Rov_Scam
2d ago
People really need to quit with the whole "land acknowledgment" thing. According to a professor friend of mine, it's fairly common in the world of academia for things like panel discussions to open with them. Because they're not giving the land back, it's almost like they're rubbing their faces in it. It reminds me of the part in the Always Sunny in Philadelphia Christmas special where Mac learns that all his childhood Christmas gifts were stolen, so they take his robot toy to one of his old friends to apologize, but they don't give it back. And he says "so you brought something that you stole from me just to show it to me?"
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait
For a while I've wanted to do a comprehensive survey of a city to examine it in terms of urbanism and the principles of what make a place a good place to live. In particular, I want to examine what makes certain places "trendy", and what causes some neighborhoods to gentrify while others stagnate or even decline. Most examinations of the urban environment are merely case-studies of a few neighborhoods that have seen change in the past several decades, for better or worse. But I think that those kinds of studies, while instructive, miss the big picture. Most cities are composed of dozens of neighborhoods, each with its own story and its own potential, and most are simply forgotten about. I've selected Pittsburgh for this exercise, for the simple reason that I live here and can talk about it as an insider rather than someone relying on news reports. You can talk statistics until the end of time, but the only way to properly evaluate a place is if you have a pulse on what the common perception of it is from those who are familiar with it. Before I get to the neighborhoods themselves, though, I want to give some preliminary information about the city so those who are unfamiliar (i.e. almost everyone here) can get the view from 10,000 feet. It also gives me the opportunity to present a few general themes that I've noticed during the months I spent researching this project. Note to mods: A lot of this survey will touch on a number of culture war items like crime, homelessness, housing, density, traffic patterns, etc. For that reason, I'm posting this in the culture war thread for now. That being said, there will be large sections where I look at nondescript parts of the city where I expect the discussion to be more anodyne, and I don't want to be hogging the bandwidth of this thread, especially in the unlikely event that I can crank out more than one of these per week. I can't really anticipate in advance what's most appropriate where, but I'd prefer to post these as stand-alone threads once I get past this initial post. If the mods have a preference for where I post these, I'll adhere to that.
I. The Setting Pittsburgh exists in a kind of no-man's land. It's technically in the Northeast, but people from New York, Philadelphia, and the like insist that it's actually more Midwestern. They may have a point; we're six hours from the nearest ocean, and the Appalachian Mountains are a significant barrier to transportation and development. No megalopolis will ever develop between Pittsburgh and Philly, and we're much closer to places like Cleveland and Columbus. We're also not assholes. That being said, nobody here thinks of themself as Midwestern. First, it's possibly the least flat major city in the US. Second, most Midwestern cities act as quasi-satellites of Chicago in the way that Pittsburgh simply doesn't. Additionally, being in the same state as Philadelphia makes us much closer politically and economically to that area than we are to places that may be closer geographically. Some people try to split the difference and say that Pittsburgh is an Appalachian city, but this isn't entirely correct, either; Pittsburgh is at the northern end of what can plausibly be called Appalachia, and is a world away from the culture of places like East Tennessee. There are close ties to West Virginia, but these are more due to proximity than anything else; for most of that state, Pittsburgh is the closest major city of any significance, which is reflected in things like sports team affiliation. And the Northern Panhandle (and associated part of Ohio) is practically an exurb of Pittsburgh, with a similar development pattern around heavy industry. But for the most part, West Virginia swings toward us rather than us swinging toward them.
The physical landscape can best be described as extremely hilly. For reference, I describe a "hill" as any eminence that rises less than about 700–1000 feet above the surrounding valley, with anything in that range or higher being a mountain. The area is built on a plateau that has been heavily dissected by erosion. Relief is low to moderate, ranging from about 200 feet in upland areas to 400 feet in the river valleys. The natural history results in an area where the hilltops are all roughly the same height, about 1200–1300 feet above sea level, while the valleys range from a low of 715 feet at the point to about 900–1000 feet at the headwaters of the streams. And there are streams everywhere. The most prominent ones are the three rivers (the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio), but there are innumerable creeks that spiderweb across the landscape. The upshot is that flat land is rare around here, and traditional patterns of urban development are difficult to impossible. Most people live on hillsides since the little flat land available is often in floodplains. Roads are windy and difficult to navigate; you may miss a turn and think that if you make the next turn you'll eventually wind up where you want to be. Instead, you find yourself winding down a long hill and end up in one of three places: In view of Downtown from an angle you've never seen before, at the junction with a state highway whose number you've never heard of, or in West Virginia.
What this means for the urban environment is that neighborhoods are more distinct than they are in other cities. While flat cities have neighborhoods that blend into one another seamlessly, Pittsburgh's are often clearly delineated, with obvious boundaries. The city is defined by its topography. One advantage of this is that a lot of the land is simply too steep to be buildable, even taking into consideration that half the houses are already built on land that one would presume is too steep to be buildable. The result is a lot of green space. Another advantage is that it means you get views like this from ground level. The actual green space itself is typical of a temperate deciduous forest, but with a couple of caveats — there's plenty of red maple, sugar maple, red oak, white oak, black cherry, black walnut, and other similar species, but not as much beech as you'd see in areas further north, and not as much hickory as you'd see in areas further south. There are conifers but most of them are planted landscaping trees. White pine and eastern hemlock are native to the area, but they're much more common in the mountains to the east. I should also note that the topography means that there are some weird corners of the city that have an almost backwoods hillbilly feel.
II. The Region
I'd describe the larger region as a series of concentric rings. First is the city proper, which is small for a city of its size. While that seems like a tautology, what I mean is that the actual city limits are, well, limited, giving the city itself a proportionately low population compared to the total metro area. This is because PA state law changes in the early 20th century made it difficult for the city to annex additional territory. The result is that the boundaries were fixed relatively early in the era when America was urbanizing rapidly, and only sporadic additions were made thereafter. The next ring would be what I call the urban core. This is the area where the density and age of the housing gives what are technically suburbs a more urban feel than traditional suburbs; in many cases, these suburbs feel more urban than the later-developed parts of the city proper. These would include typical inner-ring streetcar suburbs, though Pittsburgh has fewer of these than most cities of its size. Most of the areas thus described are towns that developed as the result of industrial concerns, or suburbs of such towns. These are most prominent to the city's immediate east, and also include the innumerable river towns in the river valleys. These towns extend along the rivers for a considerable distance, but there's an area close to the city where they form an unbroken geographic mass. If not for limitations on expansion, they would likely be part of the city itself.
