Opportunities for Local Filmmakers
For local filmmakers: a short-film script contest and an open screening
Heated bus stop benefactor steps forward
Photo by Alex Zimmerman Heated bus stop at Fifth and Ross As if their battle with UPMC weren’t hard enough, Highmark officially announced today a war against another major Pittsburgh institution: unbearably cold bus stops. But installing “overhead heat lamps” at four bus stops — three Downtown, one on the North Side — isn’t just…
Review: Pixies at Carnegie Music Hall, Jan. 25
Photo courtesy of Kate Magoc PIxies at Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland Over the course of the past year, the Pixies went from Kim Deal to Kim Shattuck, but then pretty quickly replaced the Kim trend with Paz Lenchantin, formerly of A Perfect Circle, among other projects. Some die-hard Pixies fans got their panties in a…
John Gorka at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
Folk singer John Gorka is bringing his show to Pittsburgh next Thursday, Jan. 30. With an almost three-decade career, Gorka knows something about longevity. His style is folk with a country storytelling flare. Most of his songs are about love, but also about his experiences in life, which can be relatable for a working-class city…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/28/14
Video Archive Phone guest: Susan; yes, it’s cold; trash pickup postponed due to weather; Chipotle starting a comedy series, Farmed & Dangerous; man claims he doesn’t want to live anymore, so he kills his wife; Pope releases peace doves, seagull & crow sweep down & attack them; workers no longer paid for gearing up /…
State to audit Pittsburgh Public Schools
Starting next month, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale will begin an audit of the Pittsburgh Public School District. At a Jan. 27 press conference, DePasquale said the audit is meant to help the district avoid a pending financial crisis and improve academic performance. “Our audit will provide a road map for how we fix those problems,”…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/27/14
Video Archive Philadelphia woman gives birth outside on a sled; the OTHER Lynn Cullen; get your Snow-Ease on Amazon!; South Koreans love Spam; Grammys recap; Lewis Carroll quote of the day; Sparky Sweets, PhD will give you the classics with a twist in 2-min; History Channel’s Banned From the Bible; snow salt not good for…
Activists ask ALCOSAN to assist low-income families with rate increases
Starting this month, the rate paid to the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority for sewage treatment will go up for homes across Allegheny County. As a result of a federal mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency, ALCOSAN is being forced to spend $2 to $5 billion to upgrade the county’s sewer infrastructure. To pay for the…
Port Authority hires CEO
Photo by Alex Zimmerman Ellen McLean The Port Authority board voted this morning to promote interim CEO Ellen McLean to be its permanent CEO. That decision appeared to be swayed by McLean’s lobbying efforts in Harrisburg, where a transit funding crisis threatened to force the authority to make yet another round of service cuts. (Those…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/24/14
Video Archive Guest: Chris Potter; chemicals: innocent until proven guilty; Huckabee on women’s libidos; Hillary Clinton’s NYT mag cover; rise of global capitalism; Powel Memorandum; Cambodia garment factory workers fainting, speaking in tongues; planetary explanations; no such thing as colour; Ralph Lauren’s Team USA Olympic outfits look like ugly Christmas sweaters; what Lynn’s really thinking…
Friday night Moot Davis show cancelled
Moot Davis The Pittsburgh debut of New Jersey-based honky tonk artist Moot Davis is going to have to wait a couple of weeks. The show scheduled for tomorrow night at the Dead Horse Cantina and Music Hall in McKees Rocks has been cancelled. As City Paper reported in this week’s issue, Davis was beginning and…
Local students weigh in on Hazelwood development
What would Hazelwood’s 178-acre brown field look like if it were developed by teenage students from one of Pittsburgh’s private schools? Hazelwood’s community leaders and stakeholders got the answer when they visited Winchester Thurston on Jan. 22. As part of their class on urban research and design, three groups of senior students presented different development…
Adam Ravenstahl to seek re-election
While his brother — former Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl — decided to get out of local politics last year, state Rep. Adam Ravenstahl (D-Summer Hill) has decided to seek a third term in office. “It has been an incredible honor to serve the residents of the 20th Legislative District and I hope to earn their…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/23/14
