When I was in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago, I saw a few signs advertising “basement caving” services, or something with phrasing to that effect. My question to the many Yinzers on the SDMB: what is it? (I probably have the phrasing off, but it’s something like that. Googling “basement caving” revealed nothing Pittsburgh-related.)
I don’t think it’s Pittsburgh related. Basement excavation services are all over the place.
(I grew up in the Mon Valley.)
I wonder if it didn’t say something like “Basement Caving?”
This is not an uncommon appeal to people who’s basement might be caving in.
I think they’re referring to the current trend of creating (sigh) “Man Caves”, where manly men who find that their SUV falls flaccid as an expression of their manly manhood now compete to have a fully pimped out manly den in their house. My co-workers are big into it, fueled by the financial crack cocaine that is home equity loans, and it tends to involve setting up mini-home theatre systems with giant screen TVs and a wet bar so manly men can get together (but not too close! They’re not gay! No way!) to watch other manly men play manly sports. And yes I have heard them refer to it as “goin’ caving!”
Instead of SUV size and cost, the new metric is LCD screen size. And number of beer taps. And pool table vs. ping pong table vs. Reale Olde Authentique Galaga machine. There is a scoring system of sorts which is used in their subculture, but its methods are unknown to such as I.
WAG: Perhaps it was listing problems solved, i.e. “Porch collapsing, flooring rotting, basement caving? Call us!”
Or it was “excavating” and you just saw it as “caving” (I’m only suggesting that because you said “or something with phrasing to that effect”).
Well, Carnegie Mellon has the infamous steam tunnels. Could there be other subterranean tunnels around Pittsburgh?
(And a quick Google search turned up this from YouTube–Escape from CMU. I graduated in '93. Looks like things haven’t changed much!)
Most of the region is honeycombed by old coal mines. Subsidence is a huge problem - which leads to those basements caving in in the first place.