(exciting music) - [Announcer] This program is part of WQED's Pittsburgh History Series.

- What makes Pittsburgh is the people in Pittsburgh.

They make it better.

They make it like the place to live, right?

It's where you wanna be, it's where the action is.

- [Narrator] Okay, let's consider Pittsburgh, the city and its surrounding area in Western Pennsylvania.

What makes this place so unusual?

- Pittsburgh, I think what makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh is really its neighborhoods and its people.

And I know you hear that all of the time, but it's true.

- There's so much about Pittsburgh that makes us unique.

I think a lot of it's the way we drive.

I mean, we deal with the constructions and the potholes and the parking chairs.

- It's aesthetically pleasing.

It's small enough and manageable.

It's very rich in its culture and heritage.

- No, there's a depth of family.

There's a depth of culture.

- The big hair, the loud voices.

- I've gone to other towns and I always wanna come back.

(laughing) - [Narrator] In this program, we're gonna talk to a lot of people who know this place and we're gonna look at some of the things that make it interesting.

- Well, a lot of friendly people to start.

- I would say Pittsburgh's very green.

- I just love when somebody comes in from out of town and take them through the, Fort Pitt Tunnel and see that city open up.

You know, when you come out of the tunnel and.

- The hills, you can't get from point A to point B without going over or through a hill.

- I think Pittsburgh's a very European town.

- I think our neighborhoods are ethnic diversity and our work ethic.

- Everyone knows the Steelers, the Pirates, the hockey.

- Well, I like it at the park, you know how it's made, the hills, the valleys, you know, things like that.

- You can stand up on a hill above town and look down at the skyscrapers.

So that's really unusual.

- It's the greatest small big city, it is.

- You still find little niches like this where this is where you come for your cake.

I still have a place in Bloomfield that I go for pizza, you know, little special places like this.

- We've got more bridges than probably what, any place in the world.

- It's probably the warmest place that I've ever been in.

- You don't put too many people down that stays down in Pittsburgh.

It's like the ball club.

They just keep coming back at you all the time.

- What makes Pittsburgh are the people?

And there are a lot of engineers in the people of Pittsburgh.

- This is a beautiful city.

It gives you everything that you need.

A nice small little city.

- So Pittsburgh's a great place to live.

- And I've never seen a place like Pittsburgh where family is so extended and it's so much a part of the culture of the region.

Everywhere you go, family matters.

- [Narrator] We're going to call this program What Makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh.

Even though we know there's no real easy or definitive answer.

- It's a good place to be.

(lively music) - [Announcer] Major funding for What Makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh was provided by the Buhl Foundation, serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927.

Additional funding was provided by Nova Chemicals, producing plastics and chemicals essential to everyday life.

- [Narrator] Maybe the most obvious thing that helps define the Pittsburgh area is its natural setting, it's geography.

- I think the geography has a lot to do with what makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh.

The hills, the gulleys.

- You talk about terrain, of course we have hills and anybody that's used to these hills when they get out in a flat country, I think they're glad to get back to the hills.

- I love the hills and valleys.

I'm originally a flatlander and I don't like flatland because I think I'm genetically programmed to like hills and mountains because that's where my family came from.

- [Resident] I miss the hills when I'm away.

- [Narrator] And the hills were one of the things we talked about with Dr. Joel Tar, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon, who studied many aspects of this beautiful part of the country.

- Pittsburgh is a beautiful place because you have this wonderful confluence of rivers and hills.

And of course how it got that way of course is not widely known that this was really an uplifted, a plain that was truncated by streams and rivers that ate into the soft strata over time, creating this pattern of hills and valleys that we have.

And if you stand on, let's say at Mount Washington and look across the horizon, you realize that most of the hills you here are about the same level.

You don't have like the rockies, sharp peaks and so on.

They're about the same level.

And that's because it was this plain that was cut and truncated by these streams and rivers.

I think the people that live here often don't appreciate what they have.

And I think you hear a lot of complaints about steep hills and weather and ice.

I think they're more conscious sometimes of the disadvantages that the topography presents and the advantages, how different it is to live in a flat city, the boring kinds of places.

And here you never get bored when you're driving around.

You may be saying some pretty nasty things about the hills or trying to find to go from one place to another.

I always say it takes a newcomer to the city about five years to acclimate themselves, to finding their way around the hills and valleys and the development of these neighborhoods in these locations, give them a special kind of identity.

That's why, what do we have?

85 or 90 identifiable neighborhoods within the city of Pittsburgh.

You're always finding these special little places and many of them have names of a character of their own.

- Pittsburgh's full of neighborhoods.

You don't get that everywhere.

- [Paul] Pittsburgh is a conglomeration of neighborhoods and they're all because of the terrain pretty insular.

- [Narrator] We met Paul Centner, a local history buff in his neighborhood called Elliot.

- Daniel Elliot bought this land in the late 1700s.

He bought this land and he bought the land that's also known as West End Temperance.

- Well it's little.

Basically it's this hillside, straight across over to Herschel Field.

- [Resident] It's a very nice neighborhood.

- [Resident] One way you can describe where it is is if you ask them if you know what the West End Overlook is, since 1960, it's been called the West End Overlook.

- [Resident] It's the West End Elliot Overlook and it is a beautiful view of the city.

- Anybody that's a stranger at all that I always ask him, do you know where the West End Overlook is?

Yeah, well that's it.

Come on up.

The old name Ford is dog time.

That's what they used to call it.

'cause everybody owned a dog.

- Well you know where Herschel Field is it's up over the hill here.

It was a coal mine and there was not a major operation where they had large tunnels and everything.

He said that they used dogs to pull the smaller carts out of the coal mines.

And so a lot of those dogs were around and a lot of people have dogs.

- We have the two dogs, and this one's Frank and that's Fritz.

- And this is Elliot.

- I do notice that almost everybody seems to have a dog.

She goes crazy every time a dog walks by, which is about 50 times a day.

- It's an old fashioned neighborhood.

You walk down the street and people step off their porch to say hello.

Everyone knows my dog's names.

They may not always know my name.

- [Narrator] Her name is Christian Futrell, and that's Jack Warthman.

This guy is Regis Cormick, and that's Michael Flaherty and his mother Kathy.

They all live in one row of houses there in Elliot, - [Resident] There's 10 houses, there's five big ones and five little ones.

And it goes big little, big little, big little, you know, - Two and a half story two, two and a half, two.

We've all changed it a little bit since then.

But I have one of the little house, I think it's called a Dutch colonial.

- There's 10 of them.

