PNC Park

PNC Park
115 Federal Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15212

June 7, 2014
After spending the day at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a pair of breweries, we took the quick subway ride from our hotel to the ballpark. Since taking the guided tour of the stadium the day before, we were completely smitten with the ballpark and super excited about watching a game (for more photos and behind the scenes action of PNC Park, check out our blog post from our guided tour of the park). When we arrived at the stadium for the game, it was already super crowded, so we quickly snapped a selfie outside before heading in.

At the recommendation of our awesome tour guide, we purchased crab fries to share for $10 at Chickie's and Pete's from the food court on the 100 level before going up to our seats. Our guide gave us a lot of suggestions, so we wanted to make sure we hit as many of those as possible while being cost effective. Hence, sharing meals.

Unfortunately, we ended up in the wrong section by mistake and since the game was starting and we didn't want to be "those" people that stand and block the entire game, we quickly slid into the nearest empty seats for the time being. We figured we'd finish the crab fries, get ourselves sorted out, and find our correct seats. In the meantime, Serena pulled out our trusty notebook to start taking notes about our stadium experience. As you can see in the picture, for the price, you get quite a lot of food. The fries had a delicious spicy kick to them and so far, our lovely tour guide was batting 1.000 in the recommendation department.

It was brutally hot. The kind of hot that when you're sitting in a seat, you can't sit with your legs closed or your arms at your side because your limbs and body touching one another traps entirely too much heat. Despite the fact that we truly enjoyed the crab fries, the weather made it difficult to eat them. Sitting in front of us were three young chicks with a whole lot of hair. Listen, it's not a problem to have a shit ton  of hair on top of your head. We're two chicks that have a shit ton of hair on our heads and there are a lot of individuals on this planet that would pay good money for that hair. Since we are among those with a lot of hair, we know just how sweaty and suffocating our hair can be on a humid, hot day like this one. Ladies and gentlemen with long, thick hair: suffer in vain no longer. We'd like to introduce you to the wonders of the ponytail and its many relatives: the bun, side bun, braid (single, French, pigtail, etc.), the updo. All of these hairstyles function to sweep the hair off of your neck, allowing what little breeze that's available to cool your skin.

Behold one of the girls in front of us:

As you can see, that's a lot of hair. During heat waves such as this, let go of ego. You must accept that fact that being pretty is not an option any longer. Only comfort. Your face is going to look moist and melty just like everyone else's and the only thing this look serves to do is trap sweat against your neck, shoulders, and back...and our legs. Our legs, which are situated behind you and actively dying each time your long locks rest on top of them. When you don't embrace the ponytail on days like this in crowded spaces, your hair suffocates our lower half and makes us dry heave.

Aside from the mass of hair sitting in front of us, the girls kept to themselves and didn't bother us, which is all we could ask for. While slowly munching on our crab fries, we dutifully took notes on the game's action as it unfolded before us so that we could reference later (for this very blog post). Serena entered a few details into her Ballpark Passport Trapperkeeper (after all this, Lisa forgot hers at home like a real a-hole).

PS - note the mass of hair sitting just in front of Serena.

Basically, all we were doing was minding our business when shit hit the fan. A girl that can only be described as a "chickenhead" arrived. Apparently she was a friend of the three wookies sitting in front of us. Without saying anything directly to us, she merely shouted, "SOMEONE is sitting on our seats. We have those four seats and these four seats." One of her wookies replied, "Okay, no big deal. No one is here yet. We can take care of it when everyone arrives." There was no placating the chickenhead. All she did was repeat herself loudly in her empty, bimbo voice over and over and over again. Truthfully, all she had to do was look at us and politely ask us to move. We were in the wrong and we had had no intention of remaining in those seats to begin with. We would've gladly moved without any confrontation at all. However, she didn't have the balls to confront us directly. Only passive aggressively, which is one of the most pathetic, useless traits a human being could possess. It's slightly worse than stupidity only because stupid people don't know any better. Passive aggressive people are just feeble a$$ f*cks and since we have the temperment of Vlad The Impaler, our reaction to her may not have been the most rational. Serena merely stared at the girl without wavering with the expression that Brother has referred to as, "The Look." If Serena had the same magical powers as Maleficent, she could probably commit murder simply by flashing The Look. Unfortunately, since Serena has yet to determine how to summon the forces of alternate universes for this purpose, she must settle for making people extremely uncomfortable with her stare. Lisa, on the other hand, was less subtle. Loudly, she declared, "what a dumb bitch." The wookies were suddenly very uncomfortable. They continued to try to calm down their chickenhead to no avail. Therefore, Serena continued to give The Look and Lisa continued to call the chickenhead a dumb bitch. Again, we can't stress enough that this is hardly considered rational behavior. We are adults with 401(k) plans and Serena is a 200-hour trained yoga instructor. Clearly, we know better, but that didn't stop us from being angry New Yorkers.

