Leverage Models brings Pittsburgh ties to Thunderbird Cafe
In One Wind and Leverage Models play the Thunderbird Cafe on Wednesday July 25th.
Layoffs at EDMC continue in Phoenix
About 200 employees of Education Management Corp.’s online operation in Phoenix, Arizona were laid off this afternoon, according to multiple sources within the company. A former employee of the facility, known as Cotton Center, told City Paper that the laid-off workers included academic counselors, financial-aid counselors and recruiters. According to that source and others, some…
Gallery Crawl – Friday, July 13
Pittsburgh City Paper was at the Gallery Crawl friday night from 5-8 giving away prizes and having a great time! The Gallery Crawl is a free quarterly showcase of art and entertainment in the heart of the Cultural District. All events take place at a variety of galleries and spaces and are FREE and open…
Media outlets shine light on fireflies … and other updates
As the workweek winds down, here’s an update to our recent piece on the leadership debate at the Gertrude Stein Political Club of Greater Pittsburgh. After a July 12 meeting, our very own Lauren Daley tells us, the club has a new leader — at least for now. Long-time member Audrey Glickman was elected to…
Carnegie Library Launches Book Buzz at Union Pig
Do the words “book discussion” conjure an image of readers sitting in a circle in some disused corner of a library, maybe nibbling on a cheese-cube-and-cracker? This summer, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh seeks to enliven the literary scene with Book Buzz, “a book discussion with a twist.” Book Buzz is not just picking quirkier…
Q&A: Vijay Chattha of BlackMahal
Photo courtesy of Marc Bourgeois Vijay Chattha of BlackMahal BlackMahal mixes traditional Punjab music with funk, soul and hip hop; the band’s Vijay Chattha grew up in the Pittsburgh area. Tonight is the band’s first Pittsburgh show, but it made a splash a couple years back with “Black, Gold and Silver,” a Steelers anthem. Chattha…
Lynn Cullen Live 07/13/12
Video Archive Penn Staters’ emotional connection to the school; JoePa’s name taken off Nike child care center; media opinions on the Penn State football program; Paterno’s family can’t accept his involvement; buildings with no 13th floor; Friday the 13th, friggatriskaidekaphobia; corporate group cleansing; people on the bus; Ralph Lauren is really just a Jew named…
Gas industry’s Harrisburg investment produces fantastic ROI
The next time environmentalists tell you that the natural gas industry doesn’t contribute to Pennsylvania, you can tell them they are wrong: According to a report newly out from a watchdog group, the industry actually has been very generous to at least one set of Pennsylvanians — our elected officials. MarcellusMoney.org, a venture backed by…
Will Sandusky scandal take accountability measure off back burner?
With the world abuzz over today’s release of the Freeh Report on sexual abuse at Penn State, it might be worth checking in on one effort to make the university’s leadership more accountable. And while the school is pledging “to strengthen Penn State’s role as a leading academic institution” in light of the Sandusky scandal,…
Lynn Cullen Live 07/12/12
Video Archive Guest: Tom Sokolowski; Penn State report by FBI Louis Freeh — live broadcast; why is there no report like this regarding the Catholic Church?; realizing you have to give up JoePa is like realizing that Santa Claus isn’t real; PG’s random acts of kindness section; Myron Cope started as a Sports Illustrated writer;…
Extended Q&A: Alex Scally from Beach House
Photo courtesy of Liz Flyntz Beach House: Alex Scally and Victoria LeGrand A couple weeks ago, I chatted on the phone with Alex Scally from Beach House. The band’s show at Mr. Small’s next week is sold out already, but I think the interview is worth checking out either way, I think, especially here in…
FUZZ! featuring Sweden’s Seba
Sebastian Ahrenberg, better known as Seba, has been around the drum and bass block quite a few times. His first release, Sonic Winds, came out in 1995 when most of you were probably wearing JNCO Jeans and frosting the tips of your spiked hair. Having been released on the LTJ Bukem’s storied label, Good Looking…
Savage Love
I’m a smart, professional woman in my mid-30s who dates the same. I also happen to use a wheelchair: I have about as much physical strength as a quadriplegic but I have full sensation. I am careful about who I date because of my physical dependence on the people around me. I am also wary…
