulfilling and lucrative. I was also a basketball announcer for my high school, accepting the job with no real understanding of basketball beyond the basic ‘put the ball in the basket’ idea. This taught me that I could do anything, provided that I had the right training.
In college, I did tele-fundraising for the university, subjecting myself to the whole slew of discouraging events that befall telemarketers on the daily. Then I worked in retail. Probably my most surprising job was as a student research assistant doing various motor and cognitive skill tests on brain-damaged rats to determine what drug and environmental therapies best aided in recovery of the working memory and physical ability after traumatic brain injury. (I am on a few medical publications for this, too, which is interesting since my academic focus was not scientific.) I left that great job for a really crappy one calling European Fortune-500 companies and trying to wheedle the people on the other end into telling me what their IT Department’s structure looked like and how to get in touch with all of those people. Something that bothers me is that the noblest lines of work seem to pay the least, and the opposite the most.
After that experience (which was horrible), I needed something simple that I could do while finishing my last undergrad semester. So I decided to take on a part-time job working at a balloon store. I sorted, filled, sold, and arranged balloons. That’s it! Unfortunately, the owner of the store was a complete nutcase and decided to fire me one day because I was sick and unable to go to work. After that experience, I needed a break from employment to focus on my studies for the midterm and final exam periods. The week of graduation, I fell into a position at my current employer’s office and have been with them (but with differing titles) ever since.
More about me…
Music is my heart and soul. I’ve been playing the piano since I was a small child. Unfortunately, I never really paid attention to the music theory part of it, and only honed in on my reading skills, so I have a lot of trouble with improvisation and only play written music. More unfortunately, I don’t have a keyboard or a piano at my place right now, and rarely have the opportunity to play. But I make up for it by listening to all kinds of music anytime I can.
I also love language, so much so that I spent 4.5 years at Pitt making a ‘career’ of it—now I can speak and read Spanish and Portuguese in addition to English. I spent a month living with a host family in Costa Rica in July of 2004. That was the best month of my life, despite mosquito bites on my eyelid, the resulting eye infections, and the fact that during the whole thing, I was attending class every weekday. It opened my eyes to a lot about the world and about myself. I don’t really use my language skills with anyone here, though, which is something I would like to change. However, I think I’d rather change it by moving somewhere else. I have always seen myself living internationally, and I hope to be able to do that someday. (I know I’ll end up boomeranging back to Pittsburgh.) Despite the fact that I only use it to read and write and think (sometimes), I still have a pretty good proficiency with the language. My Portuguese is shaky, but I hope to visit Brazil someday and change that.
I attribute my love of and ease in understanding foreign languages to the fact that Spanish was somewhat incorporated into my education starting in grade 2. I also attribute it to the fact that I learned to read music at an early age. I am completely convinced that the process of learning any kind of language (music, computer code, words, etc.) while a native language is only known at the most basic level and is also being instructed has some kind of positive affect on a child’s overall learning process and abilities.
Writing is also an interest of mine, and in my younger days I often daydreamed about becoming a writer one day, so this should be a great outlet for that. I wrote a lot in college, too—it was a given with all of the upper-level Spanish courses. As much as I hated writing papers, though, I always got some pleasure out of it. What put me out about it was that I always managed to wait until the very last minute to do the work. Oh well. Now I have no deadlines, so it’s much easier to write.
I have 4 pets that I love: Walt Disney (Wally) the cat, and my Rat Pack of bettas: Frankie, Dean-o and Sammy Davis, Jr. Some other interests of mine are: venturing outdoors (hiking, mostly, but I love bouldering and caving and rappelling and kayaking, too), geology, astrophysics, indoor gardening (with legal plants), and reading. I also love art and would throw pots and do metal sculptures all day, every day, if I had the opportunity and equipment.
Anyway, I think this has gotten a little long-winded, so I’m going to stop now. Thanks for reading all this, and feel free to get in touch with me!
Rant and Rave!
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