WWW.PGHCITYPAPER.COM | 12.12/12.19.2012
TAKING ‘NO’ FOR AN ANSWER: LOCAL WRITER CREATES ART FROM REJECTION LETTERS 42
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
AD V E RTISE MEN T
Andy Warhol, prince of pop art, dies
Image: Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol Getting a Pedicure (detail), 1982, Š The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Andy Warhol, an artist who grew up in Pittsburgh and who came of age by setting pop culture loose in uptown Manhattan, died yesterday of a heart attack. He was 58. The son of Slovak immigrants who came to Pittsburgh’s Soho district at the turn of the century, Mr. Warhol died in his sleep at 6:31 a.m. in New York Hospital. He had undergone gall bladder surgery on Saturday, but according to hospital spokeswoman Diane Goldin no complications had surfaced. The artist’s death, she said, was “clearly unexpectedâ€?. He had been admitted to the hospital Friday, Goldin said, and “his postoperative condition was stableâ€?. Funeral arrangements are incomplete. Mr. Warhol’s death shocked family members in the Pittsburgh area, including brothers Paul Warhola of Elizabeth and John Warhola of the North Side. Every Sunday morning for the past 20 years, Paul Warhola said, he would make a phone call to his brother, Andy. Yesterday was different. “I called this morning, and for WKH Âż UVW WLPH LQ \HDUV VRPHRQH else answered the phone. It was my brother’s publicist. He said, ‘John, Andy died.’ “ “I looked at him as my brother, not a famous man.â€? added John Warhola, a manager at a local Sears, Roebuck and Co. store. “He was the kindest, nicest brother you could have.â€? Paul Warhola said his brother’s public Ă€ DPER\DQFH EHOLHG KLV JHQWOH QDWXUH “People got the idea that he was a wild character, but he was the nicest person in the world.â€? said Paul Warhola, the eldest brother. $V RQH RI WKH PRVW LQĂ€ XHQWLDO
artist of his day, Mr. Warhol gained his place in art history by turning routine glimpses of pop culture into critically acclaimed paintings and drawings. To his eye, chic was anything from a row of Campbell’s soup can to a candy-colored portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Indeed, the artist’s often splashy, IUHH Ă€ XQJ ZRUN ZDV LQ FRQWUDVW WR his signatory appearance – thin, pale and withdrawn, with hair as bright as talcum powder. “He made his own lifestyle a work of art,â€? Richard Oldenburg, director of the Museum of Modern Art, told the Associated Press. “He was one RI WKH Âż UVW SHRSOH WR UHDOO\ EHFRPH a star as an artist and, once celebrity cam, he certainly enjoyed it.â€? Here in Pittsburgh, friends and family said that time spent at Schenley High School and at Carnegie Institute of Technology seldom have a clear sign of pending brilliance. 1HLWKHU GLG \RXQJ $QG\ÂśV Âż UVW paying job, family members said. He sold fruit in the Strip District while a student at Schenley in the early 1940s. Even as an art student at Carnegie Institute of Technology, the troublesome young artist did not distinguish himself as part of the class of 1949 - a
group that included renowned artists Philip Pearlstein, Harry Schwalb, and sculptor Henry Bursztynowicz. Robert Lepper, a professor emeritus of art at Carnegie Mellon University, recalled that Andy Warhola – he didn’t change his name until moving to New York in 1949 – faced expulsion several times. Each time, the panel of 10 faculty members would weigh his lack of discipline against his potential. Each time, they would allow young Warhola to stay – though sometimes, recalled Lepper, the vote was close. Âł$QG\ ZDV LQ GLIÂż FXOW\ KLV Âż UVW two years and the faculty had a nice time quarreling whether to let him stay.â€? Lepper said. “I’d like to sat I gave him and A,â€? Lepper added. “But I probably gave him a B, probably because he didn’t come to class.â€? Instead, he was probably Downtown in a display window at Horne’s department store where, Lepper said, he worked part time dressing mannequins. “If anybody would have asked me who was least likely to succeed, I would’ve said Andy Warhola. What a guesser I am,â€? Lepper said from his home in Shadyside.
EVENTS 12.14 – 8pm FIT TO PRINT: FOX MOVIETONE NEWSREELS (1928-1942) with Curator Greg Wilsbacher Tickets $10
12.15 – 2pm GALLERY TALK: ANN ROSENTHAL, ARTIST, EDUCATOR, AND WRITER Free with Museum admission/ Free for Members
12.31 SPECIAL HOLIDAY HOURS The Warhol will be open on Monday, December 31 from 10am to 5pm
(Continued on Page 20)
ANDY WARHOL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN DEBORAH KASS
1.5 – 2pm GALLERY TALK: LESLIE GOLOMB, ARTIST AND INDEPENDENT CURATOR Free with Museum admission/ Free for Members
1.11 – 7pm OUT OF THE BOX: TIME CAPSULE OPENING WITH TIME CAPSULES CATALOGUERS Free with Museum admission/Free for Members
DEBORAH KASS: BEFORE AND HAPPILY EVER AFTER THROUGH JANUARY 6, 2013 Deborah Kass, Blue Deb, 2000
Sponsored by
1.25 – 8pm OFF THE WALL 2013: TAMMIE FAY STARLITE: CHELSEA MADCHEN Tickets $25/$20 Members & students
WARHOL: HEADLINES THROUGH JANUARY 6, 2013 The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, the Galleria Nazionale d’arte Moderna, Rome, and The Museum fßr Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and
117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA 15212
The Andy Warhol Museum receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency and The Heinz Endowments. Further support is provided by the Allegheny Regional Asset District.
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
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[NEWS]
over 10 years, there have only 06 “In been a handful of fatalities, then two
happened on the same street in six days.” — BikePGH’s Scott Bricker on an unusually dangerous year for cyclists
[VIEWS]
18
“Murphy’s administration was often accused of the sins Ravenstahl is faulted for today: a lack of transparency, too-cozy relationships with developers.” — Chris Potter on former Mayor Tom Murphy’s sudden, brief return to public life
[TASTE]
side of lentils braised with pork belly 24 “A was one of the best dishes of the night.” — Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth, reviewing Bridge Ten Brasserie
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“I’m registering to be a substitute teacher, so that my degree doesn’t devalue when I’m on the road.” — Daniel Pujol, of the band Pujol, on finding a day job
[SCREEN]
meowing ‘White Christmas’ is 38 “Cats intercut with footage of Jesus writhing
in agony.” — Al Hoff, reviewing the Everything Is Terrible! holiday film mash-up
[ARTS]
Wood Street show reminds viewers 41 “The that newsprint and gunpowder formed the Modern World at least as much as precious objects ever did.” — Charles Rosenblum on art exhibit The City & The City
[LAST WORD]
theory, kids from these rival 63 “In neighborhoods should hate each other. But here they are, quietly sitting together, boasting of their college tours.” — Robert Isenberg on the positive influence of the Isaiah Project on at-risk kids
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{EDITORIAL} Editor CHRIS POTTER News Editor CHARLIE DEITCH Arts & Entertainment Editor BILL O’DRISCOLL Music Editor ANDY MULKERIN Associate Editor AL HOFF Listings Editor MARGARET WELSH Assistant Listings Editor JESSICA BOGDAN Staff Writers AMYJO BROWN, LAUREN DALEY Staff Photographer HEATHER MULL Interns CATHERINE SYLVAIN, AMANDA WISHNER
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{PUBLISHER} STEEL CITY MEDIA GENERAL POLICIES: Contents copyrighted 2012 by Steel City Media. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. The opinions expressed in Pittsburgh City Paper are those of the author and not necessarily of Steel City Media. LETTER POLICY: Letters, faxes or e-mails must be signed and include town and daytime phone number for confirmation. We may edit for length and clarity. DISTRIBUTION: Pittsburgh City Paper is published weekly by Steel City Media and is available free of charge at select distribution locations. One copy per reader; copies of past issues may be purchased for $3.00 each, payable in advance to Pittsburgh City Paper. FIRST CLASS MAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS: Available for $175 per year, $95 per half year. No refunds. PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 650 Smithfield Street, Suite 2200 Pittsburgh, PA 15222 412.316.3342 FAX: 412.316.3388 E-MAIL info@pghcitypaper.com www.pghcitypaper.com
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“IT WILL GET BETTER WITH MORE BIKERS ON THE ROAD.”
INCOMING Past Perfect: 25 years of Rick Sebak (Dec. 5)
“I’d love to have a big-box sporting-goods store Downtown, for instance. It would be easier for me to buy a pair of sweat pants for my son there than to schlep to Homestead. … For my money, I’ll take Pittsburgh Dad over Sebak in the 21st century. A celebration of yinzerness, but also a recognition of its absurdity.” — Web comment from “Ginzberg” “This was brilliantly on-point, particularly the paragraph about how fetishistic it is, and how the most mundane or human activity is viewed as quintessentially Pittsburgh. Every time I hear that I want to tell the person to get out more, to anywhere — Columbus, Cleveland, Baltimore, Chicago, St Louis, anywhere at all really — the country’s full of quirkiness. I enjoy watching Sebak, but holy crap, the human condition is pretty much universal.” — Web comment from “Leigh” “I loved this article, love Rick Sebak’s films and love Pittsburgh!” — Web comment from “mariamaria” “A big-box store Downtown where you can buy your child sweat pants? There are redneck strip-mall meccas across the country.” — Web Comment from “Sloov Sloover”
More than 31 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are not getting adequate treatment (Dec. 5)
“Thank you for this well-written and timely article on a topic for which there is far too little discourse at all levels.” — Web comment from “Aaron”
Carnegie Mellon Drama’s Angels in America: A strong production of Tony Kushner’s epochal play is sapped by cuts in the script (Dec. 5)
“I thought the production was pretty great. There were some theatrical decisions I didn’t agree with but I thought they were brave choices. … As far as things that were cut, I don’t really know what you are referring to. Have you read Angels in America? The only thing I noticed being cut was Scene 10, which isn’t a pivotal scene, and surely doesn’t add up to the 40 or so minutes you say have been trashed.” — Web Comment from “Seth Bickford”
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BREAKING
THE CYCLE
Due to growing pains or growing tensions, 2012 was a dangerous year for the city’s cycling community {BY LAUREN DALEY}
Colin Albright bikes in Oakland. {PHOTO BY HEATHER MULL}
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
A
S THE KNIFE came toward him, Colin Albright hoisted his bicycle toward his attacker. On the desolate South Side steps at 11 p.m. on Sept. 5, Albright thought that’s what the man was after. “I said, ‘Dude, take the fucking bike,’” Albright says. “I thought it was some cheap street robber.” But it wasn’t. The attacker grabbed Albright from behind his shoulder and stabbed him “for a couple of seconds” without saying a word. He grabbed the cyclist’s black-and-white road bike and chucked it over the railing. The man ran down to a gray car parked at the base of the steps at Harcum Way in the South Side. Albright followed, dialing 911. Seeing the vehicle, his memory
on an article about Albright’s stabbing. Some blamed motorists for motoring too fast and not being respectful of others on the road. Others blamed cyclists for zipping through traffic and running red lights. Everyone pointed the finger outward. But cyclists, advocates and transportation planners will all tell you the answer lies with how we all interact with one another on the road. “It doesn’t matter if it’s between motorist and motorist, or pedestrian and pedestrian,” says Stephen Patchan, the city’s bike-ped coordinator. “Road rage is road rage.” BRICKER AND OTHERS believe the problem could be as simple as growing pains: There are more cyclists on the road than ever before. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the number of bike commuters has increased in the city 269 percent since 2000, with 1.6 percent of the city’s population commuting by bike. Meanwhile, drivers are adjusting to sharing the road. A bicyclist is “not part of the dominant traffic argument,” says Albright. “You’re almost an anomaly.” Albright, 25, started riding when he was 19. “I thought it’d save the planet,” he jokes. He worked as a bike messenger and now is a technician at Pro Bikes, in Squirrel Hill. Recounting the moments leading up to the attack, Albright says he never engaged with his alleged attacker. He says he rode off of the Hot Metal Bridge’s bike path, off the sidewalk and onto Hot Metal Street toward East Carson as the cross-traffic light was yellow. A car was sitting at the red light coming off the bridge in the right-hand lane, and Albright says he pedaled several feet in front of him, while he was still at the red light, without incident. “There was no honk. Nothing happened,” Albright says. The two didn’t meet again until the steps, when Scholl, 21, of West Mifflin, allegedly stabbed him. Scholl fled, and police arrested him on Oct. 25 while he was jailed on arson charges, accused of burning his family’s house down. He’s awaiting a preliminary hearing in the Albright case, scheduled for the day before this issue hits the streets. Until his Sept. 5 stabbing, Albright says his interactions with motorists had been mostly positive. In his handful of previous wrecks, “It’s always been [the driver saying,] ‘I’m so sorry,’” he says. One motorist even called to check on him a week later, and the pair hung out.
“THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE WHEN I WAS HIRED WAS, ‘GET PEOPLE ON BIKES.’”
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clicked. He had seen the car a short time before, at the Hot Metal Bridge, then at the base of the stairs making a threepoint turn. Albright says the car followed him on his path from the South Side bridge to the steps where he was attacked in an apparent road-rage incident. But rage over what? Albright says he never engaged with the driver — alleged by authorities to be Anthony Scholl — until they met on the stairs. As Albright dialed 911, “I could feel my neck flapping. My legs felt wet.” Blood covered his torso. His throat had been slit millimeters from his carotid artery and trachea; he had multiple stab wounds to his head, shoulders and arms. The case made headlines in what was already being described by advocates as the most dangerous year in history for Pittsburgh cyclists. During the summer, for example, motorists struck down two cyclists on Penn Avenue in Point Breeze within a week of each other, killing both James Price and Anthony Green. “In over 10 years there have only been a handful of fatalities, then two happened on the same street in six days,” says Scott Bricker, executive director of advocacy group BikePGH. “There’s no word for it. It’s an anomaly.” Add to that several hit-and-run cases, and Albright’s attack, and cyclists and advocates were left scratching their heads as to what it all meant in city that’s trying to grow its bike infrastructure and community. “It’s data from one summer. Right now, we believe this year is an outlier,” Bricker says. “There’s no reason to think it’s going to be like this from now on.” But there is evidence to suggest that there is growing animosity between cyclists and motorists. BikePGH’s own interactive online crash map includes a category for confrontations. And tensions from the streets spilled out in debates in the online comments section of news stories about the incidents. “On any given day I see drivers texting, or trying to make a left turn with the phone in one hand and going way into the other side of the road,” one City Paper commenter wrote. “Most people have had enough of these morons on their little bicycles in the streets. I’m sure there are plenty of paths for them to pedal along to their little heart’s content where they don’t hold up vehicular traffic,” said another commenter
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BREAKING THE CYCLE, CONTINUED FROM PG. 07
Delight in the Season. NEW WINTER LIGHT GARDEN Through Jan. 6
[PHOTOS BY HEATHER MULL}
Colin Albright’s scars from a Sept. 5 attack
Come catch that holiday glow at Winter Flower Show, where you can stroll along candlelit pathways, marvel at a miniature World’s Fair-themed Garden Railroad, and take in the beauty of seasonal blooms and festively trimmed trees. Then head outside to explore our dazzling new Winter Light Garden with luminous orbs, “dripping” icicles, and a sparkling fountain. For details, visit phipps.conservatory.org.
But other cyclists he knows haven’t been as lucky. “A lot of people have experienced when they get into a wreck — as long as no one is really injured — immediate confrontation,” he says. Other cyclists say they have been cursed at, honked at, even intentionally hit. And if a wreck does occur, many say drivers don’t even stop. As Dan Yablonsky recounts the May 13 accident that left him unconscious for more than three weeks, he shifts in his chair. “I’m still pretty uncomfortable,” he says softly. Yablonsky’s injuries were severe, including a torn aorta, shattered pelvis, a broken lower spine, a broken arm, fractures in both legs and brain damage.
Yablonsky believes his crash was the result of a “weird” traffic grid and the driver not paying attention. He’s had several surgeries so far, and is preparing for another in the spring. Yablonsky was riding with a group on May 13 around 2:30 a.m., passing through the intersection of Liberty Avenue, Herron Avenue and Ligonier Street in Lower Lawrenceville when he was struck head-on by a vehicle driven by Beau Fishinger. Yablonsky says he was riding with a helmet and full reflectors. Fishinger allegedly fled the scene, but turned himself in the next day. He’s been ordered to stand trial on charges of felony aggravated assualt with a vehicle and other traffic infractions. According to detective testimony at his preliminary CONTINUES ON PG. 10
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
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BREAKING THE CYCLE, CONTINUED FROM PG. 08
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hearing, Fishinger admitted to fleeing because he was drunk and driving on a suspended license, KDKA reported at the time. Yablonsky, of Larimer, came to the city for an internship with BikePGH last February. Instead of buying a car, he bought a trailer for a bicycle so he could explore the town on two wheels. But today, though he plans to ride again, his confidence in cycling is also fractured. “The perceived risk from my perspective is so much higher,” he says. “I don’t have the same confidence or feel the same freedom.” But Albright says that it’s not always safe to follow laws that were made for four-wheeled vehicles or that don’t even address cyclists at all. “If I get to a red light and there are six cars piled behind me and there’s no cross traffic, I’m supposed to wait for the light to change. If I do that, I have to accelerate back up to speed and the cars wait behind me,” he says. “If I look and there’s no traffic, I can get a half block ahead. It’s better for everyone.” The truth is, he says, “the legal requirement of acting like a car is completely inapplicable to most situations a bike is in.” Albright doesn’t advocate biking dangerously, “If you do, you are submitting drivers whose path you cross to killing someone,” he says. And darting in and out of traffic, or visibly breaking laws without regard to safety, sours drivers’ perceptions. “When you have a biker behaving badly,” says cyclist Nick Drombosky, “you affect how other bikers get treated on the road.” Drombosky’s company, a Fiks: Reflective, makes safety gear for cyclists; he was also the victim of a hit-and-run.
Other cyclists dart in and out of traffic or don’t know how to ride in traffic, observe some drivers. Around mass transit, operators often face cyclists darting up the right side of the bus in order to pass, says operator Jim Bonner. That presents a danger when drivers try to curb the bus to pick up passengers. “That’s the most dangerous thing they can do,” he says. Bonner says many cyclists he observes just aren’t paying attention. But he acknowledges that many are courteous and try to stay in front of the bus — which is where he prefers. “I like cyclists in the front of me or the left.” While riders say the streets don’t feel more dangerous, they have noticed more tensions with and guff from motorists. And while overall the number of cases of drivers hitting cyclists on purpose is small, observes cycling law attorney Marc Reisman, “we’re seeing more of those in the last year where it looks like the driver wants to hit the cyclist or scare the hell out of him.”
“WHEN YOU HAVE A BIKER BEHAVING BADLY YOU AFFECT HOW OTHER BIKERS GET TREATED ON THE ROAD.”
LAWS DESIGNED for four-wheel drivers are slower to catch up with the increases in those getting around on two. In April, the state implemented a law mandating that motorists give cyclists a 4-foot buffer when passing. Also this spring, another law passed closing a loophole that made it an incentive for drivers to leave the scene of an accident. Under previous state law, if a driver failed to stop at the scene of an accident and the person they struck died, they would be subject to a one-year minimum prison sentence. But if they stopped — as the law requires — they could have faced a three-year minimum sentence if they CONTINUES ON PG. 12
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
Bridgeville
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BREAKING THE CYCLE, CONTINUED FROM PG. 10
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were found to be impaired. The new law, authored by Indiana County Republican Dave Reed, increases the penalty for drivers who flee to a second-degree felony, while allowing judges to order a longer prison sentence, of up to 10 years.. The legislation was born of a hitand-run that left Indiana County cyclist Sean Pearce dead in 2005. In that case, Reed says, authorities believe Pearce was run over twice by two different vehicles and left for dead. “It makes you wonder what would have happened if the first person would have stopped,” says Reed. “My only goal is really to get a [driver] to stop and help the person … so maybe they’ll have a chance to survive.” Closer to home, there have been 496 reportable bicycle/motor-vehicle crashes in the city of Pittsburgh since 2002, according to figures from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Nearly 70 percent of those accidents were the fault of the motorist, according to the data. But Bricker says the number is likely much higher. State data is based on only “reportable” crashes, meaning that the incident involved at least one motorized vehicle and that an injury or fatality occured, or that a motor vehicle was towed from the scene. BikePGH’s online bike-crash map, for example, displays 156 crash reports, from fatalities to cyclists hit by drivers opening the doors of parked vehicles, from
cyclists wrecking on slippery surfaces to vehicles making left turns into their paths. Some of those accidents aren’t included in state data. Without truly accurate data, says Sara Walfoort, a transportation-planning manager at regional planning body Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, it’s harder to shape public policy and get the attention of lawmakers. That’s one reason the SPC started doing its own twice-annual bike counts, she says. “Lawmakers would ask, ‘Well, how many cyclists are there?’” she says. “But we didn’t have the data. For better consideration of bicycling as transportation need, we need to use the same language,” she says. “And right now we don’t get to do that.” The city and advocacy community have been doing what they can to mitigate the issue and improve safety. Pittsburgh was the first municipality in the state to have a paid bike-ped coordinator and department, of which Stephen Patchan is the sole employee. In that role, Patchan manages MovePGH, a multi-modal transportation dream plan for the city. He also works with the Department of Public Works on implementing infrastructure and safety measures. “The original message when I was hired was, ‘Get people on bikes,’” says Patchan. Bike-friendliness, he says, has become a measure of desirability for cities. “You don’t hear anyone saying, ‘Come to Columbus, we want you to drive more.’” CONTINUES ON PG. 14
Dec. 15th and Dec. 21th call 412-343-6640 or visit eatdrinkmurder.org for tickets
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
{BY MATT BORS}
IDIOTBOX
Objects in mirror are worth more than you know. With every new Subaru purchased or leased, we’re donating $250 to your choice of five charities. Get a great deal. Support a great cause. Now through January 2.
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BREAKING THE CYCLE, CONTINUED FROM PG. 12
Come for the Show, Stay for the Shopping! Our downtown is merry and bright; ďŹ lled with unique holiday gifts ‌ Appalachia arts, local antiques, estate jewelry, trendy designer boutiques and handmade leather goods.
Cities like Pittsburgh are chasing ratings by the League of American Cyclists, who determines levels of bike-friendliness on a scale from bronze to platinum. Only one city — Portland, Ore. — has received a platinum level. Pittsburgh has achieved bronze. About 6 percent of Portland’s population — which is almost double Pittsburgh’s — commutes by bike, according to Census data. As of 2008, Portland’s cycling infrastructure was valued at $60 million. And that’s by design, city ofďŹ cials say. The city has, since the 1920s, always focused on building a bike culture. “If you look at where major economic drivers are moving, everyone is trying to ďŹ gure out how to get as much bikeway down as possible,â€? says Dan Anderson, spokesman for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. “It’s the future of the United States.â€? Portland has 181 miles of bike lanes, 79 miles of paths, dedicated car-free days on certain streets to expose residents to cycling and the pedestrian lifestyle, and driver-training and -awareness programs. Pittsburgh, by contrast, has approximately 35 miles of on-street bike infrastructure, from bike lanes to shared markings and signage. There are 20 miles of
separated mixed-use trails. Patchan hopes to only grow that number. The city is exploring future projects like “cycle tracks,â€? which are bike lanes with a buffer between trafďŹ c and a dedicated cycling lane. Bricker says BikePGH is trying to develop a vision of implementing more bike lanes and infrastructure into the city’s existing street grid, while looking for safer way to connect cyclists to safer routes. The organization received a grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation to start producing a design plan to dovetail with the MovePGH vision. That plan is due in the spring, Bricker says. “It’s putting ‌ bike routes and more language out there to start developing an idea that links bicycling to an overall transportation plan,â€? he says. For now, he and other cyclists believe the only way for drivers to get used to having them on the road is to encourage more people to ride. “People see it as a problem and want to place a victim in the whole thing,â€? says Chris Matrozza, a bike mechanic at Iron City Bikes, in Oakland, and friend of Albright’s. “It will get better with more bikers on the road. “We’re not going anywhere, we’re here to stay.â€? L D A L E Y @ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM
Disney’s Aladdin Dec. 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 22 | Met Theatre
Second Sunday Antiques Saturday, Dec. 9 | Mylan Park
Solo Pianist Jim Brickman Tuesday, Dec. 11 | WVU CAC
Moscow Ballet‘s “Great Russian Nutcracker�
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
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TRAFFIC CONTROL Pittsburgh Police try to mediate rage between cyclists and motorists {BY LAUREN DALEY} CHRISTINE SCALISE might be one of the
most noticeable cyclists on the road. A bike officer for the past 13 years, she has never been in a wreck with a vehicle. She admits that she’s pretty easy to notice — “the uniform is highly visible and we’re carrying a gun,” she says. But despite her occupation, as a cyclist, she still hesitates when she’s on the road. “There are certain roadways I avoid because of the congestion and I wouldn’t feel comfortable riding,” Scalise says. The past year has been one of the most dangerous on record for cyclists locally, and the job of dealing with the numerous accidents, attacks and incidents falls to Pittsburgh police and officers like Scalise. Tensions can be high between cyclists and motorists — something offi-
{PHOTO BY LAUREN DALEY}
Bike officer Christine Scalise
cers know all too well. Police commander Scott Schubert, for example, says he doesn’t have to go far to get a sense of how motorists and bicyclists feel about each other. “All you have to do is look at the paper
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after a crash and read the comments,” he says. “There’s definitely a bicycle side, where they’re saying ‘We have just as much right as you’ and then you have some of the motorists respond, saying ‘Wait a minute, you have the same responsibility on the road.’” Schubert and Scalise say that the anger and disdain often displayed online isn’t something that manifests wholly on the streets, if at all. But they do say road rage between many people on the road, regardless of their mode, is alive and well. “One side is always pointing the finger at the other,” says Schubert. “We’ve got to get past that and do what is safe. When you have motorists who are violating laws, they need to be held accountable, and when you have bicyclists who go through red lights, stop signs, etc., they need to be held accountable.”
