Toomey targeted in debt-ceiling protest
As U.S. senators began casting votes on the much-debated debt-ceiling legislation that passed the House yesterday, more than a dozen angry protesters demonstrated outside the district office of U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, arguing that the Tea Party Republican is part of the reason why the debt-limit bill is all cuts and no new revenues. “Folks…
Let the healing begin: Natural-gas referendum would force politicians to speak succinctly
Here’s one reason even critics might support a referendum barring natural-gas drilling inside Pittsburgh. If the question does appear on the November ballot, someone in public office will — at long last — be able to make city councilor Doug Shields get to the point, already. By state law, for a referendum to be placed…
MP3 Tuesday: Return the Ransom
Howdy! Sorry we missed out on MP3s on Monday; things got a little hectic in City Paper-land. No worries, though — we’ve got an MP3 for you. It comes from the band Return the Ransom, and the track is called “Center Stage Snapshot.” Underneath all the screaming, distorted guitars and post-’90s masculine vocals, I think…
Questions remain on anti-drilling ballot question
Just a follow-up on yesterday’s post about the prospects for letting residents vote on a citywide ban on natural-gas drilling. As noted here and elsewhere, while a seemingly veto-proof majority of council passed the measure allowing the referendum, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl can still kill it. The mayor has 10 days to act on the bill…
Anti-fracking referendum: not so fast
Pittsburgh City Council voted 6-3 in favor of putting an anti-fracking referendum on the ballot. That’s a veto-proof majority … and there was much rejoicing. But advocates should remember: Mayor Luke Ravenstahl doesn’t need a veto to kill it. Sponsored by Doug Shields, the bill would give voters a chance to append a citywide ban…
Kid Cudi postponed
Monday’s Kid Cudi show at Trib Total Media Amphitheater has been postponed due to illness. An email from Cudi’s publicist, passed along by Drusky Entertainment, says that dates in Worcester, Toronto and Pittsburgh this weekend and next week are affected: “Under doctor’s orders to rest, Cudi sincerely regrets this unavoidable cancellation and apologizes to fans…
Organic Theater Pittsburgh Debuts
While there’s a lot more going on in Pittsburgh arts-and-entertainmentwise than there was when I became CP’s A&E editor, in 2003, the uptick is especially noticeable in summer. Used to be things quieted down after the arts fest and stayed sleepy until mid-September. Not anymore. If the shows and exhibits aren’t quite as wall-to-wall as…
Holy horseshit, Batman!
To hear politicians tell it, you’d almost think the real hero in attracting the new Batman film to Pittsburgh was a state tax credit. But notwithstanding remarks made at a press conference Thursday, public subsides are not the reason that portions of Dark Knight Rises will be shot here over the next month. If anything,…
POG Disbands: Anarchist group calls it quits after nearly a decade of protests
The anarchist Pittsburgh Organizing Group has disbanded. And with it, say other local activists, have gone some of the most effective methods of public protest. At least for now. “They were undoubtedly targeted for all the wrong reasons and blamed for more than they earned,” says Beth Pittinger, head of the Citizen Police Review Board,…
Gut Shot: Cancellation of UPMC vaccine center was unwanted surprise to Hazelwood
Hazelwood residents thought their neighborhood was about to change for the better. Since December, politicians and officials from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center had been touting the hospital giant’s plans to build a high-profile vaccine center at the nearby former LTV steel mill. The project, community members were told, could cost between $600 million…
The Moral Abyss Strikes Back
The very title of the sequel to last year’s The Moral Abyss, a festival of new one-acts by Sean Michael O’Donnell at the New Olde Bank Theatre, carries a subtle warning. There’s not really much thematic continuity in The Moral Abyss Strikes Back, except perhaps a dependence on the clichéd, the obvious and the dated.…
Short List: Week of July 28 – Aug 2
Thu., July 28 — Festival In 1794, David Bradford led farmers, disgruntled by an excise tax on liquor, in the Whiskey Rebellion, one of the largest insurrections in the early United States and one whose suppression required the federalization of state militias. In honor of this historic event, Washington, Pa., hosts a three-day Whiskey Rebellion…
