We're no. 1! Just not in the way we want to be.

Really, The Onion says it best:

http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/pittsburgh_no_1_in_soot

But if you need something more substantial, some context, you might turn to the Post-Gazette for the full story--that Pittsburgh is America's sootiest city, with only Los Angeles (Los Angeles, ferchrissakes) having dirtier air.

Personally, I don't see it. Or smell it. Or breathe it. Or taste it. Soot, that is. But then, we are talking micro-particles, so it's understandable that perhaps I don't or shouldn't or can't.

Pittsburgh may be a lot of things--and, conversely, a lot of things it is not--but sooty? No. Not at least in the classic "coals to Newcastle" or "iron ore to Pittsburgh" way of yore.

Old-timers here (and that's pretty much everyone who grew up here) talk about the old Pittsburgh, the pre-1985, heavy industry Steel City, where driving down the quaintly named "Parkway" (the high-speed Formula One racetrack that is Interstate 376 leading you from the Pennsylvania Turnpike into dahntahn), you were greeted by great fire-belching smelters and the strong stench of at least one coke plant on your way into the city.

In the not-too-distant past, the skies at midday were as grimy and overbearing as anything from a Charles Dickens' novel apparently. Adults of a certain age talk about being at school in the middle of a spring day with all the lights on and the windows closed to prevent the smoke and soot from invading their environs and lungs. You still see older stone buildings covered with the stain of soot on their facades.

There are a still couple of steel mills in existence along the Mon, the Ohio, and the Allegheny. But nothing is as it was, even remotely on the same scale as before.

Now it's all bio-med, university, research, and service industry, along with a fair number of pensioned-for-life blue-collar types--you know, those bitter, small-town Pennsylvanians, who can be found even in the heart of 2-million+ metropolitan region. But not much in the way of soot production.

So Pittsburgh is many things--overcast, springlike, working class, elite, attractive, ugly, interesting, dull, sophisticated, downhome, pretentious, provincial, but, most of all, bipolar. But sooty? I don't see it.

Or smell it. Or taste it. But I'll have to take it on faith that I may well breathe it.