I live Downtown. I work Downtown. Believe it or not, I was born as a Downtown resident.
And no, that doesn't mean I was behind bars.
For more than a century, the only real population inside the Golden Triangle constituted of however many prisoners the U.S. Census was counting at the Allegheny County Jail on Ross Street. That was it. That was the population of Downtown, almost without exception. There was one condominium as part of Gateway Towers, two other residential high-rises ... and the jail.
Also, and us. Meaning 625 Stanwix Street, which looks like this today:
THE VENUE
625 Stanwix Street, Downtown.
It's recently been rebuilt inside and out, but the U.S. Post Office is still there on Stanwix, the parking garage is still there -- now coolly covered by murals of the people whose names now adorn the Three Sisters bridges in Rachel Carson, Andy Warhol and Roberto Clemente -- and all the office/residential above that now has luxury apartments called The Venue.
When I was born, that upper section was home to the U.S. Consulate of Yugoslavia. Our region had as many immigrants from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and other former provinces of a country that's long since splintered, so it was decided by the Yugoslav government that cities like Pittsburgh and Chicago needed embassy-type services closer to them than the main embassy in Washington.
My late father, Milan Kovacevic, was an ambassador for Yugoslavia. Pittsburgh was his first assignment, and he'd go on to serve in Tanzania, Syria, Pakistan and Cyprus, as well, before retiring in the 1990s. When he was sent here, my mother, Vlatka, accompanied him. And because Pittsburgh was to be just a temporary assignment, neither expected to be here longer than a handful of years.
Oh, well.
I was born a year after they arrived. And our apartment, if you want to call it that, was simply another spot inside the same building, like everyone else at the Consulate. We were working and living Downtown way, way before that ever became a thing.
Five years later, my parents split, and this is where it gets wild. Like really wild.
My father was summoned back to Belgrade, which meant it was time to go. My mother had no intention of going. So the two of them decided, amicably, that each one would get a child. He'd get me, and she'd get my younger brother. Which, of course, meant I'd be heading to a country I knew nothing about ... except the Serbian language, which was the only one they taught me since they were sure it was the only I'd ever need. No, really, I didn't speak a syllable of English.
One other problem with all this: My father was a busy guy, and he had neither the time nor the know-how to raise a young child. He also had no family who could help with that over there, since most of his relatives were lost in World War II. So he decided to take me way out into the Serbian villages, where I'd grow up with ... my mother's family.
Uh-huh:
DKPS
Zvezdana, Zorana and Dejan.
That's me eating grass on the right. Village of Futog. My awesome cousins with me. Nowhere near Belgrade. Nowhere near either of my parents.
Stuff stayed this way for a full year. I'm not sure how much my mother knew about this, since this was back when communicating globally was either crazy-expensive or outright impossible. But she found out enough that she began to really bug my father about it. Again and again and again. Every chance she got. Every way she could.
Ultimately, the following summer, she convinced him to fly me to Pittsburgh -- by myself, at age 7 -- but only for a "vacation." That's the term she used.
She lied.
All these years later, I'm still here on "vacation."
Before I get back to the Downtown component, I was already of elementary-school age here, so I had to enter English as a Second Language courses, needed only two more years to win our school's spelling bee -- woo! -- and went on to ... fall in love with my new home.
Maybe it was a grounding mechanism that I fell in love with Pittsburgh. Maybe it was not having a home or any real base for my earliest years that prompted me to latch on to Pittsburgh and, through it, the Steelers as a child. Then the Pirates. Then the Penguins. But whatever it was, the even greater urge kept pulling me back into the heart of our city. I was raised in the suburbs, first Delmont, then Monroeville, but even then, I'd ride the 67A into town for my comics, my music.
And best by far, as soon as I was old enough, I moved right back.
Downtown's the foundation I was never supposed to have. I've never been this happy anywhere else, and I'll never be this happy anywhere else. Every building, every fountain, every step of every sidewalk, it's my home in the same way that Point State Park was my back yard, where my mom would take me out to play.
It's beautiful that so many more people now, with 8,000-plus permanent non-jail residents living here, get to embrace for themselves the heart and soul of our unrivaled little place on this planet, just a mile and a quarter from the Point to Grant Street.
My home. Forever.
