Pittsburgh Police say they haven’t used Defense Department surplus program ‘anytime recently’
The images of suburban Midwestern police officers in riot gear, outfitted with rifles, rubber bullets and gas canisters, have served as a powerful reminder of the military-grade equipment that’s been flooding into local police departments. And while Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has now ordered an actual military intervention in Ferguson, The New York Times last…
Lynn Cullen Live 08/19/14
Video Archive Phone guest: Susan; Sophie Masloff’s funeral; what’s happening in Ferguson; Callers: Robert / Joe. Audio Only Archive
Lynn Cullen Live 08/18/14
Video Archive Audio Only Archive
Hearings for ridesharing companies begin next week
Two San Francisco ridesharing giants are headed back before PUC judges in Pittsburgh starting next week to fight for permanent authority to operate in Allegheny County and the state. First up is Uber, which has hearings scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, at the PUC Pittsburgh office at Piatt Place, Downtown. Lyft will have its hearing…
Pittsburgh joins in National Moment of Silence for victims of police brutality
Together with cities throughout the country, last night Pittsburgh observed a moment of silence for victims of police brutality. The National Moment of Silence was spurred by the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown, a black teenager killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. “It’s such an injustice,” said Celeste Scott.…
Lynn Cullen Live 08/15/14
Video Archive Guest: Chris Potter; name released of the cop who killed Michael Brown; no need for cops to wear camo; are police preparing for an uprising?; it’s a good day for Rand Paul; Corbett may be going down; Lyft operating legally…for now; pilot lost control of plane after prosthetic arm detatched; the problem with…
Twin Peaks play Roboto Friday night
Twin Peaks Chicago’s Twin Peaks play Mr. Roboto Project Friday night, August 15, bringing their fuzzy blend of garage rock with them. The band, essentially four twenty-somethings who know how to rock, released their new album Wild Onion Aug. 5 via Grand Jury Records. Wild Onion is their first release since their 2013 LP Sunken.…
Federal government announces early learning grant competition in Pittsburgh
On Aug. 13, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited the Hug Me Tight Child Life Center in the Hill District to announce a $250 million preschool development grant competition for early childhood education. “We’re working as hard as we can to expand access to high quality early learning opportunities,” Duncan said. “Seeing the opportunities that…
Inaugural Downtown Rooftop Shindig
The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s first party on the roof of a parking garage drew more than 400 last night for a set by Grand Piano and a screening of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Though in truth, the evening-length event atop the Theater Square parking garage might have attracted many of those folks just for the food…
Lynn Cullen Live 08/14/14
Video Archive Guest: Tom Sokolowski; remembering Robin Williams; purpose for hair on our bodies; Warhol art talk; cops think they’re military nowadays; what’s happening in Ferguson, MO; Callers: PJ, Greensburg / Joe. Audio Only Archive
Calliope announces 2014-15 Roots Cellar series
Calliope, the longtime local folk-music organization, has announced the new season of concerts at its Roots Cellar space, at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Shadyside. The lineup looks like this: Thu., Sep. 25: Ellis PaulThu., Oct. 9: Spuyten DuyvilThu., Oct. 23: Long Time CourtingFri., Nov. 14: Pittsburgh Songwriters Circle CD release showThu., March…
We Need Justice Too urges increased community role in preventing, solving crime
On a hot June day, 34-year-old Autumn Perkins and about a dozen others set out from New Life AME Church in Homewood with water bottles and flyers in hand. They went into bars, barbershops and convenience stores. Their goal: to get people to come forward with information about homicides in the community. “A lot of…
Despite improvements in water quality, risks of river recreation can be hard to measure