A radical independent bookstore expands
For seven years, The Big Idea Bookstore has sold books, zines, pamphlets and manifestos, dubbing itself “your friendly neighborhood radical bookstore.” Like so many such shops, The Big Idea closed its doors last Thursday. But unlike those other stores, it’s reopening around the corner in a much larger space. Instead of its cramped cubbyhole on…
Bigham Tavern
Grandview Avenue is indisputably the front-row seat to the best view in Pittsburgh — even, according to USA Today, the second-best view in the country. There’s a reason the avenue is lined with fancy restaurants and diners out on special dates. But until recently, very few non-locals ever penetrated the actual neighborhood behind the vista.…
Keeping up with the Joneses
How much do your neighbors earn? You don’t need to guess. Last week the IRS reported data compiled from income-tax filings submitted in 2009 and tabulated by individual ZIP code. Among the results for Southwestern Pennsylvania: The highest incomes can be found not in Upper St. Clair or Sewickley, but in Collier Township. ZIP code…
The Full Monty
The production of The Full Monty at Stage 62 is a remarkable example of storytellers mirroring the story they’re telling. This Broadway musical from 2000 (adapted from the 1997 British cult film by composer and lyricist David Yazbeck and librettist Terrence McNally) concerns a group of unemployed steelworkers in Buffalo who, for monetary reasons, perform…
By the Book
“I went to the library as a kid,” says Judge Frank Lucchino, “… because that’s where the girls were.” But Luchhino, a onetime county controller and now a judge in the county’s Orphans Court, may be the Carnegie Library system’s most important ally. Lucchino is among the most prominent backers of Our Library, Our Future,…
Dead Man’s Cell Phone
Organic Theater Pittsburgh has made a lively debut in an impressively performed play. It’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone by acclaimed, prolific Sarah Ruhl, whose work has been seen on Broadway and in other significant places. Attention must be paid because Ruhl reminds us that the artificial life in our hands — that small communication device…
Savage Love
“This could happen to anyone,” says Debra Lieberman, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami. A quick clarification: Lieberman means this could happen to anyone who meets a sibling under similar circumstances. Co-residence throughout childhood creates sexual aversion in adulthood, explains Lieberman, who has studied “sibling incest avoidance” extensively. It’s a phenomenon called…
Beaver Brewing Company has big ambitions
How does a brewer stand out in the marketplace when his brewery is a one-man operation, and its products are sold only in a handful of places in Beaver and Allegheny counties? Simple, says Dan Woodske of Beaver Brewing Company: “Make the beer taste good, but make it unique.” Woodske’s Patterson Township operation is a…
Quantum locates another unlikely makeshift stage, this time for Twelfth Night
While the full title of Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, or What You Will, is seldom cited, some scholars believe the subtitle was the play’s original name. “Twelfth Night” itself connotes the end of the Christmas season, in Elizabethan times a revel-filled occasion Shakespeare perhaps wrote the play to mark. In either case, the title emits…
Hanlon’s Café
Uptown’s culinary loss is Downtown’s gain, thanks to the relocation of Hanlon’s Café. Earlier this year, owner Bob Hanlon moved his 15-year-old restaurant and catering business, formerly housed in a Mercy Hospital medical building, to Downtown after a year-long legal battle with his landlord, UPMC. “My lawyer bill was getting huge,” says Hanlon, who settled…
Critics’ Picks: July 29 -Aug 3
[ALT-COUNTRY] + FRI., JULY 29 Hayes Carll is a Texas-born country singer, but not one of the down-home variety; the thirtysomething songwriter has a worldly way about him. Influenced by Dylan and the Beats as much as he is by the old Nashville sound, Carll has established himself as an heir to the literate country…
CD Reviews
The Chad Sipes StereoLess Than or Equal To(Self-released) New full-length from the power-pop band fronted by its namesake singer-songwriter. At its best — like on “Do Your Worst” and “Young Man’s World” — the record showcases jangly Tom Petty-style pop-rock with masterful guitar work performed by Erik Cirelli. The downtempo tracks tend to hold a…
Craig Boliver’s I Am Shark manages punk and emo bands local and national
