![\"\"](\"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Mon-BillyT-corner-of-lonely.jpg\")
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For the most part, the commercial and residential areas of Monessen are very distinct: the commercial district sprawls along two main streets near the river and the residential area occupies the hillside above.\u00a0 Dotted here and there in the residential landscape are places like Nuzzaci Pizza (a going concern) and Billy T’s (a nagging concern).<\/p>\n
I was inspired to visit Monessen mostly because one of my best friends hails from there.\u00a0 In a way, I was paying respects as well as reporting back.\u00a0 If I may share his remarks on this photo:<\/p>\n
Billy T\u2019s (corner of Sketchy and Dicey) is on the corner of 9th St. and Knox Ave — that place was a scene of so many shootings, stabbings, etc.\u00a0 It changed ownership and names a bunch of times, but it was a nasty place even back when I was growing up and it finally was shut down for good.<\/em><\/p>\n Billy T’s, situated at the foot of the residential hillside, was in fact shut down<\/a> in 2009.\u00a0 But the opiod epidemic in Monessen lives on.\u00a0 My photographic impressions of the degraded nature of the town are reinforced by this article<\/a> in the Uniontown Herald-Standard (please read).\u00a0 I don’t know what the answer is.\u00a0 I imagine that people feel trapped there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the most part, the commercial and residential areas of Monessen are very distinct: the commercial district sprawls along two main streets near the river and the residential area occupies the hillside above.\u00a0 Dotted here and there in the residential landscape are places like Nuzzaci Pizza (a going concern) and Billy T’s (a nagging concern). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}