They were built soon after the turn of the century, starting on that end and moving this way - The story goes that they were built to illustrate that the worker and the boss could live in the same neighborhood.

- The story is that the builder was a very religious man and the homes were originally built for people who worked at the steel mills right down the hill.

And it was dangerous work and he thought they needed a little extra protection.

So he named the homes The 10 Commandments.

- They have been called them as long as I can remember.

Everybody in the neighborhood calls them that.

- I said, which commandment is this?

She said The fourth commandment.

I said, honor thy father, thy mother.

- [Narrator] You may have noticed these 10 houses with the biblical name have some kind of view.

- [Resident] Yeah, we do have a beautiful view.

- [Resident] The whole thing's the view, it's 360 basically.

You can see the whole thing.

- [Resident] It was the view, yes, yes it was.

'cause at that point I didn't know the neighborhood like I do now.

So you can't help but fall in love with the view.

(laughing) - We just took it for granted.

- I just think the downtown skyline, especially from the view up here, it's almost set up it seems like bowling pins.

It's a triangle and it's just the way it stand out.

- And the view changes.

You know, when the weather, with the weather changes in the different seasons, the time of day.

It's really a remarkable place.

- Where's the best view between house five and six?

And I'm number five, next door is number six.

- You can hear the trains go by, but you can't see it.

So it just looks like you're right on top of the river.

- [Resident] You have no idea how many barges there still are, you know, carrying coal and whatever else.

Until you live in a place like this and you see 'em going by all the time.

- [Resident] Watch the traffic jams, crossing the West End Bridge and on Route 65.

- [Resident] Our family has owned this house for 60 years and I've lived most my life here.

- Well, I've only been here for 40 years.

(laughing) - People stay up here and people hand the houses down it seems, from family to family.

So I was fortunate enough to find the place the way I did.

- I asked my mother about was the view part of the thing, and she says, what are you talking about?

You know, Pittsburgh was still the smoky city.

- [Resident] Like when I bought the house, there was one window on the back because there was no view in those days.

'cause the pollution was so bad - And people hated living up here because of the train tracks.

You'd get your wall shot, which in the '40s everybody hung out in the yard and a train would go by and you'd see this wall of black smoke just coming up the hill.

Yeah, so it was not the view, - No, it was not for the view.

- Which is hard to imagine now, I put a lot more windows in.

(chuckling) - Oh, we absolutely love it.

- Yeah, sit out in the evening.

- Oh yeah.

- Sit nice and quiet.

- I built table out on a back porch, a fold away table.

Stay out there and enjoy your coffee or whatever you have.

And it's nice.

- I just love to watch the people coming and going.

Say it's a football game, you'll see the crowds coming and hear the roar, the crowd.

And when they're leaving the fireworks, - [Resident] Fireworks, you can stand in the backyard and watch fireworks.

- Yeah, fireworks from here are fabulous.

- We can watch 'em from all over the city here, - Although we all get tired of fireworks because Pittsburgh is fireworks crazy.

- All the relation comes worth in July.

It's about the only time we see them.

They come and enjoy the fireworks for half an hour, an hour, boom, they're gone.

And we don't see them again until next year.

- When we lived on Lakewood, I never looked out the window because there was nothing to look at, you know, but your neighbors.

But when you're on a hill, when you look out the window, you see something.

- I don't plan on ever leaving here.

I never get tired of it.

Always something to see out there - Once a hill person, always a hill person.

(laughing) - [Narrator] Yeah, but there are some folks who root for the rivers.

- You go in some cities and they don't have a river.

We have three.

- The three rivers.

- Rivers, hillside and that.

- Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, got the confluence.

Nowhere else, confluence.

- [Narrator] From the confluence, we went up the Monongahela to the town of Duquesne where Dan Burns is a police officer who got injured, and while recuperating started to write history books with photos.

- Most people think that the only thing cops, not a writer tickets are things like that.

But I like to write, I've always liked to write.

It's a good distraction from the law enforcement aspect.

It's also a nice hobby and I have a lot of fun doing it.

- [Narrator] We followed Dan to Oakland where he does a lot of research.

- Right now, the project that I'm working on is the book titled "Pittsburgh's Rivers".

Primarily most of the photos are gonna come from here.

The book is a cooperation between myself and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

I have access to all of the photos that Carnegie has and are literally hundreds that I would have been able to scan here.

I find that most Pittsburghers and even people out of Pittsburgh identify Pittsburgh with the rivers.

The rivers are why Pittsburgh is where it is from the 1700s up through today.

You know our commerce, our communities, were built on and grew up around the rivers, industry thrived because of the rivers and availability of transportation.

And there'll be photos in the book of the Mon Wharf at the start of World War I, where there were literally hundreds of people seeing off the troops off to war.

The Mon Wharf used to be a hub of activity, not just for the river traffic, but it was they were open air markets there.

So seeing a lot of those pictures of what we still have today, but it was used in a different way are fascinating.

Every time I scan a photo or I read an article or whether it's something current or something that dates back to the turn of the century, I learned something.

So there are certainly a lot of surprises.

I didn't know the impact that we had as Pittsburgh that we had on river traffic to New Orleans.

A lot of the larger steam ships, stern wheelers, and even transport and cargo ships that were synonymous with the Mississippi Delta were built here in the Pittsburgh area.

I can scan a photo and I can look at it, but I go back to it another day and see something I didn't see the first time.

I scan 'em in at a very high resolution, so I'm able to zoom in and pick out certain elements of a photo and I usually wind up seeing something different and even more interesting and more fascinating.

We identify ourselves with the rivers.

I think what we always have, and we always will as Pittsburghers.

And I'll probably come up to the industrial time, the industrial of the river industry as far as coal, oil, the barge traffic, and industrial traffic.

Again, the Gateway Clipper has a great history here in Pittsburgh and they're using the rivers and a lot of their boats will be in there also.

- [Narrator] When you look at our rivers, you often see one of the Gateway Clipper boats.

- The gateway Clipper fleet is one of the largest excursion vessel companies operating in the United States.

We serve as sightseeing cruises, dinner cruises, charters, weddings, corporate of functions.

It's a wonderful opportunity for people to get out on the water and enjoy themselves for a few hours.

- [Narrator] Terry Wirginis is now the president of the Gateway Clipper Fleet.

- [Terry] My grandparents started this company in 1958 with a boat from, actually came off of Lake Erie.

They brought it here to Pittsburgh and that was our first boat.

Sailed in May 17th, I believe 1958 was the first cruise.

