Local woman dies in New Orleans warehouse fire
Pittsburgher Nikki Pack, a self-described “hobo” whose friends called her Nurse Nikki, is apparently among those who died in a New Orleans warehouse fire Dec. 27. She was 23 years old. “She wanted to go someplace warm, and she loved New Orleans,” says Pack’s friend Giovanna Garafalo, of Polish Hill. “She hated Pittsburgh winters.” Keeping…
Ricky Burgess Strikes Again!
2011 is promising to be another banner year. I haven’t even finished my magnum opus (latin for “overlong blog post”) wrapping up the pension imbroglio (italian for “fucked-up mess”), and now there’s this: Councilor Ricky Burgess is proposing that any future hike in city real-estate taxes be approved by voters first. Burgess is billing the…
Haitian orphan rescue receives local, national coverage
Jamie and Ali McMutrie — whose BRESMA orphanage received an outpouring of support online from Pittsburgh after last year’s earthquake in Haiti — appear in two different news stories this week. Both remind us of the disaster, and of the successful effort to airlift the orphans to the U.S. But the two accounts tell the…
The Neo-Futurists
I spent about four hours at First Night and saw a bunch of stuff, but the highlight was the 7 p.m. show by five members of this Chicago performance collective. They’re a group of writers who perform their own stuff – personal material, but not always in an obvious way, and completely unpredictable. The show…
Short List: Week of December 30 – January 6
As with the Three Rivers Arts Festival, when somebody says “First Night,” you largely know what’s in store. Still, the 2011 edition of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s annual Downtown New Year’s Eve party has some intriguing new wrinkles amidst its 50 venues and 125 events and activities. And it’s not just that the crowd-pleasing, horn-driven…
One More Read
Before we close the book on 2011, a look back at the Cliff Notes
Pho Van
A new Vietnamese restaurant freshens up the Strip District.
Little Fockers
Child projectile vomiting? Check. Inappropriate boner joke? Check. Ben Stiller looking comically pained, Owen Wilson doing his benevolent surfer shtick? Check, check. Formerly great actor Robert DeNiro slumming on another payday? Cash that check, baby! This third iteration of the squabbling extended Focker clan isn’t half as funny as Meet the Fockers (2004), which was…
Disco and Atomic War
The Soviet state of Estonia has the good luck to be just south of Finland, from which emanated TV signals bearing forbidden Western programming. Jaak Kilmi’s entertaining documentary looks back on these critical TV-centric years — from the mid-1960s through the 1980s — during which smaller skirmishes defined life in Tallin, Estonia’s northern capital. There,…
Tiny Furniture
Aura has just graduated from a liberal-arts school and returns home to her mother’s spacious Tribeca loft. While she waits for her film-making career to take off, Aura takes a job as a day hostess at a trendy bistro, pursues some unsuccessful romantic encounters, and, when at home, pouts, whines and walks in her underwear.…
A photographer and two poets evoke the mismatched twins of Homestead and the Waterfront shopping complex.
Poet Jim Daniels works like a jazz improviser, with the photo the chord progression, the verses riffs exploring small visual details.
Pittsburgh: Head-to-Head
Greetings, hockey fans! City officials expect thousands of you to descend on our city to see the Winter Classic. But wherever you come from, you almost certainly fall into one of two groups: Sidney Crosby fans or as Alexander Ovechkin fans. The former are law-abiding citizens who — despite an apparent weakness for ill-advised facial…
Holidays on Ice
Highlights of events taking place in and around the Winter Classic
When Sidney meets Ovie
Jim Shearer, VH1 VJ and host of online show Yinz Love ‘Da Guins, on the match-up between two hockey stars who have nothing in common but greatness.
Emerging Artist of the Year Gregory Witt constructs an alternate universe of inscrutable devices.
If Dr. Seuss ever fiddled with an erector set, he might have built the prototypes for Witt’s creations.
2010: Down the Hatch
On New Year’s Eve, it’s the wise man who stays home to reflect on the year past, rather than venture out inebriated, risking pickpockets, frostbite and sloppy kisses from strangers. And what’s still on everybody’s mind, but the wobbly mega-sized global economy we’re all part of these days? As we close out 2010, let us…
This Just In: December 30 – January 6
Highlights from the local TV news: Beating the Wrap
An exhibition exploring the intersection of engineering and design is short on historical context.
The unity of structure, function and aesthetics that curator Billington lauds as an elevated achievement in these works is not as straightforward as he indicates.
How to celebrate the New Year … and Pittsburgh’s music scene
Local musicians and DJs are offering alternative New Year’s Eve celebrations guaranteed to keep your hips shakin’ all the way into 2011.
Hip-hop legends Wu-Tang Clan celebrate New Year’s Eve in Pittsburgh
Wu-Tang Clan’s current Rebirth tour plays Mr. Small’s Theatre, featuring Method Man, GZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, U-God and Masta Killa.
Idiosyncratic Fred Eaglesmith outgrows Americana roots
Singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith started moving on once Americana began attracting young guys who had goatees and flannel before they “discovered” cowboy boots.
Old Lang Syne
The Baby New Year may be an orphan
Savage Love
I really need some help and comfort. I am a straight 25-year-old woman, and I’ve been dating my boyfriend for four years. At the beginning, we were purely sexual. We love role-playing, and we always came up with erotic fantasies of me being fucked and used by multiple men, or some fantasy where others were…
On the Occasion of My Mother’s Fifth Baptism
A poem by Tess Barry
Kevin Finn releases his second cryptic Folklore compilation
Kevin Finn tapped some talents from his first compilation, such as Michael J. Kaisner, plus new voices like Colin Baxter’s.
Donnie Iris & The Cruisers wish you a classic-rock Christmas
On “The Hallelujah Chorus,” Donnie Iris’ 81 overdubbed vocals lend a classic-rock, “Bohemian Rhapsody” quality — a little silly, a lot awesome.