Next, we obviously have the true suburbs, by which I mean areas that developed after World War II but still revolve around Pittsburgh more than a regional satellite. Then we have the exurbs, which I define as areas that are developed, but more sporadically, and are often revolve around a satellite county seat rather than Pittsburgh itself. This is the area where couples looking for an extended date will get a hotel in the city for the weekend (My family makes fun of my brother for doing this because he lives in one of these areas but always insists that he's close. Nevermind that it would be ridiculous for any of us to get a hotel room in Pittsburgh if we weren't planning on getting seriously wasted.) Finally, we have the much broader greater co-prosperity sphere, which is roughly everywhere that falls within Pittsburgh's general influence, be it rooting for sports teams to being the destination when you need to go to a hospital that isn't crappy.
III. History I'll try to make this as quick as possible, since there are obviously better, more comprehensive sources for people who want more than a cursory review. The city was ostensibly founded when the British drove out the French during the French and Indian War and established Fort Pitt. The war began largely as a contest between the British and the French for control over the Ohio Valley, a vital link between the interior northeast and the Mississippi River. The site of Pittsburgh was particularly strategic, as it was at the confluence of two navigable rivers. The surrounding hills were rich in coal; combine this with the favorable river network, and the location was perfect for the nation's burgeoning iron and steel industry. This new wave of prosperity attracted waves of immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe, who later came to define the region. A number of satellite industries developed as well, including glass (PPG), aluminum (Alcoa), chemicals (Koppers, PPG), electrical products (Westinghouse), natural gas (EQT), etc. Pittsburgh's place as an industrial powerhouse continued until the triple whammy of the energy crisis, inflation, and the Reagan recession sparked a wave of deindustrialization that turned America's Rhineland into the Rust Belt. By the '90s the region was bleeding jobs, and much of the working-age population decamped for the Sun Belt. The outright population loss has stabilized in recent years, but the region is still slowly losing population.
The odd thing about this, though, is that in 1985, at what should have been the city's nadir, it started ranking high on the "liveability" lists that were becoming popular. The city had been making a concerted effort to reduce pollution since the '50s, and by the early 2000s it had become a bit of a trendy place to live. I don't want to speculate too much on why this is, but I think there are a few factors at play. First, the crime is low for a rust belt city; there aren't too many really bad areas, and the ones that exist are small and isolated. What this means is that there is a certain freedom of movement that you don't have in other Rust Belt cities like Cleveland or Detroit with large swathes of ghetto. Even in the worst areas, the only time you might find yourself in trouble is if you visit one both at night and on foot. Even the worst areas are fine to walk around in the daytime and I wouldn't worry about driving through anywhere, which is more than I can say about friends of mine's experiences in Cleveland or Chicago. Second, the housing stock is more East Coast than Midwest. Many of the neighborhoods have architectural character, as opposed to other Rust Belt cities that are nothing but rows of nearly identical derelict frame houses (though we have plenty of those, too). Third, the housing is actually affordable. People have been bitching in recent years about significant price increases, but it's still nowhere near the level the major East Coast cities or the trendy western cities. Years ago I met a girl who moved here from New York because she wanted to live in a brick row house but it was simply unattainable where she was. She looked at Baltimore and Philadelphia, which are true row house cities, but the ones she could afford were all in the endless expanses of ghetto. In Pittsburgh, meanwhile, you could snatch a renovated nee in a good area up for well under $200k, and rehabs were being sold for under $50k. You aren't getting them for anywhere near that now, but $500k gets you a nice house in the city, and if you want to do the suburbs you pretty much have your pick of 4BR 2000 square foot homes in excellent school districts. Finally, the outdoor recreation is better than you're going to get in a city of comparable size or larger anywhere east of Denver, and the hotspots don't get the crowds that the western areas do. In the Northeast you have to drive a lot father to get anywhere, and the places are busier. In the Midwest the cities are surrounded by corn, and the areas worth visiting are few and far between. In Pittsburgh, the mountains are only about an hour away, and the general area is hilly enough and forested enough that a typical county park has better hiking than anything within driving distance of Chicago. The mountain biking and whitewater are nonpareil, and that's still a secret to most locals.
I've gone a bit off track here, but I want to make one general observation that I've noticed when studying the history of the city: Everything changes all the time, and there are no meta-narratives. The first statement may seem obvious, but when discussing urban dynamics, people often act like there was some golden era where everything was in stasis, and if we're still in that era then any change is bad and disruptive, and if we're not in that era then any change should be aiming to get back to that era. The meta-narrative is simpler: American cities developed in the 19th century, and grew rapidly during the industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was largely due to high immigration. Few had cars, so people needed to live close to where they worked, and public transit networks were robust. Blacks lived in segregated neighborhoods, and this was a problem. After The War, people started moving to the suburbs, a process which was hasted by not wanting to live alongside black people, who were gradually getting better access to housing. This white-flight drained cities of their economic base, and the new suburban commuters demanded better car access to the city core. Once decent neighborhoods were turning into black ghettos. The response of municipal leaders was to engage in a number of ill-advised "urban renewal" projects that which were blatant attempts to lure white people back into the city by resegregating the blacks into housing projects so they could build white elephant projects and superhighways. Then in the 90s hipsters were invented and they looked longingly at the urban lifestyle. Hip artist types moved into ghettos because they liked the old architecture, could afford the rent, and were too cool racially to be concerned about black crime. Some of them opened small businesses and white people started visiting these businesses, and the neighborhood became a cool place to live. By 2010, though, that neighborhood was expensive and all the cool spots were replaced by tony bars and chain stores and all the bohemes had to find another neighborhood. Meanwhile, the poor blacks who lived here before the hipsters showed up started complaining about being displaced from their homes, and now the same hipsters who "gentrified" the neighborhood are concerned about the effects of reinvestment on long-time residents.
This narrative probably fits somewhere, but the reality is often more complicated. One common refrain I heard from older people in the '90s was "neighborhood x used to be a nice place to live and now it's a terrible slum". Usually, the old person in question was the child of an immigrant who grew up in the neighborhood but decamped to the suburbs in the '50s. She'd return regularly to visit her parents, and watch what she saw as the decline of the neighborhood firsthand. The problem with this is that most of the neighborhoods I heard people talk about like this growing up were always slums. The only thing that changed about them was that they got blacker and don't have the business districts that they once did. Second, in Pittsburgh at least, the changing demographics in some neighborhoods is more in relative terms than in absolute ones. While some places did see an increase in the black population in the second half of the 20th century, most places did not. Before World War 2, Pittsburgh only had one truly black neighborhood, and even that was more diverse than one would expect. Blacks normally lived in racially mixed neighborhoods alongside Italians, Poles, Jews, etc. of similar economic standing. The changing demographics were oftentimes caused more by whites leaving than blacks moving in. It's also worth noting that some areas went downhill long before any of the factors cited in the meta-narrative really kicked in. People tend to be ignorant of urban dynamics in the first half of the 20th Century, which is viewed as this juggernaut of urban growth. No one considers that a neighborhood might have peaked in 1910 and gone into decline thereafter, because the meta-narrative doesn't allow for it. But in Pittsburgh, I see these sorts of things time and time again.