“A FAIR AMOUNT OF RESPONSIBILITY NEEDS TO BE PLACED ON THE VEHICLE DRIVER.”
THAT’S PARTLY where Scalise and other
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hour, “that affords us the ability to see what’s going on” and interact more with the community. Her bike is outfitted with a siren, air horns and LED lights. She carries handcuffs, a baton, a weapon and everything every other police officer carries. And yes, she’s pulled vehicles over on her bicycle. “I haven’t had a problem with motorists too much in 13 years,” she says. “I can’t think of any examples of disrespect. I have had people challenge me to race, though.” She acknowledges that she’s been fortunate not to have been in an accident with another vehicle. “It’s possible we command more respect on the road, but at the same time we’re held to a higher level … because we’re cyclists,” she says. That’s not to say she’s been accident-free. She has wrecked her bike while policing — once chasing after a culprit in a torn-up parking lot, and another time while following a bike thief down a flight of stairs. When operating on the road, police say, cyclists are supposed to abide by the laws of traffic: stop at red lights and stop signs, and indicate which way they are turning. Between sundown and sunrise, they are required to have headlamps and reflectors. Cyclists aren’t allowed to ride on the sidewalks of business districts. Drivers “need to be aware that I’m supposed to be on the road. I’m not supposed to be on the sidewalk,” she says. “A lot of car drivers are very territorial.” And when it comes to riding safely, “A lot of the onus is put on the cyclist but a fair amount of responsibility needs to be placed on the vehicle driver,” she says. “They’re the ones with a thousandpound machine under them.” Scalise does her best to educate drivers, warning them or pulling them over if she sees a traffic violation. She carries stickers that remind them about the recently passed state law requiring motorists to give cyclists at least four feet clearance when passing, as well as stickers reminding cyclists to wear their helmets. But cyclists have to balance their safety with their rights, making sure they are seen and are behaving predictably so drivers know what they are doing. “On one hand, you’ve got to yield to the bigger thing, but [you] also have to stake your claim,” she says. “It’s a fine balance.”
bike officers come in. She has been an officer for the city since 1994 and, in 1999, joined the bike division — which has 17 officers around the city who patrol year-round. Scalise trained in a 40-hour class through the International Police Mountain Biking Association, and takes courses annually. Working out of Zone 5, in Highland Park, Scalise primarily patrols Penn Circle and part of East Liberty. With a patrol speed of 10 to 12 miles per
L D A L E Y @ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
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SPIRITED DEBATE A former mayor rises up to oppose a controversial development {BY CHRIS POTTER} THERE HE WAS, appearing before Pittsburgh
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
City Council just in time for the holidays — like something out of a Dickens story. Tom Murphy, the Ghost of Pittsburgh Past. Since leaving office in 2005, the silverhaired Murphy had scarcely been seen in the City-County Building prior to Dec. 5. But Pittsburgh City Councilor Patrick Dowd had invited him to weigh in on a controversial redevelopment plan, a proposal for 55 acres between the Strip District and Downtown. The Buncher Company, which owns most of the land, wants to demolish a landmark produce terminal and tap $50 million in tax subsidies, all to facilitate a $400 million commercial and residential development. Murphy was unimpressed, as Dowd — a critic of the plan — had no doubt expected. “You need to get this development to be world-class,” Murphy said. And you couldn’t blame project backers like Luke Ravenstahl, the Mayor of Pittsburgh Present, for feeling haunted by the spirit before them. Murphy launched his political career by beating Ravenstahl’s grandfather in a state legislative race in 1976. And way back in 1985, Murphy was criticizing Buncher in terms similar to those used by skeptics today. Buncher’s “history of development has been office buildings,” Murphy told the now-defunct Pittsburgh Press. Sites like the old steel mill site now known as SouthSide Works, he added, “should be used for a higher level of development.” The Buncher plan has problems. According to a preliminary plan filed with the city, it will be dominated by five vaguely horseshoe-shaped buildings facing the river. Its main public amenity is, in contrast, decidedly modest: a “piazza” that will jut into the water, looking a tiny bit like the fluke of a thoroughly beached whale. Other drawings raise more questions than they answer: The preliminary plans show buildings that may be as low as four stories tall — or as high as 20. (By comparison, the nearby Wholey’s warehouse is just seven stories tall.) To me, those aren’t two potential visions for a project; those are two different projects entirely. Still, you can say this for the Buncher proposal — and backers say it all the time: It would be far better than the sea of park-
ing lots that is there now. And even if you agree with Murphy’s diagnosis, you may have doubts about his remedy. “You have a public plaza… but with no retail and nothing that animates” the space, Murphy said. The site should be a place “where people go to hang out and celebrate” — one with “retail and stores … and tables” for merchants. But there’s already such a place nearby: It’s called “the Strip District.” Do we need another one next door? In fact, Murphy’s warm welcome from council —“Where were you when I needed you?” he joked — was a bit ironic. too. Murphy’s administration was often accused of the sins Ravenstahl is faulted for today: a lack of transparency, toocozy relationships with developers. Such accusations probably come with the (tax-subsidized, rezonedby-request) territory. And maybe the best lesson Murphy can teach us comes not from his successes, but from his biggest failure. A decade ago, he pitched a massive redevelopment of Fifth and Forbes avenues — ousting small, downscale merchants in favor for national chains — as the cure for Downtown’s ills. The proposal failed, yet somehow the city didn’t collapse. Instead, the area has undergone a slower, more organic redevelopment. As Murphy acknowledged Dec. 5, “[W]hat you’ve done there is world-class.” But it all started with what we didn’t do. We didn’t succumb to high-pressure tactics, or fears that no developer would ever love us again. One thing the Murphy years taught us: There will always be another chance to subsidize development with tax dollars. I’m not a fan of the Duplo-block development suggested in the preliminary plans. But I’d also prefer to avoid another SouthSide-Works-on-the-Allegheny, a prepackaged mixed-use urban funzone. I’d love to see the site become something truly unique — for the city, if not for the world. Make it America’s biggest urban farm, or a post-industrial wildlife sanctuary. Put a steel mill there, just to mess with people’s heads. Hey, a guy can dream. After all, there’s a mayoral election coming up next year. And we have yet to hear from the Ghost of Pittsburgh Future.
MAYBE THE BEST LESSON MURPHY CAN TEACH US COMES NOT FROM HIS SUCCESSES, BUT FROM HIS BIGGEST FAILURE
C P OT T E R@ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM
We Put The “T” in Toys For Tots. On Friday, December 14th, don’t just get caught in the morning rush. Catch the holiday spirit. Bring a toy down to the Steel Plaza T station and help lift a child’s spirits for the holidays. Friday morning, December 14th from 5:30 till 9 am, Toys for Tots will be collecting new, unwrapped children’s gifts. Port Authority is proud to join with media sponsors Q92.9 FM and the United States Marine Corps in asking you to help fill a child’s heart with joy and happiness this holiday season.
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Constipation? Abdominal Bloating?
The Wolong Panda Training Base in Sichuan, China, released a series of photos to China Daily in October to mark the graduation from captivity, and into the wild, of the 2-year-old Tao Tao. Sure enough, Tao Tao and his mother, Cao Cao, were shown frolicking in the woods, accompanied by trainers each dressed in full-length panda suits, including panda heads, as they appeared to demonstrate climbing trees and searching for food.
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Fewer than 3 bowel movements per week Lumpy or hard stool, straining, or a sensation of incomplete evacuation during bowel movements Abdominal bloating due to chronic constipation
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chief executive, Jose Mujica, declared his personal wealth in 2010 as the equivalent of about $1,800 and gives away 90 percent of his $12,000 monthly presidential salary in order to remain true to his political roots with the leftist guerrilla group Tupamaros. He has rejected the government-provided mansion and instead lives with his wife at her family’s farmhouse, where he helps work the land, according to a November BBC News profile from Montevideo. “I have to do [this],” he told a reporter, “because there are many Uruguayans who live with much less.”
The Lost Art of Cuddling: (1) At the recently opened Soineya “cuddle cafe” in Tokyo, men buy hugging privileges (but no “sex” allowed!) with young women for from 20 minutes to 10 hours at prices (gratuity optional) ranging from the equivalents of $40 to $645, with surcharges for special services (e.g., foot massages, resting heads in each other’s laps). (2) The Deluxe Comfort Girlfriend Body Pillow, which began as a boutique-only niche product, recently became available at Amazon.com and Sears.com at around $25. The bolster-like, cuddling-enabled pillow is augmented with two strategically placed mounds and a snuggle-up arm hanging to the side. (There’s also an Original Soft and Comfy Boyfriend Pillow, without the mounds.)
Financial advisers charge the big bucks because of their sophisticated understanding of money and markets — or maybe because they know how the stars align. A September Marketplace radio program highlighted the newsletters of “financial astrologers” Karen Starich and former Merrill Lynch stock-trader Arch Crawford. About 300 traders pay $237 a year to learn what Starich knows about Neptune and Saturn, and Crawford’s 2,000 subscribers (at least a few of whom prefer receiving copies in unmarked wrappers) learned that any new business venture goes south when Mercury is in retrograde.
“You have wrinkles,” the inquiring customer was told, “and your left cheek is larger than your right,” explained “Tata,” the Bangkokborn woman who recently opened a salon in San Francisco to employ the supposedly traditional Thai art of face-slapping. Frown lines and droopy skin are curable with a 10-minute regimen of well-placed whacks across the cheek (and payment of the $350 fee), Tata told the Seattle PostIntelligencer in October. Masochists are warned that Tata deals in therapy, not punishment. “If you want someone to hit you, go on Craigslist.”
In 2011, only 75 shark attacks on humans were reported worldwide, with only 12 fatal. Yet researchers writing recently in the journal Conservation Biology found that about 60 percent of all media reporting about sharks emphasized just the serious dangers that human swimmers face. By contrast, only about 7 percent of the reports were focused on shark biology or ecology, though the sorry state of shark survival would seem more important, in that an estimated 26 million to 73 million sharks are killed annually from the harvesting of their fins.
Among the “Ig Nobel” prizes awarded to earnest academics in September by the Annals of Improbable Research was the one to Patrick Warren and colleagues, who delved into excruciatingly detailed predictions (at the behest of a cosmetics firm) about how someone might ultimately look with a ponytail, based on hair characteristics. The team took into account the stiffness of the strands, the effects of gravity and the random curliness or waviness in the hair in a set formula to compute a “Rapunzel Number” for each head. Explaining his particularized work to reporters, Dr. Warren acknowledged (perhaps with underestimation), “I’ve been working on this for a long time.”
Attorney Thomas Corea of Palmer, Texas, was indicted in August for four felonies related to misuse of clients’ trust accounts, and in October a panel of the State Bar of Texas voted to revoke his license. He apparently did not take the news well. On Oct. 31 (according to a judge’s later findings), Corea vandalized his rented law office, resulting, said the landlord’s representative, in “complete destruction,” with “penis graffiti on every single wall throughout the building,” with the representative’s name written next to several of the penises. Furthermore, at the November sentencing hearing, the judge had to admonish Corea to stop making faces in the courtroom.
