trips

By Eric Brinling

There has been a mystery that, for some time, has puzzled the Pittsburgh psyche. It has befuddled the modern mind, strained the intellect in such a way that has only been done by the great unsolved problems of the past, like the Münchhausen Trilemma, Hilbert’s Eighth Problem, the whole thing with the Zodiac Killer, and whether the sun can justifiably be called a soup or not. The question which plagues so many students’ minds is the very question I have decided to set out and answer today in a daring feat of investigative journalism: Why does the intersection of Forbes and Bigelow smell like shit?

The answer that probably immediately came to mind was that there’s a manhole there that probably leads to the sewers, which carry human waste, feces, dung, poop, crap, shit, and other words for fecal matter. Or, alternatively, something with the manure they put in the nearby soil. Those were the answers that I had settled with for some time, and I dismissed the rumors of other, more suspicious activity as unlikely or impossible. That was, however, until I saw a man-shaped figure slip under the manhole at around 2 am as I was coming back from the Late Night Go Fish Club at the University of Pittsburgh.

My investigative journalist senses tingled, and I resolved immediately to follow the man-shaped figure. I crossed the street (although the hand said not to, I did not listen) and tried to open the manhole, but it would not budge. I stomped and shouted, but to no avail. Then I politely knocked, and soon after the manhole opened, and I descended.

Below the intersection of Forbes and Bigelow is what I would describe as a bunker, which smelled strongly of excrement. There was a man there, who I recognized as the man-shaped figure, since he was also man-shaped, as many men are. He introduced himself, his name was Billiam J. Bigelow III, but his friends call him Bigelow Bill, or Big Bill, or just Bill, or sometimes even just B.

I heard a car pass by overhead, and I asked him why he would live beneath a road like that. He answered that the property beneath the road was the only land left to him by his father, Billiam J. Bigelow Jr., who in turn received a number of underground properties from his father, Craig Bigelow. I am skeptical that underground property rights like that actually exist, but I digress.

I was tired, so I knew the interview couldn’t be much longer. I had to get to the biting question, which came to every man, woman, and child’s mind as they walked over this guy’s bunker home. I asked him why the intersection of Forbes and Bigelow smelled so awful.

And he answered: “I don’t know.”