IV. The Housing Stock I mentioned housing stock in the last section, but I want to go into a bit more detail here because it's important when evaluating a neighborhood's potential for future growth. When Pittsburgh was first settled, most of the housing was simple frame stock. Most of this is gone, but, contrary to what one might think, the little that's left isn't particularly desirable. These houses tend to be small and in bad condition, essentially old farmhouses from when most of the current city was rural. Later in the 19th century, brick row houses were built in the neighborhoods that were relatively flat lowlands. Almost every row house neighborhood in the city is desirable, as these neighborhoods have a dense, urban feel. It should be noted, though, that through most of the 20th century this was housing for poor people, as most middle-class and above felt these were outdated.
Also from around this time is the Pittsburgh mill house. These are similar to what you'd find in most Rust Belt cities, and are proof that not all old housing has "character". These were houses built on the cheap and have often been extensively remuddled to keep them habitable. Most of these in the city aren’t exactly true mill houses, as they weren’t built by steel companies as employee housing, but most 19th and early 20th century frame houses fit the same mold. These were mostly built on hillsides and hilltops where building row houses was impractical. Not a particularly desirable style.
Combining the two is the frame row. These were built during a period in the early 20th Century when the area was experiencing a brick shortage. They aren't as desirable as brick rows but still have more cachet than mill houses, although the purpose for which they were built is similar. Most of these were remuddled at some point (by this I mean things like plaster walls torn out in favor of wood paneling and drop ceilings, window frames modified to fit different sizes, wood siding replaced with aluminum siding or Inselbric, awnings, etc.). By the 1920s and 1930s, the classic streetcar suburban style took over. These include things like foursquares and bungalows, the kind of stuff you see in old Sears catalogs. The brick shortage had ended by this period and the houses were larger and better-appointed, making them popular for middle-class areas. The remuddling on these was limited, and they’re highly desirable. After the war, more suburban styles took over, though by this point the city limits were mostly built-out so they aren’t as common as other styles. Most of the suburban stuff was built during the first decade after the war in odd parts of the city that were too isolated to have been developed earlier, though a fair deal was built in neighborhoods that were rapidly declining into ghetto in an attempt at stabilization. There’s nothing wrong with these houses in and of themselves, but they aren’t particularly desirable, as this is exactly the kind of development urbanists hate most.
There are obviously other styles, but the rest of the housing is either multi-family or infill housing that may or may not have been built with consideration given to the vibe of the existing neighborhood. The city has gotten better in recent years about building new houses to match what’s already there, but there are plenty of hideous miscues out there.
V. Neighborhood Dynamics
Pittsburgh is roughly divided into four geographic quadrants, based on the points of the compass. The East End roughly includes anything between the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, and is where most of the trendy neighborhoods are. The North Side is anything north of the Allegheny; the neighborhoods in the flat plain along the river are mostly desirable, if less obnoxiously trendy. The South Hills are roughly everything south of the Monongahela; most of it isn’t trendy at all. The West End is everything south of the Ohio, and is beyond not trendy; it’s basically terra incognita to most Pittsburghers, as the neighborhoods are boring and obscure.
Pittsburgh officially recognizes 90 distinct neighborhoods, but the official geography isn’t entirely accurate. First, the official boundaries are based on census tracts that don’t always line up neatly with a neighborhood’s generally-accepted boundaries. Second, there are a number of bogus or semi-bogus neighborhood designations. Large neighborhoods are often split up into smaller geographic divisions (e.g. North Haverbrook, South Haverbrook, etc.) that may or may not line up with the way people actually talk. Conversely, some neighborhoods include areas that everyone treats as distinct neighborhoods but are officially unrecognized. Some neighborhoods had their names changed because the residents didn’t want to be associated with a declining part of the neighborhood; in some cases these new names caught on but other times they didn’t. For this project, I will be discussing the neighborhoods based on what makes sense to me based on having lived here all my life and knowing how people actually treat the matter. When necessary, I will use historic designations that don’t necessarily match up with the official maps, but this is rare. I will always make reference to the official designations to avoid confusion for those following along at home.
As I was examining the neighborhoods in detail in preparation for this project, a few things jumped out at me with regard to gentrification, stability, and decline. First, a gentrifying neighborhood needs a relatively intact business district. This could be nothing more than boarded up storefronts, but the physical structures need to be there; there has to be some indication that the place has potential, and it’s much easier for businesses to move in when they don’t have to build. Some depressed areas lost practically their entire business districts to blight, while others never really had a business district to begin with. This second scenario decreases the chances of gentrification even further, as there is often no logical place to even put a business district. The presence of a business district is important for two reasons. First, walkability is a huge selling point for people who want to live in a city as opposed to suburbs, and an area that’s dense but unwalkable is the worst of both worlds. Second, neglected neighborhoods don’t get “on the map”, so to speak, unless there’s something to draw in outsiders. Related to the above, there are two general kinds of businesses that can occupy a business district. The first are what I call Functional Businesses — grocery stores, dry cleaners, corner bars, banks, professional offices, hardware stores, etc. The second are Destination Businesses — restaurants, breweries, boutiques, trendy bars, specialty stores, performance venues, and other miscellaneous stuff that will actually draw people in from outside the neighborhood. There's obviously a continuum here, as, for example, a coffee shop could be either depending on how much it distinguishes itself, but you get the idea. Both are essential for a neighborhood to fully take off. There are plenty of areas with perfectly functional business districts that don’t get a second look because there’s no reason for anyone who doesn’t already live there to go there. But if a neighborhood consists exclusively of destination businesses then it will feel more like a tourist area than a real neighborhood; it’s a hard sell for someone to move to a place where they can get artisanal vinegar but not a can of baked beans. Often, the presence of a robust functional business district will stymie a neighborhood’s potential for gentrification. One thing I’ve noticed is that destination businesses rarely replace functional businesses, usually moving into abandoned storefronts or replacing other destination businesses. Functional businesses just sort of exist and don’t move out until the neighborhood has declined past the point of no return.
As I mentioned in the previous section, housing stock is another major contributor to gentrification potential. Urban pioneers have to look at a neglected neighborhood and see the potential to return to a faded glory. Houses that are worth restoring, not dumps that should have been torn down ages ago. The one exception to this is the spillover factor; if a neighborhood with bad housing stock is close to other gentrified neighborhoods that have great amenities but have become too expensive, nearby neighborhoods will get a boost from this, especially if they have intact business districts.