In order to not disturb the rest of the section, we waited until the close of the inning to pick up our stuff and relocate to our real seats. From several rows up, we could still hear her bubblehead voice bellyaching.

Here's the view from our legit seats:

Our real seats turned out to be infinitely more pleasant than our borrowed ones. Thanks to the stadium's overhang, we had the comfort of sitting in the shade.  Under no circumstances should you infer from that statement that we were "cool." It was still as hot and sweaty as a man's pair of underpants at the gym, BUT we were at least protected from the piercing death ray that was the sun.

During the 5th inning,  we spotted the Pirate Parrot, the team's mascot in the lower level in right center field, mingling with fans.

Since the tour guide advised us to sample a sandwich from the Primanti Brothers stand (a supposed local traditional fare) and it was around the time we typically eat our third lunch of the day, we figured that we'd meet the mascot and grab a sandwich while we were at it. The concourses, for some reason, were so packed with slow moving drunk people that by the time we bumped into Pirate Parrot, he'd already reached left field. We politely asked (we promise you that we asked politely. We swear that there wasn't a single ounce of rudeness in our request) one of his handlers if we could take a picture. The handler totally blew us off! We even repeated our question just in case he didn't hear us. He pushed by us and ignored us! We couldn't believe it! Everyone assumes that New Yorkers are the meanest, coldest, rudest people on the planet, yet we'd never been treated like that by a staff person at a Mets or Yankees game.

Abandoning the idea of getting a photo with Pirate Parrot (he no longer seemed worth it), we walked the lower level back toward the first base side to see if we could find the Primanti stand. The concourse was complete and total chaos. We hadn't seen that many intoxicated, badly behaved people since the last Islanders/Rangers playoff game we attended at the Nassau Coliseum. To put things into perspective, hockey fans are insane. The Islanders/Rangers games (let alone a high stakes game like the playoffs) play host to insane hockey fans "on steroids." That's how sloppy these Pirates fans were. They put Islanders/Rangers fans to shame. It was terrifying.  The mass of drunken idiots moved at a glacial pace. We reached the area behind home plate just as the pierogies lined up to race around the field's warning track. Since the crowd was hardly moving, we stepped aside to watch the race.

We could see the pierogies step into the stands via a gate in the wall near left field, so we tried hurrying through the crowd to meet them. Unfortunately, the drunky mcdrunkersons of the stadium were not on the same wavelength as we were. It took us 20 minutes to go 20 feet.

An article ranking every stadium's top food choices had been printed earlier that year. We saved the clipping, hoping to use it as a reference for future ballpark visits. The fact that we'd totally disagreed with the options chosen at our own local ballparks should've been an ominous sign. Unfortunately, we're idiots. The article voted The Closer, a grilled cheese sandwich named for the Pirates' closer Jason Grilli, as THE dish to get when visiting PNC. How could you go wrong with a grilled cheese sandwich? It's hot cheese for heaven's sakes.

The sandwich cost $15, which is a bit steep for something like a grilled cheese sandwich. The other downside is that you can only get this sandwich at one location in the ballpark - the bar/restaurant behind left field, which means that we had to get a table, sit down, and place an order. This is something we don't really like doing at games because it means that for a portion of the game, you're not in the stands watching the action. You need to watch the game on the restaurant's televisions, defeating the purpose of actually going to a game. In the case of our particular game, it took place during the Belmont Stakes. We thought this was something that was big only in New York because the Belmont is on Long Island, but it turns out that LOTS of people are into it. The restaurant was MOBBED by people trying to watch the race and game (at that point, why bother getting tickets to the game when you could just save your money and patronize a local sports bar?). It was a zoo and instead of the televisions only broadcasting the game we'd all come to see (right? Isn't that why we were all there?), the screens were divided between the race and the baseball game. Super frustrating.

Back to the sandwich. It was served on sourdough bread (yum) and included nine different cheeses (hell yeah), candied bacon (candied is odd, but it's bacon, so also hell yeah), and apple compote. The apple compote is what kind of threw us for a loop,but again, it's a grilled cheese sandwich. How bad could it be? Surely the power of the cheese would dominate any tastes that seem odd. Wrong. It is one of the worst food items we've ever eaten at a ballpark. Are there worse? Sure. The memory of the Dodger Dog and the Kinder's Ball Tip Steak Sandwich (Oakland) still makes us dry heave, but that's hardly the point. PNC Park ruined the grilled cheese sandwich, which is bordering on offensive. We had to order a plate of french fries as a palate cleanser because water and beer did not cut it.

The "free giveaway" for that afternoon's game was a post-game Goo Goo Dolls concert, which sounded pretty awesome. We tried to focus on what a great time that experience would be as opposed to the shit show that we'd been experiencing all day.  From the restaurant, we headed back up to our seats to enjoy the concert. If you follow us on Instagram (@travelingbbabes), you can catch a little video snippet of the show.

All in all, we wouldn't say that this was a worst stadium experience than our Philadelphia one, but we'd rank it pretty close to being that awful. Great ballpark. Terrible day.