A research team at Lund University in Sweden, led by neuroethologist Jochen Smolka, concluded that one reason dung beetles dance in circles on top of dung is to cool off, according to an October report on LiveScience. com. To arrive at their conclusion, the team went to the trouble of painting tiny silicone “boots” on some beetles to protect them from the ambient heat experienced by a control group of beetles, and found that the booted beetles climbed atop the dung less frequently. Explained Smolka, “Like an air-conditioning unit, the moist [dung] is cooled by evaporat[ion].”
Donna Giustizia lobbied the city of Vaughan, Ontario, in N ovember to chop down all the oak trees in the vicinity of Stephen Catholic Elementary School, claiming that her children and others like them with nut allergies were in danger. She mentioned especially their “anxiety” from even glimpsing acorns on the ground and suggested that the allergic children could be easily bullied by acorn-wielding classmates.
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In a parental-involvement program with 70 public schools and Walgreen Co., the City of Chicago announced in October that it would give previously uninterested parents $25 gift cards just to come by the schools to pick up their kids’ report cards.
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
The perfect antidote to holiday overload!
blogh.pghcitypaper.com
Clicking “reload” makes the workday go faster
PITTSBURGH PREMIERE!
THE SCHOOL
FOR
LIES
By David Ives
Nov 29–Dec 15 Tickets at picttheatre.org Pick your seats online at picttheatre.org Phone orders, call 412.561.6000 x207 Additional phone order charge may apply.
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The Charity Randall Theatre in the Stephen Foster Memorial, Oakland.
Professional Theatre in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh
Great Stories. Great Stories. Sto ies. WWell ell Told. ell Told.d.
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LENTILS BRAISED WITH PORK BELLY WAS ONE OF THE BEST DISHES OF THE NIGHT
A BETTER PIG {BY CHRIS POTTER} Shawn Temple still farms the Fredonia, Pa., spread that his great-grandparents, Fred and Mary Vernon, bought in the 1920s. And the 158-acre Temple Family Farm still uses the same techniques, raising pork “from farrow to finish” — from birth to slaughter — and allowing pigs and cattle alike to spend most of their lives outdoors. “They’re healthier and happier outside,” Temple says. But while life on the Temple farm may not have changed much, little else in the industry has remained the same. The family farms once common in his part of Mercer County are “getting less and less common,” says Temple. “A lot of them have disappeared in my lifetime, and I’m only 38.” Why has he held on? “I’m stubborn and stupid,” he jokes. “And I love farming.” Which is why the Temples recently began leasing a stall at the Pittsburgh Public Market. Each Saturday, they drive from Mercer County to the Strip District, where they offer a variety of pork products — ham, bacon, ribs, sausage — and beef cuts as well. While the meat is not certified organic, the Temples say they feed their cattle grass and hay, and eschew the use of hormones and antibiotics. And that, they hope, will provide the niche their farm needs to survive for another generation. “We treat our animals humanely,” says Temple. “And we’ve found that at the market, that’s what people are most interested in.” CPOTTER@STEELCITYMEDIA.COM
724-301-2339 or www.templefamilyfarm.com
the
FEED
Only 12 days left for holiday-food planning! Get those orders in for hams and birds; check growler hours for the Dec. 21-24 mega-weekend; put up some cookie dough in the freezer; and check (and replenish) your spices now. And don’t wait until the last minute to treat yourself to Trader Joe’s Holiday Joe-Joe’s — you know they sell out every year.
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FINE
FRENCH FARE {PHOTOS BY HEATHER MULL}
{BY ANGELIQUE BAMBERG + JASON ROTH}
D
URING THE PAST decade, restau-
rants in Pittsburgh have reflected a broader trend in American dining: the glorification of the humble. The same culture that has popularized gourmet burgers and lobster mac-and-cheese has brought about a transition in French dining from haute cuisine to much more accessible crêperies and bistros offering street food and hearty peasant fare to diners who are, perhaps, less interested than their forbears in putting on airs (or a tie). We’re all for blurring the lines between highbrow and low. And yet, inevitably, in this process something has been lost: the sense of French dining as the epitome of sophistication. Local wine savant David DeSimone has attempted to recover some of that bygone elegance with his new venture, Bridge Ten Brasserie, in the South Side Holiday Inn. While the brasserie (literally: brewery) is not an inherently haute restaurant type, it is more upscale than a bistro. DeSimone has imbued this one with a sense of dining as event — com-
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
Braised lamb shank with barley and spaghetti squash
plete with well-trained staff, lovingly curated wine list and a formal yet relaxed decor that balances reverential evocations of France with punches of exuberant color. The menu is for the most part familiar, such as steak frites, escargot and cassoulet. These are foods that, whether rustic in origin or a bit more refined, mostly
BRIDGE TEN BRASSERIE
20 S. 10th St., South Side. 412-586-5033 HOURS: Mon. 4:30-10 p.m.; Tue.-Thu. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers, salads and sandwiches $7-20; entrees $21-28 LIQUOR: Full bar
CP APPROVED eschew elaborate sauces and persnickety preparations. What we found eye-catching, however, were the subtle inflections imparted by the chef, who makes the escargot in the style of Bourgogne and
pizza in the style of Alsace. Even dishes with no obvious regional affiliation, such as cassoulet, reflect an individual vision: While bright, astringent tomato is a typical enlivener of this famously hearty stew, Bridge Ten’s was pink with pureed tomatoes, an approach we’d never tasted before. Something else new to us was crêpe au porc, essentially a crêpe wrapped around pulled pork and offered here as a starter. In the absence of barbecue smoke, the flavoring was a Calvados brandy sauce, which rendered the tenderly braised meat absolutely luscious. The crêpe was excellent, too. The flavor of the escargot was defined first by Pernod butter and second by a profusion of fresh herbs, which created a profile much sweeter than the pungent garlic slurry in which snails are usually served. Initially, the departure from the taste we expected was bewildering, but we soon warmed to the tender morsels in their aromatic, pesto-like sauce.
A side of lentils braised with pork belly was one of the best dishes of the night. This hearty plate satisfied in just a few forkfuls, but offered enough depth of savor to be the centerpiece of the next day’s lunch; indeed, this dish plus a vegetable or salad would make a superb dinner. We enjoyed it with haricots verts, straw-slender green beans served with creamy goat cheese, walnuts and a sweet-tart dressing of ver jus (the pressed juice of unripe grapes) and olive oil. The very name of Alsatian Flammekueche suggests the mixed heritage of the region that, until recently, swapped nationalities every few decades. Like the lentils, this beautifully constructed flatbread hit the sweet spot between flavorful appetizer and satiating entrée, with a thin, crisp crust — more pastry than pizzeria style — topped with rich creme fraiche, sweet caramelized onions and more savory morsels of pork belly.
On the RoCKs
{BY HAL B. KLEIN}
WIGLE ROLLS OUT THE BARREL Local distillery introduces small-barrel aging
Only the aforementioned cassoulet fell short of magnifique. The issue wasn’t the tomatoes, but rather the beans and confit duck, both of which seemed a bit underdone: The beans were al dente at best and the duck tough near the bone rather than unctuous. Perhaps this would be typical in France, but our American palates, accustomed to ingredients stewed into utter submission, registered objection. This was not enough to diminish the pleasure of Bridge Ten Brasserie, which mines the rich core of sophistication in everyday French fare, prepared with distinction.
For the past year, if you wanted a taste of aged Wigle Whiskey, you had to take matters into your own hands: by aging the distillery’s white whiskeys in noveltysized barrels. No longer: This week, the Strip District distillery releases its first three batches of house-aged whiskey. The whiskeys spent six months in 10-gallon barrels, which is a quick dip in the bucket. In America, whiskey is traditionally aged for at least two years in 53-gallon barrels. But quick, small-barrel aging becoming ag agi ng g iss bec becomi oming ng common practice among micro-distilleries like amo Wigle. The process might Wig make an old-school m bourbon distiller flip his b lid, but it’s a smart move for a startup trying to get more products on the market. “We see this as a bridge to when we release whiskey aged in r larger barrels, but we l also a see it as a [spirit with a] different taste profile,” says distiller Marc Meyer. “Whiskey aged in a small barrel will get a really quick and powerful extraction from the wood.” The result is a punchy spirit, one that leans more heavily on wood flavors instead of the caramel and vanilla notes found in long-aged bourbon. One advantage of quick extraction is that it gives distillers room for experimentation. For example, two of Wigle’s aged whiskies are finished with honeycombed sticks of non-traditional woods; the wheat has a maple finish, while cherry is added to the rye. The wood finishes aren’t merely a novelty. Differences in aroma and flavor are noticeable when you taste the products side-by-side: The straight wheat is light, hot and straightforward, while the maple-finished wheat is slightly mellower, with a sweeter finish. The cherry-finished rye is the most sippable of the three. It drinks nicely straight up, and evokes a nearly Scotch-like flavor. The two wheat whiskies, meanwhile, are more suitable for mixing. Although Meyer has respect for the purists, he agrees with the old saying that age is just a number. “Aged bourbon can be incredibly good,” he says, “or just incredibly old.”
INFO@ PGHC ITY PAP ER.CO M
INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
Chef Matt Christi
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THE FOLLOWING DINING LISTINGS ARE RESTAURANTS RECOMMENDED BY CITY PAPER FOOD CRITICS
Thank you City Paper readers for voting us
2nd place Best Chinese in Pittsburgh
DINING LISTINGS KEY
J = Cheap K = Night Out L = Splurge E = Alcohol Served F = BYOB
BARLEY’S & HOP’S. 5217 Library Road, Bethel Park. 412-854-4253. This celebration of all things beery is tucked into a retail slot at South Park Shops. You’ll find a huge and eclectic selection of imported beers and microbrews, all fortified by a light Germaninspired menu. It’s a casual, personable place where the beer is always flowing, and the game is always on. JE
China Palace Shadyside Featuring cuisine in the style of
Peking, Hunan, Szechuan and Mandarin
100 VEGETARIAN
BRGR. 5997 Penn Circle South, East Liberty (412-362-2333) and 20111 Rt. 19, Cranberry Township (724-742-2333). This casual restaurant celebrates — and in many cases, imaginatively re-creates — America’s signature contribution to global cuisine. BRGR keeps its patties to a reasonable size, which allows for a variety of gourmet toppings — plus room for excellent fried sides (French fries, onion rings, pickles), or milkshakes (traditional or spiked). JE
DISHES!
Delivery Hours
11:30 - 2 pm and 5-10pm
5440 Walnut Street, Shadyside 412-687-RICE www.chinapalacepittsburgh.com
Celebrate the Season
Let Del’s Cater Your Holidays! Server and Bar Staff Available. From 10 to 500 Guests.
Open Monday Christmas Eve 10am to 3pm for Pickup of Your Holiday Meal
Open Monday New Year’s Eve
nown! ope ITALIAN IMPORTED WOOD-BURNING OVEN THAT PROMISES A 90 SECOND COOKING TIME
11:30am to 10pm
GUARANTEED FRESH INGREDIENTS.
Make Reservations Soon.
