State transit solutions: running later than a 54 on the weekend
Gov. Tom Corbett last week warned that transportation funding isn’t his priority for this term. Port Authority CEO Steve Bland, meanwhile, is warning yet again that if the state doesn’t act soon, riders can expect more misery. Last week, Corbett was in town for a Waterways Symposium, and told the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review that he…
MP3 Monday: Hidden Twin
Boooo! Spooky! Hey! Halloween! Let’s cut right to the MP3. This week it comes from a guy, Phil Boyd, who used to sometimes dress up as a giant squid when he performed. That’s almost topical, right? His current solo project is Hidden Twin, and his latest EP (on Machine Age Records) sounds more like the…
Irish Poets at City of Asylum
A group of four Irish poets made City Of Asylum/Pittsburgh’s big white tent on Sampsonia Way one of three stops on their U.S. tour. Rita Ann Higgins, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Caitríona O’Reilly and Leontia Flynn were all included in the new anthology The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry. The other two stops were…
Anti-fracking activist Dana Dolney taking another shot at county executive
We’re not sure why anyone would want to get into the middle of the donnybrook for Allegheny County Executive, but anti-fracking activist Dana Dolney is doing exactly that. Dolney made a splash during the May Primary when she launched a write-in campaign on an anti-fracking platform just 24 hours before Fitzgerald tangled with Democratic challenger…
Short List: October 27 – November 3
The photographs of Charles “Teenie” Harris documenting African-American life have likely been as widely seen as any still images produced in Pittsburgh — from the nationally circulated pages of the mid-century Pittsburgh Courier to local gallery shows big and small. Now the Carnegie Museum of Art, which owns the Harris archive, offers the biggest exhibit…
In Their Own Words
Originally from Mexico, Gregorio and Alejandra today live on the North Side with their two children. Due to their immigration status, their names have been changed. They were interviewed by Andrea Kamouyerou. Gregorio: I came from Mexico to have a better future, and better work options. I was told that in Pittsburgh there was a…
Savage Love
My boyfriend and I are in college and doing the long-distance thing. Over the years, he’s granted me increasing freedom to be intimate with women — I’m female, and date women while we’re apart — but I still don’t have full autonomy. Lately another one of my “needs” has been eating at me: my masochism.…
Nadine’s on 27th
A poem by Bernadette Ulsamer
Alien Notions
Last week the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit, Aponte v. Martino, that raises a disturbing question about how immigrants are treated in Pittsburgh. And the question is this: Whatever happened to the good old days, when Pittsburghers knew how to make a buck off of immigrant laborers? The lawsuit stems from an October…
Alma Pan-Latin Kitchen
The discovery of regional cuisines by professional chefs has led us to some sophisticated explorations of foreign food, some so regionally specific that they might otherwise have never lit up our radars. In our own kitchen, for instance, is an entire cookbook dedicated to Le Marche, a modest area of Italy a bit larger…
Crossing Borders
“My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita …” famed mojito enthusiast Ernest Hemingway once wrote. Although the legendary La Bodeguita bar is still open today in Havana, travel to Cuba can be difficult. Luckily, Pittsburghers seeking a mojito have an easier alternative. Downtown’s Seviche boasts a deep list of South and Central…
Emergencia Médica: Dealing with health care can be the real pain for immigrants
When Roberto Boyzo’s friend refused to see a dentist for a nagging tooth problem, Boyzo was concerned but not surprised that his friend would postpone seeking dental care until the next time he returned to his native Mexico. “I said, ‘Really?'” recalls Boyzo, a 40-year-old Mexican immigrant who lives in Bellevue. “‘You’ll deal with all…
Raja announces plan for first 100 days
Republican Allegheny County Chief Executive candidate D. Raja rolled out the plan for his first 100 days in office Wednesday afternoon. And while most of the press event went according to the plan, Raja also found himself dogged by questions regarding 84 lawsuits he filed against employees between 1996 and 2009. Raja said that if…
Las Palmas Supermercado
Gabriel Berumen, owner of Las Palmas Supermercado in Brookline, says one reason his customers come from far and wide — some from an hour away — is simply for brand-name Mexican products they can’t find elsewhere. “We have products that come direct from Mexico,” he explains. “They ship them to Chicago, then we bring them…
No Habla Español?: State proposals would make English the official language
Walk into a Department of Motor Vehicles office and you’ll have your choice of the various state-produced publications: a Driver’s Manual, civil-service exam sheets or a motorcycle manual. Some of those materials are even available in Spanish. But under two bills pending at the state level, those foreign-language resources would be gone. House bills 361…
Greetings from Mexico … Pa.: Central Pa. town with a strange name shares its border with a growing Hispanic community
Welcome to Mexico, where whites cherish the local history, and kosher chicken is a noted delicacy. Or bienvenidos — as not a single person who lives here is likely to say. Because this is Mexico, Pa., a small town in rural Juniata County. It’s the kind of Mexico even immigrant-baiting politicians might like: a Mexico…