Video Archive Story of the Snow-Ease; the Pittsburgh connection to the West Virginia chemical spill; 1/2 billion Chinese people without internet earlier this week; Catholic school fires Vice Principal after he married his boyfriend, students appealing to the Pope; Callers: George, Moon / Joe / Unknown. Audio Only Archive
SPACE Gallery’s Behind Our Scenes looks behind the curtain
BEHIND OUR SCENES continues through Jan. 26. SPACE Gallery, 812 Liberty Ave., Downtown. 412-325-7723 or spacepittsburgh.org Behind Our Scenes, at the Cultural District’s SPACE Gallery, is a curious exhibition. It collects the works of five photographers, two working in tandem, with a generous representation of images by each. But while each installation is intriguing in…
Short List:
FREE EVENT: Fri., Jan. 24 Look who’s got a birthday — the Cultural Trust’s Gallery Crawl is 10 years old. To mark the occasion, the Trust is introducing a new component, CrawlAfterDark, in which select venues program events after 9 p.m. The late-night activities require admission ($5-15), and include: comedy at the Arcade Comedy Theater;…
PNC Broadway Across America brings lush Wicked to local stage — again
WICKED continues through Feb. 9. Benedum Center, 719 Liberty Ave., Downtown. $39-149. 412-456-6666 or trustarts.org Not that this has anything to do with anything, but at the opening-night performance of the national tour of Wicked — now returning to Pittsburgh for its fourth engagement — one of the few remaining items on my theatrical wish…
Southern Hospitality
Southern Hospitality Edgewood Towne Center, 1763 S. Braddock Ave., Edgewood. 412-518-9556 Hours: Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Prices: Appetizers $3-4.75; meats, a la carte $1-8; entrees $6-12 Liquor: BYOB Baby, it was cold outside. But after three days of enforced family togetherness, it was also getting a mite cabin-feverish inside. Heading south…
Choreographers debut works-in-progress at Alloy Studios
Kelly-Strayhorn Theater presents NEXT STAGE DANCE RESIDENCY artists Mana Kawamura and Gia T. Cacalano. 8 p.m. Sat. Feb. 1. The Alloy Studios, 5530 Penn Ave., Friendship. $10. 412-363-3000 or kelly-strayhorn.org When Mana Kawamura and Gia T. Cacalano show their works-in-progress at The Alloy Studios Feb. 1, the Friendship studio space itself will play a role. The…
Boyd & Blair distillers branching out with colonial rum, other spirits
Prentiss Orr, co-owner of Glenshaw’s Pennsylvania Pure Distilleries, tempered his expectations when the first shipment of Boyd & Blair vodka was sent in August 2008. “We thought if we could do 5,000 cases, that would be pretty cool,” he says. “We hit that a long time ago.” In fact, the brand — which is now…
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Directed by: Kenneth Branagh Starring: Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Keira Knightley, Kenneth Branagh In English, and Russian, with subtitles. The spy thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit begins where all great espionage tales kick off — the London School of Economics. Kenneth Branagh’s exploration of the Tom Clancy character is an origin…
Fresh and homemade define the cuisine at Shadyside’s new Greek Kitchen
Lampros Kakitsis loves the food he’s cooking at his new Shadyside eatery, The Greek Kitchen, near the corner of Negley and Centre avenues. He’s been in the restaurant and food-service industry for about 40 years. He’s owned restaurants, and his Greek rice pudding — which bears his first name — can be found in grocery…
American Promise
The troubles with America’s education system are defined by millions of individual kids’ stories, and two of them are told in American Promise. In 1999, two New York City parents — Joe Brewster and Michele Stevenson — began documenting the educational paths of their 5-year-old son Idris and his best friend, Seun. Both boys —…
Ride Along
To ascertain his potential brother-in-law’s mettle, a grumpy cop takes him out on the job. If you think this is the day that all kinds of gangster hell is gonna break lose in Atlanta, you’d be right. Ditto if you predict that wussy, cop-wannabe Ben (Kevin Hart) will wind up saving the day, and winning…
She’s gone continental
KAYLEIGH LEITH 7 p.m. Tue., Jan. 28. Club Café, 56 S. 12th St., South Side. SOLD OUT at press time. 412-431-4950 or clubcafelive.com Kayleigh Leith is a local music success story of sorts. At least, as much as someone can be when they’ve been living in Europe for the better part of a decade. Leith,…
Moot Davis’ new album is a hot item