300 LIBERTY AVE. DOWNTOWN
4428 LIBERTY AVE • BLOOMFIELD 412-683-1448 • delsrest.com 26
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
stonepizzeria.com
BRILLOBOX. 4104 Penn Ave., Bloomfield. 412-621-4900. A bar that serves well-designed retro chic with its whiskey and beer, Brillobox is (for now) the cool place to be. The menu isn’t lengthy, but it’s broad: Choose from bar staples or more inventive (and veggie-friendly) specialties such as Moroccan roastedvegetable stew or herbed polenta wedges. JE
{PHOTO BY HEATHER MULL}
Barleys & Hop’s
CAFÉ RAYMOND. 2103 Penn Ave., Strip District. 412-281-4670. A perfect place to catch lunch or a snack during Strip District shopping forays, this little café offers an array of artisan breads, French pastries, fine cheeses and refined delicatessen fare. The few tables up front — augmented by sidewalk seating
Tomato Pie Cafe {PHOTO BY HEATHER MULL} in season — have the feel of a bright, cozy, Parisian café. J CAFÉ VITA. 424 Allegheny River Blvd., Oakmont. 412-8285506. Embracing the inherent dichotomies of brunch, this restaurant offers both traditional Italian, complete with panini, pasta, ratatouille and eggplant parmesan; and classic breakfast fare, such as omelets and French toast. Italian notes pervade some of the breakfast options, too: You’ll find French toast made with focaccia, and omelets served with Tuscan toast. JF
pancakes, and hot and cold sandwiches) are also distinctive options, including German potato pancakes, ham off the bone and a sandwich tantalizingly called a “meatloaf melt.” J KELLY’S BAR & LOUNGE. 6012 Penn Circle South, East Liberty. 412-363-6012. The vintage aesthetic isn’t retro at this longtime neighborhood hangout; it’s the real thing. And the original 1940s fare has been updated with taste and style: Burgers and fries share space with Asian potstickers and satay. The mini mac-andcheese is a classic. JE
FULL LIST ONLINE
THE CAPITAL GRILLE. 301 Fifth Ave., Downtown. 412-338-9100. PARIS 66 BISTRO. www. per pa This dark, clubby 6018 Centre Ave., East pghcitym .co restaurant excels at Liberty. 412-404-8166. VIP service, and offers A charming venue a menu highlighted by brings Parisian-style café steaks, chops and seafood, with culture to Pittsburgh, offering sophisticated but straightforward less fussy, less expensive everyday preparations such as crab cakes fare such as crepes, salads and with added lobster, or steak croques, those delectable French encrusted in Kona coffee beans. grilled sandwiches. With fresh Also, the Grille employs its own flowers on every table, specials butcher (for cutting and drychalked on boards and French aging), and desserts are made conversation bouncing off the on site. LE open kitchen walls, Paris 66 epitomizes the everyday CURE. 5336 Butler St., glamour of the French Lawrenceville. 412-252-2595. neighborhood bistro. KF Charcuterie specialties are just part of the locally inspired menu SALVATORE’S PIZZA HOUSE. at this rustic-chic Lawrenceville 612 Penn Ave., Wilkinsburg. restaurant. A short menu offers 412-247-4848. A neighborhood seasonal specialties (wild onions pizza place and more, Salvatore’s in spring), often combined offers something even rarer with pork, but vegetables get a than good pizza: fast food of spotlight in dishes such as risotto the finest quality. “Fresh” is the with local mushrooms. LF watchword, and the large, fullcolor takeout menu has dozens DOR-STOP. 1430 Potomac Ave., of dishes in a score of categories. Dormont. 412-561-9320. This Shellfish are prominently bustling, homey family-run featured, and worth trying. K venue is everything a breakfastand-lunch diner ought to be. SEWICKLEY HOTEL. 509 The food is made from scratch: Beaver St., Sewickley. 412-741Alongside standards (eggs, 9457. At this revamped hotel,
the offerings reflect a balance between time-honored dishes such as turtle soup and more modern fare, like a crabmeatstuffed quesadilla. Steak-lovers will be pleased, but adventurous burger fans should check out the Light Up Night burger, topped with blue crabmeat, bacon, avocado and pepperjack cheese. LE
offMenu
ANGKO STR TR HE S TH N T IIN
{BY AMYJO BROWN}
AUTHENTIC THAI CUISINE
SWEET FINISH Gingerbread Lane is product of chef’s year-long passion
TABLE LAKESIDE BRICK OVEN AND BAR. 200 N. Lakeside Drive, Canonsburg. 724-7461126. Perched on the edge of manmade lake, this clubby restaurant offers casual American cuisine, with outside dining in season. A brick oven produces a variety of “phatbreads” topped creatively, such as the “lawnboy,” with prosciutto, tomatoes and wilted arugula. Burgers, chops, seafood and pasta dishes round out the menu. KE
DINE IN / TAKE OUT
BYOB ALL LUNCHES
SOME PEOPLE do yoga. Some meditate. Chef Jon
Lovitch bakes gingerbread houses after especially stressful days at work. “When I come home at the end of the day, I whip up a bowl of icing,” says the 36-year-old consultant for the hotel industry. “By the time I’m stressed out over the gingerbread house, I’ll have forgotten about work.”
$
7-$9
THE FRESHEST LOCAL PRODUCE FROM THE STRIP Mon
TESSARO’S. 4601 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. 412-682-6809. This immensely popular Bloomfield institution, set in an old neighborhood corner bar, has built its reputation on enormous wood-fired hamburgers: choice meat, ground in house; fresh rolls; and a variety of toppings. Regulars sit at the bar, and, on busy weekends, diners line up to get in. KE
11:30-3:00
Tue-Thu 11:30-9:00
Fri-Sun 11:00-9:00
1906 Penn Ave. Strip District 412-586-4107
{PHOTO BY AMYJO BROWN}
Jon Lovitch, artist behind Station Square’s Gingerbread Lane
For 19 years, Lovitch has been whipping up such batches year-round, culminating in an annual holiday display he’s named “Gingerbread Lane.” This year’s creation, which can be viewed at Station Square, features 142 gingerbread structures, including storefronts for a pierogi shop and an eggnog distillery, as well as a railroad, a subway system and the essentials a town needs to function, such as a municipal hall, school and fire department. The largest of the structures, the Plum Pudding Hotel — made out of 7,104 “bricks” of licorice — overlooks it all while Santa’s elaborate workshop hides in the mountains behind the town. All told, the display includes 1,600 pounds of icing, 400 pounds of candy and 370 pounds of gingerbread, says Lovitch, who moved to Pittsburgh with his wife six years ago. He builds all of it by hand, baking the gingerbread and molding the icing into the forms he wants. That’s different from many professionally styled gingerbread houses on display at this time of year, he says, recalling the first time he entered a competition at age 17 in his hometown of Kansas City, Mo. Although he placed third, he says, “I quickly grew to hate the other gingerbread-house competitors.” They used power tools — jigsaws and sanders — and got creative with the rules. The woman who beat him used edible play dough. “Who the hell eats play dough?” he says. Clearing space for the next year’s batch of houses (he’ll begin whipping them up again in February), Lovitch, as he has every year, will give away each of the gingerbread houses on a first-come, first-served basis on the last day of the show, Jan. 6.
THAI CUISINE. 4625 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. 412-688-9661. This Thai restaurant in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Little Italy serves up authentic dishes with warm, friendly service. The restaurant also offers an updated vegetarian menu that features mock duck, vegetarian pork and other meat substitutes, as well as the more familiar non-meat offerings of tofu and vegetables. KF TOMATO PIE CAFÉ. 885 East Ingomar Road, Allison Park. 412-364-6622. Located on the verdant edge of North Park, Tomato Pie is more than a pizzeria. It offers other simple Italian specialties including pasta and sandwiches, and the chef uses plenty of fresh herbs grown on the premises. FJ VIETNAM’S PHO. 1627 Penn Ave., Strip District. 412-281-8881. The menu features a manageable selection of noodle and rice dishes and the eponymous pho soups. There’s also a tempting assortment of simple vegetable dishes and appetizers that go beyond mere spring rolls, such as whole quail with lemon leaves and herbs, and ground-shrimp patties on sugar-cane skewers. JF THE ZENITH. 86 S. 26th St., South Side. 412-481-4833. Funky antique décor you can buy and a massive, convivial Sunday brunch make this a vegan/ vegetarian hotspot. For the tea snob, the multi-page list is not to be missed. FJ
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LOCAL
“IT’S NOT THAT CONSUMPTION IS GOOD OR CONSUMPTION IS BAD; IT’S THAT IT’S THERE.”
BEAT
{BY KATE MAGOC}
Pittsburgh isn’t known as the most fashion-forward city. Last year, GQ panned our general style, using the phrase “game-day casual.” We have a fashion week, but it’s nothing like the party-fueled atmosphere of New York, Milan, London or Paris. This weekend, however, Pittsburgh gets a taste of the big time with an event that seeks to cross dance music with fashion. Designers Elaine Healy, Makayla Wray, Romina Mirella Vairo and Alex Beitler have teamed up with Obvious Modern Party Music for an event that showcases house music, art and fashion. “It’s so intertwined,” says Healy, reflecting on music and fashion. “One of the main things is that the rate of change in both worlds are the same. When you’re really paying attention to both, you just see how it all evolves together. They’re always …” “On beat!” Wray says, finishing Healy’s sentence. The two designers, both currently studying fashion design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, have a natural rapport from spending so many hours in the studio together. With divergent tastes and styles — Healy is detail-oriented and feminine, and Wray a ’90s street queen — their relationship is proof that tastes have little to do with camaraderie. Music, though, is one arena where they feed each other. “When I’m working on a collection, I’ll obsessively listen to things,” says Healy. Her music tastes fall somewhere in the realm of the U.K. bass scene associated with former pirate-radio station Rinse FM and the dirty house music of the upcoming event’s headliner, Claude VonStroke, and his Dirtybird label. “And I’ve definitely been stealing some of her playlists,” Wray adds. “You have to listen to music when you’re working. If not, your brain will be unbounded.” “The music has such an important role,” Healy emphasizes. “I don’t want to feel like these clothes are [just] coming down the runway while this song is playing. I want [the music and clothes] to complement each other.” The four designers will showcase their work, set to carefully selected tunes, early in the event. Also on display will be visual art by local artists, some of whom — like Casey Hallas and James Gyre — have connections to the music scene. INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
CLAUDE VONSTROKE with BUKU and GUSTO, plus art show and fashion show. 7 p.m. Sat., Dec. 15. Mr. Small’s Theatre, 400 Lincoln Ave., Millvale. $20. 18 and up. 412-821-4447 or www.facebook.com/obviouspgh
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Strike a pose: Elaine Healy and Makayla Wray (right)
FASHION HOUSE
PEDAGOGICAL
PUNK {BY ANDY MULKERIN}
P
LENTY OF musicians seek part-time
jobs when they’re making a go of it, so that when they’re home they can work without being encumbered by a full-time schedule that stops them from going on tour. There are lots of baristas and bartenders out there, and some delivery drivers. Daniel Pujol is going a slightly different route. “I finished school in March, and I’m registering to be a substitute teacher,” he explains, “so that my degree doesn’t devalue when I’m on the road. When I’m home, I’ll go in and work two or three times a month. If I get in five days a year, it counts.” The Nashville garage-rocker, with his unkempt hair and signature sunglasses and goofy outfits, might seem at first an odd fit for the classroom. But beyond the fuzzedout guitars and often punishing rhythm section of his eponymous band, Pujol, there are some lessons to be learned. The band’s first full-length, United States of Being, came out earlier this year on Saddle Creek, after an EP on that label in 2011, and a series of singles and demos in the two years prior. USB, as it’s slyly called
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
Just feeling good: Daniel Pujol {PHOTO COURTESY OF JONATHON KINGSBURY}
in acronym, is something of a portrait of Pujol’s philosophy. From the spoken-word sample in opening track “DIY2K” (“I don’t want to die / But living is tricky”) to the album-closing clinical-depression anthem “Psychic Pain” (“There is a pain inside my brain / That feels a way I can’t explain”), he examines the challenges life throws at us, and what amounts to a Zen-like approach to handling them. Many of Pujol’s characters live in a state of quiet, desperate optimism. “I know I’m hanging out in a smoky bar / And I done drove here in my parents’ car,” a book-smart kid admits in “Mission From God.” But then he continues to insist, “I gotta know about you, I gotta know about you too!” Elsewhere on the album, Pujol declares, “God is pumping me all full of lead,” and “is reloading Jeremiah’s broken yoke / But I’m not dead! Just full of lead!”
PUJOL
WITH NIC LAWLESS, WHITE LIKE FIRE
10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 14. Club Café, 56 S. 12th St., South Side. $8-10. 412-431-4950 or www.clubcafelive.com
It’s thoughtful stuff, and material that implies that Pujol, while gaining nationwide note only just lately, has been working long and hard on creating this body of work. Some of the songs on USB were recorded as demos in 2010. One of them, “Black Rabbit,” also made it onto a single he released on Jack White’s Third Man Recordings in 2011. “All the lyrical narratives — the order of the lyrics on that album is intentional,” Pujol notes, explaining why a song like “Black Rabbit” appears three times in his recorded repertoire. An earlier Internet-only release on InfinityCat, X-File on Main Street, was a bit conceptual as well. “I released most of that material on 7-inches, and it was compiled and released on InfinityCat,” he says. “There was kind of a plan: X-File on Main Street was sort of a Nashville record; the context of it was very intra-Nashville, for me and my friends. Then the EP [Nasty, Brutish and Short] was a little bit of a wider scope, and [United States of Being] was an even wider scope. “It sort of went from a regional narrative to a national narrative to a being-ahuman-being narrative.” One of the 7-inch singles from X-File, “Angelbaby,” was issued by Pittsburghbased Velocity of Sound, whose Darren Little simply got in touch with Pujol because he liked his music. Pujol was shopping around at the time for labels for the series of singles, and agreed to work with Velocity of Sound. CONTINUES ON PG. 30
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PEDAGOGICAL PUNK, CONTINUED FROM PG. 29
talk (and bitch and moan and laugh until your cheeks hurt) radio* *on your computer!
