About BTR · A community archive · Est. 2025
Beneath the Rust is a community storytelling platform dedicated to the people and places of Steel Country and small-town America. Through interviews, documentaries, and film, we share stories of recovery, resilience, belonging, and hometown pride. We believe every community has stories worth telling and every person deserves to be heard.
This is for the Industrial Midwesterners, the Rustbeltians, and the Yinzers who grew up in towns most people don't understand — the boy whose dad spent his life working in the mill, the mom whose son is fighting addiction, and everyone in between — to finally be given a voice and a place to belong. Our roots are shaped by both pride and pain: steel mill closures, addiction, resilience, and the moments that hold us together.
We're building a community where people can share their stories — hometown pride and the small businesses that keep the lights on, slipping in recovery, losing a mill job, the best slice of pizza in the region, and the ongoing fight to overcome addiction. These are the things our communities know by heart and live through every day.
Real life America, told from the porch.
The Rust Belt in its own words — Aliquippa, Braddock, McKeesport, Beaver Falls, Homestead, the South Side, the North Shore to name a few. The places that were built by steel and what they look like now, told by the people who never left, and the people who came back. We map it town by town, story by story, until the archive is the place.
Nostalgic · Raw · Proud
The boring kind of miracle.
The road from addiction back to a life. The mentors and the morning routines, the meeting that worked when the others didn't, the sober home, the sponsor, the day-one self. Plain talk from people who walked it. We tell these stories so the next person knows the way out is real — and that they're not the first to make it.
Empowering · Authentic · Healing
Sober homes, heritage groups, mutual aid co-ops, public media, neighborhood mags. We work with the folks already doing the work — and we share the credit.