myself, i love the location and the PAPA event it's self. the strangeness of being surrounded by industrial wasteland and being able to tailgate gives it a real laid back casual atmosphere that can't and won't be retained in some state-of-the-art convention center. i love the pittsburgh area. it's far enough from and different enough from home (flat midwestern suburbia) to feel like a real vacation. but it isn't so far that the drive eats up an entire day.
as for the PAPA event, i like it better than pinburgh/replay FX. i'm not a competitive player and pinburgh seemed to tie up the vast majority of their machines in competition where as PAPA only tied up 70 machines or so.
what i really don't understand is... PAPA is going to have to house these machines somewhere. why not just have their events where they have their machines? PAPA needs a home not a weekend rental.