In the morning, we go to the Colorado River
I once heard that if you earn a black belt in karate you have to register yourself as a “lethal weapon.” The water breaks into green and aqua as if a hand has come down to split its waves in two, chop of butchered rapids. I’m becoming more & more lethal as I eat Chex…
Tell the Truth Or Bring a Toothbrush
We were ambitious men Not like Caesar, who was stabbed to death in Rome. Not that kind of ambition for that kind of power. It wasn’t for money Nor fame but ambition for truth. Hard to understand unless you took the oath And swore to duty And honor. Detective Cosmo was working the streets Going…
Short List: July 11 – 17
For the summer iteration of its free quarterly Gallery Crawl, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust pulls out the stops, and it’s not all about galleries (or even crawling). The evening-length, two-dozen-venue July 13 happening is highlighted by a rare local concert by Chicago’s Occidental Brothers Dance Band International. The acclaimed group plays its highly danceable…
Hal’s Bar and Grill
Hal’s Bar and Grill is one of those Pittsburgh places that reminds you that, no matter how many stories Forbes runs about our booming economy, no matter how homogenized the exurbs get with chain-stocked “lifestyle centers,” this will always be a funky place, if only for the topography. Located in a valley between the two…
The Color Wheel
The frustrations and disappointments of a pair of squabbling adult siblings form the heart of The Color Wheel, a sort-of road comedy. JR (Carlen Altman), a college drop-out, forces her equally floundering brother Colin (Alex Ross Perry) into a fraught road trip to collect her belongings after a love affair goes sour. Along the way,…
Customers rally to aid the Bloomfield Sandwich Shop
Less than a week after a small rooftop fire temporarily closed the institution that is the Bloomfield Sandwich Shop on July 2, Rosalyn Dukes found her role reversed. Dukes, known to her customers as “Mama,” and Mike Miller, a.k.a. “Papa,” have co-owned the small diner at 4613 Liberty Ave. for almost nine years. They are…
Savages
Savages Directed by: Oliver Stone Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Blake Lively, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta, Salma Hayek In English, and some Spanish, with subtitles It’s been a while since we’ve spent time with the flashy side of director Oliver Stone. But the razzle-dazzle is back in Savages, a fast-paced, darkly comic thriller that…
Pittsburgh Seltzer Works offers old-school approach to cocktails
With so much attention being paid to the ingredients in craft cocktails today, it’s only natural that the most basic ingredient — water — has been getting new attention. Some Pittsburgh bartenders — including those at Meat & Potatoes, Spoon, Isabella’s, BRGR and Bar Marco — have dropped the soda gun and are moving back…
Rubblebucket toes the line between indie-pop and jam-rock
RUBBLEBUCKET with BUTTERBIRDS. 9 p.m. Thu., July 19. Thunderbird Café. 4023 Butler St. Lawrenceville. $12. 412-682-0177 or thunderbirdcafe.net Rubblebucket lives in a precarious place. Not Brooklyn, the band’s current physical home — though perhaps that’s precarious in its own way. It’s more of a precarious psychic place: somewhere between hip indie pop and salt-of-the-earth jam…
Slice on Broadway
Slice on Broadway 2128 Broadway Ave. Beechview. 412-531-1068 Rico Lunardi knows that Pittsburgh doesn’t lack pizza restaurants. But in the South Hills neighborhood of Beechview, not far from his family’s Lundardi’s Ristorante, he’s established his own niche, affectionately called Slice on Broadway. Slice opened two years ago, and while the BYOB eatery offers baked hoagies…
Beach House’s Alex Scally discusses Myth and its misconceptions
BEACH HOUSE with WILD NOTHING. 8 p.m. Sat., July 21. Mr. Small’s Theatre 400 Lincoln Ave. Millvale. Sold out. 412-821-4447 or mrsmalls.com Alex Scally is one half of Beach House, the Baltimore dream-pop duo that blew up with its last record, Teen Dream, in 2010. He spoke with City Paper about the band’s new album,…
Poet Paula Bohince’s The Children draws on her Westmoreland County childhood
The Children Poems by Paula Bohince Sarabande Books, 80 pp., $14.95 Paula Bohince’s second collection of poems, The Children (Sarabande Books), serves up a tasty broth of language. These verses conjure rural southwest Pennsylvania as an exotic locale, swirled with pussy willow, milkweed, hornet nests of gray papier-mâché, velvet-antlered deer, mushrooms like men on horseback,…
