Drink tax passes — but not without a fight
Allegheny County Council may have passed its 10 percent drink tax on Dec. 4, but restaurant owners say the fight is far from over.
Best political activist
Some may be surprised that City Paper readers named city councilor Bill Peduto as the best local activist in 2007. After all, Peduto’s defining political moment this year involved not acting: After a brief campaign, Peduto decided not to challenge fledgling Mayor Luke Ravenstahl in the Democratic primary. As he told City Paper at the…
Best Pittsburgh Movie
In Rowdy Herrington’s 1993 actioner Striking Distance, a Pittsburgh river cop from a troubled family tracks down a serial killer. The mediocre macho drama starred Bruce Willis, who was then deeply mired in his post-Die Hard mid-career slump (see also: The Last Boy Scout, Hudson Hawk, Look Who’s Talking 2). Reviews were unkind: The Washington…
New housing in East Liberty delivers on a promise
After losing their homes in the name of development, some East Liberty residents are now reaping the rewards of years of uncertainty.
Best place to buy antiques
Nothing is easier than buying things. All you need is a little cash in your pocket or a wallet armed with a credit card, that token of a usurer’s conditional affection. Sally on down to your local emporium and accumulate to your heart’s content — or until your plastic is declined. Malls and mills are…
Best new restaurant
If the aroma of freshly ground coffee brewing can rouse the sandiest of sleep hounds from their slumber, and the smell of pie baking can activate even the salivary glands of those emaciated Olsen Twins, I wonder if anything is more alluring to a foodie’s nose than the block that houses Muriel’s Restaurant, in Allegheny…
Bach & The Baroque Ensemble takes final bow with Bach’s Christmas Oratorio
“We wanted to have a celebratory work as our finale with all of these extra instruments.”
Best local athlete
Photo: Heather Mull Skating on the ice during a recent practice at Mellon Arena, Sidney Crosby charged the net with all the force of a guy trying to break a 2-2 tie in overtime against the Ottawa Senators. This was only practice, but you just knew that in a matter of seconds, “Sid the Kid”…
Best Place to Not Eat Meat
Vegetarians and vegans don’t often have high hopes when it comes to dining out. They’re used to settling for one or two meat-free selections on the menu, usually a grilled cheese sandwich or a bland veggie burger. And vegans are often stuck with whatever salad doesn’t contain some sort of animal byproduct. But at the…
DJ Mary Mack
“I’d had this idea for months of doing a Flashdance-themed party.”
Best bar to avoid hipsters/Best shot-n-beer bar
We’ve done these “best of” issues for a few years now, and whenever it comes to picking a winner for the “unpretentious bar” category, our readers go with Jack’s on Carson. Doesn’t matter whether you call it a dive bar, a “shot-and-beer” bar, or some combination of the two … Jack’s almost always comes out…
Best outdoor dining
According to the Double Wide Grill’s self-made legend, Tessie Mae and Hank Hullficker owned an auto-repair shop back in the Depression. They decided that slinging car-parts wasn’t satisfying, so in 1939, they started serving home-cooked meals instead. Pretty soon, they quit the oil-changing and began serving lunch and dinner full time. In reality, the Double Wide…
Pittsburgh n’@
rom: http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/andrewsblog/index.html Andrew Stockey’s Blog Cool Weekend Unlike Steelers safety Anthony Smith, I never guarantee anything … and that includes the weekend. I never know whether it’s going to be fun or a complete bore. This one wound up being pretty cool. Friday, I had the honor of serving as emcee for the annual Ronald…
Best bartender
Fresh from a trip to Mexico, and minutes into her first bartending shift since returning, Becky Sauer breaks the seal of a tequila bottle she brought back with her. Then she reaches for some shot glasses for the regulars at St. James Place Tavern. “Anybody want a shot?” asks Sauer, 31, of Brookline. “Straight…
Best local record store
In the age of iTunes and peer-to-peer, “record-store owner” is a career you wouldn’t be surprised to find on the endangered list. But with chain record stores collapsing all around him, Paul Olszewski isn’t as worried as you might expect. The soft-spoken proprietor of Paul’s CD’s, in Bloomfield credits the store’s specialized nature with its…
Local electro act Pfunked wants your vote
He’s even played a “Sweet 16” bash for two local girls — evidence of a developing teen-age fanbase.
Pride & Prejudice
Playwright Jon Jory and director Scott Wise are every bit as level-headed as Austen.
