Est Liberty
After five years of holding E-Fest, East Liberty’s arts festival at Highland and Penn avenues, “the community is starting to participate,” says Muzz Meyers, fest organizer. Mostly, that means drawing arts groups and current exhibits out into the streets. The annual event, on July 12-13 this year, includes a performance of Barrett Black’s urban opera…
VISTA Darkening
Beth Ament has helped rebuild a playground on the North Side, a park in Homewood and jazz on the Hill, but now she’s leaving Pittsburgh because she’s discouraged, not by the city but by the federal program that brought her here: VISTA, the domestic version of the Peace Corps. “Mostly because I’m frustrated with all…
Saline Dissolution
The tiny Saline Street cul-de-sac in Squirrel Hill, isolated on three sides by woods but facing several industrial-looking blocks of Brown’s Hill Road, has half a dozen houses and a future that is now much more certain — to the regret of some residents. In January, Walnut Capital Partners approached homeowners about the possibility of…
Sodom Might
The Fourth of July came early this year. Eight days early, to be precise, when on June 26 the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the very principles we celebrate every July. And the holiday was celebrated not with fireworks, but a shot across the bow … for Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, for the University of Pittsburgh, and…
Yank-ing Conservative Chains
In this new age of patriotic homophobia, nothing strikes terror into the hearts of conservative curmudgeons like the phrase “I’m a Yankee doodle dandy.” The last thing these guys want is more dandies, and they’d like everyone to keep their doodles to themselves unless they’re used in a government-approved, religiously acceptable program of procreation. And…
The “Hot Metal Bridge” — is it really hot? And where is it located?
The Hot Metal Bridge is easy to find. Just jump in the Monongahela River at the Point, swim three miles upstream — try not to swallow any water on the way — and look straight up. Less physically fit readers may prefer to simply drive along East Carson Street and turn left at South 29th…
ENO PANINOTECA
JASON: The first time I enjoyed this little dining garden, it was part of the Café Photo Forum, and it was intimate and sophisticated — everything dining in Shadyside should be. ANGELIQUE: Remember when it was Bellini? My waiter once spoke faux-Frenglish to me all night. JASON: How irritating. Well, it was part of the…
Dry
Even in his more earnest moments, Augusten Burroughs punctuates his thoughts with a silent yet resonant, “Whatever, Augusten” — meaning he always manages to keep his life, both pre- and post-rehab for alcoholism, in perspective with a wit, I suppose, typical of a sharp twentysomething advertising executive living in Manhattan’s “fast lane.” After all, this…
House of Fools
Once you’ve gathered some metaphors to stand on, the walls that separate the insides of mental institutions from the supposedly sane outside world stop looking so high. Or so the movies often tell us. Andrei Konchalovsky’s potent House of Fools takes that conceit more literally than most. It’s set at an asylum in the midst…
We Take Brunot in the Morning!
Captain’s Log, Day 1Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world … Wait a minute. I’m thinking of the wrong Moby-Dick character entirely. Call me Ahab…
A conversation with Diana Weichert
When you speak Esperanto it sounds like you have an Italian accent.The basis of Esperanto is Latin — Romance languages. Seventy-five percent of Esperanto is Latin-derived — that’s why a lot of Latin teachers like Esperanto. Twenty percent [of the words] are English and German [derived] and five percent are just [from] different languages –…
The Guys
A drama like The Guys — in which a New York City fire captain remembers his colleagues killed on Sept. 11 — has a small window of opportunity and perhaps an even smaller range of appeal. It needs to reach us soon enough after its crystallizing moment that our confusion still lingers, but not so…
Terminator 3
For a few happy minutes at the beginning of Terminator 3, there’s something witty going on. These minutes commence with the appearance of the villain, a time-traveling robot built roughly in the form of a female underwear model. But it’s not just that the TX (Kristanna Loken) has a pleasing appearance. It’s also where she…
Campaign Wants YOU to Fight the USA PATRIOT Act
As Uncle Sam read the Bill of Rights, President George W. Bush leapt out from behind a painted dinosaur, ripped the document from the older man’s hands, and shoved it into a nearby paper shredder. Asked what gave him the right, Bush grabbed a microphone and shouted, “I was selected as president!” That bit of…
Levity
The opening scene of Levity is lit with the mild glow of unreality. More than 20 years earlier, as a teenager, Manual Jordan did something awful, and he’s been in jail for it ever since. Now his life sentence has been shrunk to time served, and he’s free to go. It turns out that what…
Web Site Wants YOU to Solve the City Budget Crisis
Mayor Tom Murphy has so far failed. Gov. Ed Rendell has barely tried. Corporate chieftains have been rebuffed. So it’s up to you to solve the City of Pittsburgh’s $60 million budget deficit and avert bankruptcy! That’s the idea behind the Pittsburgh Policy Issues Forum, an online “town hall” put together by Carnegie Mellon University’s…
To Serve and Object
“To this day I still haven’t received an official word from city authorities that I’ve been nominated,” says Richard Carrington, one of three people named by Mayor Tom Murphy to fill long-standing vacancies on the Citizen Police Review Board. “All I got was a call asking that I submit my resume” — and that, he…
