PITTSBURGH, PA—We were in an old blue Volvo station wagon, the kind with Lightning Hopkins on the AM radio and black leather interior that’s worn out at the seats. Rain was driving Pittsburgh even deeper into the rusty ground. I was in the backseat, watching the city through the rhythm of the windshield wipers, and as we careened around the preposterous angles of Polish Hill, I couldn’t help but expect to see Carl Franklin’s Hi-Hat around the corner of our next forty-degree turn.

The Hat, as regulars call it, is a ramshackle old juke joint on the Hill, the site of one of my favourite scenes in Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys and precisely the sort of place a man visiting Pittsburgh would like to spend his Thursday night. But the sad fact is that the Hat doesn’t actually exist, though it might as well, for like most of the fabricated details of Chabon’s Pittsburgh it exists in countless variations across the hills and valleys of this city. (If you’ve got the time and inclination, I think you’ll find Gooski’s a more than adequate stand-in; they’ve got Roy Orbison on the jukebox, and it’s the sort of establishment where a man can accomplish a round of three pints and three Jagermeister shots for less than twenty bucks.) (more…)