The Hot Metal Bridge

Upset.

The unexpected.

The improbable.

Surprise.

These are just some* of the many words and phrases that the many tourists who flock to this Mount Rushmore use to express their shock** to find the Hot Metal Bridge as the final Bridge completing this wonderful Mount Rushmore of Pittsburgh Bridges.

It is not that the Hot Metal Bridge is an unworthy bridge; that is not the case at all. The Hot Metal Bridge is as worthy and as prestigious as it gets (citation: The Mount Rushmore of Pittsburgh Bridges).

For many of the numerous tourists that crowd into this Mount Rushmore URL*** expect to see the Andy Warhol Bridge here completing the trifecta of the Three Sisters, three of the great Pittsburgh Bridges that sit side-by-side-by-side traversing the great Allegheny. Oh it would make logical sense to have all three bridges represented on such a Mount Rushmore with the Fort Pitt Bridge being their “and one” to the party, providing the necessary entrance (as it so well does anyway) or perhaps being the chauffeur driving them into the dinner reservation or the usher bringing them to their seats or the point guard (in a 4-on-4 pickup game) setting them up for easy baskets on the path to victory over victory in maintaining dominance on a “winner stays” court (of public opinion, in this case—or of Great Bridge Appreciation, courts of which have yet to go public and currently only exist in basements of houses to which the Great Pittsburgh Bridges Connoisseurs of Old hold titles to).

But the unexpected is so much possible in Mount Rushmore Construction, not unlike the “any given Sunday” idiom of the NFL, but much unlike it in the sense that Vegas Sportsbooks no longer (or have yet to) risk putting out lines for our future Mount Rushmores because of the possibility of having to fork out so much money to the masses, especially since the “smart money,” largely wagered by the Great Pittsburgh Bridge Connoisseurs of Old who would have noted that had the Andy Warhol Bridge been included on this Mount Rushmore it would most likely gone between the Clemente and Carson Bridges just as it is in Pittsburgh, representing the old Seventh Street Bridge as Clemente does for the old Sixth Street Bridge and Carson does for the old Ninth Street Bridge, and thus would have bet on “the field” and not the Andy Warhol Bridge on the would-have-been-highly-trafficked future of what the 4th Bridge on this great Mount Rushmore would be; and the Great Pittsburgh Bridge Connoisseurs of Old would have done so with considerable amounts of money, for the the Great Pittsburgh Bridge Connoisseurs of Old are almost exclusively in an older demographic and have sizable retirement funds at their disposal having usually worked in a field with healthy pensions like engineering and have not frivolously spent money on expensive hobbies or lavish dinners as Pittsburgh Bridge connoisseurship is largely a free hobby that is not preceded or followed by reservations at a Michelin 3-star restaurant, of which Pittsburgh doesn’t have any so you would have to go to Chicago or DC for the closest, which the Great Pittsburgh Bridge Connoisseurs of Old do not have time for with Connoisseurship filling up their schedules.

That’s okay with us though. We are not here to push people into addictive habits that may cause strain on their finances or marriages. That is not a hollow statement; that is supported by the fact that no one—perhaps outside of the Great Pittsburgh Bridge Connoisseurs of Old, a savvy but small Western, PA subculture—has reported any risk of finding Pittsburgh Bridge-themed Mount Rushmores addictive. Opiates, like opium or OxyContin, have proved much more addictive and much more destructive than any of our Mount Rushmores, in fact.

We want to push people towards responsible choices, and part of that is transparency: so let this be an advisory to all: just like “any given Sunday” rings true in building the multi-billion dollar NFL and begetting the billions of gambling dollars associated with it every year, so too rings trues “any given Rushmore.” The only difference is we don’t sell our souls to the mob and casinos, like the NFL does. We do not promote gambling.****

We also do want to push people to the greatness in this world, much of which has been harbored in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh has many Hall of Famers, from “Mean” Joe Greene to Jerome “the Bus” Bettis. And, of course, the Mount Rushmore-acclaimed Roberto Clemente.

