I met a cute queer boy from Pittsburgh, and he informed me that the Pittsburgh displayed in Queer As Folk does not exist...

i have one word for you: liketheark

I like Pittsburgh. It feels friendly and unpretentious. The trans community is small, I think, but welcoming the one time I was there.

you should talk to jess promdress: her lj name is jess_s.

so funny to just now find you on here! such a small world...and always connected by lj!

want to be online friends?

p.s. this is jess p.

i second that. liketheark.

i hope you get the job!

don't know about pittsburgh, but i wanted to say hi and that it turns out that dc has a very decent trans community. we've been here for a little over 3 months. drake is up to her ears in law school. good luck with the job search. -beau

hey dean,
We've crossed paths several times at Wesleyan and in New York, but I have no idea if you'd remember me. I worked at UJC's Mental Health Project for a while, and am now at Legal Aid. Anyway, I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, and love the city. There are queers there, though it's good to remember that Pittsburgh is a very *small* city. It's 1/3 Catholic, strong union base. A big emphasis on ethnic neighborhoods, Polish Hill really being v. Polish, etc. Very segregated. I'm unclear as to what work is going on that is radical. The Thomas Merton Center had a queer project going on http://www.thomasmertoncenter.org/RESYST/ but it fizzled out, as far as I know. jess_s could give you updates from someone who knows more current things. My father won some big award from the Women in the Law Committee of the bar association, and I don't think he's particularly radical, so...eh. Oh! My favorite Pgh queer thing is Persad, the mental health place. They provide sliding scale mental health services to LGBT communities and our families. It is because of Persad that I made it through high school. If I ever go back to Pgh, it will be to work with/for them.

zach,
thanks so much for your thoughts on the city. i really liked it. i met with some activists this morning in pittsburgh who gave me a ton of information and generously answered my zillions of questions about what is going on there. the things i loved about pittsburgh were:
1) beautiful: water, bridges, old brick, bike and pedestrian friendly, not sprawl-looking, lots of cute neighborhoods with interesting differences
2) cost of living is so low...more opportunities to redistribute wealth, easier to come up with resources/space for activism/art
3) social justice infrastructure: the thomas merton center, the people who do bike recycling, the sprout fund, Persad, the lgbt center--its seems like there is some good backbone stuff for activism, good ways to connect with others for new projects.

i also really liked talking to my friends this morning and feeling like there is a lot of great stuff to be done in pittburgh--especially things to create radical anti-racist and prison abolitionist queer/trans social and political life. its fun to think of being able to be part of getting stuff off the ground that is needed there. there was definitely a lack of queer stuff on the thomas merton center events calendar, and i got the sense from the people i met with that if we tried to pull some events and spaces and reading groups together, people would come and it could have a big impact.

i guess this leaves me with a certain kind of dilemma. i mean, i don't have any job offers yet so there isn't a real dilemma, but in thinking about the places where i had callback interviews: seattle, LA, SF, pittsburgh, i am left with some big questions about where i want to live. i've always wanted to live in SF. i feel like its the most supportive place for my gender in the US. there are a lot of freaky queer trans people there, there is a lot more trans work that has been done there, with greater success, than anywhere so it feels easier to do everything from find a doctor to get a haircut. i always have this nagging question, though. should i live somewhere like that, where there are a lot of awesome people doing work that is similar or related to work i do, who i love to hang out with and be around and who understand me and use the right pronoun for me and are engaged in activly thinking through anti-racist, anti-poverty gender liberation? or should i be in places where the kind of work i want to do might have more impact, needs start up energy, could help to build a radical movement that has more local nodes in places not on the coasts, etc? i look at a place like pittsburgh with its deep labor history, gentrification issues, and other elements and i can imagine how amazing it would be to work with activists there on projects ranging from a trans night at a bar to a legal services clinic for low-income queer and trans people.

i feel like this whole process of thinking about where to move is actually a process of asking myself what my life is for. is it to be near people i love? to write more things and teach? to do radical activist projects? to develop my personal and spiritual health? obviously its for all those things but those things come in different combinations in every place i can think of. i'll probably end up turning to some kind of fortune-telling to figure it out.

anyway, thanks for the info! i'll let you know what happens.