PHOTO BY DAVE DICELLO

Last week, I attended three events in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District.

Tuesday, I saw “Billy Strayhorn: Something to Live For” at the O’Reilly Theater. I saw the touring production of “Moulin Rouge” at the Benedum on Wednesday, after eating a memorable burger at the new Lounge at the Greer Cabaret. Saturday night, I served as emcee for a double-feature at the Harris Theater.

At no point on those three nights did I experience anything that could be described as “trouble.”

OK, fine: Getting out of the parking garage after “Moulin Rouge” was a bit of a nightmare. Those ticket machines don’t always work right.

Wait — is that not the Downtown problem people are talking about?

All of these events were well-attended, and the bars and restaurants I walked past were full. People were happily taking in shows and contentedly returning to parking garages and nearby street parking after the curtains fell. On the last night, crowds streamed out of PNC Park following the year’s last post-game fireworks display, further lining the streets with happy groups and families.

If, however, you were to listen to the narrative pushed by a certain breed of commentator — and I use that word to encompass both alarm-raising media types and social-media malcontents — you wouldn’t know that thousands of people were happily attending Downtown events every night. Your mental associations with the Golden Triangle might be vagrancy, crime and abandonment, rather than arts and culture.

Since the pandemic changed behavior — not only Downtown, but certainly including it — an overly reductive story has emerged about Pittsburgh’s central business district. “It’s riddled with crime,” certain attention-starved pundits will say. “No one goes there anymore,” according to Facebook commenters (who likely don’t go much of anywhere).

Downtown certainly has an unaddressed vagrancy issue, even if the specific numbers of people experiencing homelessness are largely unchanged. And, like any city, there are blocks and corners where crime is more common; there are probably a few areas where you don’t want to idly hang around at midnight.

And that has little to nothing to do with the way the vast majority of us experience Downtown.

The Cultural District is bustling. Downtown-adjacent areas, such as a constantly changing Strip District and a thriving North Shore, are magnets for events and recreation. Those assessments don’t attract eyeballs on a ratings-grabbing commercial, and they don’t work as a pithy comment underneath a social-media post. But they’re true.

I think, in a kind viewing of this simplistic narrative, people want to justify their own tendency to nest. It’s no secret that, over the past few decades, people have started going out less; to a certain group of people, our homes are too comfortable and our televisions are too big to bother with parking and paying for a Downtown event. Unfortunately, some seek to justify that by trumpeting the notion that the Golden Triangle is somehow inherently treacherous.

In a less kind viewing, I think a lot of people are trying to rationalize their own discomfort. Some people don’t like seeing signs of homelessness on street corners or get nervous when they have to navigate a loitering crowd outside a bar or bottle shop. Willfully or not, some people mistake this discomfort for danger — and that’s an attitude that we should stamp out.

Here’s the truth: There are cities where whole neighborhoods, and sometimes entire ZIP codes, are forsaken. I could name metropolises where you very much do need to know where you’re going and avoid certain areas. Pittsburgh is not one of them. While we are not immune to the problems facing cities in the 21st century, we are nothing close to a dire case — and if you were to name Pittsburgh’s potentially hazardous neighborhoods, Downtown would absolutely not be on the list.

I can’t tell you that nothing has changed Downtown; I can’t tell you that no problems need attention. I can’t tell you that every corner of the Golden Triangle is perfectly safe and clean.

But I can tell you this: If you’re avoiding the city because someone told you it’s not safe, you’ve been misled. And you’re missing out on a great deal.