Why I Moved to Pittsburgh: Lawrenceville

"I've always been a shy person," says Rob de la Cretaz, his earnest demeanor readily apparent.  "But Pittsburgh took the shy right out of me."  Though he's quick to give Pittsburgh its due, De La Cretaz's story is more about making the most of a few good opportunities.

A native of Cape May, New Jersey, the wannabe IT geek was nearing college graduation when he stumbled across an old high school girlfriend on Facebook.  The fact that she was in Pittsburgh piqued his interest, since staying in small-town Jersey would have resigned him to "fixing computers for real estate agents and making websites for restaurants."  He visited the city for the first time in 2007 and his takeaway was encouraging.

"It was painfully obvious that things were happening in Pittsburgh," he notes .  There was this sense of promise, a progressive and forward-thinking mentality.  I saw lots of new shops and felt that if you had a fresh idea, it was easy to make it.  There's a huge arts community and the tech presence is massive.  Plus, everyone in Pittsburgh was super-nice."

"I looked at Philly since it was local but it was too dirty," he recalls.  "New York City was expensive, dirty and competitive and Boston was expensive and competitive.  Pittsburgh felt up and coming.  

The decision to come to Pittsburgh was made in the fall of 2008 and, as luck would have it, his Facebook friend was moving out of her mother's house in Aspinwall at the time.  Together, they took an apartment in Regent Square.  "A comparable apartment in New Jersey was $1,200 and here, we were able to get a two-bedroom apartment for $625."

Pittsburghers' penchant for friendliness showed up early.  On one of his first days in town, "a disheveled guy stopped me on the sidewalk and said 'hi,'" de la Cretaz recounts with a chuckle.  "My m.o. in Jersey was to put my head down and keep walking so I mumbled something to the guy and, to my surprise, he said 'have a nice day!'  It blew me away."

De la Cretaz found time to dabble in his many passions, including photography and graphic design and once settled, started scanning the classifieds for a suitable job.  A posting on Craig's List for a "product sample designer and prototype builder" caught his eye and he landed a job with Davison Design and Development in the summer of 2009.  

Eager to create more community, de la Cretaz immersed himself in local social media and a tweet by media maven iJustine pointed him to PodCampPittsburgh, a yearly techfest.  His first PodCamp, in the fall of 2008, was a revelation.  "I went from being the lone kid preaching about tech licensing to being stuck in a room with people who all agreed."  The mass Twitter following that resulted post-PodCamp turned out to be more exciting than the event itself and at one of the group's follow-up meetings at the Firehouse Lounge, he met girlfriend Jennie Roth, a native Pittsburgher who had scoped him out at PodCamp and shared many of his tech sensibilities.

"PodCamp really opened up a lot of stuff for me," says de la Cretaz.  "I learned about the PGHTweetup, which meets regularly – we do a $5 movie every Monday night at the South Side Works and then have wings at Fathead's – and soon after I heard about BikePGH, where I'm an evangelist.  You can form a community here quickly if you enter a group.  People are so friendly and welcoming and no single group I approached was a bad experience."

De la Cretaz also keeps busy as part of a makeshift Twitter posse for the Mattress Factory's Urban Garden Party, and he writes iPhone and iPad reviews for MacWorld.  "I now have more friends than my girlfriend has!" he marvels.  "The town is that friendly.  People who say there's nothing to do in Pittsburgh don't want to do anything.  I can understand the wanderlust, wanting to get out, but any native is fully capable of making it here.  There are so many fresh ideas."

Eager to give back to his newfound home, de la Cretaz is working on a series of videos "on things that are unique to Pittsburgh that people should know about."  It's his attempt to rectify the many misconceptions about the city.

"Lots of people still see Pittsburgh as a steel city, and we still call ourselves the Steel City even though we've reinvented ourselves.  When I go back to New Jersey, I swear people expect me to return with soot on my face!  And my college friends still ask me 'how I like Philly' even though I'm living in Pittsburgh – they're not making the distinction.  Nobody seems to talk about Pittsburgh outside of Pittsburgh, and we need to reach out to young people with that exploratory mentality who are willing to take a look at it."

Next steps for de la Cretaz, who currently shares a home in Lawrenceville with a friend, include finding an old brick house to restore.  "Old city charm meets new city mentality in Pittsburgh," he says.  "I love being here for Pittsburgh's renaissance and can't wait to see what it looks like in ten years.  Pittsburgh is a cool place.  You've just got to let it happen."

Spoken like a true evangelist.

Elaine LaBalme writes frequently for Pop City as the New Girl in Town.

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Photographs copyright Brian Cohen