- [Narrator] Now their flagship is the 300 foot long Majestic.

And Brian Krug is one of her captains.

- I'm very lucky being a captain with three rivers.

I'm just not going up and down.

I got three rivers to work with.

They all meet at the Pitt point of Pittsburgh, which is an absolute beautiful skyline.

- [Narrator] And when you're on the water, there's always a chief mate.

This is Tara Haley who makes sure the engines are okay, the pumps are working, the passengers are happy and everyone knows the basics.

- There's three rivers.

(chuckling) You got the, the Mon, the Allegheny and the Ohio.

A lot of people do know that, but they don't know which river they're on.

They don't know if they're on the Ohio, the Allegheny or the Mon, they ask that a lot.

- The rivers of Pittsburgh, our Pittsburgh's reason to be, they're the reason that we came here originally.

There were our only transportation source back in the 1700s.

- [Brian] The rivers twist and turn, the Monongahela River flows north.

It's very different than any of the other rivers.

It has a mud bottom.

The Allegheny has a sand and gravel bottom.

They are a great reason for Pittsburgh to be here today.

I don't think the Pittsburghers, Western Pennsylvanians have the appreciation for how much commerce even goes on the rivers today.

There's no automatic pilot.

'cause the rivers turn, there's banks, there's bridge piers, there's always something too close.

- [Tara] You got wind, you got current, you have storms.

There's a lot, you have to be on your toes.

- [Brian] Well, when you, when you're going up and down the rivers, you have to know the river height.

If it raises a little bit, the Majestic's 40 feet high.

Some of the bridges are only 41 feet high.

So that's the main thing, you don't wanna rip the top of the boat off.

- They are beautiful rivers.

If you think about it, a lot of people are like, oh look how dirty.

And it's not really that it's dirty, it's the mud bottom, some rivers, you know.

- With all the new EPA laws and the rivers have cleaned up, the game fish have returned to the city of Pittsburgh.

Walleye muskie, large mouth, small mouth bass.

We had the Bass Masters classic here this year.

Who would've thought that?

The river fowl and the birds that have come back and the amount of people that enjoy these rivers in the summertime, they really take advantage of 'em.

- [Narrator] People are able to use the rivers because of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Army Corps of Engineers started building dams and locks to keep the water in, to keep the rivers navigable.

- And before the locks and dams in the early 1900s you could actually walk across the river and the water depth that only come up to your shoulders.

But due to the locks and dams, now were navigable 365 day year round navigation.

- [Narrator] Engineers in general have had a profound effect on Pittsburgh in countless ways.

They built all our bridges.

They figured out how to make heavy industry work.

- The engineers are the ones that applied the technology for primarily in the steel industry and developed the blast furnaces and the coke oven batteries, and the rolling mills, and then built the mills here on the rivers of Pittsburgh after the Army Corps of Engineers and people put dams on the rivers to allow 'em to be used for transportation.

So engineers have been a very, very integral part of the city of Pittsburgh since it's very beginning.

- We had so much heavy industry in iron and steel and glass and coal and a lot of things that were very engineering intensive.

- You know, Pittsburgh wouldn't be the same without engineers, that's for sure.

- It's not easy to define exactly what is an engineer.

So we talked with Jim Boyle, who's an engineer for Duquesne Light, and we met Engineer Tony Deya and George Tannehill from the Coppers Company when they came to have lunch at the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania.

They met Carl Angelo, who's an engineer at Bayer.

We talked with Deb Lange, Civil Engineer and Director of the Steinbrenner Institute at Carnegie Mellon.

Alex Shulley, Civil Engineer and a senior VP at Mellon Financial.

And we met with writer Tim Palucka, who was busy working with Sherry Moshawn, on a history of the engineer society.

We thought they all might help explain what is an engineer.

- An engineer is really a problem solver.

An engineer is a person or a profession that creates a better way of life - Actually we build things to improve the health and welfare of people.

- One definition of engineering that I like is that engineering is the art and or science of making things practical.

- It's a very vast, I mean you could be an electrical engineer, you could be a mechanical engineer, you could be an aeronautical, you could be a chemical, civil, environmental.

But basically we are a service industry and we make things work or we make things better.

- They're practical scientists is what they are.

They're practical scientists.

They take what scientists taught them and they use it to make useful materials, useful structures, bridges, tunnels, roads.

- They make things work, they make things stand up, they make things fall down when they need to fall down.

- [Narrator] And Pittsburgh engineers like so many groups of like-minded people in the late 19th century, started this club that still exists today.

- The Engineer Society of Western Pennsylvania was founded in 1880 at a time when a lot of individual cities around the country were forming these technical societies so that people could exchange notes basically and on what they were doing and what the latest methods were and you know, pull their knowledge.

- Well I think the founders back in 1880 realized that it was a good idea to pull all of the various disciplines together.

They hold major conferences every year, including the Bridge Conference, the Brownfield Conference, and the Water Conference, it's been going on forever.

- So it's a gathering place of of knowhow and knowledge and educations of all types.

- [Narrator] But engineers still work all around us taking care of things we take for granted like electrical power.

In 2005, Duquesne Light started an infrastructure project that involves putting in new lines and replacing some aging equipment, including here in Oakland.

- And what we're doing today is we're moving a new larger transformer from its delivery location, Panther Hollow here, all the way down to our substation on the Boulevard of the Allies.

- [Narrator] The transporting of the transformer has been planned by various teams of engineers from Duquesne Light, the city of Pittsburgh and Edwards moving and rigging of Shelbyville, Kentucky.

West Knapp is the Edwards project engineer here.

- This transformer is a very delicate piece of equipment that cannot take shift changes or vibrations.

You've got a lot of hills in Pittsburgh, we'll transport it up the road coordinating with city officials and with the police.

- The route is to come up out of Panther Hollow next to CMU onto 5th Avenue.

Come down 5th Avenue past the university.

It weighs about 80 tons, which would be 160,000 pounds.

And that's why you see it has 96 wheels on the trailer so they can distribute the weight evenly and protect the roads and not damage the roads from heavy weights - As you go, changes in terrain, the trailer itself will allow, you're basically operating on a bed of hydraulic fluid.

It's got a lot of very detailed engineering that went into it and it's kind of the right tool for the job.

- Make a left go past McGee Hospital and pop out onto the Boulevard to the Allies right next to the old Isley building and pull into our substation right there.

- [Narrator] Moving an electrical transformer actually connects with another great Pittsburgh engineering tradition.

The Westinghouse Electric company engineered and built much of the equipment that first generated and distributed electrical power, changing the world forever from right here in Pittsburgh.

