OT: Hotels around Pittsburgh and hanging out
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If you want to have fun, stay close to the fun and Heinz the Northshore is option#1.
The downside is that the hotels are expensive and booked full.This is where we stay but I book like ten months ahead of the games. Rooms open up close to gameday as people cancel as long as there's not a Steelers home game the same weekend.
Hyatt Place , Marriott, Holiday Inn Express in that order.
But you can have more fun than you handle and all you have to be able to do is find your way back to your hotel and operate and elevator. No driving!
Southside is option two.Lots of good bars,restaurants with the Holiday Inn Express and Hyatt Place the places to stay.
The hotels shuttle close to Northshore or the T subway line. The hotel shuttes don't like to go to close to Heinz on game day because they get stuck in traffic so they drop you downtown near the bridges to cross over to Northshore. On the way out after the game you have to meet them around the same place. Or you can Uber.
The Hyatt Place Southside is nice,usually not booked and reasonably priced.
The hotels I mentioned have no bars or restaurants except for complimentary breakfast buffets in the morning.
The nice thing about Northshore and Southside hotels is you park your car in hotel parking and you don't see it again until Sunday but it's expensive.
I know nothing about downtown hotels.
There's one large hotel just over one of the bridges near Pt Park which I think is the Omni that is just a walk over a bridge to get to Northshore.
There are a lot of outside the city hotels that are inexpensive and probably available which require a short drive and parking. Again I'm not up to speed on those options.
The downside is that the hotels are expensive and booked full.This is where we stay but I book like ten months ahead of the games. Rooms open up close to gameday as people cancel as long as there's not a Steelers home game the same weekend.
Hyatt Place , Marriott, Holiday Inn Express in that order.
But you can have more fun than you handle and all you have to be able to do is find your way back to your hotel and operate and elevator. No driving!
Southside is option two.Lots of good bars,restaurants with the Holiday Inn Express and Hyatt Place the places to stay.
The hotels shuttle close to Northshore or the T subway line. The hotel shuttes don't like to go to close to Heinz on game day because they get stuck in traffic so they drop you downtown near the bridges to cross over to Northshore. On the way out after the game you have to meet them around the same place. Or you can Uber.
The Hyatt Place Southside is nice,usually not booked and reasonably priced.
The hotels I mentioned have no bars or restaurants except for complimentary breakfast buffets in the morning.
The nice thing about Northshore and Southside hotels is you park your car in hotel parking and you don't see it again until Sunday but it's expensive.
I know nothing about downtown hotels.
There's one large hotel just over one of the bridges near Pt Park which I think is the Omni that is just a walk over a bridge to get to Northshore.
There are a lot of outside the city hotels that are inexpensive and probably available which require a short drive and parking. Again I'm not up to speed on those options.
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I have to book 10 months in advance of each game which is about the lead time when they open up reservations for Northshore Hotels and it's expensive even with that leadtime.
Parking is like $ 22 / night at the hotel parking lots.
At this time most are fully booked. On Steeler weekends we leave early on Sunday right after breakfast to get out of town prior to the Steeler fans jamming up the roads.
The Northshore has a lot going on!
What do you and your guys consider hanging out? South Side has plenty of places, but it tends to be a younger crowd that doesn’t mind crowded bars, loud music etc. There are a lot of jack offs down there too.
If you’re looking for a nice dinner, drinks, cigars, etc then downtown or North Shore might be better. I’d also suggest looking at East Liberty / Shadyside. There are several hotels there that can be easier to book and there are a lot of options for night life in that area.
Good point I forgot to mention what you posted highlighted in Red.
Northshore has more reasonable people looking for fun that's one of the reasons we switched to Northshore.
The hotel that shows FOX News in the lobby is always 100% booked. It’s the only safe space in town for Parrothead
That's not true now they show CNN on two TV's and FOX on two which is fine with me.
The hotel management sets it up that way.
On Steelers weekends the FOX side of the breakfast room is overcrowded and the opposite on non Steeler weekends.
Equal opportunity TV is great!
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I like this idea. I've stayed in the Ace Hotel, and its atmosphere isn't conducive to attracting the "jagoff" crowd. Their bar scene is friendly and eclectic, and the hotel is connected to the Whitfield Restaurant which has good food.