MOOT DAVIS Jan. 24 Pittsburgh show canceled. If his time in the recording studio is any indication, Moot Davis’ new album is going to be hot. The record, Goin’ in Hot, was recorded last year at a studio in Nashville and is due out in April. Davis, his bandmates and producer Kenny Vaughn decided on…
Drum-and-bass night Fuzz! calls it quits after 13 years
FUZZ! FINAL EDITION 10 p.m. Wed., Jan. 29. Bloomfield Bridge Tavern, 4412 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. $2. 412-682-8611 In the 13-plus years that the Wednesday-night drum-and-bass night at the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern has been going consistently, plenty of other DJ nights have come and gone. Heck, plenty of venues have come and gone. So it’s nothing…
Critics’ Picks: January 22 – 29
[NEW MUSIC] + FRI., JAN. 24 Using samples — musical and non-musical — is commonplace in pop music today, but it’s a 1988 work that remains one of the most stark and affecting uses of vocal samples ever put together: Steve Reich’s Different Trains. The three-movement piece interweaves speech samples of Americans and European Holocaust…
On the Record with David Mayfield
THE DAVID MAYFIELD PARADE with KALOB GRIFFIN BAND 8 p.m. Fri., Jan. 24. Club Café, 56 S. 12th St., South Side. $20. 412-431-4950 or clubcafelive.com David Mayfield returns to town this weekend with his band, The David Mayfield Parade; he chatted with CP about a cause dear to his heart, and about jamming with his…
Oral History: CMU linguistics professor charts the city’s history through its language
For years, Carnegie Mellon University professor Barbara Johnstone has been the world’s foremost expert on Pittsburgh’s unique speech patterns. But don’t expect to use her book Speaking Pittsburghese: The story of a dialect as a phrasebook for negotiating the Strip District on a Saturday morning. Published by Oxford University Press and currently available on amazon.com,…
Grand Plans? Mount Washington residents wondering if any development is better than none at all
After five years of waiting, Mount Washington residents recently saw signs of life on a long-anticipated “One Grandview” development project slated for Grandview Avenue. But the news wasn’t what they expected. Instead of a planned five-star hotel, the site’s developers — Sycamore Grandview Development — now plan to build a 300-unit apartment complex. For some…
Sojourner House gives mothers in recovery, and their children, a second chance
It’s a sunny afternoon at Sojourner House, the former Idaho apartments on Penn Avenue, Friendship. A relic from the time when such buildings were named, the building is now a residential treatment home for 14 adult women and their children. A dozen women are in the basement now, participating in a parenting-through-the-arts program. Today’s task:…
Local author Heather Terrell is looking for readers — in the schools.
The idea that history depends on who tells it is itself pretty old. But local author Heather Terrell bets that her new young-adult novel exploring the theme is a good fit for schoolkids of today. And she’s got the air miles to prove it. Relic, the first in a planned trilogy, takes place a few…
Silver Ballot
At some point, I’m going to start feeling sorry for Gov. Tom Corbett. One month after a state Supreme Court ruling blew up key portions of the state’s fracking-friendly gas-drilling law, Corbett’s legal team got another shock. Last week, Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard L. McGinley issued a blistering 103-page opinion dismantling the state’s “Voter ID”…
Lynn Cullen Live 01/22/14
Video Archive Guest: Jared Day, Daylee News Nuggets; August Wilson Center can’t be saved; next presidential election: Bush vs. Clinton?; Robert Gates assessment of Obama on war not so shocking; military exercises we probably didn’t know about & how the Soviets almost bombed China; Hope For Paws in LA, helping stray dogs find happy endings;…
Savage Love
I’m a 24-year-old female, and I just recently lost my virginity. I’ve had sex only three times and have found each time to be incredibly painful — even when the guy’s just using his fingers. I’ve always been extremely sensitive. In the past, I’ve had guys run their hands over my jeans, and even that…
Miller Gallery director Astria Suparak removed as CMU plans “new direction” for gallery
Miller Gallery Director Astria Suparak, who brought exhibits examining everything from Pittsburgh Steelers fandom to riot grrrl culture to Carnegie Mellon University, has been terminated, City Paper has learned. Reached by City Paper this weekend, Suparak declined comment. But Pam Wigley, a spokesperson for the College of Fine Arts, confirmed that Suparak was no longer…
