How Much Do You Know About Pittsburgh Music History?
Dust off those Pgh trivia skills and give our quiz your best shot!
Moby-Dick Challenges You to Name These Famous Whales
Name these famous whales from books, movies, and real life and you could win 2 tickets to see Moby-Dick at the Benedum!
Pittsburgh official Twitter account retweets a user with title “WHITE NATIONALIST”; city says it was in error
Pittsburgh official Twitter account was tagged in a tweet from a far-right troll and was retweeted in error, according to Pittsburgh officials.
Pennsylvania Democrats criticize the new tax cuts for overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthy
Thanks to tax cuts, many corporations have announced billions of dollars to investors, but Pennsylvania Democrats think that money should go to workers.
Age Ain’t Nothin’ But a Number, Baby
Some of these star couples have bigger age gaps than you think! Find out if age is just a number and you could win two premium tickets to see Heisenberg from Pittsburgh Public Theater.
Critics’ Pick: Joe Pug and Jason Narducy at Club Cafe
[FOLK] + WED., MARCH 7 I once wrote on a pizza box for Joe Pug during one of his shows. My original posterboard that read “I wouldn’t mind ridin’ around with you, Joe!” — based on the hook from ballad “Speak Plainly, Diana” — was confiscated by security, forcing me to improvise. My ad-hoc effort…
Pittsburgh black elected officials say black-business community needs entrepreneurial reform
The Pittsburgh Black Elected Officials Coalition wants to ensure black entrepreneurs are free to grow and not become overly reliant on Pittsburgh-area foundations.
CMU, Pitt and Duquesne University issue commitments to support peaceful protesting among current and prospective students
A number of online databases provide prospective college students with information regarding how U.S. colleges and universities stand on gun reform and peaceful protesting
Listen Up! Feb. 28 Issue
All our favorite songs by the artists featured in the music section of tomorrow’s issue, today
American Craft Spirits Association’s Distillers Convention comes to Pittsburgh
On March 4-6, Pittsburgh welcomes the largest gathering of licensed craft-spirits producers in the U.S.
A booster for gubernatorial candidate Paul Mango spouts anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on controversial podcast
Carla D’Addesi, a self-described Mango campaign coalition leader, belittled trans rights during an interview with a far-right church just a month after Mango was criticized for interviewing on a similar program.
Anti-gerrymandering group holding Mount Lebanon meeting tonight in run-up to Pennsylvania redistricting decision
Fair Districts PA seeks to inform voters on the effects of gerrymandering and let people know how they can help to end gerrymandering in Pennsylvania.
MP3 Monday: Altar Boy
This week’s freebie is a melancholy track from Altar Boy that plays with dynamics, building into a desperate wave about love lost.
Oscar Week: The Shape of Doug Jones
A conversation with actor Doug Jones, star of the Oscar-nominated film, The Shape of Water
Gone Fishin’: Immaculate Heart of Mary
Writer Celine Roberts reviews a local fish fry for every Friday of the Lenten season.
Candidates in Pittsburgh City Council District 8 special election talk gun violence, PWSA and wet basements
Democrat Sonja Finn, independents Marty Healey and Erika Strassburger and Republican Rennick Remley will face off in the March 6 election.
Healthy Ride bike share will more than triple amount of Pittsburgh stations
Pittsburgh’s bike-share system has tallied 212,000 rides in less than three years, and is looking to get even more.
