The building on the corner was a riot of color. It was as if a Sesame Street character (let’s say Big Bird) had taken a heavy dose of LSD and was given the leftover paint cans from a kindergarten finger paint session and told to cover every surface with color. Also, there is a dumpter full of tossaway toys and vintage remnants to playfully place around the courtyard at Big Bird’s leisure.
This was my first impression of Randyland, a must-see-to-appreciate destination if you should ever find yourself in Pittsburgh. We had been recommended to visit by our gracious hosts at Traveler’s Rest Hotel, a beautifully restored former admin building for a wrought iron pipe company and a top-notch experience in its own right.
Our host, Paul, told us that while he had been to Randyland many times, he had only recently encountered its namesake inhabitant and creator, a local legend named, you guessed it, Randy. He had a hard time describing Randy, but illustrated his quirky charm with a couple of anecdotes. After hearing all of this, we knew that we were going to Randyland posthaste and that we sure hoped we would get a chance to see the man himself.
Before the festival began the next day, the family hopped in the van and began to traverse the river valley from one side of Pittsburgh to the other. This path enabled us to cross two of the many iconic yellow bridges built with sturdy Pittsburgh steel that span the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, two waterways that merge just beyond downtown Pittsburgh to form the mighty Ohio River. The landscape of Pittsburgh is really quite lovely, something we didn’t expect when first visiting it five years ago.
As we climbed the steep, winding city streets on the other side of the valley, the brick row houses rose up around us and we soon found ourselves in a quaint neighborhood, complete with whiskey barrels planted with flowers on many corners. Later on, we would learn that Randy was behind these makeshift planters, a few of the 800 pop-up nature reserves he had orchestrated.
Randyland is not hard to find among these charming city streets. It is a rainbow butterfly among the red-brick moths. As we crossed the street and entered its grounds, we were immediately immersed in colorful joy. We all smiled in wonder at the endless splotches of color, pattern, discarded toys, bike parts, flower pots, mannequins and pie tins tacked on every conceivable surface and painted a vibrant shade of blue, magenta, neon orange, and phosphorescent yellow. The courtyard had a maze-like path meandering though the rainbow rubble, towering brick walls with playful murals, and little art coves to hang out in. I’m certain that these outdoor corridors have served as many selfie backgrounds. Life-size cutouts of Randy himself are sprinkled throughout, his smile beaming out to visitors. The millions of brushstrokes that it surely took to adorn this wonderland culminate in a purely joyful experience. It is hard to describe in words.
We spent time ambling around the place, our mouths both smiling and agape in wonder. Randyland is free to enter, but there is a little gift shop that works on the honor system, with a bolted down cash box and a Venmo QR code serving as the cashier. We perused the t-shirts and then settled on a magnet. The boys asked us for coins to use in the quarter-turn vending machine and we begrudgingly discovered that we only had enough for one, a nightmare for any parent of two children. The younger typically gets his way in this situation, and this day was no different. He put the coins in and walked away with a vibrant little 3D-printed figure, a cool keepsake.
The tour had come to an end, and it was illuminating and joyful. There were only a few others there, and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. As we moved towards the exit gate in the morning sun, a radio kicked on and started pumping bass to the tune of J-Lo and Ja Rule’s “I’m Real (Murder Remix)”. It was such an audio twist to the situation, and again, we all smiled, and Ash started to do her best J-Lo while I tried to add extra gravel to my baritone to be Ja Rule.
The boys rolled their eyes and continued toward the exit when, behold, a shirtless long-haired man emerged and blocked our exit.
“Hi! I’m Randy!”
The conversation that followed was a blend of Randy’s amazing personal history of growing up in a broken home and being called stupid and worthless by his teachers and peers, with his spiritual approach to life that we are all put here to do good and that our direction in life is led with our hearts, not our heads. Randy was a ball of effusive, joyous energy and although our boys were little frightened at first, they were quickly disarmed by Randy’s positive affect. His pocket full of quarters, which he gleefully handed out to children (including ours) for the quarter-turn machine, was clear evidence of his overflowing generosity.
We talked with him for about half an hour and he really is something else. You can tell he has an internal, immovable sense of his worth and from this center, he radiates out pure, unbridled encouragement, especially towards children. He is playful and shoots from the hip with rapid-fire stories and philosophical musings he has learned from a life making something worthwhile out of what is seen worthless. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what he said to us that day and he has reshaped some of my approaches to life and creativity.
For example, Randy talked about how we are rooted through our feet to the wisdom and effort of our ancestors, who put their time and energy into ensuring that future generations (us!) would thrive. Then, if you move up your body to the arms and head, they radiate out from our heart, which is where we should decide what we want to be and from that intention, God will open the pathways towards it if we keep our hearts open to our purpose.
I know this all sounds woo-woo and you might just roll your eyes at it, but it was a great visual illustration of something I often fail to appreciate: the sacrifices of prior generations that allow me to be able to have the freedoms and joys that I currently possess. We stand on the sturdy shoulders of our ancestors, both recent and distant, and taking the time to truly consider this truth is a source of deep gratitude that we can all tap into at any given moment.
This is but one of the many bits of happy wisdom that Randy sprinkled into our morning, somehow being profound and wildly entertaining to our kids and the adults alike. He is truly a ray of sunshine and if you go to Pittsburgh (you should) and climb the steep streets to Randyland (you should), I hope to get the chance to bask in his warmth.
