Uber says it will operate this weekend; PUC says it faces possible sanctions if it does
Uber released a statement Monday evening intimating that it may continue to operate despite an order earlier in the day from a two-judge panel from the Public Utilities Commission ordering it to stop. The statement, which appears in it’s entirety below, states: “While we plan to continue our commitment to reliable and safe service in…
Lyft, Uber ordered to cease operations (UPDATED)
Photo by Kevin Shepherd Reporter Dan Sleva has the latest on Tuesday’s Lyft/Uber ruling: Rideshare companies Uber and Lyft have been ordered to immediately cease operations in the City of Pittsburgh following a ruling issued late Tuesday. (Update: But in a late-day Twitter announcement, Uber said it planned to continue offering service through the July…
Public weighs in on police chief selection
Should Pittsburgh’s next police chief come from within or outside the city’s police bureau? Should he or she be an academic or have street experience? These were some of the questions posed at a public forum in the West End June 30. “I have a sense of the skills they need to bring the police…
Former Miner Speaks Tonight on Life in Coal Country
19-city tour visits First Unitarian Church
Lynn Cullen Live 07/01/14
Video Archive Phone guest: Susan; Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent on the Hobby Lobby ruling; gov’t values corporations over people; women need to get serious about protecting their rights; Hobby Lobby holds stock in pharmaceuticals; General Motors recalling more cars; public dog walking banned in Iran; University of Pittsburgh costs double the average in-state school tuition;…
End of an Era: Pete Wagner replaced as 19th ward chair
Pete Wagner, the longtime chair of the 19th Ward Democratic committee, can say this much: He was never defeated by his longtime political nemesis, Anthony Coghill. Instead, Wagner withdrew rather than face a vote by commiteemembers in a reorganization meeting last night. Such reorganizations take place partywide every four years, after the party elects new…
HUD announces $30 million housing grant for Larimer
During a tour of Larimer, Federal Housing Administration Commissioner Carol Galante passed dozens of vacant lots and deteriorating houses. But along the way she also passed the neighborhood’s Environmental and Energy Outreach Center, a branch of Chatham University, and the popular Bakery Square — signs that one of Pittsburgh’s long forgotten neighborhoods is being reborn.…
Lynn Cullen Live 06/30/14
Video Archive SCOTUS votes 5/4 that employers can refuse to pay for contraception bc of religious beliefs; Boy Scouts in trouble for showing up in uniform to NYC gay pride parade; Georgia passing a law allowing guns to be carried just about anywhere; jooking dance competition in Memphis, TN; UPMC hospital-acquired infection rates; healthcare in…
Final Night for Lost and Found at City of Asylum
Storytelling and brass-band concert lights up the North Side
Port Authority board to hold special Bus Rapid Transit meeting
The Port Authority board announced today it will hold a public meeting to discuss possible funding streams for a $4 million study of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) — a project that would create separately branded rapid bus service between Downtown and Oakland. The study is a necessary step to qualify for federal funding, according to…
Mash Bash to close Brooklyn Brewery’s Mash Pittsburgh stop
The Brooklyn Brewery Mash tour rolled into town this week and the festival closes with a bash of “new school rockers” tomorrow night. The Mash Bash, a show that serves as the Pittsburgh stop’s closing party, features Massachusetts’ Speedy Ortiz and Pittsburgh’s own Legs Like Tree Trunks and The Lopez. The event also includes video…
Lynn Cullen Live 06/27/14
Video Archive Guest: Chris Potter. Mansion article in Wall St Journal, Pittsburgh rich say there aren’t enough nice homes, Albert’s Gifts. Rich celebrities not giving their children their inheritances in hopes they live successful lives.Gentrification. Borders around abortion clinics. The smell of men, men now use too many scents. Last eagle flew the coop. Audio…
Plan announced for Hilltop Urban Farm
At a meeting at Lighthouse Cathedral on June 26, a group of community partners presented a draft of their plan for the Hilltop Farm on the former Saint Clair Village public-housing project. The effort is being lead by: the Hilltop Alliance, a community group representing nearby neighborhoods; Grow Pittsburgh, an urban agriculture nonprofit; the Allegheny…
Supreme Court overturns “buffer zones” outside abortion clinics, local impact unclear (UPDATED)
Today the US Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Massachusetts state law establishing a “buffer zone” that keeps anti-choice protesters at arm’s length from the entrance to abortion clinics. But while Pittsburgh has a buffer-zone ordinance of its own, at least one abortion-rights advocate says it’s too early to say what the ruling’s impact here will…
Lynn Cullen Live 06/26/14
Video Archive Guest: Tom Sokolowski. Couple downtown holding hands like they can’t walk without holding hands. Outer banks, politics trumps science, report about water rising thrown out by Repubs. World cup, USA vs Germany today, rain and floods may delay game. Football injuries, amnesia, dangers. Americans cultured to believe drinking alcohol gives the OK to…