At 22, most young rocker types are still dreaming of hitting it big and touring with a band. Craig Boliver has moved on from that: The Grove City resident is now running I Am Shark, a management firm with a small roster of Western Pennsylvania- and Ohio-based bands. Of course, he got into the game…
The Black Lips bring retro rock and onstage hijinks to Mr. Small’s
The Black Lips play a raw, gleeful, bouncy style of rock. Though their songs sound more simply primitive than consciously retro, most wouldn’t stand out if slipped into a retrospective of ’60s garage rock. And while they were toiling away on their six typically rock albums, it seemed as if the Lips were working as…
Pennsylvania photographers get a new biennial
Many people fear dying alone. The palliative-care initiative called No One Dies Alone offers a solution by keeping vigil at a patient’s bedside. In Lori Waselchuk’s black-and-white photograph called “George Checks Jimmie’s Breathing,” a hand rests gently on the chest of a dying man. This could be a scene from any hospital, nursing home or…
City Paper story may lead to review-board investigation
A City Paper story about two feuding Pittsburgh Police officers could soon become the subject of a Citizen Police Review Board investigation. In May, CP reported about an unusual dispute between two police officers. The officers, Chuck Bosetti and Lisa Luncinski, disagreed on how to handle the case of 59-year-old James Takos, who last September…
Innervenus rolls out a new compilation of Pittsburgh metal bands
Scott Massie and his Innervenus Music Collective have released albums for 10 years now, and even dabbled in anthology, releasing 2003’s Ursa Major comp. But when Massie spotted a resurgence in the local metal scene coalescing in the past year or two, he realized a metal-only collection was due. “It just had to happen,” says…
Viva Riva!
This new film from the Democratic Republic of Congo is set in its capital, Kinshasa, here presented as a chaotic city of hustlers, casual sex and easy violence. One thing Kinshasa does lack is gasoline, and a heisted truck of fuel barrels is the spark that sets the story in motion. The rogueish but charming…
Daylight
A young married couple — she’s quite pregnant, he’s a bit distant — get lost in the country while driving to a wedding. Looking for directions, they pick up a hitchhiker, who promptly abducts them and takes them to an isolated farm house, where his accomplices are waiting. Thus begins a day or so worth…
Captain America: The First Avenger
A fluid storyline, nifty action sequences and great scenery are the high points of summer’s latest superhero offering. Chris Evans does a good job portraying Steve Rogers/Captain America as he clashes with our enemies during World War II — though it turns out that Hitler is the least of our worries. The Captain takes on…
The Trip
What do we talk about when we talk about stuff? In their funny and inventive movie about nothing, British actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play “themselves” on a road trip through northern England, where Coogan goes to write a series of restaurant reviews for The Observer. He needs a traveling companion, so his friend…
Friends With Benefits
How could two people as adorable as Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis not belong together? Well, Will Gluck’s bouncy rom-com, Friends With Benefits, says: yes, they do, and no, they don’t. The pair, who meet in adorable circumstances (more on that later) agree to be friends — which they’re great at — and sex buddies…
Natural-gas referendum generates heat
City council took a preliminary vote in favor of placing a natural-gas-drilling ban on the November ballot. A final vote is due next week. But given the heat created by the debate this week, a ban on gas production might be superfluous … even assuming it is legal. Which it may not be. The bill,…
Review: Gang Gang Dance and Nguzunguzu at Brillobox
New York art-scene figureheads and Pitchforkmedia darlings Gang Gang Dance hit Brillo on Sunday July 17th accompanied by LA avant-moombah-pop production-and-DJ duo Nguzunguzu. The show itself was a sweatfest prompted by boundless dance music as both artists offered up their versions of sonic splatter paintings. Indie representation from the major cultural epicenters of either U.S.…
Library tax referendum moves forward
Activists want voters to decide how to fund the Carnegie Library system, and it looks like this November, city residents will get a say on whether to support the libraries or not. Library activist group Our Library, Our Future yesterday presented nearly 11,000 petition signatures to City Council, asking for a ballot question in November.…
