The Vacancy
OK, you think, here comes another A-F Records release, so it’s bound to be a political punk band following in the footsteps of Thought Riot, The Code and Anti-Flag themselves. But unless you were thinking of, say, dance-floor politics, you’d be wrong. The Vacancy purveys a muscular, melodic pop-punk sound, but rather than…
Ben Lee
My prediction? After the first few singles on his new album slowly work their way into heavy rotation on Gap-store soundtracks and Volkswagen commercials, Ben Lee finally becomes as famous a songwriter stateside as he already is in his native Australia. Awake Is the New Sleep, Lee’s first work since his highly publicized falling-out with…
Pop-By Quiz
When Alex passed through the double set of locked doors that lead to his Bloomfield apartment-house on Jan. 26 and saw the note wrapped around his apartment’s door handle, he wasn’t concerned at first. “Alex, please call Bill Parks,” read the half sheet of notebook paper. It offered a local phone number,…
Possibly Inflammatory CMU Speaker Draws Non-Protest
“This is not a protest; it’s the opposite of a protest,” insists Rachel Svinkelstin, president of Hillel Jewish University Center and Carnegie Mellon University’s Tartans for Israel. She is organizing a “Declaration of Unity” on Thu., Feb. 17, to celebrate “equality and positive relationships.” But it will take place in the hour before New Black…
One More Oakland Outdoor Eatery May Go
Lunch options in Oakland may be about to get even more limited than we expected. As Oakland habitués are already aware, a city park will soon take the place of the parking lot between Pitt’s Hillman Library and the Carnegie Library, displacing food vendors who park their trucks in that lot. Their…
GOP Honchos Back Newcomer Over Old Soldier
A father of five, owner of a swimming pool-maintenance business, Bellevue Council member and Air National Guard reservist, Joe Scioscia didn’t need to add to his to-do list. As a lifelong Republican, though, he couldn’t sit still when he heard that Michael Diven — a Democrat until last month — was likely to represent the…
Imitation Pittsburghese Falls Flat Instead of Flatters
Despite references to Bill Cowher, the Steelers and the 412 area code, no one’s mistaking Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers for a native son just yet. The next-to-last sketch on Feb. 5’s SNL pitted a disgusted host, Paris Hilton, against the ardent advances of a skeevy, mustachioed Meyers at a New York City bar. For…
Corrections
As previewed in “Mass Movement” (Feb. 2), George Gula and the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum will present historic slides of Mon Valley streetcars on Thu., Feb. 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the Holiday Inn Express at Lebanon Church and Camp Hollow roads, West Mifflin (724-228-9256). The day of the week was previously listed incorrectly. In our…
The Merchant of Venice
There were few (if any) Jews in the late 16th-century London inhabited by William Shakespeare when he wrote The Merchant of Venice, his serio-comic play that some believe to be an anti-Semitic screed. But the Italy of Shakespeare’s day was lousy with Jews, who were considered to be “foreigners” even if native-born. …
Tasca Navarre
Location: 2623 Penn Ave., Strip District. 412-434-0585 Hours: Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-midnight Prices: Tapas $4-9; entrees $10-15 Fare: Spanish-style tapas and entrees Atmosphere: Turn-of-the-20th-century bar and diner Liquor: Full bar As a couple famous among our friends for dining at an hour when others are yawning in their pajamas, we love tapas, those sophisticated snacks that…
Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
When it comes to being taught history, says Howard Zinn in a new documentary about his life, “I discovered in graduate school you get the same point of view you get in elementary school, only with footnotes.” Zinn, among this country’s best-known political activists and likely its best-selling politically progressive historian, has made it…
Irony City
The woman on the phone was from National Public Radio, and she had a problem. The network was looking for someone to interview about the Steelers’ upcoming AFC Championship game against the New England Patriots. They wanted a sense of what football meant to Pittsburgh, she said. An “old bartender” would be ideal, especially if…
Constantine
The detective-cum-exorcist John Constantine is not your grandma’s comic-book superhero, unless maybe your grandma was Pandora. He has, let’s just say, a dark side, and not like that brooding caped millionaire with a cool car and an adolescent avian sidekick. In fact, Constantine goes by the sobriquet Hellblazer in print, his title changed…
What is the story behind that creepy, boarded-up mansion at 5105 Fifth Ave., between Oakland and Shadyside? It seems like it’s been empty forever.
Actually, it’s only been about a year since that home, a massive Tudor mansion, caught fire. And by the standards of creepy haunted house-looking mansions, that’s nothing. For proof, you need only look across the street, at the Gwinner-Harter house. The place looks great now, but a fire damaged its roof in 1986,…
BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE
A shaggy, friendly dog named Winn-Dixie helps lonely 10-year-old girl Opal (Annasophia Robb) discover unlikely friends in this heart-warming family comedy drama from Wayne Wang, adapted from Kate DiCamillo’s popular novel. Wang’s film — set in one of those mythical sleepy Southern towns — is as sentimental and predetermined as a Hallmark movie, incorporating the…
Is Bill Overdue-ing It?
A lot of people thought Tom Murphy was a mean prick, and that’s why the last mayor’s race was so juicy: Bob O’ Connor’s crew wanted to take out the man they saw as that smug little pantywaist once and for all. This time, though, we appear to have three pretty…
FADE TO BLACK
Pat Paulson and Michael John Warren’s documentary records Jay-Z’s last performance, staged at Madison Square Garden, in November 2003. It was supposed to be his last show — along with his last CD (The Black Album), and his last book, The Black Book, which is also his first book; he’s since had plenty more performances,…
Front-Page Pittsburgh: Two hundred years of the Post-Gazette
Newspapers, it’s said, are the rough draft of history — but no one holds onto rough drafts, and few bother to write histories of the newspapers themselves. That’s true even for the venerable Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, whose 1786 origins make it the oldest newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains. The last history…
Dog Days of Winter
It’s Jan. 22, a cold Saturday morning at Chapman State Park in northwestern Pennsylvania, and the wind carries a blizzard of snow and the noise of dogs. Barking dogs. Braying dogs. Howling dogs. Yapping dogs. In all, over 200 dogs — easily four or five times the number of humans on hand. It was as…
Sage Francis
Eminem, who famously transmitted his message of trailer-park angst straight to the suburbs, was hip hop’s equivalent to Nirvana. The latest wave of postmodern producers and emcees — often called “indie rappers” or “backpackers” — absorbs the production values of post-rock and electronica while holding on tightly to the coattails of…