On the other side of the equation, decline follows displacement. The story of declining neighborhoods in Pittsburgh follows a pattern. First, in the 1950s and 1960s, civic visionaries sought to clear slums by replacing them with ambitious public works projects. Forced out of their homes, the residents of these slums needed somewhere to go, and moved to working class neighborhoods that were already in a state of instability, if not minor decline. (It should be noted that slum clearance was much rarer in Pittsburgh than in other cities, though some wounds still run deep). More recently, the city has demolished public housing projects that had become crime-ridden hellholes, but their problems only spilled out into low-rent, working class neighborhoods. What results is a game of whack-a-mole, where revitalization of one area simply leads to the decline of another. That’s why I’ve been less critical of low-income set-asides than I was in the past. I used to be totally free market on the housing issue, but it seems like an inflexible standard only ensures that poverty will remain concentrated, which does little to improve the situation of the poor. Section 8 was supposed to address this problem by getting people out of public housing hellholes and into regular neighborhoods, but it’s only worth it for slumlords in declining areas to accept the vouchers, and the result is that entire neighborhoods go Section 8. I grant that it’s better than things were previously, but I think things could be better still if we agreed that every neighborhood was going to subsidize the housing of a certain number of poor people. That way we can at least make it so the honest, hard working people don’t suffer unnecessarily, and the kids grow up in a more positive social environment. Maybe I’m being too idealistic, but it seems better than any of the existing alternatives.
Finally, a brief note on stability. Stable middle-class or working-class areas tend to be boring areas that are too far away from bad areas for any spillover or displacement to affect them. There may be some long-term factors that may lead to their eventual demise, but there are no obvious causes for concern. The flip side is that as much as some of these places have been touted as the next big thing, the same factors that keep them from going down also keep them from going up. One factor playing into this is the number of owner-occupied houses and long-term rentals. New residents, whatever their economic condition, simply can’t move into a neighborhood if there are few rentals and little turnover in ownership.
VI. The Neighborhood Grading Rubric
The initial goal for this project was to discuss what the future holds for these neighborhoods, and to discuss special considerations that factor into the whole thing (actually, it will mostly be about special considerations, at least for the big neighborhoods). One thing that’s important to this exercise is to discuss where the neighborhoods are at now. I initially developed a complex classification system, then scrapped it because it was too complicated and still didn’t explain everything. But as I got to thinking about it, I decided that some sort of grading was necessary to put things in proper perspective rather than rely on qualitative description. So I developed a much simpler rubric that should catch everything. I would note that the below isn’t to be construed as a ranked desirability ranking, although it will be made apparent that some of the categories only describe undesirable areas.
Upper Middle Class: This includes upper class as well, but truly upper class areas are rare enough to make this a distinction without a difference. These are highly desirable but may have gone past the point of trendiness to the point of blandness (though not necessarily). These include places where gentrification reached the point where it’s all chain stores, but also places that never really gentrified because they were always nice.
Gentrifying: These are the hotspots that everyone knows about. What separates them from the upper middle class areas, even if they are more expensive, is a sense of dynamism and a raffish air. Students and bohemian types still live here. There may be older working class homeowners who never left, and poor renters who haven’t been forced out yet. There may still be a few rehabs for sale at somewhat decent prices. Most of the businesses are locally owned, and it probably still has a functional business district from the old days.
Early Gentrification: This is the point where a neighborhood starts making the transition from working-class or poor to middle-class or trendy, but isn’t quite there yet. Most of the businesses are functional, but there are a few cool places for those in the know. The hipsters are starting to move in. People are buying derelict houses at rock-bottom prices and fixing them up. But the normies don’t know about it yet; tell most suburbanites you’re going to a bar there and they either think you’re going to get your wallet stolen or wonder why you want to hang around old people. The neighborhood is still rough around the edges, and may still have a decent amount of crime and a high minority population. It probably still looks rather shabby. It’s perfectly safe for those with street smarts, but it’s still sketchy enough that you wouldn’t recommend it to tourists.
Stable: Not necessarily boring, but not going anywhere. There’s probably a good functional business district, but few destination businesses. Every once in a while one of the destination businesses might become popular enough that people think the whole neighborhood is going to go off, but it never seems to happen. And that’s if it’s lucky. The upside, though, is it’s very safe, and affordable to buy here. This also includes middle-class black areas that suburban whites assume are hood but are actually rather quiet.
Early Decline: These are the neighborhoods that just don’t seem like they used to. Crime is up, property values are down, and the houses are starting to get unkempt. Most of the long-term residents are elderly, and the newer residents are transients who are of a distinctly different class than the elderly ones. They may be blacks who were displaced from nearby ghettoes, or they may be white trash. There’s increasingly conspicuous drug activity, but no gangs yet. There still may be a functional business district, but there is rarely anything destination, maybe an old neighborhood institution that is still hanging on. These are perfectly fine to rent in if you don’t mind a little excitement in your life, since they’re still relatively safe for normal people, but they aren’t places you want to commit to.
Rapid Decline: This is the point where gang activity has become a problem, and gunshots are no longer a rare occurrence. If there was a white working class here they’re now dead and gone, and if there was a black middle class they’re very old. Residential sections are starting to see blight and abandoned houses. There’s still probably a reasonably intact business district, but it’s entirely functional at this point and mostly caters to stereotypical ghetto businesses. It is, however, still well populated.
Ghetto: A neighborhood that has bottomed out; it can’t get any worse than this unless it disappears entirely, which seems almost inevitable at this point. Few intact blocks remain. If there’s any business district left it’s scattered remnants (though there’s almost always some kind of newsstand). There’s probably gang activity, but there’s little territory worth defending. The atmosphere is desolate and bleak, as the remaining residents are only here because there’s nowhere else to go. Crime, while still a problem, is probably lower here than one would think, simply because there aren’t too many people here to be criminals, and equally few available victims.
The below ones are special cases that don’t fit into the above continuum particularly well.
Deceptively Safe: These are areas that look sketchy as hell but are actually decent places to live. They are usually poor neighborhoods where the properties are in somewhat shabby condition but are occupied. Unique to Pittsburgh (probably), this also includes places that look like part of West Virginia was transported into the middle of the city. These are mostly very small micro-neighborhoods that are poor but just don’t have the population or foot traffic to support any serious crime. Buy low, sell low.
Projects: Pittsburgh has a few “project neighborhoods” that only really exist because it built most of its public housing in odd places where nobody wanted to build before. Most of these projects don’t exist anymore, so saying these are invariably bad areas is a misnomer, especially since one of the few remaining projects is a senior citizen high rise. Most of these are an odd mix of different uses that merit individual treatment.