LYNN CULLEN LIVE TALK RADIO without all the static
ONLINE MONDAY-FRIDAY 10-11am only on www.pghcitypaper.com WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
Pittsburgh City Paper editor Chris Potter, every Wednesday and former Andy Warhol Museum director Tom Sokolowski, every Thursday
That set of songs was more abrasive and lo-fi than most of what Pujol released prior and since, though the spirit remains. On “How High,” maybe the album’s most traditionally Pujol-ish song, he sings, “You’re 19 and I’m 25 / I’ve been here ever since I’ve been alive/ You say you were born to get away / And it makes worry I was born to stay.” Though not trained as a poet, Pujol writes at a level that betters most others out there writing in any musical genre. He employs techniques rarely seen in straightup rock ’n’ roll; often, for example, he’ll take one line from early in a song and repeat it later, changing only a few words in order to alter its meaning. (“Brand new popes and kings / Owning all the things / I need to survive,” begins “Providence”; “Pirates, popes and kings / Repeat everything / century 21,” begins the last verse of that song.) A common ideological feature throughout USB — and Pujol’s earlier catalog — is a wide-eyed look at American culture, clearly concerned but never baldly critical. (Perhaps his most direct critique, if you want to call it that, comes in “DIY2K”: “America, you know better / I know we can get it together.”) Pujol insists that his take is neither an affront to American consumer culture nor an affirmation of it. “You can use this idea of consumption — it’s not that consumption is good or consumption is bad; it’s that it’s there. And it’s better to try to do something normative or interesting with it: Highlight, perhaps, the utility of why it exists, as opposed to saying ‘I love consumer culture’ or ‘I hate consumer culture.’ You can use consumer culture as a human.” Pujol’s philosophy, and the area where he tries to work, is more nuanced. “It’s relationships between people,” he says. “Not generalizing or making abstract to-dos of a lot of those kinds of things, but grounding interaction in what’s integral, which is the space between you and someone else, or between people in general.” And music, he says, can be key, at least to him. “I think it helps me make sense of how I feel about it,” he explains. “Music and writing is a good way for me to externalize what I’m thinking and feeling and figure it out. It prevents my head from exploding.”
“IT SORT OF WENT FROM A REGIONAL NARRATIVE TO A NATIONAL NARRATIVE TO A BEINGA-HUMANBEING NARRATIVE.”
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
CD REVIEWS {BY ANDY MULKERIN}
SUPERVOID ENDLESS PLANETS EP (SELF-RELEASED)
For many bands, a two-song release is considered a single, but for Supervoid, it’s a 16-minuteplus EP. The stoner-y rock band’s debut is heavy and epic, with strong, clean vocals countered by screaming growls. Track 2, “Wake of the Smoke Jumper,” is the heavier of the songs, and the more lyrically intense; it’s bound to appeal more to a metal audience. Good first release. INCYTE THE WRONG IMPRESSION (SELF-RELEASED)
The local rapper’s full-length release opens with a sample of Nico’s “These Days,” indicating we’re in for something a little different. The Wrong Impression is full of upbeat party tracks and pop-culture references from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to, seemingly, Okkervil River. It’s the happy, major-key tunes wherein Incyte excels, and from the success of party-rappers from Mac Miller to Pitbull, we’re in an age where big-time success is a very real possibility for Incyte. Margot B. makes a couple of strong cameos as well, creating hooks that render sampling obsolete. THE FITT THE FITT IS DEAD (SELF-RELEASED)
A set of songs recorded after the hardcore punks broke up, brought to fruition by frontman Patrick Waters and go-to local punk producer Matt Schor, who fills in on drums. Heavy, sometimes drone-y mid-paced stuff that’s raw and aggressive, drawing influence from early SST stuff, and at times ending up comparable to Pissed Jeans — only, this sounds better than anything they’ve done. An essential pickup for the car-stereo headbanger or the local punk historian. AMULKERIN@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
{PHOTO COURTESY OF MERLIJN DOOMERNIK}
Take a seat: Eric Vloeimans
GOING DUTCH {BY MIKE SHANLEY} ERIC VLOEIMANS plays trumpet with such
a warm, smooth tone that when he begins a piece in the horn’s lower register, it almost sounds more like a flute than a brass instrument. “Smooth,” in this case, isn’t synonymous with “slick” or “commercial” — instead, Vloeimans plays with tranquility and calm in his music. Even when one is expecting something a bit more upbeat, Vloeimans can make those expectations disappear with his rich textures, even in such unlikely titles as “MJ (For the King of Pop).”
ERIC VLOEIMANS, FLORIAN WEBER AND KINAN AZMEH
8 p.m. Wed., Dec. 18. First Unitarian Church, 605 Morewood Ave., Shadyside. $10-15. 412-361-2262
A native of Holland, Vloeimans has garnered a reputation in both Europe and the United States for his work. Originally a classical trumpeter, he made the switch to jazz while studying at the Rotterdam School of Music, later coming to the U.S. to study with jazz trumpet player Donald Byrd. While he spends most of his time on the Continent, he has performed in America more frequently in the past few years. A review on AllMusic. com aptly described the Vloeimans touch by saying that he “isn’t as much a romantic as he is interested in under-the-surface tones and implied emotional inferences.” Of the trumpeter’s two associates on this tour, pianist Florian Weber can lay claim to a wide range of projects. He re-
cently released Biosphere, an album under his own name in which he straddled his own progressive originals with interpretations of Eric Clapton, Coldplay and Jamiroquai. Frequently playing both acoustic and electric pianos simultaneously, Weber gave the pop tunes as much weight as his originals. Written in the insane meter of 25/16, Biosphere’s title track proved to be the album’s intense centerpiece. Weber also plays in the trio Minsarah, who received a major boost when playing with veteran saxophonist Lee Konitz on his 2010 Live at the Village Vanguard session. Konitz, whose career dates back to Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool, has a reputation for revisiting standards like “All the Things You Are” on a regular basis, finding some new music direction each time. Weber and his crew were an ideal support system. Vloeimans and Weber released the album Live at the Concertgebouw from a 2011 performance. The music often moves slowly yet always maintains a focus. Two brief tracks titled “Solo di Tromba” serve as pensive interludes with the trumpet commanding attention. Fans of the ECM label — whose catalog includes many Europeans whose music balances adventurous jazz and classical — should enjoy this blend of chamber music and thoughtful jazz. In Pittsburgh, the duo will be joined by Kinan Azmeh, a clarinetist from Syria. Much like Vloeimans, he straddles the classical and jazz worlds, having worked with his own group HEWAR, members of the Berlin Philharmonic and percussionist Zakir Hussain. The trio’s appearance, part of an eight-city tour, is sponsored in part by the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
51 S. 12TH ST. SOUTHSIDE TRUTHLOUNGE.COM 412-381-9600
New Years Eve is just around the corner! DINNER AND TOASTING IN THE NEW YEAR!
PARTY WITH US AFTER DINNER!
New Years Eve - $75.00
$25.00 - Doors open at 10pm DJ, midnight toast and 2am Breakfast!
Two seatings for Dinner 5:30PM or 8PM Includes Wine Pairing, After Party, Midnight Toast and 2am Breakfast! Seating is limited to 34 people per seating and tickets will be pre-sold.
Tickets will be pre-sold and we are limiting the number of people to 75.
MAKE YOUR RESERVATIONS TODAY! LIMITED SEATINGS AVAILABLE!
I N F O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M
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CRITICS’ PICKS
Hit the Lights
Nathan Xander hangs his hat in Brooklyn now, but hails originally from northwestern Pennsylvania, and spent time in Pittsburgh. The folk-rocker also spent time on the Deep Elm label, but his most recent is self-released and self-titled — not to mention honest, refreshing and catchy. His writing is unconventional and introspective, but comforting. Tonight, he returns to Pittsburgh for a show at Thunderbird Café; Emily Rodgers and Sleepy V open. Andy Mulkerin 9 p.m. 4033 Butler St., Lawrenceville. $6. 412-682-0177 or www.thunderbirdcafe.net
[INDIE ROCK] + TUE., DEC. 18
December 22nd
UGLY SWEATER PARTY
$100 CASH PRIZE FOR THE UGLIEST
$50 Cash Prize for 2nd place
$2 MILLER LITE PINTS DJ CLIMAX / PHOTO BOOTH WEEKLY SPECIALS TUESDAY:
Ladies Night Karaoke @ 9pm $2.50 Pints /$2.50 Well Drinks WEDNESDAY: Trivia @ 8pm FRIDAY: 80’s Night DJ Rob Tierney @ 9pm SATURDAY: DJ Climax @9pm
claddaghirishpubs.com 407 CINEMA DRIVE
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
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The Dangerous Summer is a busy bunch. Since releasing War Paint last year, the trio (formerly a quartet) has been hard at work filming a documentary and touring the U.S., all while recording a third studio album. The guys recently announced via Facebook that this would be the last chance to see them live until the upcoming album is finished — it’s expected sometime in the first half of 2013. Catch them while you can tonight at the Smiling Moose; Young Statues, Lights Camera Distractions and Nevada Color open. Amanda Wishner 6:30 p.m. 1306 E. Carson St., South Side. $12-14. 412431-4668 or www. smiling-moose.com
[POP-PUNK] + WED., DEC. 19
Hit the Lights fans both old and new should find something to love about the band’s current headlining U.S. tour. The Ohio natives recently announced they’ll be temporarily reuniting with Colin Ross on vocals for the first time in five years to play some “oldies but good-
Eluveitie
ies.” But don’t worry — current vocalist Nick Thompson will still be taking over for the band’s new material, including all of your favorites from last winter’s Invicta. Hit the Lights comes to Pittsburgh tonight with A Loss For Words, WITH THE PUNCHES and Trophies at the Altar Bar. AW 7 p.m. 1620 Penn Ave., Strip District. $12-14. 412-206-9719 or www.thealtarbar.com
The Dangerous Summer
[FOLK METAL] + WED., DEC. 19
If you have slightly different ideas about holiday music, maybe a stop at Mr. Small’s is in order tonight. There you can find pagan folk-metal heroes Eluveitie — and so close to the solstice! The Swiss band plays a mix of Celtic-style folk and death metal, some in English and some in the agesold, dead language of Gaulish; this year saw Eluveitie’s 10th anniversary, and an early-material re-issue. Joining the band on its U.S. voyage is Finnish metal band Wintersun (which was spawned from Ensiferum) and German Viking metal band Varg (no relation to Varg from Burzum). AM 7 p.m. 400 Lincoln Ave., Millvale. $18. All ages. 412-821-4447 or www.mrsmalls.com {PHOTO COURTESY OF MANUEL VARGAS}
[INDIE FOLK] + FRI., DEC. 14
G I V E
T H E
G I F T
O F
J A Z Z
F O R
T H E
H O L I D A Y S
National Jazz Appreciation Month
Diggin’ Deep
Deep, soulful jazz, heart throbbing blues, fiery straight ahead jazz, distinctive melodies, and the funkiest of funk‌we promise you’re gonna dig every show in April.
Three incredible interpreters of song‌.
A PROJECT OF PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST EDUCATION & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
World-class trumpeter Sean Jones teams up with international jazz star Gregory Porter and renowned songstress Carolyn Perteete for an unforgetable Valentine’s Day celebration of music, love and passion.
JAZZLIVE CABARET SESSIONS Lou Donaldson Quartet, 4/2 $ +ENNY 'ARRETT 1UINTET s .ICHOLAS 0AYTON 4RIO "ETTYE ,A6ETTE s *AZZ -EETS &UNK 6OL ))
#ABARET 4HEATER &EBRUARY s
For tickets, call 412 456 6666 or visit trustarts.org
SAVE
Pittsburgh JazzLive THE DATE: International Festival press event
JAZZ & COCKTAILS
4/2, 5:30pm Cabaret Theater
Hear all the news about the 3rd Annual PJLIF!