- It's very much a Pittsburgh thing.

George Westinghouse won the battle of AC versus DC against Thomas Edison.

And the very early developments in electricity transmission distribution of electricity was here in western Pennsylvania with George Westinghouse out in the (indistinct) Turtle Creek area.

Many of the first components were built in George Westinghouse's plant.

- [Narrator] George Westinghouse founded some 60 different companies during his life.

And in the early 1930s, Allegheny County Civil Engineers designed and built an incredible bridge in his honor.

It comprised five concrete arches over the Turtle Creek Valley, built with an innovative combination of steel false work, and an elaborate system of overhead cable waves that delivered buckets of concrete to the workers on the various arches.

And while there was a lot of engineering involved in designing and figuring out how to erect this bridge, there were many workers who actually carried out the construction.

Workers in the 19th and 20th centuries came to Pittsburgh from countries around the world because there was a lot of work here.

There's no question, hardworking immigrants helped make Pittsburgh Pittsburgh - People came here, they worked in the mills, they stuck together and they worked so hard, but they have this sense of joy about being what they are.

- All the steel workers who lived here, they left their mark in the town.

You know, that's a hardworking team.

- We had everything here.

We had Germans, Polish people, Hungarians, Yugoslavians, everything.

yeah, Italians, I married an Italian.

- We have so many different, not only ethnic people, but active ethnic people in that they are not ashamed to say who they are and they practice by having a lot of activities.

- [Narrator] Many groups have activities designed to preserve ethnic identity.

And on this day at St. Gregory Byzantine Catholic Church in Upper St Clair, folks in the western Pennsylvania Slovak Cultural Association are gathering at the invitation of Joe Sanko and his wife Albina.

- We have different activities for our members.

So this was just to be within our membership, but word got around and I guess you can't keep a secret, when there's good food involved.

- Today it's sort of like a Slovak Mardi Gras.

It's called Faaiangy, but it's a pre Lenin food festival to teach the people what it's gonna taste like and also how to make it.

We gave out recipes today.

- The recipes are from the special guest cooks, mag de Luca Chava and Mariana Grela.

- Oh my cooks are very special cooks.

They are from Slovakia, from Koaice area, their husbands are employees of the US Steel Koaice Works, but they are working here.

We start out with a dish that has meat and then we're going to demonstrate some lentil food from Slovak, which is meatless.

They had already made platski and suski.

- [Narrator] And today they're going to teach everyone to make Slovak haluski, little potato dumplings with cheese that are very different from the cabbage and noodles that most of these pittsburghers know as haluski.

- First, when we made a haluski, it was so hard because we don't know a consistent, what is the better, you know, - [Narrator] But learning is what this day is all about.

Joe, who's honorary Slovak consule to Pennsylvania will tell you that more Slovak immigrants settled in Pittsburgh than in any other American city.

- No, they come over for work and then they would stay with their friends till they learn English.

And as a result, they had pockets, like people from the Spia region would settle in south side.

People from the Zemplín region would settle on north side and the úaria region would be homestead and Braddock.

So they'd go where their friends were or where their neighbors were.

- [Narrator] People of similar backgrounds liked getting together and obviously still do.

Social clubs, formed dance groups, benefit societies that acted as insurance agencies and maybe some culture from the old country got preserved, especially when it was served with goulash and other goodies.

- [Resident] It's good food no matter what the nationality you're, but majority of the people here have some Slovak connection, maybe way back in grandparents or great grandparents, but they just like the food.

(singing) - [Narrator] People like music too.

And it can also be important in matters of cultural preservation.

And on one Saturday, every year, if you hear singing at the club at Neville Wood in Collier Township, it may be the St. David's Society of Pittsburgh.

Dave Williams is its president.

- The society exists to keep Welch's culture and heritage alive.

St. David is the patron saint of the country of Wales.

He is to the country of Wales as St. Patrick is to Ireland.

- March 1st is St. David's Day.

But it is wonderful that we can all get together on the weekend and celebrate St. David.

And the whole idea is really just to bring Welsh people together.

- [Resident] Actually, not everybody's certifiably Welsh, but everybody's either a Welsh or a Welsh wannabe and there's some Welsh wanted be, so yeah.

- I'm originally from Swansea in South Wales and I got to Pittsburgh by marrying a GI who I met during World War II.

- We actually have members who have in so far as they can tell, no Welsh blood, but they're so attracted by the Welsh culture and the singing that they've joined our society.

- Basically if you get enough Welsh people in a room, somebody's gonna start singing.

- This is a tune called (indistinct).

(singing) - Singing is very important.

It's a part of their entire heritage for singing.

- They're breaking the song.

If you go into any pub in Wales, before you know it, people will be singing.

- [Narrator] They sing, they wear kilts and funny hats, and occasionally they eat some odd appetizers.

- Well, my shoes are called Gilly Bros, and noticed how they're laced.

This is how they would lace them in the old days, - They did wear stovepipe hats, but everybody didn't have one.

- Here I have faggots.

Now faggots of a very good old Welsh food from before my time.

They're like little meatballs and they're made from liver and onions and breadcrumbs.

Faggots were popular early on when miners took them to work with them.

- [Narrator] The feasting and the festivities end with the singing of hymns.

- [Resident] It's been a lot of speculation that people from Wales migrated to this part of the country because it's so much resembled Wales.

- [Narrator] Occasionally this attempt to preserve culture can become a business.

In the neighborhood of Hazelwood, there's an unusual small restaurant on 2nd Avenue called Josza Corner.

- The style is doing Hungarian country style, family home cooking.

No additives, no preservatives, everything from scratch, just like the way grandma used to do it.

- [Narrator] Alex Josza Bodnar has run this place since 1988.

Even the regulars here know it's always best to call ahead and make sure he is open before you go.

- I was born and raised in Budapest, (indistinct), and I feel that Pittsburgh is my second home and I lived in Hazelwood longer than any other place in my life.

- I found out about him just by driving by on 8085 here and seeing the sign and being of Hungarian descent, of course I was interested.

- He answered the phone and I said, I'd like to come down.

He said, getting ready to close, but I'll stay open for you.

See you in a few minutes.

- My husband and I moved here about a year and a half ago and he just happened to drive by, and knowing that I'm from Hungarian background.

- I'm a real challenge for Alex because I'm a vegetarian Hungarian.

- This an oatmeal dough, and this is a whole wheat and oatmeal - As he described it, this is his sort of experiment to try to understand the people's desire for Hungarian food and the like.