Student Areas: Transient population, unmaintained properties, exorbitant rent for what you get, multiple unrelated people living together common, noise, public drunkenness, vandalism — everything a real ghetto has except violent crime and gang activity. This doesn’t describe all student areas, but areas where the percentage of students reaches a certain threshold have a much different dynamic than regular neighborhoods. First, these areas are relatively safe considering how dysfunctional they are in every other respect, and second, while the properties are in poor condition, there is little blight or abandonment because the slumlords know they have a captive audience. Also, the presence of a university usually means that the area sees a lot of outside visitors so more destination businesses develop, and there are plenty of places catering to students. Altogether a unique dynamic, though no one not in college would even consider living here.
That’s it for the preliminaries, stay tuned for Part I, where I discuss Downtown and the other “tourist areas” in its vicinity.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
Mass shootings in the popular conscience mean shootings where random innocent people are targeted either for unknown reasons or because someone doesn't like a particular group. These were all shootings where specific people were targeted for specific reasons, probably drug-related. These stories usually get decent local coverage but some gang beef in Memphis isn't likely to concern people a thousand miles away like it would if the same guy shot the same people at a shopping mall for no reason.
Journalists had no issue pointing out when a police officer who allegedly did something abusive is White.
Because when gangbangers shoot other gangbangers it's expected. If the shooters are caught, they invariably go to prison. It isn't complicated. Cops are supposed to be there to protect the public, and in a society where accused criminals have rights, we don't excuse police shootings just because the victim was probably a piece of shit. We expect the police to have better judgment and self-control than the criminals. When someone is killed while in police custody it raises questions about the proper role of police and use of police force that simply doesn't come into play when one random civilian murders another random civilian. Pointing out black-on-black crime in response to police violence is an exercise in futility because it ignores the dilemma that people in violent neighborhoods face — they don't want to deal with criminals on the streets, but it's hard for them to trust the police when they treat everyone like criminals.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
If you're on a private tracker it's a different story. I haven't been on a private tracker since the days of what.cd, and I haven't felt the need to get on one since you can find pretty much anything on Soulseek or rutracker (though if you've got an invite I won't turn it down). As for your system, that's enough for it to be worth the difference in quality. Generally, if you have a "real stereo" that has a separate receiver and speakers you're there. If you've done any research into your purchases then you're probably chasing rainbows if you spend more than a few thousand on a system. For full disclosure, my system consists of a few hand-selected pieces I bought used about a decade ago and I spent less than a grand on it if you exclude the amount I spent on stuff for vinyl.
As for remasters, the rules of thumb are that audiophile remasters by record companies like Mobile Fidelity, DCC, Audio Fidelity, and Analogue Productions are probably going to be the best, though some of the earlier MoFi stuff may be questionable (though not bad, just not the best). SACD releases are usually good, with a few exceptions, but it's all because of the mastering, not the bogus "hi-res" designation. For records that were originally released between the mid 70s and the mid 90s, the first CD edition is usually the best. This was the era when most of the questionable recording practices from years prior had been dispensed with and before the loudness wars started. If the record was originally released before the mid 70s, then the quality of the source tapes used comes into play in a much bigger way. Early releases may have used inferior tapes, and later releases may have been casualties of no-noise and the loudness wars. For newer stuff the options are limited, and there is often only one mastering available, and if there is more than one it is either an audiophile release or isn't any different in quality than the original CD. There are exceptions, of course, and the best course of action is usually to search the Steve Hoffman forums for the consensus on what the best release is, just be forewarned that if Steve mastered any of those albums then that version will always be the consensus best version, though not without reason (he has a very warm style of mastering that I absolutely love, but he can be a bit smug about his abilities and there's some backlash online). If you're wondering about any releases from the classic rock canon, DM me and I can tell you, or just give you my Soulseek handle so you can look me up and grab it yourself.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
Yes. Almost compulsively. I like being able to have my music organized the way I like it, and to be able to listen to it on my own terms. If I have financial hardship in the future I don't have to give up music entirely because I can't justify the cost of a subscription to a streaming service. While that isn't likely to happen, I generally don't trust the subscription model as a practical matter (though I admit this has nothing to do with why I don't use a streaming service). We kind of take it for granted that these services have a fairly representative collection of the entire musical corpus, in the way video streaming doesn't, but that's being held together by rights agreements that may or may not hold in the future. As we've seen with video streaming, the motivations of the streaming services and the content producers aren't necessarily symbiotic — Netflix and Amazon want to produce their own original content, while NBC and Disney want to run their own platforms. This hasn't happened in the music industry yet, but Spotify's exclusive contract with Rogan might portend the future. What happens when Taylor Swift signs an exclusive contract with Apple Music or whoever? What happens when Universal music decides to stop licensing their catalog and make it exclusively available on their own service? What happens when half of an artists discography is on one service and half of it on another, because different rights holders own different albums? Since you don't own the music, you only own the right to listen to whatever the platform has available during the month you've paid for in the subscription. If your favorite bands bolt, then you're out of luck for the future. This has the potential to be even more annoying than with video because even if you're willing to pay for multiple services, you won't be able to make playlists as easily. I'm not saying any of this will happen, but given how cheap hard drive space is I'd be wary of dumping my entire collection I already have just to have the privilege to pay for it, and be at the mercy of whoever is hosting it.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
Well, I'm totally biased but Pittsburgh has most of the pros of the trendy cities and few of the cons. It's become a semi-trendy place to want to live if you believe Reddit, but the population isn't exactly exploding (the city population is holding steady and Allegheny County is actually losing population). It's also about double the size of Salt Lake and triple the size of Boise, and while it's similar in size to Austin, it's an older, more established city. What this means is that it has more big-city institutions than you'll find in any of those places and more of a big city feel rather than overgrown suburb (e.g. I don't think the Austin Symphony is playing for the pope any time soon).
As much as locals complain about the recent housing price increases, it's still nothing compared to the trendy cities. 500k gets you a four bedroom house in a highly desirable suburb with excellent schools. If you're paying more than that you're in a McMansion (or a mansion). And that's not just in a desirable neighborhood with good schools; that's in the most desirable area with the best schools. If you're satisfied with the former you're going to pay a lot less.
As an avid outdoorsman, the outdoor recreation is great. No, it's not as spectacular as certain areas out West, but an hour drive gets you pretty far out there and only the popular easy hikes are swamped. For example, Ohiopyle State Park is a popular area andit can be hard to find parking in town on a summer weekend. But as soon as you get away from town it's practically deserted even at the busiest times. A few years ago I was there Sunday of Memorial Day weekend up on the mountain and I saw a total of five other people, three of whom I knew. And the city is pretty hilly, with lots of wooded areas, so there's perfectly decent hiking without driving anywhere depending on where you live, though places in the city itself are going to be more crowded. The lack of spectacular views is only really a concern, though, if you're focused on "payoff hikes" that involve views. There are plenty of waterfalls, and the forests themselves are top-notch.