Best local microbrew
Man has been brewing beer roughly since the dawn of civilization. And surely there’s satisfaction in upholding a craft that is millennia old. But Brant Dubovick, head brewer at the Church Brew Works, also likes playing with tradition. When the Lawrenceville establishment hired Dubovick in 2005, it was already a success: an award-winning microbrewery and…
Best Southeast Asian restaurant
Though home to an increasing number of upscale eateries, Pittsburgh’s dining scene is probably best represented by the rich variety of inexpensive ethnic restaurants that showcase our culinary and cultural diversity. Despite a relatively small Asian population, our city has no shortage of eastern cuisine. Of course, as in many other cities, cheap Chinese take-outs…
High Anxiety
We can’t afford 64 million beans to pay for tradition and sentimentality and the stuck-in-the-pastness that is a hallmark of Pittsburgh.
The Golden Compass
At a time when religion increasingly wants to hijack secular culture, how can you not applaud a movie that sticks pins in the eyes of the Christian Right and argues that children should have the freedom to decide for themselves what they want to believe? Such is Chris Weitz’s film, adapted from Philip Pullman’s His…
Best chef
Chris Jackson jokes that his chicken wings take four days to make it to your plate. That’s because they are first brined in sweet tea, “confit-ed,” then smoked over fruitwood, before being finished with homemade hot sauce in the wood oven of the restaurant’s large, bustling kitchen. Besides making sure theatergoers get to their seats…
Best tribute band
Just this past week, Journey announced the latest in a long line of replacements for the keening pipes of Steve Perry: Philippine vocalist Arnel Pineda. But what’s interesting about Pineda is that he was recruited after Journey’s guitarist saw Pineda’s band cover “Faithfully” on YouTube. This has to be the secret fantasy of every musician…
Savage Love
My two roommates are in the same frat. Roommate A and his GF have been going out for about a year. Roommate A is a great guy, but maybe a bit too nice: Recently, his GF cheated on him and he forgave her. Her infidelity did not come as a surprise to the rest of…
King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Steve Wiebe, an unassuming junior high school teacher, logs a new high score on Donkey Kong in his garage, beating the long-held record by the arcade world’s de facto celebrity gamer, Billy Mitchell. But the score is disputed, kicking off a year-long battle to determine which man holds the world’s high score. Wiebe tries in…
Best Dance Company
“Who the @%!# is Attack Theatre?” a famous pop singer (who shall remain nameless) is said to have exclaimed when Attack Theatre music director/cellist extraordinaire Dave Eggar turned down a chance to record, preferring to tour with Attack instead. Who is Attack Theatre? CP readers who voted it the area’s best dance company know it…
Create Your Own “best of” Category!
Category: Best goat found tied to a mailbox Winner: The goat found in Polish Hill Reason: Come on! Category: Best political party Winner: Libertarians Reason: Got on ballot more than Republicans. Category: Best event of the year Winner: The Furry convention Reason: Do we really have to explain? Category: Best exercise of civil liberties Winner:…
Tea For You
Is tea more civilized than coffee? Are tea drinkers cat people and coffee drinkers dog people? If tea leaves tell the future, do coffee beans flip you off? Such questions require two lumps of subjectivity. Two distinctions can be made, however. Places that offer high tea tend to have an Eyre about them. Often you’ll…
Tearoom
Shot without sound, in grainy color 16 mm, it’s a stunning document.
Best place to buy denim
Olena Thomas used to hate shopping for jeans. The last time she went to the mall, she tried on 37 different pairs. “They just looked bad,” she says. Everything she tried was either “not long enough, or too low.” Her co-workers sent her to the South Side to give Pittsburgh Jeans Company a try. There,…
Into Thin Air
There’s a hole in the heart of Bakery Square. Look closely at redevelopment plans for East Liberty’s defunct Nabisco plant, and you’ll see it. It’s a blacked-out square in a map of the project’s “TIF District” — a zone where development is eligible for $10 million in tax subsidies. When he saw that hole, marked…
The Perfect Holiday
The elves at Santa’s satellite workshop in Hollywood know what viewers want: a cinematic potpourri of cute kids, family affirmation and beautiful people falling in love, topped off with fat jokes and comic riffs on idiotic rap stars. Imagine all this in one glorious, if poorly plotted film — plus cameos from Queen Latifah and…
Best fine dining/Best continental restaurant
While executive chef Derek Stevens classifies his restaurant’s menu as “modern American cuisine,” I’m comfortable saying that few of my lunches in modern America have been as memorable as the one I had at Eleven. The entrée was a duck confit salad, which was hearty and warm while combining at least a couple of tastes…
This Just In: Dec 12 – 19
Highlights from the local TV news: The Mon Wharf is closed! Oh, the humanity!
Letters to the Editor: Ded 12 – 19
Feedback from our readers: No easy choices when it comes to having a disabled child.
Best hip-hop performer
When Wiz Khalifa appeared on City Paper’s cover last October, the then-19-year-old Pittsburgh rapper had already laid claim to the title “Prince of the City.” He staked the claim based on a hot mixtape of the same name as well as on Show and Prove, his debut album for the independent label Rostrum Records. But…
The holidays, it turns out, are really all about rethinking how we use our buildings.