- I called it a American Hungarian improvisational, Hungarian cooking at large.

And that's the whole idea, is to do traditional and combine the traditional, kind of just to the American ways too.

And some people like it, some people don't.

I mean it's a personal thing like anything else.

- Oh, it's always good, the longos I love is one of my favorite things, the flatbread.

- My grandmother always took care of it for me, and cooked the same kind of a food.

What Alex cooking here?

- I always try to make it down here for lunch just to shoot the breeze, (speaking foreign language) - It's a rare chance that I can actually be in an environment where I can practice the Hungarian language.

- We start off usually with the longos.

- Voila, again.

- The Transylvanian goulash is always good.

I copied it and tried it at home.

(laughing) - Finger food, just sort of pass it around.

- And you can't forget the cucumber salad with the sour cream on top.

- The food is good, the price are sort of reasonable.

So what more can I ask?

The owner, we tolerate the owner.

(laughing) - We all call up Alex and say, we're making a reservation.

We're coming down.

And if the if the store's not gonna be open that day, he'll open it up and we'll come in, and he'll make whatever he wants, and we'll eat it.

- The phone number is right on my door, above my door.

And I'm listening to the yellow pages and the white pages.

- I don't know how many people know about it.

It's a small place not on the main thoroughfare.

You wouldn't necessarily stop here if you were driving by.

The food is genuine.

Alex is the definition of genuine.

- You have a diverse group of people, all very interesting people, but they have one common bond.

And that's keeping the Hungarian or Slovak or Croatian or any part of old Hungary culture and customs alive.

- To me, to reenact my heritage every day is kinda important.

And what's kind of exciting about it is that I basically focus in on the situation that once you tasted my food, you become part of the family.

- [Narrator] The mix of food and family and old world cultures can be powerful and delicious.

- The best way to get somebody interested in your culture is through their stomachs.

- [Narrator] Some pittsburghers who like soup often end up on Saturday mornings in West Homestead at an unusual building on West 8th Avenue.

- This organization is now called the Bulgarian Macedonian National Educational and Cultural Center.

And we are the oldest Bulgarian organization in the United States.

We are the only ones that have such a building.

- [Narrator] Pat French, who sometimes called Panka is president and founder of the soup sale here.

- This soup project that we have, it was just one of these things.

We were putting money into this building and we needed to pay bills.

You can imagine a 70-year-old building, how expensive it is to run.

- It's called Soup Sega, which means soup now.

And what we do is we make 14 to 15 kinds of soup that we offer every Saturday morning for sale to take out - [Narrator] The chief cook here, Anja Roy decides what's on the stove each week.

- All right, a lot of soups that you're very familiar with, some with a little bit of a Bulgarian twist, some just pretty common to a lot of cultures.

Like a white bean soup that we make that has mint in it, which is very typical Bulgarian, it's quite tasty, it's really different.

- The potato lake is frozen, the spicy tomato is fresh.

It seems that people are very interested in food, people are interested in good food and healthy food.

And we foot the bill.

- Because nobody likes to make soup for just one or two people.

If they can go and get homemade soup, then that's great.

And that's $20.

- And it now does pay 70% of the bills for this building.

- The soup is fantastic, it's inexpensive.

It's a local thing that helps a community group that is a wonderful part of this region and you can't beat the value.

- This is the French onion, which is our special for the month.

So I'm making it today and it'll go on sale next week.

- Each time I come for a board meeting, I go back laden with bags of soup, yes.

- The friesian chicken is my favorite, but they have both vegetarian and non-vegetarian.

I'm not a vegetarian, but they're vegetarian soups are so good that they are very attractive in terms of, you know, weight loss and all that good stuff.

- [Resident] You could buy soup, you could go watch your kids rehearse.

- [Resident] We've got the children and they're rehearsing or they're singing.

- It's like a club, consider it an ethnic bowling league, if you will.

We don't bowl here, but we dance and we sing and we make soup.

- So there's always some sort of Bulgarian music in the background to keep me going and keep me stirring.

- One of the reasons I do it, I feel it's my legacy from my parents, because they came over here and they struggled and they built a life for themselves, but they never forgot their heritage.

- And a great, many of the members have absolutely no Bulgarian heritage in them other than what they've learned here.

- But having good soup had such a value and a wonderful place for the community, how can you beat that?

- It's perfect.

Who's hungry?

Soup is ready - [Narrator] Soup or no soup, almost everybody understands the joys of just being social, ethnic groups established all sorts of clubs, but sometimes coworkers did too.

In 1919, a group of African American Pittsburghers started a social club that's still going strong on Frankstown Avenue in Homewood.

- The name of this club is the Wemco Club, Westinghouse Electric Manufacturing Company.

- Well it used to be years ago, the blacks that worked for Westinghouse had nowhere to go.

- Black people or African Americans could not go to the Polish American or the Italian American clubs or whatever.

- George Westinghouse donated and built the first club so the blacks could have a social club like the white folks.

- Back then you had to be a Westinghouse employee in order to, you know, be a member of this club.

- That's the founder.

Mr. Green.

- Originally started a building down here on (indistinct) Avenue, then eventually moved up here, bought this lot and the lot next door.

And here we are today.

- That's Skip Allen, who's the current president of the Wemco Club.

- When you get a certain age, there's not too many places you can go to.

You can really just relax.

Like people here are going, just relax, have a beer or two and go home.

And this is what this is for.

- I've been a member here.

It's either 1974, 76 when I used to work for Westinghouse Corporation, - Wemco, I retired from Wemco 1980 as a technician in material science division at the research center in Churchill.

A lot of good people out here that don't work at Westinghouse, I never did.

- Nowhere to be a member and get in the club, we have a membership card with your picture on it.

And you gotta swipe your card.

We know who's coming in, we have a screening committee.

- What I like about this is the camaraderie that you find, the safeness of it.

- We sit here and talk about what's going on on the news and stuff or problems.

- Everybody calls it the old folks on.

- Yeah, that's what they call it, that's what it is.

- We play cards on bid whist and it's a social club.

We do anything old folks like to do.

- Everybody used to say the best kept secret, the Wemco Club.

- It's not a secret, you just gotta know where we're at, and come in and see what it's about.

- [Club Member] Police don't even know we're here 'cause there's no trouble.

- We give a lot of things back to the community, such as we donate financially to the YMCA, the YWCA.

We do things for the young children in the Homewood Area.

- That's why we proud to say we are part of the neighborhood, you know, 'cause we do more than just sit here and drink.

- I love the people in it, like the activities.

