Wrlenrllkkom tog Pitetsbkrrh!

We all know Pittsburgh is a very idiosyncratic little city. We're generally pretty proud of the little things that make us seem absolutely bizarre to those outside our little valley in the mountains, like the bizarre post-German vernacular that a lot of our residents, even those without a drop of German blood, vomit on a daily basis. I guess that's why we haven't bothered to correct the blinking light on top of the Grant building. We love too much to bask in the glory of our own imperfection (and really, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just what we do.) to take something so hilariously incorrect and make it right. If we took ourselves that seriously, we might start looking at some of those bigger cities with good mass transit and populations over a million and get jealous. And who wants to be jealous? Better to be the awkward fat kid who's 100% comfortable with exactly who he is. We rock the awkward fat kid style.

Anyway, what's wrong with the Grant building? Unless you paid a lot of attention in Boy Scouts (or to the Post-Gazette,) it's probably never occurred to you at all, but there's a building in the Pittsburgh skyline (admittedly not even one of the principal ones) that has a little light atop it that blinks in morse code.

It's that one.

When it was being designed, it was common for a building in a given city's skyline to spell out the city's name in morse code. Back before fancy things like GPS, aviators needed a means of having some idea where they were. And they couldn't just GIS the city from their iPhone and find out "Oh, that one looks like Pittsburgh!" So ideally, this light at the top of the Grant building would slowly spell out "P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H" to aid the lost flyboy.

But like so many other things here, it's just not quite right. Nobody knows exactly when it failed to spell the right word, but at some point the beacon started mistakenly informing folks that they're in the city of "Pitetsbkrrh." Say it out loud a few times! PITETSBKRRH. It's fun.

I think other cities should follow suit. Soon you could fly over Sean Fritskrrrhsiscogh or Hkrroustbrn or Karnsks Citrrrhy. Cleveland might even change theirs to "Pittsburgh" just to give itself a self-esteem boost.