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| - A hipster hideout in Pittsburgh! I thought I'd never live to see the day that hipsters could congregate openly and proudly in this 'tahn (town) apart from at a couple of off-color coffeeshops with miserable coffee or at the odd event at the Andy Warhol museum. But alas, about a year after I graduate college, the Brillobox opened. Upon my return visit to the 'burgh, I couldn't have been happier (or more jealous of current college kids).
Brillobox presents a distinctly Pittsburgh interpretation of hipsterism that I'm in love with. Sure, it's skinny pants and odd attire and funny hats and people smoke cigarettes outside. But, the Pittsburgh part of it makes all the things you hate go away. It's clean, the people are NICE, yes - NICE, the place is well-designed for multiple experiences, and you wouldn't even mind having a whole meal there. Perfect.
The downstairs bar is a really great place to chill with friends and have one of their many great beers or some other drink. It's dark, swanky, and artsy...in a good way. The upstairs is the musical performance space. When I went there, there was a hipster-come-bluegrass-rock-revival type band playing at absurdly volumes. But the crowd was into it, and it wasn't half bad either.
A place like this would never fly in any other city. In SF, LA, or NY, it would be mocked for being faux-hipster, pretentious, superficial and for trying too hard. In other less urban towns, it would be mocked for being too "cool", for being for smokers and druggies and drop-outs, and for trying too hard to be something it's not. But Brillobox fits Pittsburgh like a glove - modern and urban, yet sensible and unpretentious, all at the same time. It's the reason why Pittsburgh is succeeding where other similar rust-belt cities are fading. It's why, for the first time, I can honestly say to myself, "I want to go visit Pittsburgh sometime soon!"
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