PRESS PARTY RIGHT BEFORE SWEET POPPA LOU TAKES THE STAGE! R.S.V.P. AT EDUCATION@TRUSTARTS.ORG
’TIS THE FOOTBALL SEASON. GRIDIRON blogh.pghcitypaper.com GLORY THE BEST OF THE PRO FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME
AT THE
Clicking “reload� makes the workday go faster What better gift for the sports fan on your list than a trip to the Heinz History Center to see the Gridiron Glory exhibition. It features more than 200 artifacts from the Hall of Fame and videos from the vaults of NFL Films. To learn more, call 412-454-6000 or visit www.heinzhistorycenter.org. N E W S
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Buying or selling a home? Choose a pro who lives and works in the city. Call today for a consultation: Rick Schweikert Coldwell Banker Real Estate Services 5887 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15217
412-352-3417
Rick Schweikert rick.schweikert@pittsburghmoves.com
TO SUBMIT A LISTING: HTTP://HAPPENINGS.PGHCITYPAPER.COM 412.316.3388 (FAX) + 412.316.3342 X194 (PHONE) {ALL LISTINGS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY 9 A.M. FRIDAY PRIOR TO PUBLICATION}
ROCK/POP THU 13
720 RECORDS. Andre Costello. Lawrenceville. CIOPPINO SEAFOOD CHOPHOUSE BAR. Terrance Vaughn Trio. Strip District. 412-281-6593. CLUB CAFE. Boulevard of the Allies, The Williams Band, Monica Stephenson. South Side. 412-431-4950.
FRI 14
ALLEGHENY ELKS LODGE #339. The Harlan Twins, Coronado, Delicious Pastries, Grand Piano. w/Chet Vincent & Molly Alphabet. North Side. 412-321-1834. ALTAR BAR. Lee Dewyze. Strip District. 412-263-2877. BRILLOBOX. Olympus Mons, The Color Fleet, Claire With The Turban. Bloomfield. 412-621-4900. CLUB CAFE. World Domination & Friends (Early) Pujol, Nic Lawless, White Like Fire (Late). South Side. 412-431-4950. THE FALLOUT SHELTER. Lullaby Engine, Astro Kinetic, Abandoned Innocence. Aliquippa. 724-375-5080. GARFIELD ARTWORKS. A Life Once Lost. Garfield. 724-814-7225. THE HANDLE BAR & GRILLE. Bill Ali & Matt Barranti. Canonsburg. 724-746-4227. HOWLERS COYOTE CAFE. Lungs Face Feet, Guests of Guests, Jayke Orvis and The Broken Band. Folk & Food Drive. Bloomfield. 412-682-0320. IRON CREEK BAR & GRILLE. Daniels & McClain. South Fayette. 412-564-5292. LAWRENCEVILLE MOOSE. Overdost, SIN, Until We Have Faces, Doomsday Initiative, Havoc Theory, The Last Grimoire, Deally Dunn, River City Conspiracy. Overdost CD release. Hosted by Yung’n Voorheez. Lawrenceville. 412-758-4087. LINDEN GROVE. El Monics. Castle Shannon. 412-882-8687. THUNDERBIRD CAFE. Nathan Xander, Emily Rodgers Band, Sleepy V. Lawrenceville. 412-682-0177. UNCLE BUCKLES BAR AND GRILLE. Gina Rendina & The Game Changers. Plum. 412-744-4763.
SAT 15
ALTAR BAR. Joe Grushecky & The Houserockers. Strip District. 412-263-2877.
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BRUSHCREEK INN. Auburn Ash. Warrendale. 724-312-1124. CLUB CAFE. The Boogie Hustlers, The Rents (Late). South Side. 412-431-4950. DOWNEY’S HOUSE. Sidewinder. Robinson. 412-489-5631. GARFIELD ARTWORKS. Math The Band, Mustache Required, Crochet Cat Pause, Social Justice Squad, The Lopez. “Winter Prom 4.”. Garfield. 412-361-2262. THE GROVE IRISH PUB. South on 65 Band. Ross. 412-931-1690. HARVEY WILNER’S. Ancient Bloom. West Mifflin. 412-466-1331. HOWLERS COYOTE CAFE. The Pow Wows, City Steps, The Mt. McKinleys. Get Hip Records Christmas Showcase. Bloomfield. 412-682-0320. MILLERSTOWN INN. The Dave Iglar Band. Unknown. 724-445-2157. ROOSTERS ROADHOUSE. Daniels & McClain. Bridgeville. 412-221-1543. SMILING MOOSE. Young London
Young London. South Side. 412-431-4668. THUNDERBIRD CAFE. Miz. Lawrenceville. 412-682-0177.
SUN 16
MR. SMALLS THEATER. Drowning Clowns, Pure Cane Sugar, Liz Berlin, Brewer’s Row, Hey Compadre, Smear, Play Off Beard. Millvale. 866-468-3401.
TUE 18
CLUB CAFE. Ray Lanich, The Brothers Graham Acoustic Band, Sarah Fina. South Side. 412-431-4950. GARFIELD ARTWORKS. Cousin Brian, Dewey Marquee. Garfield. 412-361-2262. SMILING MOOSE. The Dangerous Summer, Young Statues, Lights Camera Distractions, Nevada Color. South Side. 412-431-4668.
WED 19
ALTAR BAR. Hit The Lights, A Loss For Words, With The Punches,
MP 3 MONDAY ANDRÉ COSTELLO
Each week, we bring you a new track from a local band. This week’s MP3 comes from André Costello, who releases a new EP this week. Download “Hear, Say” at FFW>>, our music blog at pghcitypaper.com.
State Champs. Strip District. 412-263-2877. ARSENAL BOWLING LANES. The Me Toos. Lawrenceville. 412-683-5993. CLUB CAFE. Broccoli Samurai. South Side. 412-431-4950. MR. SMALLS THEATER. Eluveitie, WIntersun, Varg. Millvale. 866-468-3401. ROCK BOTTOM. Good Brother Earl. Waterfront. 412-462-2739. SMILING MOOSE. Battlecross. South Side. 412-431-4668.
DJS THU 13
AVA BAR & LOUNGE. Thursdays in AVA. Pete Butta, McFly, Bamboo, & Red. East Liberty. 412-363-8277. BELVEDERE’S. Neon w/ DJ hatesyou. 80s Night. Lawrenceville. 412-687-2555. CLUB TABOO. DJ Matt & Gangsta Shak. Homewood. 412-969-0260. INN-TERMISSION LOUNGE. Transmission: Classic Alternative Dance Party. South Side. 412-381-3497.
FRI 14
BACKSTAGE BAR AT THEATRE SQUARE. Salsa Fridays. DJ Jeff Shirey, DJ Carlton, DJ Paul Mitchell. Downtown. 412-456-6666. BELVEDERE’S. Sexplosion w/ DJ Zombo. Lawrenceville. 412-687-2555. CAPRI PIZZA AND BAR. Bombo Claat Fridays. Reggae/dancehall w/ Vybz Machine Intl. Sound System, Fudgie Springer. East Liberty. 412-363-1250. FAIRWAYS LOUNGE. DJ’s Mark & Soul. North Braddock. 412-271-0506. ONE 10 LOUNGE. DJ Goodnight, DJ Rojo. Downtown. 412-874-4582. ROWDY BUCK. Top 40 Dance. South Side. 412-431-2825. RUGGER’S PUB. 80s Night w/ DJ Connor. South Side. 412-381-1330.
SAT 15
BELVEDERE’S. Humanaut Presents “Out of Order”. 1 year anniversary. Lawrenceville. 412-687-2555. CAPRI PIZZA AND BAR. Saturday Night Meltdown. Top 40, Hip Hop, Club, R&B, Funk & Soul. East Liberty. 412-362-1250. DIESEL. DJ CK. South Side. 412-431-8800. IRISH CENTRE. Femz Wit a Twist. LGBT after hours. “Come as you are.” 2 a.m.-6 a.m. Squirrel Hill. 412-829-9839. THE NEW AMSTERDAM. Tracksploitation. Lawrenceville. 412-904-2915. REMEDY. Push It! DJ Huck Finn, DJ Kelly Fasterchild. Lawrenceville. 412-781-6771. ROWDY BUCK. Top 40 Dance. South Side. 412-431-2825. S BAR. Pete Butta. South Side. 412-481-7227.
SHADOW LOUNGE. Classic Material. DJs Selecta & SMI. East Liberty. 412-363-8277.
SUN 16
RIVERS CASINO. DJs Bill Bara & Digital Dave. North Side. 412-231-7777. SMILING MOOSE. The Upstage Nation. DJ EzLou & N8theSk8. Electro, post punk, industrial, new wave, alternative dance. South Side. 412-431-4668.
CJ’S. Rodger Humphries & The RH Factor. Strip District. 412-642-2377. LITTLE E’S. Jessica Lee & Friends. Entrepreneurial Thursdays. Downtown. 412-392-2217. PAPA J’S RISTORANTE. Jimmy Z & Friends. Carnegie. 412-429-7272.
FRI 14
ANDYS. Maureen Budway. Downtown. 412-773-8884. BACKSTAGE BAR AT THEATRE SQUARE. Susanne Ortner-Roberts & Jeremy Frantz. Downtown. AVA BAR & LOUNGE. 412-456-6666. DJ Outtareach. East Liberty. DANTE’S RESTAURANT & 412-363-8277. LOUNGE. Johnny Vann Trio. BLOOMFIELD BRIDGE TAVERN. Brentwood. 412-884-4600. Fuzz! Drum & bass weekly. LEMONT. Mark Vennare. Bloomfield. 412-682-8611. Mt. Washington. 412-431-3100. SPOON. Spoon Fed. Hump day LITTLE E’S. The Skip Peck Trio. chill. House music. aDesusParty. Downtown. 412-392-2217. East Liberty. 412-362-6001. OMNI WILLIAM PENN. Frank Cunimondo, Pat Crossley. Downtown. 412-553-5235. SOUTHMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN www. per pa CHURCH. Tom SMILING MOOSE. pghcitym .co Roberts. Mt. Lebanon. Monsters of the Mic. 412-343-8900. South Side. 412-431-4668. SUPPER CLUB RESTAURANT. RML Jazz. Greensburg. 412-370-9621. CJ’S. The Top Flight Band. Strip District. 412-642-2377. SMILING MOOSE. Pheni. South Side. 412-431-4668. ANDYS. Trevor McQueen. Downtown. 412-773-8884. BACKSTAGE BAR AT THEATRE SQUARE. Ron Wilson, Paul Thompson. Downtown. 412-325-6769. ELWOOD’S PUB. Ms. Freddye CIOPPINO SEAFOOD & Mike Huston. Cheswick. CHOPHOUSE BAR. 724-265-1181. Moorehouse Jazz. Strip District. JAMES STREET GASTROPUB 412-281-6593. & SPEAKEASY. The Blues CJ’S. The Tony Campbell Saturday Orphans. North Side. Jazz Jam Session. Strip District. 412-904-3335. 412-642-2377. NOLA ON THE SQUARE. The LITTLE E’S. Velvet Heat. Olga Watkins Band. Downtown. Downtown. 412-392-2217. 412-471-9100. NOLA ON THE SQUARE. SALATINO’S RIVERHOUSE CAFE. Roger Barbour Jazz Quartet. Bobby Hawkins Back Alley Blues. Downtown. 412-471-9100. Charleroi. 724-565-5700. TJ’S. Howie Alexander Band feat. Belove. Grown & Classy Christmas Party. BAJA BAR AND GRILL. Monroeville. 412-856-9030. Shot O’ Soul. Fox Chapel. 412-963-0640. BARNEY’S BAR & GRILLE. Rhythm Hawks Band. Aliquippa. ELWOOD’S PUB. Jeff Pogas. 724-375-9851. Cheswick. 724-265-1181. MOONDOG’S. The Kilborn JAMES STREET GASTROPUB Alley Blues Band, Mahajibee. & SPEAKEASY. Benny Benack. Blues for Toys: Benefit for North Side. 412-904-3335. Toys for Tots. Blawnox. 412-828-2040. THE R BAR. Sweaty Betty. ANDYS. Mark Lucas. Downtown. Dormont. 412-445-5279. 412-773-8884. THE VALLEY HOTEL. Mr.B MANSIONS ON FIFTH. & The Bad Boyz. Jefferson Hills. Maureen & David Budway. 412-233-9800. Shadyside. THUNDERBIRD CAFE. Space Exchange Series w/ the Thoth Trio. Lawrenceville. 412-682-0177. CAFE NOTTE. Billy Heid. Emsworth. 412-761-2233.
WED 19
HIP HOP/ R&B FRI 14
FULL LIST ONLINE
SAT 15
SAT 15
BLUES FRI 14
SAT 15
SUN 16
TUE 18
WED 19
WED 19
JAZZ
ANDYS. Giambelli String Quartet. Downtown. 412-773-8884. DANTE’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE. Jerry & Lou Lucarelli. Brentwood. 412-884-4600.
