Bullet Train to Vegas
Named after a much-loved Drive Like Jehu track, Orange County’s Bullet Train to Vegas is actually louder, faster and much more likely to scream and shout. Frequently compared to Sparta and At the Drive-In, the group’s Nitro Records debut carves a singular niche for itself in the already overcrowded post-hardcore landscape, thanks largely…
Kaya
Location: 2000 Smallman St, Strip District. 412-261-6565 Hours: Mon.-Wed. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Thu.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun. noon-9 p.m. Prices: Appetizers, $5-11; entrees, $9-23 Fare: Reimagined Caribbean Atmosphere: Tropical twilight Liquor: Full bar Ten years ago, when Kaya first opened with a dining experience that felt like an hour-long resort vacation, its arrival seemed to…
COME AWAY HOME
Doug Mckeon’s family film, co-scripted and produced by former Pittsburghers Steve Zakman and Robert Slane, tells the story of a 12-year-old New York City girl, Annie (Jordan-Claire Green), who reluctantly spends the summer with her grandfather (Paul Dooley) on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. Annie’s quite petulant, but gradually warms to the island’s charms…
No Contest
I’m writing this on the Monday before the primary, so although it seems certain Bob O’Connor will be the next mayor of Pittsburgh, this column could be one of those “Dewey Defeats Truman” moments. But it’s too easy to second-guess a campaign after the race is over; and if you second-guess it during the race,…
HEAD-ON
In this broody, off-beat love story, two Turkish immigrants living in Hamburg meet at the hospital after respective suicide attempts and enter into a fake marriage. For young Sibel, the union provides her escape from her restrictive traditional home; for the 40ish Cahit, anything would be a change from his self-destructive, near-derelict lifestyle. Through the…
Wall, Page, Circuit
In Notre Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo describes a 15th-century deacon who laments that the printing press will lead, eventually, to the end of architecture. The new availability of printed books would logically cause the decline of carved-stone cathedrals, the previously favored method of conveying information to the largely illiterate masses. “Ceci tuera…
WATERMARKS
It might surprise many who view Yaron Zilberman’s documentary that even in early-1900s Austria, Jews were being persecuted considerably. Austrian sports clubs, for instance, excluded Jews; as a result, the now-legendary Jewish Hakoah sports club of Vienna was founded, and grew into one of the continent’s largest and most accomplished. Hakoah’s swim team was especially…
My question is about the Roosevelt Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh. Was it named after FDR?
It seems unlikely. The hotel opened in 1927 — five years before the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the ascension of the Democratic Party in local politics. And for years after Roosevelt’s New Deal, many businesses in Pittsburgh and elsewhere would just as soon have named the structure after Lenin. …
UNLEASHED
The racial overtones of this movie will be impossible to miss for some, while important to neglect for others. The leash around Danny’s (Jet Li) neck in this movie would seem ludicrous if not for the fact that black slaves actually were forced to wear similar neck ornaments in 19th-century America. Likewise, Li spends much…
I grew up near U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson plant. Who was Edgar Thomson?
Put simply, Edgar Thomson was Edgar Thomson’s biggest customer. That probably sounds like the sort of deal they did at Enron, where executives traded with themselves in order to boost earnings. Not so. Andrew Carnegie, the man who built the Edgar Thomson Works, was far too upstanding for such shenanigans. (And…
2005 Summer Guide
Summer Music Roundup Concerts Visual Art Seems Like Old Times Theater Fairs and Festivals Kid Stuff Sports and Recreation On a warm Saturday in April, Karen Gainey steers her Explorer into Camp Twin Echo, a Boy Scout camp just north of Ligonier. She’s on hand to help a couple dozen Cub Scouts from Pack 817…
A conversation with Chuck Freyer
Chuck Freyer, 57, of West Mifflin, runs the Greater Pittsburgh Soap Box Derby, set for Sun., June 19, down Eden Park Boulevard in McKeesport. The gravity-driven contest for wooden cars is in its 28th year. The world championship — the All-American Soap Box Derby — is held each year in Akron, Ohio. …
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
I REMEMBER THE BEGINNING, long, long ago, as if it happened just last week. Not the actual movie, which I’m sure I saw contemporary to its original release. I remember Deb Patterson, who was obsessed with the damned thing, and who ambled the halls of our college dormitory, imitating her beloved C-3P0. A…
Up and Down
Freer, perhaps, but still absurd: Life post-communism in the Czech Republic remains laden with ironies in Up and Down, a lively, thought-provoking new drama. Director Jan Hrebejk and screenwriter Petr Jarchovsky build the story around two families (actually, several) whose paths intersect: one accidentally torn apart, and another just as precipitously, and just as…
Kicking and Screaming
Phil Weston’s dad, Buck, is a jerky parent, fiercely competitive and forever finding Phil’s performance inadequate. It’s little wonder that Phil grows up to be a tightly wound ball of suppressed rage and humiliation. When the two men end up coaching their respective 10-year-old sons on rival soccer teams, the years of competitiveness…
Military
“Draft dodgers! Sign up and go, every last one of you!” screamed a red-faced man as he hustled past about 18 activists standing in front of Oakland’s U.S. Army Armed Forces Career Center on May 14. There is no draft. Of course. But, with new enlistment continually falling short of stated goals and the…
Service Jobs: More Than Just a Body of Work
In an economy supposedly fueled by mouse clicks and computer scans, it’s easy to forget how much work is still done by hand. Mike Rose hasn’t forgotten. In fact, it’s his mission as a writer and researcher to ensure that manual laborers get their due. Rose, a UCLA education professor, spent several years observing…
Labor: Trading Up for Trades
Beth Kowalewski started working at Chatham College five years ago as a housekeeper, but the classes available through her union have made her a tradeswoman. Thanks to a recent agreement, about 400 other cleaners, security guards and groundskeepers at Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne and Point Park universities can take advantage of the same…
Weird War
They say the clothes make the man, but they seldom say the laws make the outlaw. In any case, Ian Svenonious is equally fashionista and Sandinista. The Make-Up, one of Svenonious’ most long-lived band projects, and now officially defunct, was a response to the post-romantic age — a panoptic medium for…
Medications
If Q and Not U is the band that lent Dischord and the Washington, D.C., post-punk scene a long-overdue public-perception update, Medications is the band most likely to turn the clock back again. The trio’s first full-length, produced by Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, sounds a lot like the Ghost of Dischord Past: angular guitar…
