It’s my last few days in Pittsburgh, after being here for two years while I went to grad school. My stuff is half in boxes, and I’m frantically ripping CDs for my cross-country drive to my new home in San Francisco. I’m desperate to get to my new place and start my new job, but since I’m a reflective kind of guy, I thought I’d note some of the things I’ll miss, aside from my friends and teachers, about Steel City:

• the smoke-filled loft at The Cage
• tattooed girls on mopeds on the South Side
• Dave and Andy’s Ice Cream
• the baby elephants at the Pittsburgh Zoo
• the view as you come out of the Fort Pitt tunnel
• sitting on my front steps on humid summer nights, smoking cheap cigars and drinking even cheaper beer
• the jukebox at Gooski’s, which miraculously always plays “Teenage Riot” by Sonic Youth every time I’m there
• movies on Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park
• the interactive art installations at the Children’s Museum
• the bridges. With more bridges than any city except Venice, Pittsburgh has a tremendous variety of impressive bridges and their resulting vistas. You can often see several of them at once.

Pittsburgh itself was a bridge for me: a link between where I was and where I wanted to go. And while I’ve enjoyed living here, I need to cross to the other side.