I give it 110%.

- 'Cause you're comfortable here.

You're really, really comfortable with the Wemco Club.

- I don't let things bring me down.

So I just enjoy life and this is part of my life.

- You're a Pittsburgh, ease person.

You know, Yens all know that.

(laughing) We're all family here.

It's not the only place in town that makes Pittsburgh, but it makes a contribution.

- [Narrator] Various clubs, organizations, even small businesses do contribute.

And you know, Pittsburgh wouldn't be Pittsburgh without some very good neighborhood bakeries.

- I'm on the road all day, I stop at every bakery I can when I'm going but I just haven't ever stopped here yet.

- [Narrator] This is Jenny Lee Bakery in McKees Rocks.

- It's probably the best bakery around.

- Jenny Lee is a like a legend around here.

- We drive 25 miles to come down.

(laughing) - And I come here because they have good things.

- [Narrator] Bernie Baker bought this business from his father.

- My family started in the baking business in 1875.

My great-grandfather started a little bakery in West End.

He had seven sons.

Eventually all seven were in a baking business and they called it seven Baker Brothers.

Time progressed, they got trucks and stuff, but in 1938, my dad and a couple of his uncles and a cousin started Jenny Lee Bakery.

- And today are a good blend of wholesale and retail.

We sell three retail stores and about 30 supermarkets we supply.

- [Narrator] Scott Baker, Bernie's son is fifth generation in Pittsburgh baking.

- We make everything, we're full line.

When you hear full line, we really are cookies, donuts, cakes, pies.

- You don't realize how many cookies is being baked in any given day at a bakery or how many cakes or you know, whatever is being done at a bakery.

You have no idea.

All you care about is your cake.

- They're making peanut butter right now.

We'll go through about 3000 pounds of peanuts.

- When I first knew I had to make peanut butter, I thought, oh my God, I can't do it.

But now I can do it in my sleep with my eyes closed.

(laughing) - It's like, this is what I wanna do.

I mean, I love it.

I love food and making stuff look nice.

- [Scott] And that's one of the main things that makes Jenny Lee Bakery is our people.

You know, we have the traditions in my grandfather started, but these people have been around long enough to believe in those traditions.

- And this is where our parents came down.

We grew up here, so we're all, we're probably all related, somehow.

- [Customer] Pittsburgh's one of the few towns that are left that still have a lot of retail bakeries.

- [Narrator] Not as many as we once had, but many still worth checking out, including Bethel Bakery on Brightwood Road in Bethel Park.

- I've been coming here many, many, many years.

- I've been coming here all my life.

I was born and raised in Bethel Park.

- Well, I've moved to this town probably about 20 years ago.

- I'm from Whitehall.

- I've come here forever, since I moved to Bethel Park to teach many years ago.

- I mean like passed at least five other bakeries, you know.

(laughing) But I still come here - The first time I ever come in here, I swear that I'll come in here again, and every chance I get I'll be right here.

- It's in their product.

Eat a sweet roll somewhere else and eat a sweet roll here and see the difference.

- I'm always amazed at what goes on out in our store, and sometimes the camaraderie of the people.

We have some really fabulous customers.

- [Narrator] That's Chris Walsh.

She and her husband, John own and run Bethel Bakery.

John has known this place all his life.

- My dad, Morris Walsh, started the bakery with my mother, Anna Walsh in 1955 just around the block from here on South Park Road.

- We were the first retail bakery that baked on a premises in Bethel Park at that time.

- The first 35 years of Bethel Bakery, Mo and I had, at times I said to him, let's get rid of it.

But we hung in there.

- And I like to say that a business, when the second generation takes over, it usually never stays status quo.

It either goes down or takes off to a new level.

And John's taken it to a new level.

- We're a manufacturer and we're also a retailer in one operation, which gives us a lot of challenges and opportunities for failure.

But it's what makes retail bakeries special.

- And we have a lot of fun working here too.

It's a piece of cake.

(laughing) - It was my wedding cake and if I'm very good, it's my birthday cake every year.

- My greatest pleasure is just getting to know my customers and I like the bantering with them and just the homeness of that.

- All I know is the donuts are good, coffee is good, service is good, so I'm here.

- It depends on what I need.

Today I'm here for buns to make chipped ham sandwiches.

- We have really excellent cakes.

I like the cakes.

I can't eat a grocery store cake anymore.

- We have the things that are made that big stores really try to make, but they can't.

- When you bake in a bakery, you're using these large revolving type ovens, and the more you have in the oven that's baking at that time, they bake in their own moisture and create a cake that's moisture.

- It smells good.

(chuckling) You get to eat your mistakes.

(laughing) Not that we make any.

(laughing) - These are gonna be pretzel donuts, believe it or not.

That's one of our special things that you don't usually find any other bakery, I don't think.

- This is just yellow batter.

Yellow cake batter we used for all our yellow cakes.

And I just add another two pounds of chocolate batter into it.

I just kind of swirl it in.

Make nice little design.

- If you were to ask the our typical customer, they would probably say it's the French buttercream.

- Everybody loves the icing.

- A 12 inch chocolate batter.

Happy birthday Larry with love, okay.

- Oh, that's beautiful.

- The frosting is the best.

- I think more so the decorating.

- Oh, decorating too.

- I mean it's like a piece of art.

- The cake decorating is something I don't think you can find anywhere else.

- Just putting buds on this, and then this is done.

- I have a huge family and a huge baby shower and I was in charge of the cake, so it was a slam dunk.

I bought the cake from Bethel Bakery, brought it to Dowels in Bloomfield for the shower.

And a lady from Monroeville took one look at it and said, this has got to be from Bethel Bakery.

She knew it from the decorating.

- I think that's what makes a difference in our cakes too, is the amount of detail we do.

- We're just just practicing a new wedding cake over there.

- Each year we try to go look at our designs and we always wanna try to bring up something new, something different.

- [Narrator] The wedding department is managed by John's youngest sister, Christine.

- When you have a family-owned bakery, it's the personality behind it, it's the warmth.

You look forward to seeing those customers that you know all the time just as well as they look forward to seeing you.

There used to be a lot more bakeries here.

So the bakeries that we do have are important.

- The bakery I think is very important and the people that live in Bethel Way walk here, We take five minutes.

- It's the cake, it's the icing, it's the tradition.

- Oh, it's a part of what you grew up with and part of familiarity and just part of being home.

- From what I can see, we're still going strong.

(laughing) - [Narrator] Another factor that helps make Pittsburgh strong is our incredible ability to surprise people.