Drag Me Home comp highlights East End talent
Thanks to his days booking shows at the Mr. Roboto Project — and time spent playing in bands like Adult Field Trip — Rick Moslen knows a thing or two about Pittsburgh-based music. On Friday, he’ll release Drag Me Home, a collaborative CD and zine featuring songs by 22 local bands, corresponding work by 22…
Steelworkers declare victory in organizing Point Park University adjuncts
The Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers (AFA-USW), says adjunct instructors at Point Park University have voted to form a union. After a campaign that has been underway for the first half of 2014, the vote in favor was 172 to 79; a handful of additional votes are under review. “The adjunct instructors have…
Public servants tackle food insecurity
According to the website fallingfruit.org. there are more than 20 varieties of edible trees in Pittsburgh. And one organization is suggesting that the fruit from these trees be harvested and given to local food banks. This notion was behind one of the many innovations presented at the Public Allies leadership conference today. Public Allies places…
New Releases
Save Us from the Archon Thereafter (Seizure Man) Sometimes chaotic, sometimes mathy and precise, and sometimes beautiful and intricate, Save Us From the Archon has created a complex and gorgeous record. There are nods to the classic Pittsburgh math-rock without the sense of arrested development that sometimes comes with bands trying to recreate the ’90s.…
Natural Selection: Critics question choice of site for new Frick Environmental Center
When Henry Clay Frick died in 1919, he gave the city 151 acres of land, and a $2 million trust to create and maintain a park. The city park that bears his name has since grown to encompass 644 acres, making it Pittsburgh’s largest. But Frick’s original bequest, now called the Frick Woods Nature Reserve,…
A review of the PCA’s Emerging Artist of the Year Show
MIA TARDUCCI HENRY: INSIDE AND OUT continues through July 20. Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, 6300 Fifth Ave. Shadyside. 412-361-0873 or pittsburgharts.org Mia Tarducci Henry has found room to move in the genre of gestural abstraction. For Inside and Out, her Emerging Artist of the Year exhibit at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, she…
Protesters, investors urge PNC to abandon mountaintop-removal financing
Eileen Flanagan is no stranger to executives at PNC Bank. Flanagan, of the Philadelphia-based environmental group Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT), appeared at an April PNC shareholder meeting in Tampa, and as recently as October, stood outside the bank’s Downtown headquarters and bank branches with a single demand: Stop funding companies that engage in mountaintop-removal…
House of Gold makes a statement in Wilkinsburg
HOUSE OF GOLD 1404 Swissvale Ave., Wilkinsburg. house-of-gold.com House of Gold’s power lies in its simplicity. The art project consists of an uninhabited house on Swissvale Avenue in Wilkinsburg whose exterior was coated entirely in gold paint by artist and Wilkinsburg resident Dee Briggs. The fresh coat was applied over two days, with the help…
Market Value
A burly man walks out of a bright, sunny morning and into Ujamaa Collective, 1901 Centre Ave., in the Hill District. Facing a dazzling array of shapes and colors, he examines a cornucopia of arts, crafts, collectibles, edibles. He rustles through some of the 1,000 individual items — batiks and carvings, clothing and jewelry, ceramics…
Alarum Theatre’s Iphigenia and Other Daughters
IPHIGENIA AND OTHER DAUGHTERS continues through Sat., June 28. Alarum Theatre at Frick Park (Beechwood Avenue at Nicholson), Squirrel Hill. $15. alarumtheatre.com At the bottom of a hill near a Squirrel Hill entrance to Frick Park, a handful of folding chairs are set in a few rows. A couple of torches are lit to keep…
Less Gross, More Green: Measuring progress by more than just money
When critics oppose environmental protections — say, federal limits on carbon emissions — they usually object on economic grounds: Cutting pollution costs jobs, they say. Such critics are often wrong, but their arguments get traction because most of us believe in economic growth, as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP). And as we’ve always…
Little Lake’s Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike
VANYA AND SASHA AND MASHA AND SPIKE continues through Sat., June 28. Little Lake Theatre, 500 Lakeside Drive, Canonsburg. $12-18. 724-745-6300 or littlelake.org Little Lake Theatre Co. luxuriates in the fun of Christopher Durang’s 2013 Tony-winner Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike. The quirky if sometimes drawn-out comedy mixes Chekhovian atmosphere and references with…
A review of David Herrle’s Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy
As a kid in the ’80s reading Helter Skelter, I was gripped by the real-life horror story of the Manson family, boogeyman of a counter-culture I was just beginning to understand. In his newest book, Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy (Time Being Books), David Herrle moves beyond journalistic analysis to take a profound…
Savage Love
I’m out of your usual demographic, age-wise (I’m 70), but I am still an avid reader. My cousin and I have flirted and joked about getting it on together for 50 years or more. Now she’s divorced and having the time of her life. The other day, she told me she’d like to have a…
