Visible Man

- Jamilah King

WHITE PEOPLE ARE trying not to see Damon Young. On a chilly December Sunday, he’s sitting at the crowded bar of Pittsburgh’s Ace Hotel, bent over a plate of eggs, potatoes, bacon, and a side of fruit, attempting to explain the arc of an unconventional writing career that—here in the shadow of the nation’s media hubs, after years of underemployment—has finally landed him some money. Real money. Enough to buy a renovated row house with his wife, three-year-old daughter, and, as of two days ago, infant son. It’s the kind of comfort that seemed unfathomable when he was growing up a stone’s throw from here on “the hottest block of East Liberty,” once considered some of the city’s most dangerous turf.

Young isn’t easy to not see. A bearded, 6-foot-2 former point guard with a high-top haircut, he’s dressed in black jeans and a black cutoff crewneck, the tattoos just visible on his biceps. Nor is he shy, although he does double Dutch his way into conversation: patiently finding the rhythm before leaping in with his soft-spoken baritone. Having spent most of his 40 years here, Young has the local elocution that transforms a word like “there” into “dare”—the man is Pittsburgh to the core.

It’s a city on the move, or so it thinks. In nearby Bakery Square, the sterile shapes of redevelopment are everywhere: clean, rectangular sidewalks leading to massive, rectangular highrises built to attract transplants seeking an alternative to, say, Brooklyn, and tech players like Google that would love to boast they had a hand in reviving a once-mighty city’s fortunes after decades of postindustrial stagnation. The Ace, which the