Could you tell me more about the history of windy Noblestown Road and the tiny village that also bears the name?
Information on Noblestown is a bit scant. But this community, an unincorporated village inside North Fayette Township, has long been associated with the idea of getting someplace else. In that respect, it’s much like New Jersey. Any time you find a winding road in Western Pennsylvania, it’s a good bet that it was built along…
A Conversation with Penny Layne and Fawn
Penny Layne, of Moon Township, is the regional liaison for Paws with a Cause, a national organization that trains and provides service dogs … animals that assist the physically challenged with hearing, tasks such retrieving and opening doors, and pulling wheelchairs. Layne coordinates a foster-puppy program, recruits volunteers, trains dogs and fund-raises with…
DJ Zimmie
South Hills native DJ Zimmie returned from a hiatus in The City of Brotherly Love less than a year ago, yet he’s already one of Pittsburgh’s busiest and most sought-after DJs. From the down-to-earth atmosphere at the Pittsburgh Deli Co. to the Firehouse Lounge’s young-professional vibe or the rowdy South Side bars, Zimmie’s…
A Tale of Two Center Cities
Few places bring the worlds of affluence and indigence as close together as the 400 block of Wood Street in Downtown Pittsburgh. At the north side of the block sits The Carlyle, a luxury condominium in the making. The lobby is anchored by marble pillars the size of ancient oaks. Champagne flutes line the ledge…
The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
The new documentary Off & On Broadway follows The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players around New York to a handful of their shows and through a few days in their lives. The accompanying press release describes the Trachtenburgs’ music as “quirky, indie pop songs in the key of unironic good, clean fun.” …
What Made Milwaukee Famous
After the band’s particularly rockin’ set at the 2005 South by Southwest music festival, many in the audience were left asking, Who are these guys? After all the “who’s on first?” confusion settled down, it was clear that What Made Milwaukee Famous had established itself as one of that year’s festival favorites. …
Young Bin Kwan
Location: 4305 Main St., Bloomfield. 412-687-2222 Hours: Mon.-Thu. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Prices: Starters $2-9; sushi platters $15-35; Korean entrées, $9-30 Fare: Korean BBQ and hot pots, sushi, Japanese hibachi Atmosphere: Asian oasis Liquor: Full bar Smoking: Permitted throughout Angelique has a fear of windowless restaurants. Sometimes it’s a suspicion that whatever’s…
The War Tapes
There’s a black screen, and then a big sound. But as The War Tapes opens, the atomizing percussion of artillery is followed by an intimate, human noise: The heavy, quavering sigh of the soldier who’s holding the video camera as his unit faces unseen attackers in Fallujah. That sigh … an…
Hard Cell
Congress and the president really pulled the fat out of the fire for the people in the private misery business. I am referring to companies like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group (formerly the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation) that run for-profit gulags. For a minute there, it was beginning to look like the…
The King
Almost a sesqui-century after the end of the Civil War, the South is still The Story of America. I mean the literal South, but also its state of mind … in modern parlance, the Red States, where the concept of “family values” is a sword, not a shield, and where God and Jesus…
Pirates Cocaine Scandal As Seen on TV
When the HBO Sports journalism show Real Sports hits the airwaves on Aug. 15, it will feature an in-depth segment on 1985’s infamous Pittsburgh Baseball Cocaine Trials. The scandal marked one of the most shameful eras in baseball history, ranking with the 1919 Black Sox Scandal and the recent Congressional steroids hearings for its debauched…
Crossover Appeal
Bill Brown is coming to town with a tale of two road trips. One is a survey the filmmaker made of the U.S.-Mexico border between East Texas and the Pacific Ocean, exploring the cultural terrain surrounding immigration. Brown, 36, made that foray by car; on the second trip, a 1,600-miler by bicycle, he’s…
Crossing the Line on Illegal Immigration
In Western Pennsylvania, at least, you can still find discussions of immigration that look like this: a panel of five white males, members of the state legislature’s House Republican Policy Committee, hearing testimony from an all-white roster of speakers. All held in a corporate office park. In that noted multicultural hotbed, Cranberry Township. The Aug.…
Anti-WarConnecting Profits and Losses in War
Anti-war and anti-nuclear activists drew the connection between international conflicts, profits and death on the streets outside a local Navy nuclear-weapons lab … just one part of a weekend-long teach-in and gathering Aug. 4-6. The event, marking the anniversary of the World War II bombing of Hiroshima, targeted the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in…
Immigration Hearing Borders on Set-Up
An Aug. 2 hearing by the state’s House Republican Policy Committee was convened to debate new restrictions on immigration at the state level. So perhaps it was suitable that acting Chairman Daryl Metcalfe (R-Cranberry) managed to import much of the content. Two speakers were from outside the state, and Metcalfe himself kept smuggling in references…
World Trade Center
Oliver Stone has built his reputation as a conspiracy theorist and a brutalist. Here, he’s a sentimentalist, and it doesn’t suit.