We are a city of unexpected charms.

Things you wouldn't imagine are here on the south side.

There's an odd little building that houses the Green Building Alliance.

It's Executive Director Rebecca Flora knows a lot about this colorful type of structure.

- A green building is an environmentally responsible building, that's a lot.

But that means basically the materials in the building are non-toxic.

So they're healthy buildings.

They're actually also very high performing buildings, so they're very energy efficient.

- [Narrator] And Rebecca loves to show off the David L. Lawrence Convention Center designed by architect Rafael Vanoli.

- This is the world's largest green building and the first Green Convention Center in the world also, - [Narrator] It's a structural surprise outside and in.

- Probably the most exciting features are the natural ventilation system that allows fresh air to come in from outside off from the river's edge, which provides a much better air quality in the building.

So that's one of the really important ones that I like to point out.

And also the natural day lighting.

We actually can do show setup without any lights on in the exhibit hall on a day that's even cloudy in Pittsburgh.

The other feature I like to talk about is our water reclamation system.

Well, actually, all the water that's used in this building goes down, drains through a water reclamation system that recycles the water and uses it for toilet flushing.

And with that we reduce the chemically treated water used in this building by 50%.

And so it's really a gem.

It's I think the newest icon for the new Pittsburgh.

- [Narrator] It's a nice surprise, but there were wonderful unexpected pieces of old Pittsburgh all around too.

Like in the town of Natrona, about 20 miles up the Allegheny River.

Many mornings there.

You may see Mary Jane Zidelo walking to work.

- This was an old car dealership at one time.

This was a Nash Car Dealership back in the early thirties - [Narrator] For a long time, it's been a small business that makes Red Ribbon pop, The Natrona Bottling Company, Paul Bowser is its president and CEO.

- Well, we've been here since 1939, my brother started it.

Took it over brother.

The business itself started in 1904 by a fellow by the name of Ed Welsh.

- [Narrator] Small bottling companies like this are now very rare, but this one still makes a killer.

Red ribbon Cherry - Things we make the average bottler doesn't wanna make.

It's not big enough, or fast enough for.

- The difference is we do micro crafting.

This is done on order equipment and we use the old style processing.

- There's not a bottle of soda pop made in Allegheny County, whether it be Coke, Pepsi, or you name it outside of us.

- It may look antique, but it's very functional and I think the quaintness of it all adds to the magic.

- It's just an old fashioned formula.

It's a good product and excellent product.

Like I said, I never tasted any better than that.

- [Narrator] That's Art Lingenfelter, who works here whenever they're bottling.

- [Art] Yeah, I drink this stuff, I love it.

- Everything we make is just a little bit different than the other fall.

We actually use pure cane sugar in our products.

Everybody uses this high fructose corn sugar, which is just about half the price of cane sugar, but it's cheaper.

So that's the reason they use it.

- [Narrator] Steve Vokish takes care of the ingredients downstairs and the flavors upstairs in the mix room.

- [Mary] Steve is our master bottler.

Steve has been here for 30 years.

- We got a formula that we put on, I think it's 396 ounces of cherry extract, 140 ounces of citric acid.

And that's cherry pop.

(chuckling) - And he makes things run.

- [Employee] He takes care of everything.

He knows all the formulas and everything.

- I mixed the sugar up and mixed the syrup up and run the machine downstairs.

- [Mary] From the mixed room, it comes through tubing, into the filler.

And the filler, the syrup, which is called crow, is added to the bottles.

From the there it goes to where the carbonation and water is added and then the bottles are capped.

- And then from there on in, it keeps going down along the line, it goes through a mixer, which is a tumblr affair and mixes out all uniform.

- It's usually runs pretty good this bottle.

But today we're having a little bit of trouble with it.

- You may see bottles with higher and lower fill, but the funny thing is, it's the lower fill that actually has more flavor.

- [Paul] It comes on around and picks the label up.

- [Mary] Labels are put on one at a time and the arms go up and down and up and down.

- It's old, but it runs good and it pretty fast.

And that it's (indistinct) machine.

- [Mary] And then it goes back around and into a turn onto a turntable.

And from there it's taken by hand and put into the cases.

And there's 24 bottles to a case.

And these are the 12 ounce bottles.

- Bottles are luxury right now, glass bottles.

In fact, the glass production is running about 5% below demand and they're still shutting glass houses down.

So we haven't been able to go out and do what we wanted to do for the simple reason we don't have the glass to do it with.

- If you look closely, you may notice the bubbles in this stuff are tiny.

- The reason the bubbles are different, we use a different type carbonation than most other butler use.

Everybody uses CO2 gas out of a big tanker.

And these boys, this is the way they have to do it for the volume they use.

We don't do it that way.

- We get the CO2 from dry ice that is delivered and we put it in the canisters and it takes approximately a day and a half for the dry ice to produce the CO2.

- [Paul] And we can get a finer pinpoint carbonation.

- [Mary] It does wonders for the flavor.

- [Narrator] On some days, Natrona Bottling makes a popular product, specially packaged in bigger green wine bottles.

- [Paul] This looks like a bottle of the real champagne, only it isn't, Champayno.

It's a non-alcoholic type champagne.

- [Mary] The champayno, when it is produced, it is done by hand.

The scoffers are put in by hand.

The wire hoods are put on by hand.

- And then we make a drink called Jamaica's Finest Ginger Beer and a Red Ribbon Root Beer.

And now we've come out with a Pennsylvania Punch.

There's nothing cheap about our products.

We're in the Mercedes class, not the Chevys.

Chevys, you go to the other fella that has it on sale, you know, for what you can buy a case of some of the stuff on sale for you.

You're lucky you go out with two bottles of ours.

But there's that class of people that want ours and they like the product.

- We do have a website.

And through the website we have gotten a lot of inquires.

We have shipped through the website.

- It's an awesome product without a doubt.

I don't know where you'd ever come to find a product as good as this anywhere.

- I like it.

I mean, that's all I know.

I mean, I'm not a golfer, I'm not a fisherman.

I mean, I'm a pump man, I like what it is.

- People don't realize we're still here.

The company's been here 66 years and it's just a little, well-kept secret.

- [Narrator] Oh, it's surprises like this that help make Pittsburgh a fascinating and flavorful place to live.

But if you ask people what makes our city special, you might guess what the most common answer is.

- Well, Pittsburgh is Pittsburgh because of the people.

- I think it's the people.

- The people, it's the people.

- The people.

- People.

- I don't know, Pittsburgh people are special.

- The people are so courteous.