Jim Wrubel, president of the Pittsburgh Triathlon Club, has never swum in the city’s rivers — and he doesn’t plan to start anytime soon. “I don’t want to be in these rivers regardless of fecal coliform count,” he says, referring to levels of sewage contamination. The Aug. 3 Pittsburgh Triathlon offered little incentive for Wrubel…
Pittsburgh struggles to revamp its “percent for art” law
In February 2013, activists launched a petition asking the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County to enforce laws requiring set-asides for public art in publicly funded construction projects. Officials, who acknowledged that these so-called “percent for art” laws have gone unenforced, said they were revamping them. Activists are still waiting, 18 months — and some…
Peduto urges U.S. immigration office to remain in city as immigration workers and advocates voice concern
Nine months after City Paper reported that the U.S. government plans to relocate Pittsburgh’s immigration office to a suburban office park, local officials — and office employees — are raising concerns about the move. Pittsburgh’s office of the United States Citizen and Immigration Services, which oversees lawful immigration, is headquartered at SouthSide Works. But last…
A review of Wendy Scott’s poetry collection Soon I Will Build An Ark
William Carlos Williams’ modernist maxim No ideas but in things was a 20th-century call for poetry to do away with abstraction, focusing on the concrete imagery of everyday life. In her debut collection, Soon I Will Build an Ark (Main Street Rag), Wendy Scott takes this literary advice seriously. Scott studied at Pitt and lives…
In the Bag
It’s a cacophony out here tonight at the Ohio Township Nature Center, off I-279. Nine bagpipers warm up, tune up, adjust their pipes, change reeds, run scales. The sound is overwhelmingly loud, like a flock of deranged geese all complaining at once. Faces glowing red as they blow, air filling small underarm sacks, the Macdonald…
Quantum Theatre’s Tamara
TAMARA continues through Sept. 14. Quantum Theatre at Rodef Shalom Congregation, 4905 Fifth Ave. Oakland. $56-100. 412-362-1713 or quantumtheatre.com Without a doubt, Tamara is Quantum Theatre’s most exhausting production. For the audience, at least — physically for sure, intellectually and emotionally, too. It must be quite a handful for the cast and crew as well.…
Savage Love
I’m a gay male into puppy play. About a year ago, I joined a pack with one Sir and several puppies. I became very close to one of my “pup bros” and became his alpha — meaning between the two of us, I’m more Dom but still sub to our Sir. The pack has fallen…
Shuffle, Ball Change … and Die!
SHUFFLE, BALL CHANGE … AND DIE! continues through Sun., Aug. 17. Gemini Theater, Point Breeze. $10-15. 412-243-5201 or geminitheater company.bpt.me Comedy, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. My spectacles aren’t much use in discerning any fun in Shuffle, Ball Change … and Die!, a fundraiser at and for the Gemini Theater Co.,…
Short List: August 13 – 20
MAIN EVENT: Fundraiser — Sat., Aug. 16 For a year, starting in 1997, the guerrilla artists of the Industrial Arts Co-op spent every Sunday at the Carrie Furnaces, in Rankin. The overgrown, long-vacated U.S. Steel Homestead Works site was perfect for a 40-foot-tall sculpture of a deer head, crafted from materials found there, to honor…
Suite Surrender at Apple Hill
SUITE SURRENDER continues through Sun., Aug 17. Apple Hill Playhouse, 275 Manor Road, Export. $13-20. 724-468-5050 or applehillplayhouse.org Recently, while rummaging in an old sock drawer, the fine folks at Apple Hill Playhouse found a copy of Michael McKeever’s farce Suite Surrender. Where the less stalwart might have returned it to the drawer and tiptoed…
Stuff We Like
Warhol Rehang. In May, for its 20th anniversary, The Andy Warhol Museum totally reorganized. The top four floors are now a veritable Warhol bio, from juvenalia and long-unexhibited artifacts to hours of on-demand video and even an Exploding Plastic Inevitable room. Elwin Green’s Homewood Nation blog. Former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette scribe Elwin Green edits a blog…
New York-based choreographer Marjani Forte offers a work about recovery.
