Cute town, not much to do
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8/27/2008
Having lived in Sewickley for three years I've found that it's a rather nice place to be, quiet, clean and fairly crime-free. However there are some bothersome aspects to this town that, if changed, would make it a wonderful place to live.
My first issue is with local food. Restaurants, grocery stores, and farmers markets all seem to be substandard in my opinion. The restaurants have nothing interesting to offer. Anything beyond pancakes for breakfast in this town is nonexistent--very boring. Dinner is the same at every place you go--that is, you'll pay a lot for it and not get anything innovative or new. Service is mediocre across the board and there are relatively few choices.
When it comes to grocery shopping, the choices are very limited. While there is a nice fish and meat market in town, they open late and close early. If you work a normal job, you will not have the privilege of shopping here. The local grocery store, Safrans, is nice, but too small to do all of your shopping and their size limits the variety. On Saturdays in the summer there is a farmers market, but it seems that there are more flowers for sale than anything else. No local meats, eggs, milk, cheese and the vegetable selection is fairly weak. The worst offender of all is the Giant Eagle in the Quaker Valley Shopping Center. The store is small, dirty and the employees are largely unhelpful and unfriendly. As a matter of fact, the whole shopping center could be happily knocked down and replaced with something useful. The beer distributor as well as the wine store are both just awful and I rarely shop at either preferring to drive to Moon.
The food issue aside, another issue this town has seems to be a glut of teenagers and nothing for them to do. Neighboring towns have public pools, skate parks, and recreation centers. Sewickley has a YMCA which is way too small and extremely overcrowded because of this. Teenagers without a membership are reduced to sitting around town benches smoking cigarettes and being teenagers at large. I realize that teenagers are annoying, but you have to provide them with something to do or they'll be even MORE annoying.
My final issue is with the fire station. They have an awful air horn which will wake anybody in earshot from a dead sleep. It is my understanding that the volunteer firefighters have radios and pagers but for some reason, this awful horn is still in operation. I've watched this menace scare the pants off a poor old woman carrying her groceries and I've watch it make children cry. That thing needs to GO!
These issues aside, Sewickley is a very nice town with great schools in a comfortable setting. A tad Republican for my taste, but if you're a Republican, you'll be quite happy here.
Abhd | Pittsburgh, PA