And it doesn't hurt that the Ace Hotel is just a stone-throw from Kelly's Bar and Lounge, a great old-time neighborhood wateringhole.
Jacks Bar around 1 am in the back pool room gets kinda sketchy. But it's fun you just have to keep your eyes open.
We like to play pool against other people for money and Jacks Bar has a great pool room.
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I was down on Carson last weekend, for my daughter's 21st, and couldn't believe the drunken jagoffs everywhere, way worse than I remembered. No surprise that every time a local ballplayer gets in trouble, it always seems to be at ____ E. Carson Street. And GET OFF MY LAWN!
The fact that Jack's is a "smoking bar" is what keeps me away. The older I get, the less I can tolerate it.
If you are 30 or under, go to south side. If you are older and boring, north shore area has about 8 cookie cutter bars that all look the same and will be filled with middle aged people, so that’s fun.
speaking of that my pet peeve is the casino. How do they get special exemption to allow smoking? That was a rhetorical question as the answer is pretty obvious but it really isn't fair to other bars/places of employment that abide by the no smoking ban.
Yes, I agree. I spent my late teens and most of my 20s at jacks and mcardles. Smoking laws werent a thing yet but now that I’m used to it, I couldn’t walk in there.
There is a bar kind of close to me, loose moose in Baldwin and I walked in and turned right around. It’s nauseating.
Cause it would piss off their main demographic, chain smoking old people who are gambling away their social security checks.
Got to keep your target audience happy.
I can't speak for the Rivers Casino, but I know that at the Meadows Casino there's a "non-smoking" area. But it's kinda ridiculous, because there's no structural barrier that divides the smoking area from the non-smoking area -- so the smoke goes throughout the casino. I know that I've gone to the Meadows Casino to listen to certain bands (who set-up in the non-smoking area), but the smoke is so thick that I don't stay very long.
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Carnival Cruise Lines used to have a special "non-smoking" ship (The Paradise) that required vacationers to sign a contract that they would not use any tobacco products while on board. If Carnival staff caught anyone smoking on the ship, they would fine the offenders $250, and expel them from the ship at the next port - and the offenders would have to find their way back home with no refund from Carnival. (This was not a rumor: I witnessed a family get tossed when one of their teenage sons got busted for smoking onboard.)
The reason I tell this story is that Carnival no longer has a ship with this non-smoking policy. Someone from the cruise line explained to me that their research indicated that non-smokers gambled less and drank less than smokers, and this severely cut into Carnival's bottom line. So The Paradise - despite being at near 100% capacity on most cruises - made less money for the company than their other ships, so the non-smoking rules were flipped.
FWIW, The Paradise was non-smoking from 1998 to 2003.....
Mrs Buffett and I go to lots of casinos.In fact we go to one 3 weekends a month and they all have large smoking sections.
Gamblers have vices, lots of them, and smoking is definitely one of them because the smoking section is always busy.
A casino opened in AC which was non smoking and it went out of business in less than two years. When surveyed customers mentioned the non smoking policy!
Neither one of us smoke but we play in the smoking sections a lot, and what I hate are non smokers playing in the smoking section and complaining about the smoking to other smokers.
There plenty of non smoking space in casino's.
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Smoking is the least of the problems at Jacks?
We go there for the pool rooms.
One time we were at the main bar and some guy next to me was explaining to the guy next to him how he killed someone and never was caught?? I have no idea how much he had to drink since it was getting near 2 am, we were done playing pool and on our way out.
Another time we saw a drunk guy stager out after midnight, fall against the line of Harley's that belonged to the bikers in the bar,a lot of whom we were playing pool with and all I can say is it wasn't pretty when they all came running out to find the drunk and their Harley's on the ground.
That’s because you can’t hear jimmy. You listen to him but someone like you can’t hear him.
You should visit Key West FL this week we'll be there its great.
10,000 Parrotheads listening to Buffett and Buffet type music all week long.
ParrotHeads are Flocking to Key West - Meeting of the Minds
Sep 6, 2016 11:00:00 AM
October 30 - November 3, 2019
Parrot Heads...
Here he is! He'll be there with his army of fans!
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I love key west. You can’t have a bad time in key west, it’s impossible.