My Cardboard Spaceship Adventure boards AbsolutePunk with new single
Pop-punk band My Cardboard Spaceship Adventure released its new single “Farewell” via the renowned punk-rock website AbsolutePunk.net on July 4. Recorded with former Reliant K drummer Dave Douglas in Cleveland, “Farewell” has received an overall positive response. Keeping with a true independent work ethic, the band has been able to make a name for itself…
Recreation/Renewal/Rebirth
RECREATION/RENEWAL/REBIRTH continues through July 22. Pittsburgh Center for the Arts 6300 Fifth Ave. Shadyside. 412-361-0873 or pittsburgharts.org Recreation/Renewal/Rebirth is the strong and diverse Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors group show now at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. On entering, the first work you’ll likely notice is Eli Blasko’s pile of bricks balanced precariously upon two wooden…
Critics’ Picks: July 11 – 17
[INDIE ROCK} + THU., JULY 12 Bloomington, Ind.’s Murder By Death has been capturing the perfect blend of somber indie rock and alt country since its inception in 2000. Touring with an eclectic stable of bands such as Cursive, Lucero and William Elliot Whitmore, Murder By Death’s sound shines of just enough of its influences…
Talking Pictures
TALKING PICTURES continues through July 21. Little Lake Theatre 500 Lakeside Drive South (off Route 19), Canonsburg. 724-745-6300 or littlelaketheatre.org Here it is summertime, and to mark the season, Little Lake Theatre is serving up a big, swollen piece of Americana: Horton Foote’s Talking Pictures. Myra Tolliver is a woman with a whole host of…
Three Acts to Catch on Vans Warped Tour
VANS WARPED TOUR. 11 a.m. Thu., July 12. First Niagara Pavilion 665 Rt. 18 Burgettstown. $45. 724-947-7400 It’s that time of year: Vans Warped Tour, the summer festival of usually kinda-sorta-punk-ish acts, returns to Pittsburgh. And we found a few acts that might be worth checking out if you make it to the big dance.…
Candide
CANDIDE continues Fri., July 13, and Sun., July 15. Opera Theater of Pittsburgh at the Hillman Center for Performing Arts, Shadyside Academy, Fox Chapel. 412-326-9687 or otsummerfest.org A specter haunts every production of Candide. When the original version premiered, in 1956, critics disliked it. Lillian Helman’s lyrics were off-putting, and Leonard Bernstein’s soaring score couldn’t…
Lynn Cullen Live 07/11/12
Video Archive Guest: Chris Potter; Kim Jong Un’s mystery woman; new CP out today; the Allegheny Forest is being liquidated; fireflies in danger due to drilling; voter ID rules in Romney’s favor; Scranton is broke; what’s going on with Jesse Jackson Jr?; pop music in North Korea; parenting in America; gun control & policy; NRA…
Brian Brown’s paintings juxtapose cheerful mid-century imagery with ominous elements.
BRIAN BROWN: NEW PAINTINGS continues through Aug. 19. 709 Penn Gallery 709 Penn Ave. Downtown. 412-224-4651 Brian Brown is a recent Carnegie Mellon Master of Fine Arts graduate who’s been making a place for himself in Pittsburgh, appearing in group shows and creating a Sprout Fund mural on Commerce Street. And at 709 Penn Gallery,…
Warning Lights: Rare synchronous fireflies are discovered in Allegheny National Forest — a hotbed of logging and gas-drilling.
Everyone’s seen fireflies. But odds are you haven’t seen them like this: On a wooded night-time hillside along a creek, 100 or more of the insects float through the air, blinking on and off. Patterns of light emerge, a rising and falling wave of silent, slow-motion fireworks glowing in subtle shades of white and orange.…
Pilot program would place cameras on officers
Two years after agreeing to install cameras in the cars of police officers, the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police may be wiring the officers themselves. According to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, the Bureau signed an agreement last month to field-test a miniature wearable computer they call the eButton — a device that can continuously…
Hostile Climate
Some days, you can almost imagine why people become Republicans. It’s much more convenient. So it was July 6, when President Obama came to town. Republicans had their own pre-speech rally at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall, blocks away from the Obama rally at Carnegie Mellon University. “You can park in one location, go to…