Getting beyond hiking and views, though, the mountains are first-class. I've mountain biked in several of the big name destinations across the country (Pisgah, the Rockies, the Western Slope, etc.), and the mountain biking in the Laurels is as good as it gets. I'll admit the skiing isn't exactly Colorado, but at least we have skiing. The real secret, though, is the whitewater. SWPA and Northern WV probably have the best whitewater anywhere in the world, and certainly the best whitewater a reasonable day trip from a major city. A lot of the Western states have more mileage, but most of it's only runnable during spring snowmelt. Here, we get enough rain that even the small stuff is runnable a few days after a heavy rain, and we have everything from Class II family floats to sketchy-as-hell steep creeks.
The population is largely comprised of people who CHOSE to be there. It's hard to quantify this, but the "vibes" between a town like this and a town that is filled with only the people who never left (think West Virginia as an extreme) are impossible to ignore if you've spent time in both.
Pittsburgh is unique in that it's a rust belt city that people actually want to move to. The declining population of the region is largely a function of the exodus in the 90s, during which an entire generation moved away. Their parents stayed, and now that generation is dying off at a faster rate than new arrivals can make up for. That being said, the declining population isn't the same as places like Cleveland or Detroit that look like bombed out shells of their former selves. There are a few ghetto areas like that, but most of the city population's decline is more due to declining household size than outright abandonment. At some point I'd like to do a survey of the region on here to evaluate its potential on a granular level, but I've got the music thing to do for now. But I'm actually dead serious when I think you should move here, because it's actually realistic and makes more financial sense than trying to pursue some pipe dream of living internationally or moving to some overly trendy city that's going to run into problems as a result of the population crush.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
I used to run a high-adventure program for the Boy Scouts, and whether or not some sourt of "Trial by fire" wilderness experience would be considered abuse would depend on the nature of the experience. There's a big difference between pushing a kid's limits and actively abusing them. If I take a kid mountain biking and he's apprehensive about riding a certain line, I'll encourage him to ride it if I think it's within his ability based on my observation of him. If I don't think he can ride it and that it's going to end in a crash I'll tell him to walk it. If he's clearly freaking out at the prospect of riding it, I'll tell him to walk it. If it's a difficult line I'll probably won't even pressure the kid into riding even if I think he can ride it; I'll just tell everyone they can walk it if they'd like. It gets more difficult when, say, you take the kid on a long bike trip with limited or no opportunity to bail. In that case it's more a question of getting them motivated enough to keep pedaling rather than putting them in a situation that could lead to injury, and making sure they have enough snacks, water, etc. so that an acute event isn't going to happen. I mean, I always have outs in case of emergency, but a kid being tired isn't an emergency unless they're obviously incapable of continuing. Usually I just slow down the pace and take more frequent breaks to keep them moving, even if it ultimately takes longer. When they complain, I just ask what they expect me to do about it, and that usually shuts them up, especially when I tell them that an evac means an ambulance ride and a trip to the hospital that will likely end their time in the program.
The key is that the adversity be time-limited, controlled, and intended to develop skills and build confidence. Telling kids who are old enough that they'll be cooking dinner one night a week so they can learn the skills necessary to be adults is a lot different than just not feeding the kids. Making sure your kids get early exposure to outdoor adventure in the hopes that it will maintain fitness and social relationships while building a lifetime hobby is different than putting the kid in situations he's clearly uncomfortable with (and that come with high risk of injury) and regularly subjecting them to death marches in the woods. Some kids are just whiners who want to stay inside and play video games all day and not do anything that's going to make them mildly short of breath, and I never had any problem trying to toughen those kids up over their complaints. But it's important that you know where the line is, and that you make sure you never get anywhere near it. If you're moving to the Alaskan wilderness because you like the outdoors and want your kids to learn self-sufficiency, I don't think that's too much of a problem, as long as you understand the limits I outlined above. I certainly wouldn't put it anywhere near the level of the kind of stuff that's on the ACE quiz.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
While that's true, they still had to be able to afford the original mortgage payment. The complaint of millennials is that they can't afford to buy a house now, not that they can technically afford to buy it now but that it's unsustainable to own it more than a few years unless they can reduce their payments. Wile some boomers certainly benefited from interest rates going down, it isn't an assumption you can make at the time of purchase. It should also be noted that this was also a time when lenders expected you to have 20–30% of the purchase price in cash at closing for a down payment. It seems like down payments now are basically a formality. I mean, you need them, but when I suggested paying the traditional 20% for my house the general opinion was "nobody pays 20% anymore".
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I think an Amber is what you're looking for. Either that or a heavier lager. I heard one bartender at a brewery years ago describe Yuengling as a "balanced" beer, so maybe you want to go in that direction? I know Yuengling doesn't have the cachet it used to have since it's available in more states and the craft beer scene is much better than it was in the early '00s when Yuengling had its heyday, but it's still a decent beer you can always go back to. It used to be all I drank, and I'm about to go to the bar and I think I might get one for old time's sake. I should disclose that I drink beer almost every day and that my daily driver is Miller High Life, so I'm not a beer snob by any stretch of the imagination.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
The reason why microbreweries pile on the IPAs is because they're the easiest to make. The bitterness hides so much that there's a large margin of error. That being said, I have some friends who drink nothing but IPAs, so I understand why these places keep making them. I can tolerate them, but it's nice to have a beer I can drink more than two of.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
It's an acquired taste. I personally wish it didn't have psychotropic effects because it would allow me to have more than one cup without feeling like crap. I've tried decaf and that actually tastes bad, so full-strength it is, though I rarely have more than one cup a day.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
You're pretty much in the same situation as me, then, and no, I don't think cutting it out or switching to decaf will change much. I usually drink one cup around 10 am, unless I'm unusually tired, in which case I'll start earlier and possibly have a cup in the afternoon. I also have dinner at my parents' house every Sunday and my mum and I have coffee with dessert. I don't think it affects my sleep in any way. I don't drink coffee at home on the weekends and only order it at restaurants if it's a sit-down place. I used to drink quite a bit of tea when I worked from home (usually about 2 cups a day, almost always in the afternoon) and the effects on sleep were similar. Honestly, having to get up and go into an office as opposed to working from home where I wasn't going to sleep past the start time no matter what made a much bigger difference in my sleep schedule than whatever effect a little bit of caffeine is having on me.