PostSecret: The Show stops in Pittsburgh
In 2004, Frank Warren printed out 3,000 plain postcards. His plan was to ask people to decorate the cards, write down one secret they’d never told anyone else, and mail them to him anonymously. “I handed them out to people on the streets of Washington, D.C., not really knowing what to expect, but slowly secrets…
Black Panther
BLACK PANTHER Directed by Ryan Coogler Starring Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright In 3-D, in select theaters Holy Catman, Black Panther is great. We’re through the pre-hype, the preview think pieces and some killer red carpets at assorted premieres for the much-anticipated Ryan Coogler take on the Marvel comic.…
Lauren Russell’s new poetry collection What’s Hanging on the Hush
There’s something pleasingly circular about reviewing Lauren Russell’s 74-page debut collection, What’s Hanging on the Hush (Ahsahta Press) for City Paper. In it, the poem, “Of Mice and Monsters” cribs a passage from the syndicated column, News of the Weird, about Swedish murderers marrying behind bars. The poem also manages to incorporate quotes from Lady…
New Local Release: Lady Beast’s Vicious Breed
Lady Beast Vicious Breed Cruz Del Sur www.ladybeast.bandcamp.com If you were worried that Lady Beast was going to abandon its mission to pay homage to metal that replicates the feel of the golden age of metal (pre-1988), then breathe a sigh of relief. Lady Beast’s Vicious Breed is composed of eight tracks that feed the…
Driftwood Oven rallies funds for a storefront
Driftwood Oven 3615 Butler St., Pittsburgh, PA website Driftwood Oven is ending its years of mobile-oven wandering and settling into a new life surrounded by four permanent walls. After a search for a space, owners Neil Blazin and Justin Vetter chose the former Matteo’s spot on Butler Street in Lawrenceville. Setting up shop in a…
Happy End
In an echo of his penetrating thriller Caché, the director Michael Haneke (Amour) often keeps his voyeuristic camera at a distance from his characters in Happy End. This technique eschews intimacy in a disquieting drama, as we watch the members of a wealthy family enact and endure (or not) the tedious-to-toxic exigencies of everyday life.…
Pittsburgh City Paper Booze Battles: Tina’s vs. Spoon
Each week, we order the same cocktail at two different bars for a friendly head-to-head battle. Go to the bars, taste both drinks and tell us what you like about each by tagging @pghcitypaper on Twitter or Instagram and using #CPBoozeBattles. If you want to be a part of Booze Battles, send an email to…
Black Bottom Film Festival
It’s not all Black Panther on the screen this weekend. There’s another way to celebrate African-American cinema, as the Black Bottom Film Festival — three days of film screenings, discussions and guest speakers — returns this weekend to the August Wilson Center, Downtown. Production designer Wynn Thomas, who has worked on nearly a dozen Spike…
Critics’ Pick: Adam Torres at Club Cafe
[SINGER-SONGWRITER] + SUN., FEB. 25 When you hear an artist without seeing a visual representation to match up with the voice or sound, your mind can make up all sorts of absurd ideas of what the performer might look like. When I first heard Adam Torres, I immediately imagined a small, tender cartoon bird, and…
Pittsburgh Pirates owner Bob Nutting will keep putting out an inferior product for as long as we let him
The Pittsburgh Pirates need to build a statue to honor Andrew McCutchen. Yes, I know it’s unheard of to erect such a tribute to an active player, but this is a unique situation. Statues are supposed to commemorate important moments and people. They’re not only for things we want to remember, but also for things…
DeShantz restaurant group opens Poulet Bleu, a French-inspired bistro in Lawrenceville
Poulet Bleu American Bistro 3519 Butler St., Pittsburgh, PA 412-325-3435 website Richard DeShantz Restaurant Group’s ever-expanding empire has moved out of Downtown and up the Allegheny River to Lawrenceville. Poulet Bleu, a French-inspired American bistro, opened Feb. 6 in the space formerly occupied by Tamari and Pan on Butler Street. The new venue boasts long-time…
This week in Pittsburgh Sports History
Feb. 22, 1978 The annual City Game between Pitt and Duquesne is a basketball rivalry that has gone on for decades. And it has been, at times, pretty raucous. Like on this day, according to the book, Tales From the Pitt Panthers, by Sam Sciullo. Pitt would win the game 72-65, but the most excitement…
Real Men
Say it loud in a huff, shoot off their mouths and heavy guns drag bloody deer, leave their hearts on the ground. Real men roll their sleeves up, a handful of chips, edge of a mouth dripping with sauce, give you shit. Real men screw tool boxes down to floors, put rocks in your hubcaps.…
Queer-centric dance night Jellyfish returns to P Town Fri., Feb. 23
“Picture yourself in late-’70s, early-’80s Milan or Berlin. You’re just walking down an alley, and you hear music and follow it. You go into a divey bar and find a huge party with all this color, like walking into Oz.” This was the vision for Jellyfish, a free dance party centered around Italo disco, new…
Critics’ Pick: Ratboys at Black Forge Coffee House
[EMO] + WED., FEB. 28 Chi-town’s grittiest are back in the ’Burgh and ready to play songs with weird titles (like “Elvis is in the Freezer”), while you toss back an espresso beverage variant. I recommend Black Forge Coffee’s vanilla-lavender latte. If you don’t already know, Ratboys are a little bit of gorgeous indie rock…
Wild Pink perform at Club Café on Sun., Feb. 25
Although Wild Pink is, on paper, just another indie-rock band from New York City, its sound distinguishes it from the thousands of others that are currently blossoming out of the longstanding creative hub. Like many Brooklynites, none of their members are originally from the city. But unlike others, Wild Pink’s music hasn’t adapted to its…
