July 27, 2025

We headed out for a walk into the nearby neighborhood of Friendship, notable for its large Victorian homes. We had planned to go to Le’s Grocery, aka “Grocery Kart,” a convenience store on Penn Avenue, but they were closed. So, we walked over to Aldi on Baum Boulevard. We picked up a box of four (delicious and refreshing) lime bars, offered the extra bar to a fellow shopper, and zig-zagged through Friendship on our walk home. The official borders of Friendship are quite small, covering only the area between Negley Ave and South Graham Street; as most actual residents confirmed in surveys conducted in the early 1990s, we would have expected it to be much larger. (We enjoyed that Wikipedia called this a “border dispute.” We wondered if there might have been a skirmish near the Octopus Garden.)

Fun Fact:
Friendship gained its name only recently, through community movements in the 1980s and 90s. While the 1899 building that currently holds Pittsburgh Montessori was originally named The Friendship School, it was named after Friendship Avenue, and not the neighborhood. Both Pippa and Edmund are graduates of Pittsburgh Montessori.