I says this as someone who's pretty critical of coffee culture generally; it's the only addiction that's not only socially acceptable to have, but socially acceptable to almost brag about having. There was a commercial a few years back where a guy repeatedly warned everyone not to talk to him until he had his coffee. If you say you can't function in the morning without coffee people will act understanding, if not sympathetic. Say the same thing about booze and people will start giving you pamphlets. I get that there's a difference in the relative risk levels, but an addiction is an addiction, and caffeine addiction is probably the easiest to treat (it can be done over a long weekend). I think the dividing line is whether you're doing it for the taste or for the psychotropic effect. If you're doing it for the effect then you'd be sucking down Folgers at home every day and wouldn't have a moment at work without a cup in front of you.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
Yep, and I agree that it's one of the best documentary series ever made. The only quibble I have is that it gives the Pacific war rather short shrift; in 26 episodes, one of which is dedicated entirely to the Dutch resistance, only 2 deal with the Pacific War exclusively (possibly 3, there may be one on Burma, I can't remember). This may be an artifact of it being a British series, but it prevents the series from being definitive.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
Ike Turner's situation is unique, though. He had been out of the public spotlight for 20 years when the movie What's Love Got to Do With It came out, which portrayed him as a serial abuser. He then responded in possibly the worst way possible: He went on TV and called the movie a hack job while answering questions in such a manner as to suggest that every horrible allegation in the movie was completely true. If he'd have just kept his mouth shut it would have been forgotten about completely, but he had such an erratic personality that he became fodder for comedians and sketch comedy shows. Ike Turner impressions became a thing. It didn't help that he trashed Tina's solo career as well and held himself up as one of the true greats of rock and roll, which is technically true, but he's not exactly on the level of Little Richard or Chuck Berry. He finally offered a half-assed apology on Roseanne Barr's forgotten daytime talk show in 1999 (he only apologized under serious pressure from Roseanne), and after that point the music establishment basically forgave him and allowed him to join in on all-star specials and the like.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores the reality on the ground. You can talk all you want about some theoretical shared history and kinship among whoever he considers white people, but it has little tangible effect on my everyday life. Compare me to an American black person — we speak the same language, share similar religions (i.e. we're both Christian), consume similar pop culture, eat the same food, etc.Why should I feel more of a sense of kinship with a Finn? He speaks a different language, has never been to my country, let alone my city, has no sense of shared civic responsibility, no sense of my country's history, and he's probably never even eaten peanut butter before. If a random black guy from Pittsburgh ends up in my living room, I guarantee I'll be able to relate to him better than a random guy from Finland with whom all I really share is skin color and the fact that our ancestors emigrated from central Asia some time in the distant past. At the very least, the black guy isn't going to complain when I offer him Miller High Life. This article is nothing more than the author trying to fabricate an intellectual justification for his own irrational prejudices.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
She isn't entitled to half of your assets, because when you're married there are no "your" assets, only "our" assets (excepting what you had before you got married). So before she leaves she drains the bank account and there's nothing you can do about it. In modern times it's considered fraud to take assets in contemplation of divorce, but since divorce doesn't exist in this scenario, what are you going to complain about? And forget estrangement, she's still entitled to live in the house, so what if she decides to stay and make your life a living hell? She could give her boyfriend blowjobs in your easy chair while you're home and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it, except surrender the territory and move out.
Saying "Catholics and Christians" as though they were separate groups isn't the way to play to the Catholic vote. That's an obvious sign that the messaging is from an Evangelical who thinks we're heretics. As for TradCaths, they're a marginal group who are almost all voting for Trump anyway. I was raised Catholic (though my dad is a non-practicing Protestant), served as a Eucharistic minister, went to a Catholic college where half the faculty were priests and a lot of the students were conservative Catholics (and many of my friends became priests, or at least seminary dropouts), continue to attend mass semi-regularly, and I didn't even know TradCaths were a thing until a few years ago. I may have known vaguely of them but I couldn't differentiate them from the wackaloons who think that every pope since the Middle Ages is an antipope or the other wackaloons who ordain female priests. I went to a Latin Mass once when on vacation in South Carolina and while it was an interesting change of pace it wasn't something I'd want to replace the normal mass, more an interesting historical artifact that deserves preservation. The idea that this is a growing force in the Catholic church seems more an invention of internet conservatives than anything that has any serious influence in the church at large. My mother's much more devout than I'd be surprised if she's even knows these people exist.
The dominant strain of conservative protestantism in the US considers being a real christian to be the result of an individual conversion which is entirely compatible with Catholicism.
It can be, but it doesn't have to be. The sacraments of initiation begin shortly after birth, and confirmation is more a question of "do you want to continue being Catholic and complete your initiation" than "do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior". Most practicing Catholics are born into it and just go with the flow, and conversions aren't dramatic and require months of RCIA classes. My SIL converted from some Evangelical strain about ten years ago and she said the difference between the churches is stark, most notably the lack of altar calls, which most Catholics find weird as they put people on the spot and create subtle pressure to conform; she liked being in an environment where she could sit and mind her own business without feeling pressured. When I was a kid my mum would take us to "Road to Jerusalem"-type living history things, some of which were at these kinds of churches. My mother was pretty naive about Evangelicalism since it didn't really have a presence in Pittsburgh when she was growing up, and she was pretty taken aback by how aggressive the calls for conversion were if there was a prayer service involved. These were in stark contrast to the mainline protestant services we'd attended for various reasons over the years that were different but not outside our expectations for what church was supposed to be like, e.g. liturgy slightly different, more/less singing, longer sermons, different prayers, etc.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
There are more of these holidays that get limited governmental recognition than you can shake a stick at. Some congressmen proposes that March 22 is National Inland Waterway Workers Safety Awareness Day and it passes unanimously by joint resolution and nobody pays attention to it except a few trade organizations that want do distribute safety leaflets.
To be fair, the statement about trans pride day was on March 29, while today he put out an Easter message in which he said the following:
Jill and I send our warmest wishes to Christians around the world celebrating Easter Sunday. Easter reminds us of the power of hope and the promise of Christ’s Resurrection.
As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice. We pray for one another and cherish the blessing of the dawn of new possibilities. And with wars and conflict taking a toll on innocent lives around the world, we renew our commitment to work for peace, security, and dignity for all people.
