Single Files: David has head for business, mind for comedy, heart for poetry
David may be the quintessential Renaissance Man.
The 22-year-old Pittsburgh neophyte, who moved here 10 months ago from Scarsdale, N.Y., has the head of a businessman, and the heart of a poet.
He works in “financial modeling and risk analysis” at PNC, Downtown, and takes classes in improvisation.
He loves history and psychology, Monty Python and golf.
He is an avid reader, a writer, a runner and a would-be stand-up comic.
And he has very quickly come to appreciate Pittsburgh, its traditions and its quirks.
“I love how devoted everyone is to their teams,” he told me. “It’s so funny going to the Strip District and seeing a whole family decked out in Steelers gear. The sports tradition here is terrific. I love it that any man or woman of any age will talk to you about any game, and refer to the players as if they are family: ‘Ben did this, or Sid did that.’”
Still a Jets and Rangers fan, he does find himself “warming up to the Pirates.”
“They’re such lovable losers,” he says with a grin.
A 2012 graduate of Williams College, David came to Pittsburgh without knowing a soul here. But that lasted about five minutes.
He reached out immediately to Temple Sinai and Hillel-Jewish University Center, which put him in touch with J’Burgh. He is now active here on Jewish social action projects and in J’Burgh social events.
And he has spent a fair amount of time getting to know Pittsburgh.
“I enjoy exploring neighborhoods and Pittsburgh’s history,” he said, having grown his passion for walking the streets of a city while traveling abroad in Europe during his junior year of college.
“I walk a ton,” he said. The Shadyside resident enjoys walking through Squirrel Hill and Point Breeze, and heading over to the City-County Building on Grant Street sometimes during the workday, just to absorb the sense of history.
“Learning about a city is like learning about a person,” he said. “Sometimes there are all these things you missed at first glance, and you want to dig into more.”
He hopes to find a girl with whom he can share a quirky sense of humor, an intellectual companion “who will push me into doing things I didn’t think of doing.”
A good relationship is based on the small, shared details of life, David said.
“It’s the little jokes, the little shared experiences, the little quirks, the small stuff — that’s the closest definition of chemistry,” he said.
He sees Pittsburgh as offering a lot of opportunities in a lot of different arenas.
“This is the first place I am really an adult in,” he said. “And there are a lot of opportunities to engage. I feel that more profoundly here than I have anywhere.”
He has so many artistic interests; his biggest challenge may be deciding on what genre to concentrate his creative energies? Writing? Improvisation?
Stand-up?
Well, maybe not.
“I’m still terrified of it,” he said. “I don’t know where they would get the fruit — where would they get the fruit? But I just imagine them throwing rotten tomatoes. And that wouldn’t be the worst indignity. It would be worse to not have people laugh.”
Ah, no worries there.
To get in touch with David, email him at dcarlin7@gmail.com.
(If you would like to be featured in a future Single Files column, e-mail me at tobyt@thejewishchronicle.net.)
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