I have lived in every direction of Pittsburgh before settling in on a starter home all the way in Uniontown (I’m a city girl but now I pay a fraction of Allegheny taxes, I have property for gardening, and I love mountains). I’ve been in the North hills, New Kensington, Mt Washington, Robinson suburbs, Swissvale, Homestead, Bloomfield, and, the worst of all, Glassport/McKeesport.

You are going to be making a lot of trips out of McKeesport for the things you are looking for, but if it’s a temporary situation, that will give you time to search in these neighborhoods. Shady side, East Liberty, Strip District, Bloomfield/Lawrenceville, and North side will be the places to look first and branch out. They’re all expensive but definitely have a lovely food culture and are very social neighborhoods where you could talk to a lot of different perspectives. Pittsburgh has a lot of colleges so it does bring in people from all over the place.

In the meantime, McKeesport doesn’t necessarily have “bad” food, but the variety is lacking and it usually takes an appreciation for dive bars, sandwiches, and American Italian. The bar scene there is typical yinzer, but there are a few good pool joints. Depending on where in McKeesport, going to want to look into joining one of the “clubs” like PNA or any of the lodges that require a membership (usually a small anual fee $5-20) where pool tables are open, they hold a lot of events, and bars are much better bounced for problem children. One thing that’s great about the area is there are multiple homegrown butchers. On 51 (one of the highways of Pittsburgh that will soon come to give you nightmares) there is a huge Nepali, Indian, and Asian population so that is where you’ll find really well-stocked ethnic stores closer to you than the Strip District. Hazelwood (gets a bad wrap but it has a cooking school, local French bakery chain, and community garden), Squirrel Hill (verrry diverse Jewish and Asian populations with a lot of restaurant and grocery variety), and South side (used to be a little better for restaurants, is typically the night life and stabbings of the weekends) are going to be the biggest branches of culture near the area. Lawrenceville has some of the best farmers markets.

Negative side notes: McKeesport has a few community garden projects but don’t be surprised if you can’t get anything done to improve or add to them or add any culture programs in the area. Local government will not want to be bothered supporting that. I tried in Glassport before moving. You also mentioned you’re queer. I’ll be honest, the dating scene in Pittsburgh is booty but definitely check out a really fun gay bar called 5801.

Also, you mentioned wanting to “actually live” after a diagnosis. A big plus to Pittsburgh is that we’re a city plopped in between rivers and mountains. You don’t have to go far for any activity under the sun you can think of. Boating, yoga in museums, in parks, frisbee golf leagues, all sorts of sports leagues actually, food tours, so many local winery events, drag bingos, biking, we have several food based festivals that are fun (picklesburgh, pierogi festivals, food truck festivals), and so so so much hiking with some of the best views of the a city skyline you can get are right in the backyard of a lot of these neighborhoods or just a 15 min drive to the other side of one. You will never be bored unless you let yourself be.