From our family to yours, happy Easter and may God bless you.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
I doubt that there's any universe where the Texas government collaborating with drug cartels is going to be electorally advantageous to Republicans.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
The first big case in this vein was Treyvon Martin and it wasn't a factor in the 2012 election. The first big police killing case of the current era was in 2014, a midterm year, and it didn't have much impact on that election. There were a number of others and they made have made an impact on some local elections, but I don't recall any precedent for it becoming a national issue at the electoral level. If it's 2020 and you're trying to manufacture an issue so you can get votes, there's already precedent to suggest that George Floyd isn't it. And there's nothing to suggest that the whole controversy even helped the Democrats. It resulted in a lot of Democrats saying a lot of dumb things about defunding police, and Biden had to specifically go against these people while campaigning. For Trump it was easy because all he had to do was keep to the party line that Floy'd death was a tragedy but there was no systematic problem with the police and we needed to stop the riots. Biden had to navigate dangerous waters. It's hard to see how anyone in May of 2020 would have thought that making a big deal out of Floyd's death would result in an advantage for Democrats.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
I don't really foresee any scenario where this could turn into a foreign policy crisis. If the law is allowed to go into effect then the chances that the Feds would try to do something to prevent enforcement against a court order are approximately zero. It's also likely that this law is a purely performative attempt to score points with voters without actually doing anything. I doubt Texas is going to try to attempt to deport Guatemalans to Mexico against the wishes of the Mexican government, and imprisoning illegals on their own dime is going to get really expensive really fast if there's anything more than a few token enforcement actions. Consider the worst case scenario — Texas officials try to deport someone to Mexico and end up getting arrested and detained by Mexican authorities. Now Abbot has to go to Biden hat in hand to get the State Department to negotiate with Mexico, and that isn't happening without a guarantee that he'll leave immigration enforcement to the Feds, because he certainly isn't going to turn this into a regular thing. At worst, Biden has every incentive to stall, making it look like he's doing everything he can while making sure that no settlement is reached until after the election. If Trump wins, then it's pretty much lights out for the detainees, because Biden has no incentive to continue negotiations, and the Mexicans are going to be disinclined to negotiate with Trump. But I doubt this even happens because, as you said, Abbot isn't stupid enough to get hoisted by his own petard.
Honestly, it seems to me like it's in Abbot's best interest for this law to get shot down. If it's upheld and he does nothing to enforce it, then it's just campaign fodder for Biden, who can point out that Abbot is all hat and no cattle. Same even if he does enforce it, because it's unlikely that Texas has the resources to make a dent in the problem. But if it's shot down then he can continue to bitch about the Feds and blame the courts from preventing him from taking the bull by the horns.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
Sorry for the delayed reply — it's a holiday weekend and I've been spending time with my family. To answer your question, the short answer is what @sarker said. The longer answer is, as with a lot of things, it depends. I personally try to use flac whenever possible, though a large part of my collection is mp3 I got before I decided to switch over everything circa 2014, and I just haven't updated it yet. But, and this is a big but, I also do most of my listening on one of two serious stereos I own or a pair of over-the-ear headphones which are top of the line for wireless ones. So keep that in mind.
So it depends on what your starting point is and what you expect to gain. High quality lossy formats are virtually indistinguishable from lossless formats. Subtractive testing has shown that very little audible material is lost in 320 kbps mp3 as compared to flac. That being said, different program material responds differently to compression; a solo acoustic guitar piece is going to be much easier to compress than a symphony. So I keep mine in flac not because there's an obvious audible difference, but because there might be and audible difference and I'm not going to A/B every single file to save a little bit of hard drive space. But I'm also listening on a relatively high-end system; any differences are going to be less audible on less transparent hardware. If you're system consists of a pair of airpods, a Bose lifestyle system, and a portable bluetooth speaker, and you don't have any expectation of ever upgrading, then the chances of there ever being an audible difference is going to be much lower.
Another consideration is the current makeup of your collection. I've spent a decade making the transition to flac, but my collection contains nearly 100,000 files and I'm very particular about tagging and artwork so making the changeover is going to be harder for me than for someone with 10,000 files who's satisfied with autotagging. Do you currently rely on a streaming service? If you're happy with streaming then it would probably make more sense to switch to a hi-res platform like Tidal than to start a collection from scratch. If you're looking to get off of streaming and starting from scratch or close to it, then flac makes sense if space isn't a concern. Is space a concern? Mp3s first came to prominence in an era when a 20 gb hard drive was considered large, and continued to make sense for large collections even as average sizes were in the hundreds of gb. But now that you can get a 5 tb hard drive for like 150 bucks, there's no reason to worry about space.
Unless, of course, you intend to keep your entire collection on your phone, in which case file size still is a concern, and you may want to consider a lossy format, though mp3 is outdated at this point and there are better options on the market, though since I switched to lossless I'm not hip to the exact details. I personally listen to music on my phone, especially when I'm at work/hiking/biking/in the car, but I listen to entire albums compulsively and work from lists I've made, so I just keep a rotating collection of 20-30 albums on my phone from what's next on the list. So to conclude, it depends. If you give me more detail on your setup, plans for the future, and listening habits, I may be able to give you a more definitive answer, but I hope that's enough to get you started.
Now, this isn't what you asked, but since you're obviously interested in sound quality, I'd be remiss if I didn't include it. Bitrate and compression are only part of the equation. Different masterings of an album will have much more of an impact on the sound of a recording than the file format. For instance, a record released in the 1971 may have several vinyl pressings from various territories. Then, with the advent of the CD in the 1980s, there are US, Japanese, UK, and European editions, all of which sound quite different from the others. Then there was a "Remastered Version" from 1995 with a few bonus tracks with the same mastering used for each territory, and then a 2 CD "Deluxe Edition" from 2012 with yet another mastering followed by a single CD edition from 2015 which doesn't have any bonus tracks but uses the 2012 mastering. And there's also an audiophile gold CD from Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab or DCC from 2001, and an audiophile vinyl edition from 2009. Whether you're getting your music from legitimate sources or the high seas, the easiest one to find is usually going to be whatever mass-market edition is currently in print (and it will often be the only one that is legitimately available for download or streaming), and this will usually not be the edition with the best sound quality, given the casualties of the loudness wars and tendency towards noise reduction and questionable EQ choices.
So finding the best sounding version of a record isn't always a straightforward process (though relatively new music will only have one mastering). It often requires perusing online forums to find the internet consensus, and I may even download multiple versions of an album before settling on the best one. As I alluded to above, this is more of a problem for older material that's been reissued numerous times, and that was recorded in the analog days when recording wasn't always great and when original master tapes weren't always used for CD reissues. I can provide more information about this aspect if you're interested, up to and including my own personal recommendations, but for now I at least wanted to make you aware of it. Again, sorry for the delay but I wanted to give you a complete answer rather than a pithy yes or no.
I don't think China is going to stop selling to the US just because they might integrate the materials into weapons that will be sent to Ukraine. China is pro Russian, but not that pro Russian.
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