Rock festival reflected both sides of a thriving city

This column was supposed to be about the bands at the Thrival rock festival in Pittsburgh last weekend.

But to me, the festival was just a small part of a bigger story. The past and present loomed over the lightweight music like a monolith.

Thrival, as always, took place at a post-industrial site that was once ground zero in Pittsburgh’s steelmaking days. This year, it was at the Carrie Furnaces historic site. There once was a giant mill there, but now just a hulking and rusty blast furnace and a few ancillary structures are all that remain, alone and forgotten in a hardscrabble field.

The site on the Monongahela River is occasionally used by filmmakers looking for Rust Belt scenery. It’s actually kind of an artsy place these days: a 100-foot-tall abstract sculpture that resembles a giant science experiment.

The steel industry has long been silenced in the Steel City, and most of the riverfront land has been redeveloped with housing, retail, office parks and tech industries. Pittsburgh’s success story is globally known, and nothing new.

In the past decade or so, the city has seen a second wave of immigration, with few parallels to the one in the early 20th century that brought southern and eastern Europeans.

These new immigrants are from other parts of the United States. They are 20-somethings, here for education or to work in the computer, robotics, health or other fields.

They have no memory of the days when steel was king. Unlike myself, they never lived in a Pittsburgh where steel mills sprawled along every flat spot along the rivers, and steelworkers were the dominant social force.

To them, clean and cool and cultural Pittsburgh, the hipster haven, is the only one they’ve ever known.

At Thrival, the irony wasn’t that an electro-centric dance-y rock festival was taking place in the shadow of a remnant of an era of sweat and pollution.

It was that almost none of the people attending it even knew what they were looking at – if they looked at it at all. The Carrie Furnace was just a backdrop, a screen for a light show. A decoration.

Of course, it’s not a bad thing, having no memory. It’s actually very American. And it is a necessity if you want your city to move forward – to not stay stuck in the past.

First, the waves of newcomers change the flavor and fabric of city life. Then, they become the city. They also reverse the decline of neighborhoods and bring prosperity.

Old-timers in Pittsburgh’s once-blue-collar neighborhoods now scratch their heads and smile at the turn of events that has tripled the property value of their family homes.

If only this would happen in Youngstown, where the land where steel mills once stood are now mostly overgrown brownfields. And where the neighborhoods continue to spiral downward.

About 16,000 people came to the Thrival music festival, which featured headliners Thievery Corporation, the Chainsmokers, Chvrches and Metric.

It was a celebration of the new Pittsburgh – which has no idea of what the old Pittsburgh was like.

And that’s just the way it is.

If only Youngstown could be the same way.