Now, UPMC’s pledge to provide matching funds to the Pittsburgh Promise educational fund seems like so much gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Focus Group
Pittsburgh has always been a little obsessed with how it’s portrayed in the movies. And who can blame us? The rivers in Striking Distance are much cleaner than they are in reality, which may be why our readers chose it as the best Pittsburgh-based film. But any movie has the power to transform. Your average…
Best place to indulge your sweet tooth
After lying dormant for decades at elementary school parties, cupcakes are on the march. New York City, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco — all have adorable shops that sell the brightly decorated tiny premium cakes, now gussied up for consumption by the creative class. Thus it hardly seems surprising that, when Dozen Cupcakes threw open its…
Local prog-rockers Rainstation Zero release debut album
You can tell there’s a real human playing real drums in a real room.
GOODS & SERVICES
Best retail customer service Macy’sVarious locations 2nd TIE: Best Buy/Ulterior Motive, various locations3rd JC Penney, various locations Best local bookstore Joseph-Beth Booksellers2705 E. Carson St., South Side, 412-381-3600 2nd Eljay’s Used Books, South Side3rd Jay’s Bookstall, Oakland Best local record store Paul’s Compact Discs4526 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield, 412-621-3256 2nd Dave’s Music Mine, South…
Best karaoke bar
SIDE ONE It was cold and dark on the Wednesday evening I sought out the phenomenon known as “bareaoke.” With address in hand and some apprehension in heart, I weaved through the suburban sprawl of Library Road, headed for the Tennyson Lodge in Bethel Park. But my reservations were swiftly dispelled as I entered the…
Australian video artists get Workin‘ Down Under at Wood Street Galleries.
But who, in this symbolically fraught meditation on a country colonized by herds of shepherds, is blessed, and who cursed?
FOOD & DRINK
Best new restaurant Muriel’s856 Western Ave., North Side, 412-322-0476 2nd Doublewide Grill, South Side3rd Seviche, Downtown Best place to take the kids to eat Eat’n ParkVarious locations 2nd Max & Erma’s, various locations3rd TIE: CiCi’s Pizza / Chuck E. Cheese, various locations Best fine dining Eleven1150 Smallman St., Strip District, 412-201-5656 2nd: LeMont,…
Best place to take kids for an afternoon
As I head over to the zoo, the temperature vacillates between the low to mid-40s while the sky seems to be having an argument with itself: “Sunny! No! Completely overcast! No! Sunny!” But either way, it’s a perfect blustery day for a visit to the zoo: The bears, at least, don’t seem to be…
The FCC has shut down the low-wattage radio experiment “Sounds You Never Hear.”
“We wanted to create a space where you could have some new discovery, something you’ve never heard in your life,” says Rubin.
CULTURE & NIGHTLIFE
Best new bar/club Privilege UltraLounge1650 Smallman St., Strip District, 412-253-7330 2nd Brillobox, Bloomfield3rd Diesel, South Side Best dance club MatrixStation Square, South Side, 412-261-2220 2nd Privilege UltraLounge, Strip District3rd Diesel, South Side Best all-ages club Club Zoo1630 Smallman St., Strip District, 412-201-1100 2nd Mr. Small’s Funhouse & Theatre, Millvale3rd Diesel, South Side …
Best local clothing designer
Whether it’s because of the flattering, comfy-sexy fit, the great colors and patterns, or just the outright wow-that’s-not-from-the-mall factor, Kelly Lane dresses turn heads — in Boston, New York, Chicago and all over the country. They even merited a mention in a recent New York Times article about newly stylin’ Butler Street in Lawrenceville, home…
Conditions at so-called “Dropout Factories” make it hard for students to get beyond the label
A national study that called several district schools “Dropout Factories” doesn’t fill students with optimism. But despite the negative label, some say their main goal is to prove it false.
PEOPLE, PLACES & PROPAGANDA
Best mural/public artwork East Liberty Busway mural — Kyle Holbrook 2nd Carnegie phoenix mural — Greg Valley3rd Liberty Avenue parking garage mural — Brian Holderman Best Pittsburgh political activist Bill Peduto 2nd Thomas Merton Center, Garfield3rd N/A Best vestige of Pittsburgh’s past Monongahela & Duquesne inclines 2nd Kennywood3rd Smokestacks at the Waterfront …
Best lounge bar
It’s hard to imagine the Firehouse Lounge in its original incarnation: Once you walk up the steep stairs and peek around the corner, this second-story lounge feels more like someone’s swanky loft apartment than an old fire station. The only indication of its former life is a slightly mismatched floor panel where the firepole once…