I struck out with daisy fuentes in key west btw, in mid 90s. By struck out, I mean I saw her and asked her to come to a bar with me and some mtv producer guy asked that I leave her alone.
Didn’t ruin my night though, I still had a good time. Walking into a laid back bar in middle of day in key west, dude in corner on acoustic playing covers, everyone just chill, might be my heaven.
Didn’t realize it changed names. I haven’t been there in awhile. Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff, and a big wheel from GNC were there one night while we were there. It was the night Benoit went off the deep end. Saw that fatso Madden in there a couple times back in the day as well.
We’ve been to Meeting of the Minds several times. The last time, we went a few days early for the sole purpose of catching the last few days of Key West Fantasy Fest. (For those who’ve never heard of Fantasy Fest, google it.) If anyone ever wondered what Sodom and Gomorrah was like, attend Key West Fantasy Fest.You should visit Key West FL this week we'll be there its great.
10,000 Parrotheads listening to Buffett and Buffet type music all week long.
ParrotHeads are Flocking to Key West - Meeting of the Minds
Sep 6, 2016 11:00:00 AM
October 30 - November 3, 2019
Parrot Heads...
Here he is! He'll be there with his army of fans!
We stopped going to Fantasy Fest about 5 yrs ago.We’ve been to Meeting of the Minds several times. The last time, we went a few days early for the sole purpose of catching the last few days of Key West Fantasy Fest. (For those who’ve never heard of Fantasy Fest, google it.) If anyone ever wondered what Sodom and Gomorrah was like, attend Key West Fantasy Fest.
Mrs Buffett is nice to look at but many other women who attend aren't much fun.
So a bunch of us switched weeks since they're back to back to Meeting of the Minds week which gives people lots of options depending on what they like.
One of Mrs Buffett's golf girl friends from her ladies golf league, still attends Fantasy Fest but she's single, 6 ft and supermodel material so she likes that crazy week. She meets us at MOTM the following week.
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Off-topic, but I represented Jimmy some years ago. His manager and partner in Margaritaville, Howard Kaufman, was one of my best friends.
Don't discount Lawrencville/ Bloomfield. SO MANY great places to eat and hang out down there now. Too many to mention. I would seriously look at an Air BNB in that neighborhood. In full disclosure, I'm 46 now and have no interest in the South Side at all.
Friends who come in for games like to go to the Priory in the North Side. Like a hostel or BnB more than a mainstream hotel.
My wife and I have stayed weekends at The Priory several times, albeit not in the past couple of years, and loved it.
I traveled frequently on business, staying at Marriott's, Hilton's and other hotel chains. The Priory was a nice change because it was a small operation, quiet and private, and near all North Shore and Downtown events.
We go to the Hollywood FL Margaitaville Resort each year.
It's very nice there but we like Hollywood FL a lot.
We were friends with the owner of Nick's Bar ( Bob from Boston) and Restaurant right on the beach in Hollywood. Although we haven't seen him for a while.
Nicks is one of the better seafood or other stuff restaurant on the Hollywood FL beach.
They filmed a famous big time movie from way back at Nicks but I can't remember the name of the movie.
Bob has a 8 ft shark mounted over the bar. I asked him where did you catch that. He pointed out to the beach and ocean and said right out there about 100yards off his boat.
As I looked where he was pointing I saw about 50 swimmers, snorkelers, boogy boarders right where he caught the shark.LOL!
Mrs Buffett and I surf fish in NJ in season.
The fisher people fish for sharks at night right on the swim beaches and nail them one after the other. In NJ the shark has to be released in good shape. In fact you can't take it out of the water.
At 10 am when the lifeguards show up the same beach where the sharks were caught just 50 yards off the beach is full of kids and people in the water.
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Yes. They like the change from ther big chain hotels. Also the location, proximity to the stadium and clubs. They also had lived in a townhouse near there when residents here, like some of the places like Peppis and some tavern on Western Ave (name escapes me), they meet up with old neighbors. But they really do like the atmosphere of the Priory too. I guess it has a good coffee shop/ bakery in there too or such.
Lawrenceville is a good choice for going out too. More of a crowd than downtown but with less amateur drunks and tough guys than South Side. But if you stay there, an Airbnb is probably the way to go. There aren't any hotels in Lawrenceville proper.
