A Conversation with Jair Hood
This art form isn’t new in other cities — why’s it just getting here?Pittsburgh looks to other cities for style and inspiration so a lotta times if they don’t see it on TV it’s not gonna fly. But I want cats to try something different. I give people the freedom to be as creative as…
Cents and the City
If you park in Oakland, the Pittsburgh budget crisis may have just saved your space – at least temporarily. On Sept. 10, city council applied the brake to a plan to turn the Schenley Plaza parking lot into a parklet. The plan calls for transforming the 238-space lot into what City Planning Director Susan Golomb…
Clark Unbarred
Howard Dean’s minions aren’t the only ones using meetup.com to organize. But in the case of Wesley Clark fans, so far they’re organizing around a non-candidate. Clark, the retired general who once commanded allied forces in Europe, is still mum on whether he will be a Democratic contender for president, though draftclark2004.com claims…
Thirteen
Thirteen, a surprisingly lean, astute, evenhanded docu-drama about two teen-age California junior-high girls gone wild, opens with a disturbing echo of Fight Club, the story of middle-aged machismo gone over the edge. In the nondescript bedroom of Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), she and her girlfriend Evie (Nikki Reed) are getting high on the fumes from…
The Navigators
Director Ken Loach, a chronicler of the working man for over three decades (Bread and Roses, Riff Raff), sets his lens on a group of Yorkshire railway workers in 1995. British Rail has been privatized, and this maintenance crew informed that they are now independent contractors, obligated to “serve the customer.” The men laugh about…
Correction
In the news brief “Meet and Defeat” (Sept. 10), Ernesto Sanchez’s residence and occupation were incorrect. He lives in Hopewell, and provides bilingual customer support for a local corporation.
Manna from Heaven
Set in Buffalo, where it was filmed, and written, produced and directed by a quintet of sisters named Burton and their parents, the cloyingly home-grown Manna from Heaven revolves around an extended family of siblings, in-laws, neighbors and “freeloaders” who get rich quick one day in the innocent ersatz 1950s when more than $20,000 in…
Cremaster Cycle
Cremaster 1 & 2. Not that the concept of “order” has any meaning here, but Matthew Barney, the Yale-educated sculptor, filmmaker and father of Björk’s recent progeny, created the five films in his Cremaster cycle (not series: cycle) out of sequence, beginning with Cremaster 4 in 1994, followed by 1, 5, 2 and 3. Actually,…
Cincinnati Burning
You’d think the riots hit last week. Take a walk up Vine Street in the Over the Rhine section of Cincinnati, where utter bedlam occurred two years ago, and you still have to watch for broken glass. Storefronts still have gaping cavities where windows used to be. Soot borders doorways like eyeliner. In riots after…
FALL GUIDE
DRAFT DODGERSA panel of beer samples four brewpubsWriter: JUSTIN HOPPER Ours is the city of “a drinking town with a football problem”; of a pub full of Iron City Beer tattoos and a thousand rip-offs of that ubiquitous logo. Pittsburgh is the town that forgot Duquesne Brewery closed and that often still — a decade…
Dead Center
The race for Allegheny County Executive has been a model of how representative democracy is supposed to work. So why is it so godawful boring? The two candidates, Republican incumbent Jim Roddey and Democratic County Controller Dan Onorato, are meeting at nearly two dozen debates around the county — far more face-to-face meetings than George…
I’d like to know about the township, borough and city designations given to parts of Allegheny County. How are they different, if at all? Why are we not all cities?
Soon, Ms. Kaufman, you WILL all be cities… or rather, one city! Yes, soon you shall all be residents of… Pittsburgh! And then your tax base will be ours, all ours! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-h… Sorry about that. The Allegheny Conference was just here, accompanied by a handful of burly metropolitanists from the Post-Gazette editorial board. These people…
My Morning Jacket
Stunned into not silence, but a corralled cry for help, Jim James comes across partially as preacher, partially as desperate sinner, and mostly like Louisville’s own Hamlet — so overwhelmed by life’s infinite ironies and deadly vagaries as to don a dark cloak and fling himself head on into inaction. James’ is a castle built…
Low Flying Owls
Rejoice, psych fans. If the Elephant 6 stable (Apples In Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control) has proven a bit precious and twee, while garage revivalists such as the White Stripes come across a bit too stripped-down and basic (and precious), look no further than Sacramento quartet Low Flying Owls. The Owls’ label, Stinky, aptly describes them…
Benchwarmer
Remember when you were living in a neighborhood filled with college kids, and there was this one hip band that always played the fun house parties and had one or two good songs? That could be Benchwarmer. Nowadays, the youth are just sophisticated enough that their shindigs don’t always have to feature a hapless matchbox…
Overthrowing the Banana Republicans
Look, you pink-flamingo-displaying, mall-worshiping, blond-and-blue-eyed, holier-than-thou, smug, superior Banana Republican suburbanites: Take your disdain for the city and stick it in one of your 18 cargo-pants pockets. There’s way too much singing and dancing in the ‘burbs about the fiscal fiasco in the ‘Burgh. You don’t have to be so damn happy about it. Do…