- The majority of 'em now, I'm not gonna say all of them.

- We're pretty down to earth people.

You know, very approachable, hardworking.

- I've never met more friendly people that'll go out of their way to do anything for you.

- The way the city was laid out it's so jumbled that you really need each other to get where you're going.

- I'm an 83-year-old lady who goes out on my bus pass and meet people everywhere who want to talk to you.

- If you're lost, you could stop and ask someone and they don't only just show you, but they take you over there.

Like they could say, oh, you go down the street here, we drive you to where you need to go.

(laughing) - I think the people make up what Pittsburgh is really all about.

- We make Pittsburgh Pittsburgh.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, people.

- We're nice.

People make, people, - Yeah, people make Pittsburgh Pittsburgh.

- [Narrator] What may make the people of Pittsburgh truly special, the thing that distinguishes almost all local inhabitants is the power of people to become Steeler fans.

(growling) - This Pittsburgh Steeler job, - [Narrator] whether you're rooting the team on at a game or making a special trip to Heinz Field for a pep rally.

(yelling) You might try to figure out why we love the Steelers so much.

- Because I was born and raised five minutes from this stadium and my life has been Steelers since day one.

- What's greatest team there is in any sports.

- Nobody is better than the Pittsburgh Steelers.

- What Pittsburgh's known for, is our football team.

- I live in Pittsburgh, I love my team, so.

- This is our Sunday mass right here, - [Steelers Fan] Sunday mass, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

- It's really great.

See, I've never seen fans so dedicated to a sports team.

(people cheering) - They've bitten at every game so far.

- Every game this year.

- Every game in Heinz Field.

- They're good.

They all click together, they're down to earth.

They're not cocky, they're just the greatest.

And I think so many of the men have a good heart.

- They're gonna bring their A game because our fans want the A game.

We got guys having heart attacks and bars, man, come on.

- We're all out here just to come out and have fun, Watching good solid football.

- You see it live.

It's better than seeing it on TV.

You get to see it right there in front of your face.

- I'm just into going to the ball games.

I could be home nice and warm, but I'd rather be here.

- And I'll tell you what, there's no wind, like the wind from a terrible tower.

- I love (indistinct).

- How about when the crowd's all fired up, when you're right in the middle of it?

- I mean, it's hard to beat, it's like a family.

It's like a family atmosphere, you know, a rowdy family, but a family atmosphere.

- [Narrator] Some families develop game traditions.

- We've been Steeler fans since I was two years old.

I used to sit on my daddy's lap in my house and watch the game with him.

- [Harry] A family tradition is putting up this sign and taking it down every game.

We've been doing it for over 30 years.

- [Narrator] That's Harry Everett and his family.

And they're the folks with the famous Steeler Country banner.

- Well, what happened was when we first bought our season tickets in Three Rivers Stadium, we were sitting over where the visiting players came out.

And we were thinking of something that we wanted to show 'em they were in Pittsburgh.

So I thought of the design and my father-in-law painted it.

And then we hung it up, so every time the visiting players came out, they saw that they were in Steeler country.

They weren't home and they were in for a bad day.

And we've been hanging it ever since.

- My brother's really good with taking it to all the games now, so it's exciting.

- It's not too bad.

I mean, usually it takes a couple of us to do it, you know.

It's well worth in the long run I think so.

It's been a part of my family history since before I was born, and I'm just honored to continue to tradition and eventually hopefully, you know, I would like to see it hung at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

That's what I'm hoping for right now.

(people cheering) - Couldn't find a prenuptial agreement that would cover being a Steeler fan, but I worked hard at it.

- And I've got my next generation loving them as much as me.

- [Steelers Fan] It's our home team.

- It's our home team, (indistinct).

- Just like the Penguins, just like the parrots.

Were that way with all our team.

- I'll tell you what, just last night, I was telling her when I was her age, it was when Pittsburgh was known as the city of champions.

- You can go anywhere in the nation, you always meet a Steeler fan.

- Oh yeah, - This is the best football in the country.

I live in Texas, I'm tired of hearing about Texas.

This is where it's at, that's why we're here.

- If they win or lose, we're gonna love them.

It doesn't matter.

We're just true, we're just true to Steelers.

- It's a lot of traditional along with the mills, the team, the Steeler seventies dynasty.

You can't compare that baby.

- Here you Steelers, here you go.

- [Narrator] Steeler fans are a hard act to follow, especially in years when we win the Super Bowl.

So maybe it's best just to ponder one final time, the big question, what makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh?

- Do you want me to tell him?

- Go right ahead.

- It's everything, it's just the whole aura of it.

- I think there's not a simple answer.

I think it's a combination of history and heritage and topography and hills and rivers.

- Out of all the places that I've lived in, I'm not just saying this for your benefit, this is the most wonderful place I've ever lived.

- It's a miracle that things happen the way they do, but Pittsburgh is a unique town.

- So it's really just the collection of amenities and the people and the fact that you can be part of it.

It's very accessible.

- People have stayed here and kids have come back.

Wish my kids would come back.

- My sister lives in Detroit and she should come back to Pittsburgh too.

- I don't think there's anything that can compare to being here, honestly.

- It's the right size.

The people here are wonderful.

I love everything about Pittsburgh.

I mean, what you ever looking for, you can find in Pittsburgh, and many times in the (indistinct) prizes.

(laughing) - It's hard to say, we just love it here.

- [Narrator] There's obviously no real answer except maybe a combination of all these things and countless more.

It's just a city worth celebrating.

- This home.

Everybody loves home.

(lively music) - [Steelers Fan] This is not on right now, right?

- [Steelers Fan] Yes.

- Oh no it's not, is it?

- [Brian] One girl in particular stands on the corner of the boat before every game?

- Yeah, we were on your program once.

We were on Holy Pittsburgh.

You did our wedding.

- Leans over to the side and says get her done.

Get her done you dirty dog.

- [Resident] We have a nice TV too, we'd rather be here.

(laughing) - What is it?

- It's a Sony.

- No.

(laughing) - What makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh?

(speaking indistinctly) - Not but a fun view.

(people chattering) (lively music) (laughing) - We're not a good interviewee, are we?

(laughing) - So if you thought about it, I mean, what makes Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh?

- Oh, please don't ask me again.

(laughing) - I'm so sorry that last time.

- This is all on tape, alright.

(cool music) - [Announcer] Major funding for What Makes Pittsburgh Pittsburgh was provided by the Buhl Foundation serving Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1927.

Additional funding was provided by Nova Chemicals producing plastics and chemicals essential to everyday life.