But the list goes on and on.

And of course such a grand list would be ultra-difficult to dynamite-carve down to a Mount Rushmore. Such a grand endeavor may be a decades-long process like constructing the Mount Rushmore in South Dakota*****.

With more complicated logistics involved because the list of Pittsburgh Hall of Famers is so endless (there are more Pittsburgh athletes in professional sports Hall of Fames than American Presidents) that it would likely require a large government grant for people to sit around discussing it for years while drinking Iron City Beer (or something better, because let’s face it…) to whittle the list, using the intellectual dynamite of Pittsburgh’s finest intoxicated minds, down to a proper Mount Rushmore.

This steely truth is ever so strong because it does not only include the great athletes who have risen to fame in the Steel City, it also includes the likes of great Bridges, like the famed Hot Metal Bridge which was inducted into the North Railway Hall of Fame in 2016.

Which begs the questions, “Who had the great honor of giving its induction speech and when can we get our hands on the footage?”

The only question one should ask about that is: “What took so long?”

For the Hot Metal Bridge has been doing its thing (getting people and stuff over the Monongahela) since 1887!

Why the Hot Metal Bridge had to wait not only until the next century but until the next millennium to receive its Hall of Fame Induction is a travesty we wish not get into on this internet of positivity. Let the Other Internet, the sad crumbling non-Mount-Rushmore-featured bridge to negativity, delve into such disasters.

The Hotel Metal Bridge, with its ever so gentle Southern Hospitality, has always connected the great neighborhoods of South Oakland and the South Side.

But in 2007, the Hot Metal Bridge really stepped up its game and began saving lives when a pedestrian path was added. Now, college students attending Pitt, one of America’s great Public Ivy Runners-Up, are able to walk from the slew of bars on the South Side back to their residences in South Oakland without having to risk a DUI that could kill them or others, or at least ruin their professional careers and prevent them (along with their personal limitations) from saving the world.

That would have been helpful for me because I graduated from Pitt in 2006 and lived in South Oakland the majority of my time there, and spent a lot of time on the South Side, not only in the aforementioned establishments of libation consumption, but also going to Sports rehabilitation center on the South Side after major shoulder surgeries and, having no car at the time, taking buses there, always looking at the Hot Metal Bridge out the window of the rehab exercise room and thinking, “Oh how wonderful it would be if I could just walk across you; it would save so much time from taking the circuitous bus route and be so much more pleasant and healthy****** than riding the bus.”

A person who has not experienced the greatness of Pittsburgh Bridges might think them just an inanimate object that would not respond to the needs of man, woman, or child. But as you just saw with your own eyes in the previous two paragraphs and re-emphasized here in this paragraph, a year after I graduated the Hot Metal Bridge proved to be a great leader by responding to the suggestions of its followers by not only being empathetic to my needs, but also a Bridge of action and responding promptly by providing that pedestrian path. Sure, it did not help me specifically, but Great Bridges are forward thinking and it helped those that came after me.

Including possibly you. Maybe you live in South Oakland and maybe you didn’t tear the labrums in both of your shoulders by wrestling (losing, but persistently so) drunk on an non-carpeted floor one night and thus required surgeries and months upon months of rehab, but the Hot Metal Bridge may even be possible for you being alive if you are a Pittsburgher who walked safely across that Great Bridge’s pedestrian path on a regular basis, getting enough exercise to avoid obesity and the health risks associated with it that may have killed you.

But maybe that’s not you. Maybe your parents are Pitt alums who met drunk one night on the South Side and walked safely back to South Oakland across the Hot Metal Bridge instead of unwisely getting in a car drunk and dying. Drunk, safe, and still awake with good circulation from the exercise of walking across the Bridge, they consummated their love without the usual protective rubber and you were born.

But maybe that’s not you. Maybe your parents met on the set of The Hot Metal Bridge musical.