Critics’ Picks: October 28 – November 3
[METAL] + FRI., OCT. 28 Kvelertak borrows liberally from black metal — much to the chagrin of many genre purists. But in their hearts, the members of the Norwegian sextet, appearing tonight at Belvedere’s, are rock ‘n’ rollers, with more in common with Mötörhead than Burzum. The band’s self-titled full-length, which came out last year…
Rhyme Cal goes to CMJ
The name says it all: CMJ Music Marathon. Disregarding a few mid-morning hours, College Music Journal’s annual New York festival is non-stop from Tuesday to Saturday. By day, there are panels with professors and industry insiders overlap. At night, the music takes over venues across Manhattan and Brooklyn. I made my way to the festival…
CD Reviews
Hidden TwinEmpire Art Gallery(Machine Age) Phil Boyd returns with an EP issued on 10-inch vinyl; his work here more closely resembles what he’s done with TM Eye and Minister Squid (drum machines, synths, electric guitars) than early Hidden Twin, which involved more acoustic guitar. Psychedelic and slightly sinister, but with undertones of ’80s pop –…
Getting to Know Geña
Geña — born María Eugenia Nieves Escoriaza in Quebaradillas, Puerto Rico, and a Pittsburgh resident for six years now — works largely within the idiom of Latin music. But that’s a lot of ground to cover. Most folks might concentrate on salsa, or folk music or Brazilian samba and bossa nova. But Geña sings…
Puss in Boots
The Shrek franchise’s slinky kitty Puss in Boots (voiced by Antonio Banderas) gets his spotlight in this animated fractured fairy tale. Chris Miller’s film ditches the original story about the conniving cat who baits-and-switches his way up the social ladder, and instead inserts our feline hero into a Humpty Dumpty/Jack and the Beanstalk mash-up. Puss…
Margin Call
There have been some excellent documentaries on the economic crisis, and now comes Margin Call, writer-director J.C. Chandor’s biting drama about a fictional financial institution’s 2008 collapse. (Allusions to Lehman Brothers are merely coincidental.) It’s got an A-list cast and a real-life hook. But with no sex, murder or satisfying resolution, will viewers check in…
The Way
In movie terms, not much happens in Emilio Estevez’s The Way, an account of one man’s journey along “El Camino de Santiago” (The Way of St. James). No explosions, no romance, no grand melodrama: just a lot of pretty scenery and mostly casual chit-chat. It’s instead a journey of the soul, of understanding, that is…
An acclaimed new Peter Pan ballet makes its Pittsburgh premiere.
In 2005, Royal Winnipeg Ballet artistic director Andre Lewis commissioned RWB School instructor Jorden Morris to choreograph a new Peter Pan ballet. Lewis wanted a production with both audience appeal and artistic integrity — a combination he felt was missing in existing versions. The ballet that Morris, a former RWB principal dancer, delivered in 2006…
Good Times
Once upon a time, Pittsburgh’s nightclub scene featured a number of venues where local performers created evenings of songs and sketches … while the audience sat ringside lapping up both the show and a martini. By the time I came along (in the late ’80s), there were only a few still working that corner. Don…
A Chorus Line
My eyesight may be going and the wrinkles keep growing … but it never occurred to me how old I really am until I was watching the Point Park Conservatory Theatre’s production of A Chorus Line, and realized that the show debuted on Broadway 36 years ago. As Hair sums up the ’60s, Rent the…
Time Stands Still
What timing: City Theatre opens a drama about war correspondents just as President Obama announces the end of the Iraq war. Hmmm. I think I’ll give more credibility to the former than the latter. Donald Margulies’ 2009 Time Stands Still explores two core relationships as it discusses the role of war journalists, from gonzo ghoul…
A sample of works in the new Mattress Factory show, Factory Installed
You’d expect an exhibit of site-specific installation art by six international artists to showcase a variety of styles, and you’d be right. Consider Pablo Valbuena and Natalia Gonzalez, two of the artists chosen from among nearly 600 submissions for the Mattress Factory’s Factory Installed by museum co-directors Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk and independent curator…
Mexico Lindo returns with its popular Day of the Dead celebration.
Elizabeth Taylor died this year, and so did Peter Falk. Amy Winehouse seemed doomed, but not quite so soon. After assisting hundreds of suicides, Jack Kevorkian expired of natural causes. And then there are less famous deaths, like the casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the victims of Mexico’s “war on drugs.” “I have an…
Public Theater’s Electra and Occupy Pittsburgh
It’s not that I think people have changed that much. But what interests me about the art of antiquity is whether it’s possible to relate to, or even fully comprehend, pictures and stories created in societies so different from our own. Sophocles wrote this play about 410 BCE — roughly contemporaneous with the construction of…
On The Record with State Rep. RoseMarie Swanger
There are two bills pending at the state level that would make English the official language of the commonwealth. One of those bills is sponsored by state Rep. RoseMarie Swanger, a Republican from Lebanon County. Her legislation, House Bill 361, would make English the only language for official business conducted by the state. In your…
