Is it true the Stephen Foster statue near the front of the Carnegie Library in Oakland is thought to be a good-luck charm?
Honestly, I almost hate to answer this question because this statue makes me really uncomfortable. It’s a reminder of a shameful period in our country’s past, that ugly and lamentable era during which whites saw African Americans as objects of pity and hatred, scorn and contempt. I’m talking, of course, about last week, when…
Downtown Janitors Hunt for Absentee Landlord
About two dozen union janitors and sympathizers set off on a bus trip Sept. 29 to find the Connecticut-based absentee landlord of Centre City Tower, a Downtown office building whose nine-member cleaning crew lost their jobs just after Christmas in 2003. Gabe Morgan, Service Employees International Local 3 director, promises a “door-knocking campaign,” complete…
Why Novels?
The Drue Heinz Lecture Series brings novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the recently adapted-to-film Everything is Illuminated, to Pittsburgh on Mon., Oct. 10. City Paper chats with Foer about work, being typecast as a young phenom, and opera. Your latest novel, Extremely Loud and…
Turning Anti-Abortion Protesters into Bucks
The sound of about 70 college students softly intoning the “Hail Mary” floats into the cool of an early Saturday morning in October, making its way across Broad Street to the Allegheny Reproductive Health Center in East Liberty — and every voice helps contribute a bit more money to pay for abortions. The students, mostly…
Big Splendor
In an appraisal of Richard Wilbur published last year, critic Adam Kirsch compared the poet to his contemporary, Randall Jarrell. Jarrell, who served stateside during World War II, nonetheless wrote “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” among the most tersely grim verses to emerge from the war: “When I died they washed me out…
Fasting to Fix Darfur
“It’s not a pretty picture,” David Rosenberg says about genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur. “While some of the violence has diminished, it’s still a highly volatile situation where there have been mass murders, kidnappings, torture, and between two and two-and-half million citizens have been displaced, living in refugee camps in neighboring Chad and…
Arrested Development
Framing the Debate Positional asphyxia. It’s the medical term for the fatal combination of suburban police officers, a Jaguar-driving black man and the mistrust swirling around them when they encountered each other late one night 10 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1995. Jonny Gammage’s asphyxia was indeed positional: It wasn’t just being pinned beneath the…
August Wilson, 1945-2005: An Appreciation
In the Hill District the Centre Avenue poets, which included August and Rob Penny — they became like the community flamethrowers. They were not only the clearest in their vision and analysis of how to liberate ourselves but also they were able to capture that reality in their poetry The first play I did was…
Modey Lemon
On the second track from Modey Lemon’s new album The Curious City, “Sleepwalkers,” Phil Boyd sings “try to get my picture in the history books / gonna make a sound that the world shook … let’s talk about the future of me and you for a while” over an insistent, pounding crescendo. It’s an old…
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
After a mild-mannered small-town family man, Tom (Viggo Mortensen), kills two thugs robbing his diner, the ensuing publicity brings a shiny Cadillac of bad guys to town. They think Tom is somebody they know — somebody bad; Tom say’s he ain’t. This mystery — if in fact, it is a mystery — is the focus…
A Conversation with Sara Pozonsky
After relocating from Kenai, Alaska, to Canonsburg, Sara Pozonsky helps run her family’s Wild Alaskan Salmon Company. Sara will be part of an Oct. 9 panel discussion on health and sustainability issues in seafood consumption organized by Slow Foods Pittsburgh [see “Short List,” p. 62]. What’s a pretty li’l thing like you doing in…
IN HER SHOES
Moving from male-dominated films (Wonder Boys, 8 Mile), director Curtis Hanson now adapts Jennifer Weiner’s popular chick-lit novel about two sparring sisters. Maggie (Cameron Diaz) is a beautiful mess who just barely gets by on her wiles and is too often rescued by the older Rose (Toni Collette), a capable lawyer with self-esteem issues. The…
Thumbsucker
Justin Cobb is a totally normal 17-year-old high school senior. Totally. He’s bright but not a genius, moody but not despondent, interested in girls but furtive in his approach to the cute dark-haired environmentalist in science class. He’s not too sure about his parents, but he doesn’t hate them. His little brother is a jerk,…
INTO THE BLUE
First, what really matters: Jessica Alba looks great in a bathing suit. So does Paul Walker. Walker can also apparently hold his breath for minutes at a time, which turns out to be really useful in John Stockwell’s underwater ogle-fest-slash-action flick. Walker plays a Bahamian dive-bum who hopes to find sunken treasure (hey, beats looking…
Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan, a twentysomething Jewish New Yorker, preserves his family’s history without question — enclosing their personal items in clear plastic bags. This curious, detached activity suits Jonathan (Elijah Wood), a quiet, uptight sort, rigid in an old-fashioned dark suit with eyes rendered cartoonishly huge behind heavy framed glasses. But one bit of memorabilia — an…
SERENITY
“You’ve got a theater full of angry geeks here,” an audience member shouted when the film broke during Serenity’s sneak preview. Indeed, the film — based on the short-lived TV series Firefly — comes with a built-in following. Written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon, Serenity should satisfy diehards and casual sci-fi fans alike.…
2046
Nothing goes quite right for Chow Mo Wan when love goes wrong in Singapore, circa 1964. Two years later, he’s a writer living in Hong Kong, where he bumps into a woman he knew back when (although she doesn’t remember). A few days later, when he returns to her hotel room, she’s gone — stabbed…
WAITING
When dining out, most of us choose not to ponder what goes on behind the scenes, even though we know that food-service work is a miserable grind of sore feet, steamy kitchens, smelly Dumpsters and jerky customers — all rewarded with social-life-killing schedules and low wages. Well, disconnect no more: Writer/director Rob McKittrick wants to…
Hell or High Water
If nothing else, Jeff Bonnett and Dennis Curlett had a novel reason for staying in college: They had to finish their movie about the end of the world. It all started when the 19-year-old University of Pittsburgh sophomores decided to shoot a feature-length campus comedy. The two film-studies majors believed it was “something that…
WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT
Nick Park’s animated clay heroes — the muddling inventor Wallace and his faithful (and much smarter) dog, Gromit — have made a successful, satisfying leap to the big screen in their first feature-length film. Retained is the small-scale, cozy English-village-ness of the short-film series: Here, the trouble revolves around the upcoming fruit-and-veg festival and some…
Mass Movement: PAT’s New Trip Planner Unlocks the Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
Unlike a lot of people, my new roommate Lauren Coil does not think the bus is only for those Dickensian unfortunates without cars. She came to Pittsburgh last year — having lived previously in Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis — believing that transit could, at times, have practical advantages over driving. Yeah, right, and the…
Taser Use Not a Fluke, Hearings Reveal
Three of the anti-military recruitment protesters arrested during an Aug. 20 rally face trial after a preliminary hearing that put the official reasons for their arrests into doubt — and revealed that one officer sought to use his Taser more than once during the rally, and that another officer threatened to use hers. …
Police Review Board Head Expects Aug. 20 to Produce No Complaints …
David Strouthers, who faced off a police dog during the Aug. 20 rally against military recruitment in Oakland (see above), showed up at the Sept. 27 meeting of the Citizen Police Review Board in hopes of discussing his arrest that of three fellow protesters. He was disappointed, however, to find that there was little discussion…
Per Mie Figlia
Location: Forbes and Murray avenues, Squirrel Hill; 412-521-1818 Hours: Tue.-Fri. 4-9 p.m.; Sat. 5-10 p.m.; Sunday brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m., dinner 5-9 p.m. Prices: Starters $8-12; entrees, $18-38 Fare: Creative Sicilian Atmosphere: Expansive dining room with a view Liquor: BYOB The corner of Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill is one of Pittsburgh’s major crossroads…
… But Board May Not Be Ready for Complaints Anyway
After years of running two or three members short of their seven seats, the Citizen Police Review Board on Sept. 27 finally played their monthly meeting with a full deck for the first time in years. The two new board members, Deborah Walker and Mary Jo Guercio, will serve until at least 2009. Walker is…
Political Pay-Off
By all rights, I ought to be enjoying the outrage over the state legislature’s pay raise. I’ve indulged in it myself, and for once people seem to be holding a grudge as long as I do. Just last week, hundreds attended a Harrisburg protest that featured a giant inflatable pig. And yet, I found…
“Porn Free,” Sings Collective
“If you want to see naked people, you have to find naked people with big boobs and who are 18 and sexy,” says “Monster,” a member of the East Van Porn Collective. “That’s all that’s available. You kind of have to find it sexy if you want to see naked people.” Members of the…
Something Old, Something New
Any time there is a spurt of commercial activity in an historic neighborhood, a debate emerges as to how much of the old fabric is worth saving and how modern construction can be integrated. Invariably in Pittsburgh, too many historic structures get torn down, too many new structures look like dumb copies of…
P.O.’d Voters Avoid B.S.
The League of Young Voters may have officially changed its name from the League of Pissed Off Voters, but its organizers are still ticked, and they’re coming back to town on Fri., Oct. 7. Rob “Biko” Baker, of Milwaukee, was the young voter organizer for the Brown and Black Presidential Forum in January on MSNBC…