But maybe that’s not you. The Bridge is still great. It’s not all about you. Though you’re probably great too–-just not as great as the Hot Metal Bridge. Who among us are?

So great it is, in fact, that it was born with two names–-the Hot Metal Bridge is a great name, but not great enough to describe this great Bridge alone. For the Bridge’s birth name bridges out beyond simply the Hot Metal Bridge, also carrying the name of the Monongahela Connecting Railroad Bridge.

Yes, the Monongahela Connecting Railroad Bridge. Brilliant answer to a security question when you’re a Bridge trying to recover a lost password. You always have to be careful when you’re a famous Bridge.

People are always trying to cross you.

Not funny, but we have to throw some puns out there to bridge out to a larger pun-loving audience.

Great Bridges are pretty powerful in the pun game, lots of puns can be done with Great Bridges, but we will leave those to the minds of our great readers to enact on your own.

This famous Bridge is also so powerful in other, non-pun-centric ways, that it has begotten other bridges, soon to be famous. #Posterity

And so what a wonderful Bridge and what a wonderful name, the Hot Metal Bridge, for it would literally transport hot metal–-molten iron–-across itself (with the help of transport devices, like trains). If you were the metal of the hot variety, this was the Bridge for you.

Still, to this day, it carries hot metal across, in a sense, specifically in the sense of Steely Pittsburghers, with their hearts pumping bloods in their resilient Terrible Towel-waving bodies.

So who now would cry foul that the Andy Warhol Bridge, or another of the great Pittsburgh Bridges, did not make this Mount Rushmore?

We are sure someone will, because there are many deserving Bridges, but only four can make the cut, the literally metaphorical cut of hypothetically carving these Bridges into the side of the mountain of the sweeter of internets.

Because this is such a hot button issue*******, you can click the button below clearly labeled “hot button”, and read in greater depth about this issue. So dynamic is this Mount Rushmore, so dynamic is a Mountain when you put it on the sweeter internet and combine power of Pittsburgh Bridges with the Power of Mount Rushmore, that there are other buttons below for further spillover reading. #BeyondOSHARequirements

*The elite some of four that make up a mini, unofficial-Mount Rushmore of Words or Phrases Tourists Use To Express Their Shock that The Hot Metal Bridge Defeated the Andy Warhol Bridge to Claim the Final Spot on The Prestigious Mount Rushmore of Pittsburgh Bridges.

**It should be noted that "shock” itself is one of those very words or phrases, but in a rare feat, while it is was left of having its face carved in that unofficial Mount Rushmore, it did gets its name on the unofficial Mount Rushmore. #perserverance #SixthManofTheYearButInThisCaseItsFifthAndItsNotAManIt’sAWord

***If you are a fire inspector reading this, please note that at the time of construction, we don’t actually have a lot of tourists crowding into this URL. However, by the time Pittsburgh Bridge Mount Rushmore tourism seasons hits, we will have been sure to make the proper safety steps to get up to fire code or it is possible we will be deceased by then as good things, like getting people interesting in Pittsburgh Bridge Mount Rushmores, take time. #Safety #Patience

****We do, however, maturely promote its more mature second cousin (once removed): gunslinging.

*****or even longer, because for such a grand endeavor to take shape, one must first invent metaphorical dynamite, but Arthur Nobel isn’t entering that door–-the closest door to you–-any time soon: Arthur Nobel is dead, and not hypothetically so, but literally so, therefore making the invention of hypothetical dynamite a confusing enterprise to pursue that will probably not happen in our lifetime—-unless you are reading this Mount Rushmore centuries after its construction; then maybe it is possible. #AnythingIsPossibleInTheFuture

******for human health is always a concern for Great Bridges (citation: Hot Metal Bridge now connecting patients—both drivers and pedestrians alike—to the South Side Medical Complex).

*******which has a lot of pun possibilities with the Hot Metal Bridge, which we suggest you explore over whiskey.