Night Moves
Night Moves Directed by: Kelly Reichardt Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard, Dakota Fanning Starts: Fri., June 27. Regent Square Night Moves is a thriller about eco-sabotage and its aftermath, but it’s also a Kelly Reichardt film. So while necessarily plot-driven, it’s simultaneously the kind of low-key, almost observational character study you’d expect (and ardently hope…
Short List: June 27 – July 2
FREE EVENT Sat., June 28 — Stage Almost everyplace has its refugees. But unlike the more privileged immigrants whom cities like Pittsburgh are recruiting, those fleeing political or economic strife are typically voiceless. LOST/FOUND: Finding Refuge in Pittsburgh is a new stage work that gives some local refugees not only a microphone, but also actors,…
Obvious Child
In Gillian Robespierre’s sweet, offbeat rom-com Obvious Child, aspiring standup comedian Donna (Jenny Slate) is unceremoniously cut loose by her boyfriend in the nightclub’s unisex toilet. (“Stop looking at your phone while you’re dumping me.”) Later that night, Donna meets Max (Jake Lacy), who’s not really her type — he’s wearing Topsiders in winter. Still,…
Blue Line Grille
Blue Line Grille 1014 Fifth Ave., Uptown. 412-281-2583 Hours: Sun.-Wed. 11 a.m.- midnight; Thu.-Sat. 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Prices: Appetizers, soups, salads, burgers, sandwiches, pizza $7-15; entrees $16-34 Liquor: Full Bar Blue Line Grille is named after markings on a hockey rink — features no doubt very familiar to part-owner Billy Guerin, who is also an…
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
Andreas Johnsen’s documentary is less a profile of the infamous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei than a follow-up to his recent troubles with the authorities in Beijing. (Newcomers are advised to start with Alison Klayman’s 2012 doc Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.) After nearly three months in detention, Ai Weiwei is released on probation, and Johnsen’s cameras…
At Allegheny Wine Mixer, long-derided riesling gets its due
If you still associate riesling with that sticky-sweet bottle of Blue Nun that you drank in college, Jamie Patten says it’s time to step up your game. “It’s a wine that’s a bit misunderstood,” says Patten, owner of Lawrenceville’s Allegheny Wine Mixer. “It comes in all different styles.” To help foster better understanding of the…
Jersey Boys
Clint Eastwood directs this adaptation of the popular Broadway musical tracing the career of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and it’s a surprisingly flat affair. Part mob comedy, part backstage melodrama, it never really gels into a compelling (or believable) tale of the highs and lows of struggling to become a huge pop sensation.…
Local ice-cream shop Scoops opens a new location in Bloomfield
For Scoops owner Mike Collins, Bloomfield was the perfect location to open a third ice-cream shop. “Ice-cream shops need restaurants, and in Bloomfield, there are a lot of restaurants and people,” says Collins. “People come to Bloomfield from all over.” With locations in Mount Lebanon and Brookline, Collins says he prefers neighborhood stores to the…
Think Like a Man Too
The couples from the 2012 ensemble rom-com are back, and taking a fun trip to Las Vegas for a wedding. But first! Separate bachelor and bachelorette parties that almost immediately get wildly out-of-control. (Hint: The parties do reunite … in jail!) Tim Story returns to the director’s chair in this sequel to the 2012 hit,…
We Are the Best!
In 1982 Stockholm, two tomboyish 13-year-old girls decide to start a punk band. Sure, everybody says “punk is dead,” but only people who aren’t real punks would say that. And it doesn’t matter that the girls can’t play any instruments; Bobo and Klara instinctively know punk is the perfect outlet for their pent-up energy and…
WYEP marks 40 years as “the station that refused to die”
WYEP SUMMER MUSIC FESTIVAL featuring THE SAM ROBERTS BAND, VALERIE JUNE, ELIZABETH AND THE CATAPULT, THE RED WESTERN. 2 p.m. Sat., June 28. Schenley Plaza, Oakland. Free. All ages. wyep.org/smf2014 It was the early ’90s, and legendary Pittsburgh soul singer Billy Price was headed to a gig when the radio murmured a soft bass line,…
Secret Tombs put it on tape
While the general public might consider cassette tapes an impractical medium, the format has its devotees. And with its new release, Secretly Yours, local three-piece Secret Tombs makes digging out that tape deck especially worthwhile. Secretly Yours — recorded at drummer Dave Rosenstraus’ studio, Braddock Hit Factory — is the band’s third cassette release. But…
Critics’ Picks: June 27 – July 2
[INDIE ROCK] + FRI., JUNE 27 Instead of Sleeping has been on the Pittsburgh music scene since 2008; in that time, the four-piece indie-rock band has played with fun., The Dear Hunter, The Fall of Troy, Hawthorne Heights … the list goes on. The band worked on its new album, Young Lungs, with producer Marc…
Lynn Cullen Live 06/25/14
Video Archive Guest: Jared Day, Daylee News. Vietnam. North Carolina 1960’s narrowly escaped nuclear bombing. US plane carrying nukes crashed and covered up. Documents released a few weeks ago. Classic Hollywood under appreciated…Charlie Grapewine, Thelma Ritter. Audio Only Archive
