This past Thursday was my last official day on campus. I had to meet with the chair of my thesis committee and give a final presentation for my Cultural Studies seminar. It was also, by happenstance, "Take your non-gender-specific child to work" day. Since my daily commute to Pitt's campus requires that I transfer to a Fifth Avenue bus in town, I decided to meet my dad at his office for lunch—since we're all pretty sure now that I'm not going to be an engineer when I grow up, we decided it would be pointless for me to sit in his office all day twiddling my thumbs. As a result, my dad—known to fellow metropolitan men of mystery as Neilbert—dubbed the occasion "Take your daughter to lunch day."

The 61C

I took a 61C up to Neilbert's Fifth Avenue office around 11:30. After introducing me to the important people in his engineering firm, Neilbert took me to lunch down the street at Café Fifth Avenue. The lunch crowd at Café Fifth Avenue—perhaps predictably—are businessmen and women. However, being in such close proximity to Duquesne, the bar is marqueed in chalk boards proclaiming a number of beer specials, boding of a more collegiate crowd for happy hour. Since I had my presentation to consider, I forewent the booze and opted for Neilbert's favorite beverage, the raspberry iced tea. Sweet, cold and refreshing.

The Awning at Café Fifth Avenue

The menu at Café Fifth Avenue offers a variety of sandwiches and salads, but I was surprised to see that they also have a few entree-like selections from the grill costing no more than their sandwiches. I consequently took the liberty of ordering grilled yellow fin tuna. Neilbert got a reuben. I was a little wary about my decision after the waitress neglected to ask how I wanted my steak done. I caught her before she walked away and asked for my steak done medium rare—an uncharacteristic move, yes, but I was concerned at this point that the cuts of tuna might be fathoms below sashimi grade. The tuna arrived much more medium than rare, but the quality of the meat garnered no complaints from me and I much enjoyed the translucent center. The outside of my steak boasted visible grill lines, a light lemon herb flavor and crusty char-grilled yumminess in all the right places. Neilbert's reuben was sizable. When asked how he liked his sandwich, Neilbert said it was good. When pressed for further details he said only "Everybody makes it differently." A metropolitan man of mystery must be careful not to reveal too much.

A glass of cabernet

After lunch, I continued up to Oakland for my final campus business. An afternoon of meetings and errands culminated in the annual Cultural Studies Colloquium, a scholarly and social event to mark the end of another busy school year with gathering of Cultural Studies program faculty and students. The entertainment was us—the graduate students in the program's common seminar that term. The colloquium was sparsely attended, which did not reap complaints us nail-biting grad students as we prepared for our conference-style panel presentations. I was, perhaps unluckily, last to present. But after giving a presentation that sounded good in my head at least, we broke for mutual congratulations, academic chat, and wine and hors d'oeuvres. I promptly drank two glasses of cabernet in swift succession, the result of which was that I found myself drunk on the 71A heading to Neilbert's house for our weekly Star Trek night. While being drunk at 7:00 pm is a good way to kill one's evening before it gets started, the upside of this turn of events is my discovery that being drunk on the 71A is an immensely advisable course of action. For those who may be unfamiliar with the 71A, it is perhaps the most arduous bus route in the entire city. Depending on the time of day and point of origin, the 71A can be among the most infuriating experiences in your life. Turns out, riding it drunk makes the 71A a vastly more pleasant trip. I tell you, the downtown bums have been on to something all along.