Co-op Will Get Union Election
East End Food Co-op workers and management have compromised: They will now accept federal supervision of an election to decide whether employees will unionize. The Co-op’s 50 non-management employees will vote in a National Labor Relations Board-stipulated election on Aug. 30 on whether to adopt the International Workers of the World as their union.…
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Nights is a silly comedy about a top driver who loses his mojo. But it also gleefully sends up plenty of NASCARs cherished tenets. (Capsule review.)
BARNYARD
Younger kids should enjoy Steve Oedekerk’s animated comedy about walking, talking farm animals that rally together to fend off some coyotes. With, natch, some breaks for lessons in maturity … and what it means to live on a vegan farm, begging the question: What’s this place for, anyhow? It didn’t bother me that the rubbery…
Line Jumping
In Western Pennsylvania, at least, you can still find discussions of immigration that look like this: a panel of five white males, members of the state legislature’s House Republican Policy Committee, hearing testimony from an all-white roster of speakers. All held in a corporate office park. In that noted multicultural hotbed, Cranberry Township. The…
THE DESCENT
Being trapped in an uncharted cave with six not-so-friendly extreme-sports chicks is already one of my worst nightmares. No need to add meat-eating humanoids, but writer-director Neil Marshall does. His women-only horror thriller effectively taps our claustrophobia, and Marshall gets off several crowd-pleasing scares. However, I found the nail-biting mood to be leavened by the…
Big Coal
Here in Western Pennsylvania, during the Quecreek mining disaster, we chortled when King of All Media Howard Stern commented that he didn’t know people still even mined coal. Haw-haw … dumb New Yorker. After all, some of us are only a generation or two removed from the mines. And we’re all…
HEART OF THE GAME
Ward Serrill’s low-key yet rousing documentary about a Seattle girls’ high school basketball team is the perfect antidote to those saccharine inspirational sports dramas about plucky underdogs and come-from-behind victories. It’s not that Heart doesn’t offer those satisfying threads: After all, female athletics programs are perennially second-string, and the film’s two main protagonists are unlikely…
Steel-Plated Penthouse
Stand watching Braddock Avenue in Braddock, and you’ll still see plenty of traffic moving along. But what really seems to pass this town by is time itself. The steel industry collapsed famously, and the buildings are following. Weather and neglect have caused so many downtown structures to cave in that the Historic District there…
THE LOST CITY
Actor Andy Garcia makes his directorial debut with this muddled period drama set in Havana on the eve of the Communist revolution. Garcia also portrays a nightclub owner, Fico, who hopes to stay neutral, even as several siblings join the cause. His family is among the educated elite (annoyingly, most speak in epigrams), and there’s…
I grew up in Oakdale and Sturgeon, Pa. Could you tell me more about the history of windy Noblestown Road and the tiny village that also bears the name?
Information on Noblestown is a bit scant. But this community, an unincorporated village inside North Fayette Township, has long been associated with the idea of getting someplace else. In that respect, it’s much like New Jersey. Any time you find a winding road in Western Pennsylvania, it’s a good bet that…