Marjani Forte presents BEING HERE … /THIS TIME 8 p.m., Fri., Aug. 15 The Alloy Studios, 5530 Penn Ave. Friendship. Admission is pay-what-you-can. 412-363-3000 or kelly-strayhorn.org How do mental illness, poverty and addiction relate? That is the question choreographer Marjani Forte explores in being Here … /this time. It’s her reworking of being Here, which…
Bama’s Southern Kitchen
Bama’s Southern Kitchen 600 Brookline Blvd. Brookline. 412-668-3459 Hours: Tue.-Wed. 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Thu.-Sat. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-close Prices: $2-21 Liquor: None Go outside and take a deep breath. Dare to wear a white shirt. Pittsburgh, the former Smoky City, has long ago cleaned up its act, and the rest of the world…
Into the Storm
Into the Storm Directed by: Steven Quale Starring: Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, bad weather On the Fujita scale, Steven Quale’s tornado-centric Into the Storm rates well above F5. There are multiple tornadoes, tornadoes within tornadoes, a tornado of fire and a super-mega-tornado with winds above 300 mph. You’re gonna get your tornado-dollar’s…
Milkman Brewing delivers new flavors to the Strip
Milkman Brewing Company is the latest addition — and the first modern brewery — to join the Strip District’s rapidly growing roster of libation makers. “There’s a rich history of brewing in the Strip,” says Justin Waters, one of Milkman’s three brewer/owners. “We’re excited to bring that back.” The brewery is located in a bare-bones…
Magic in the Moonlight
Magic in the Moonlight is another summertime Continental trifle from Woody Allen, burnished with name actors, sun-dappled Cote d’Azur locations and Jazz Age finery. In it, a British magician and noted skeptic (Colin Firth) is brought by his pal (Simon McBurney) to a South of France estate to help debunk the otherworldly claims made by…
Southern BBQ and all the fixin’s — served in a waffle cone
As the number of food trucks in the Pittsburgh area continues to grow, it’s important for vendors to have something that sets them apart. Several trucks offer staples like burgers, pierogies and hot dogs. But only the South Side BBQ Company truck offers the Bar-B-Cone. In a homemade waffle cone are layered pepper-jack macaroni and…
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
They’re mutated turtles and teenagers and ninjas, and New York City’s subterranean avengers are back, matching some wits and a lot of weaponry against a bad dude known as Shredder. Jonathan Liebesman’s re-boot of the popular comics-movie-TV-videogame-bedsheet franchise is unnecessary: (1) There have been four TMNT films already, and (2) How many evil-fighting superheroes can…
What If
Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe) and Chantry (Zoe Kazan) are adorable yet highly articulate types navigating hipster Toronto. He’s a med-school dropout on the rebound, she’s a cartoonist with a live-in almost-fiancé. Much of this charming but lightweight romantic comedy from director Michael Dowse (Goon) goes down like ice cream: The dialogue is fast and funny, the…
The Garment District brings former Ladybug Transistor bassist back into the music spotlight
THE GARMENT DISTRICT LP RELEASE with JACKIE MCDOWELL LP RELEASE, LAUGHING EYE WEEPING EYE. 9 p.m. Sun., Aug. 17. Brillobox, 4104 Penn Ave. Bloomfield. $7. 412-621-4900 or brillobox.net Jennifer Baron has gone on and off the radar musically over the past couple of decades. But she’s never lost that drive to write and perform music…
STC Fest looks to showcase local hip hop at the Rex
STC FESTIVAL feat. HUEY MACK, HARDO, THE COME UP BOYS, more 6 p.m. Fri., Aug. 15. Rex Theater, 1602 E. Carson St. South Side. $15. All ages. 412-381-6811 or tinyurl.com/STCFest With legendary Atlanta duo Outkast dominating the music-festival circuit this year, a scene that had once been the province of indie rock and jam bands…
Critics’ Picks: August 13 – 18
[JAZZ] + THU., AUG. 14 Jazz and hip hop: They’re a natural fit for one another, but you don’t see them paired too often in live shows. A new partnership between MCG Jazz, James Street Gastropub & Speakeasy and some local artists is putting them together tonight, though. Rap and spoken word share the stage…
On the Record with Geoff Rickly of United Nations
UNITED NATIONS with FRAMEWORKS, KID DURANGO, WORN COLORS. 6 p.m. Thu., Aug. 14 Smiling Moose, 1306 E. Carson St. South Side. $12. All ages. 412-431-4668 or smiling-moose.com Following the disbandment of alternative/emo band Thursday, in 2013, vocalist Geoff Rickly formed the hardcore supergroup United Nations. The band is decidedly more aggressive and deeply rooted in…
Lynn Cullen Live 08/13/14
Video Archive The state of the world today — what global warming / technology will do to the future; everything can always get worse; Obits: Michael Brown, Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall, NYT on fracking at Pittsburgh International Airport; end of WJAS. Audio Only Archive
