Power Steering
“Put my name down as ‘Lance’ — Lance in Defense of the People,” he says from behind the wheel of his late ’90s midnight-blue Chevrolet Cavalier. It looks no different than a dozen other college-freshman first cars buzzing through the city. Shoe debris is tracked on the carpet mats. A small sandal (from one of…
What’s the history of live theater Downtown?
Downtown has long been the site of countless vaudeville productions, burlesque acts and even the occasional dark tragedy. And that’s just in the City-County Building. The truth is that it took a long time for theater to take hold here. Sounding more like they’re discussing a UFO sighting than a theatrical production, Solon and Elizabeth…
Vacant Scares
Nick Kyriazi, housing chair and president of East Allegheny Community Council, stands outside an obviously vacant and untended house on Avery Street during a recent tour of the abandoned houses in this North Side neighborhood. “It’s not vacant,” he jokes. “Pigeons live in there.” The owner has cleaned the façade, put in new windows, stripped…
Gimme Shelter
“Sooner or later,” I said to the guy I imagined sitting on the next barstool, “every hack relies on the schlocky old ‘conversation with an imaginary friend’ device to finish a column. Especially when he’s been drinking.” “I’m happy to help,” my imaginary friend replied, as I ordered another round. (Where I drink, there’s nothing…
A conversation with Dave Kuzmick
It’s unusual that you can (a) get something fixed, and (b) buy something that’s not new. Very few people fix anything these days. Anyone’ll sell you something, but what about fixing it? Disposable society. Also, I find that the older folks here in Bloomfield, a lot of ’em don’t have cars. And they don’t need…
(The) Alpha Control Group (C)/Master Mechanic
“(The) A C G C 7″Hope/Hard Travelin’ Records “It’s More Fun to Compete” b/w “You’ve Got A Lot”Sock-It Records In less than a decade, the 7-inch record has gone from an indie watermark to a semi-disposable punk-rock status symbol to an immensely troublesome labor of love. After all, you’re guaranteed to, at best, break even…
Landscape Architecture
Nineteenth-century British architect C. R. Cockerell was so impressed with the buildings of Christopher Wren, his predecessor by a over a century, that in 1838 he painted a large fantasy landscape made up entirely of Wren’s architecture as a tribute. Structures from different areas of England — Cambridge, Oxford and many parts of London –…
CAFE ALLEGRO
Sitting in the front window of Café Allegro, I am amused by the view. From the art deco-tiled front of Club Café, past the cigar store and the old market house, and around a just-so corner of well-preserved 19th-century buildings, on this warm evening 12th Street looks like one of those carefully detailed movie sets…
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times
For lots of people, Noam Chomsky is an intellectual rock star. The new documentary Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times shows fans cornering the chart-topping critic of U.S. foreign policy for photos and autographs. At one gig, the 74-year-old draws more than 3,000 people — ticket sales for which plenty of bands would…
City of Ghosts
In City of Ghosts, Matt Dillon’s debut as a director and co-writer (with Barry Gifford), the haunts of the title are the blood-rouge history of Cambodia and the suffering it left behind: a population of poor, diseased, hopeless (but not dispirited) people, freely exploited by American, European and neo-Russian capitalists who have come to share…
Hollywood Homicide
Ron Shelton’s Hollywood Homicide is about as breezy a comedy about the murderous underbelly of show biz as you could imagine. The writer and director offers up a pair of mismatched (aren’t they always?) cops investigating a hit on a rap group. But these are no ordinary detectives: Joe Gavilan (Harrison Ford) can fly, and…
The Bus Starts Here
Is there any hope of preventing the proposed cuts to the Port Authority’s bus, trolley and paratransit services? The cuts threatened are drastic: To force the books into order, the Port Authority has proposed eliminating all service after 9 p.m., eliminating Sunday service, reducing Saturday service to Sunday levels, making general cuts on several routes…
Janitors Still Sweeping through Downtown
Technically, Justice for Janitors Day was still 48 hours away. But members and supporters of the Service Employees International Union got a head start on June 13, staging their largest protest yet against rising health-care costs. The Downtown rally, about 250 strong, was the latest in a series that began in April, when 160 protesters…
Generations of Pride
Thirty years later, the need for face painting makes the biggest statement. The shifting focus of gay activism is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the addition this year of a “Children’s Area” at PrideFest — for the use of children of gay and lesbian parents. At PrideFest 2003 on June 21, says planning committee…
Owner-Occupiers
If you didn’t hear much about the controversy over sweeping changes to the nation’s media ownership rules, one reason might be that many of the corporations responsible for giving you that news had a vested interest in those changes. Some of the largest U.S. newspaper companies, including Gannett and the New York Times Company, along…