Critics’ Pick: Deer Tick at Mr. Smalls
[AMERICANA] + WED., FEB. 28 As a self-proclaimed alt-country addict and aficionado, I’ve gotta say it doesn’t get much better than Deer Tick, folks. Even though the Providence, R.I., band rejects the alt-country label, I’m here to slap it right across its members’ foreheads. Famously irreverent frontman John McCauley had a baby with his wife…
Pittsburgh city schools have churned out a lot of big-name talent in sports and other endeavors
The Pittsburgh City League recently crowned the Allderdice Dragons as 2017-18 basketball champions in both men’s and women’s basketball. The Westinghouse Bulldogs were drubbed in both championship games. Over the past few years, the City League has contracted to six teams as schools like Peabody, Oliver and Schenley have shuffled their students to one of…
Betty: They Say I’m Different premieres at the Black Bottom Film Festival, Sun., Feb. 25
Pittsburgh has given birth to myriad artists, but none have been as unique as Betty Davis. The former Betty Mabry moved to New York during the revolutionary ’60s. After befriending Jimi Hendrix, she inspired jazz icon Miles Davis to change his look and music so it would appeal to a younger, bolder audience. She also…
David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette at the University of Pittsburgh
If you’re headed to the University of Pittsburgh to catch its production of David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette, I’d suggest you spend a little time beforehand brushing up on the main character, the French Revolution, and the literature and philosophy of 18th-century France. Such information could help in navigating your way through Adjmi’s unyielding script, which…
In the Darkroom author Susan Faludi comes to Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures series
Susan Faludi, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the 1991 non-fiction book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, received a revelatory email in 2004 from her estranged father of almost 25 years: “I have decided that I have had enough of impersonating a macho, aggressive man that I have never been inside,” her…
The Colony Café offers family recipes for light repast
Cafe liminal 1125 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA website A few years ago, Erik Hendrickson and his wife Sue were living in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., when they decided to quit their corporate jobs and open a cat café. Hendrickson says they fell in love with Pittsburgh immediately and knew it would the perfect place to launch…
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Today, only the fans of classic movies are likely to know who Gloria Grahame was. The actress was often cast as the sultry femme fatale in memorable film noirs, such as In a Lonely Place and Sudden Fear; she was twice nominated for an Oscar — for 1947’s Crossfire and The Bad and Beautiful (1952),…
Amaro Sfumato Rabarbaro
“Sfumato is derived from the Italian word for ‘smoke’ which is ‘fumo.’ It’s an appropriate name for this very smoky rhubarb amaro that is full and slightly sweet, but with a bitter edge. It’s the perfect way to end a meal if you like a bold finish.” Recommended by Celine Roberts, CP staff writer Amaro…
From drug-addicted parents to homelessness, does James Craig’s hardscrabble life in Washington County make him the ideal state senate candidate?
James Craig loves grabbing a hot dog at Shorty’s Lunch in downtown Washington, Pa. If this rural county has a melting pot, it’s this small, crowded diner where the secret to the food is the flattop grill that’s only been replaced once since the joint opened in 1932. “I love coming here because there’s this…
Critics’ Pick: Dan Koshute at Spirit
[PUNK] + SAT., FEB. 24 Eat pizza and listen to weird music. That’s my personal life philosophy, and it’s not dissimilar to local Lawrenceville spot Spirit. This is why we love and accept that venue. It’s got the pizza covered, and you’ve got ears, so go experience the weirdness in full by taking yourself and…
Holmes and Watson at New Hazlett Theater
“It’s more fun not to know anything before the curtain goes up,” reads a note by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher in the program for Holmes and Watson, staged at the New Hazlett Theater through March 4. On the one hand, he’s right. The twists of this Sherlock Holmes mystery deserve an unspoiled audience in order for…
Local YouTuber Lily Whispers relaxes viewers with care and crinkling
For many people, the phenomenon of ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) puts a name to a feeling they’ve always known but couldn’t place. Now, an entire community on YouTube thrives on this feeling, lulling viewers into a state of relaxation and sleepiness. Local YouTuber Lily (who goes by only her first name) started making ASMR…
Savage Love
I’m an 18-year-old female. I’m cisgender and bisexual. I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with my cisgender bisexual boyfriend for about a year. I’m currently struggling with a lot of internalized biphobia and other hang-ups about my boyfriend’s sexuality. I don’t know if I’m projecting my own issues onto him, or if I’m just being bigoted towards…
Free Will Astrology
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “Be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods.” That’s the message I saw on a woman’s T-shirt today. It’s the best possible advice for you to hear right now. To further drive home the point, I’ll add a quote from productivity consultant David Allen: “Patience is the calm acceptance…