THU 13
ANDYS. Lisa Hindmarsh. Downtown. 412-773-8884.
CONTINUES ON PG. 36
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CONCERTS, CONTINUED FROM PG. 35
704 THOMPSON AVE. McKEES ROCKS,15136
FRI, DEC 14 • 9PM ALT COUNTRY/AMERICANA
DEC 16
NATHAN XANDER PLUS SLEEPY V AND EMILY RODGERS SAT, DEC 15 • 9PM FOLK ROCK
MIZ MON, DEC 17 • 9:30PM
TICKETS ONLY $12
DEC 19
OPEN STAGE WITH CRAIG KING TUES, DEC 18 • 9PM JAZZ SPACE EXCHANGE SERIES WITH FEATURING BEN OPIE, PAUL THOMPSON, AND DAVID THROCKMORTON MON, DEC 31 • 9PM
WITH CITY DWELLING NATURE SEEKERS AND TRIGGERS OPEN FOR LUNCH
Kitchen hours: M-Th: 11am-12am Fri & Sat: 11am-1am Sun: 11am-11pm
4023 BU TLER ST LAWREN CEVILLE 412.682.017
7
www.thunderbirdcafe.net
ACOUSTIC THU 13
ALL TICKETS ON SALE AT: DEADHORSECANTINA.SHOWCLIX.COM
412-973-3295 EVERY WEDS. - JAM NITE EVERY THURS. - COMEDY NITE
WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/GLAMSLAMINC
Mike Urick, Neon Swing X-Perience
SAT 15
OLIVE OR TWIST. The Vagrants. Downtown. 412-255-0525. WIGLE WHISKEY. Brad Yoder & Putnam Smith. Strip District. 412-728-0053. MIFFLIN AVENUE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. Pittsburgh Mandolin Orchestra. Regent Square. 412-731-2511. PITTSBURGH PUBLIC MARKET. Sidewalk String Band. Strip District. 412-281-4505. BOCKTOWN BEER & GRILL. Singer Songwriter Night. North Fayette. 412-788-2333.
WED 19
UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER PARTY UGLY SWEATER CONTEST! WINNER RECEIVES AN INVITE TO SEE RADIO TOKYO W/ 5 FRIENDS ON DECEMBER 18TH!
7PM - Acoustic Music with Mike DeLuca 10PM - DJ Qwik
Miller Lite Girls + $2 Miller Lite JEKYL AND HYDE | 140 S. 18TH STREET 412-488-0777 | BARSMART.COM/JEKYLANDHYDE LIKE US ON FACEBOOK!
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
SAT 15
FRI 14
TUE 18
Friday, December 14
Cathasaigh. Oakland. 412-622-6914. ST. JAMES PARISH. Chatham Baroque. Villancicos de Navidad. Sewickley. 412-741-6650.
We asked local musicianss and music luminaries to tell as about some of their favorite — and in this case their least favorite — holiday tunes.
SUN 16 “ONE TASTE OF OUR WINGS AND YOU’LL WANNA LICK EVERYONE’S FINGERS”
DECK THE DECKS
BILLY’S ROADHOUSE BAR & GRILL. Mark Pipas. Wexford. 724-934-1177. DOWNEY’S HOUSE. Brian Diamond. Robinson. 412-489-5631. MULLIGAN’S SPORTS BAR & GRILLE. Acoustic Night. West Mifflin. 412-461-8000. BIDDLE’S ESCAPE. Donna O. Regent Square. 412-999-9009. BOTTLEBRUSH GALLERY & SHOP. The Early Mays. Harmony. 724-452-0539. PENN BREWERY. T&A. North Side. 412-237-9400.
THE THOTH TRIO
NEW YEARS EVE PARTY
FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH. Eric Vloeimans, Florian Weber, Kinan Azmeh. Shadyside. 412-361-2262.
ALLEGHENY ELKS LODGE #339. Pittsburgh Banjo Club. Wednesdays. North Side. 412-321-1834. PARK HOUSE. Dodgy Mountain Boys & the Park House Jammers. North Side. 412-596-2743.
WORLD THU 13
THE RIVER AT NEW HEIGHTS CHURCH. The African Children’s Choir. Franklin Park. 412-741-0598.
SAT 15
CLUB CAFE. Callàn, Bob Banerjee, Andrew Bova (Early). South Side. 412-431-4950. MODERNFORMATIONS GALLERY. Michael Dodin, Tom Moran, Amethyst, Anjali. Garfield. 412-897-0809. PENN BREWERY. Autobahn Band. North Side. 412-237-9400.
MON 17
RODEF SHALOM CONGREGATION. Music At Rodef Shalom. Feat. Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival artists. Oakland. 412-621-6566.
“Frosty the Snowman”: I have a friend from Swaziland who lived in the U.S. for a few years. I remember the first time he heard “Frosty the Snowman.” He said to me, “What a dumb song. What does this have anything to do with Christmas?” For that matter, what does it have anything to do with any holiday? The song’s actually a bit creepy, too, if you think about it. I mean, where are those kids’ parents? Your kids are running all over town with some weird talking snowman!
Sheila Liming, The Armadillos “Wonderful Christmastime”: That song makes me wish I’d been born without ears. And the accompanying music video makes me want to strangle myself with the sleeves of my own ironic Christmas sweater.
Brett Staggs, The Long Time Darlings “Winter,” by Tori Amos: Just kidding! This song is baller.
REGGAE THU 13
REX THEATER. The Flow Band, Sistahs With Voices Raised for Freedom, Eric Johnson & the Fabalous A Team, Divas Lucille Prater Holliday, Lashawn McBride-Clancy, more. Benefit for ACTION United. South Side. 412-381-6811.
COUNTRY THU 13
BENEDUM CENTER. Martina McBride. Downtown. 412-456-6666.
SAT 15
SPEAL’S TAVERN. The Agway Shoplifters. Unknown.
CLASSICAL FRI 14 - SUN 16
PITTSBURGH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA. Tchaikovsky’s Winter Dreams feat. Arild Remmereit, conductor & Gil Shaham, violin. Heinz Hall, Downtown. 412-392-4900.
ASPINWALL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. Shady Side Academy Chamber Choir. “Sounds of the Season.” Aspinwall. 412-781-2884. ELWOOD’S PUB. Tim & John. Christmas Sing-a-long. Cheswick. 724-265-1181. FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH PITTSBURGH. The Chancel Choir. Holiday Concert: “Ceremony of Carols” by Benjamin Britten. Shadyside. 412-681-4222. FRICK FINE ARTS AUDITORIUM. Coro Latinoamericano Christmas Concert. Oakland. 412-345-1047. KEAN THEATRE. Johnny Angel & the Halos Christmas. Gibsonia. 724-444-5326. THE LEGACY THEATRE. Latshaw Pops Christmas Show. Allison Park. 412-394-3353. MT. LEBANON UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. Pittsburgh Camerata. The Light of Christmas. Mt. Lebanon. 412-531-7131. SOUTH PARK THEATRE. Harmony Singers of Pittsburgh. Bethel Park. 412-831-8552. SYNOD HALL. Chatham Baroque. Villancicos de Navidad. Oakland. 412-621-6204. UPPER ST. CLAIR THEATER. Pittsburgh Civic Orchestra. Upper St. Clair. 412-279-4030.
SUN 16
CHATHAM UNIVERSITY. Chatham Baroque. Villancicos de Navidad. Laughlin Music Center. Shadyside. OAKLAND GIRLS CHOIR. 412-365-1100. Church of the Ascension, Oakland. FIRST PRESBYTERIAN 412-267-7707. CHURCH. Music of the Spirit. Christmas caroling. Downtown. 412-471-3436. LANDMARK CALVARY UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. LEMONT. Phil & Roxy. Handel’s Messiah Sing-Along Mt. Washington. Concert. North Side. 412-431-3100. SOUTH PARK THEATRE. Harmony Singers of Pittsburgh. Bethel Park. www. per 412-831-8552. hcitypa
SAT 15
OTHER MUSIC SAT 15
HOLIDAY MUSIC FRI 14
BRIGHTWOOD CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Harmony Singers of Pittsburgh. Christmas carols, Hanukkah songs & other holiday music. Bethel Park. 412-381-7175. HAMBONE’S. Tim & John Christmas Singalong. Lawrenceville. 412-681-4318. KEAN THEATRE. Johnny Angel & the Halos Christmas. Gibsonia. 724-444-5326. PHIPPS CONSERVATORY & BOTANICAL GARDEN.
FULL LIST E N O LIN pg
.com
MON 17
NORTH HILLS HIGHLANDS. Cathasaigh. Ross. 412-366-3300.
TUE 18
FERRANTE’S LAKEVIEW. Cahal Dunne’s Wonderful World of Christmas. Greensburg. 724-834-4590.
WED 19
PALACE THEATRE. Latshaw Pops Christmas Show. Greensburg. 724-836-8000.
What to do
IN PITTSBURGH
December 12 - 18 WEDNESDAY Wiz Khalifa
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CONSOL ENERGY CENTER Downtown. With special guests Juicy J, Chevy Woods & more. All ages show. Tickets: ticketmaster.com or 412-642-1800. 7:30p.m.
Sonata Arctica
ALTAR BAR Strip District. 412-263-2877. With special guests Arsis, Kobra and The Lotus, Critical Condition & more. All ages show. Tickets: ticketfly.com or 1-877-4-FLY-TIX. 7p.m.
Every Time I Die
MR. SMALLS THEATRE Millvale. 412-821-4447. With special guests The Chariot and Kills & Thrills. All ages show. Tickets: 866-468-3401
newbalancepittsburgh.com
or ticketweb.com/opusone. 7:30p.m.
SUNDAY
Chappo
REX THEATER South Side. 412-381-6811. Over 21 show. Tickets: rextheatre.com. 9p.m.
MONDAY To The Arctic
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12 BENEDUM CENTER
Christmas Tree
TRAX FARMS Finleyville. 412-835-3246. Appointment Only. For more information visit traxfarms.com.
BENEDUM CENTER Downtown. 412-456-6666. Tickets: trustarts.org. 7:30p.m.
ALTAR BAR Strip District. 412-263-2877. With special guests Tony Cenname, Amber Lane & Kevin Kiley. All ages show. Tickets: ticketfly.com or 1-877-4-FLY-TIX. 7:30p.m.
Holiday Hootenanny
The Cheaters
NEW HAZLETT THEATER North Side. For tickets & more information visit wyep.org. Doors open at 7p.m.
HARD ROCK CAFE Station Square. 412-481-7625. With special guests Soundservent & Wizard Bomb. Over 21
Tchaikovsky’s Winter Dreams
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Joe Grushecky and The Houserockers
REX THEATER South Side. 412-381-6811. Over 21 show. Tickets: greyareaprod.com. 9p.m.
CLUB CAFE South Side. 412-431-4950. Tickets: 866-468-3401 or ticketweb. com/opusone. 8p.m.
Miz
Sugar Mountain
THUNDERBIRD CAFE Lawrenceville. 412-682-0177. Over 21 show. Tickets: showclix.com. 9p.m.
ALTAR BAR Strip District. 412-263-2877. With special
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Ray Lanich with the Brothers Graham Acoustic Band & Sarah Fina
Burlesque-A-Pades: Holiday Inn
HEINZ HALL Downtown. 412-392-4900. Tickets: pittsburghsymphony.org. Through Dec. 16.
SATURDAY
TUESDAY
guests The Igniters and Junction PA. Over 21 show. Tickets: ticketfly.com or 1-877-4-FLY-TIX. 8:30p.m.
show. Tickets: ticketfly.com or 1-877-4-FLY-TIX. 10p.m.
14 Lee Dewyze FRIDAY
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OMNIMAX AT CARNEGIE SCIENCE CENTER North Shore. 412-237-3400. Ticket info & showtimes: carnegiesciencecenter.org.
MANNHEIM STEAMROLLER CHRISTMAS BY CHIP DAVIS PRESENTED BY PANDORA
13 Cut your own THURSDAY
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Hanzel Und Gretyl
SHADOW LOUNGE East Liberty. 412-363-8277. With special guests Monogold & Chupacabra. Over 18 show. Tickets: ticketfly.com or 1-877-4-FLY-TIX. 7p.m.
Mannheim Steamroller Christmas by Chip Davis Martina McBride: The presented by Pandora Joy Of Christmas Tour BENEDUM CENTER Downtown. 412-456-6666. Tickets: trustarts.org. 8p.m.
PAID ADVERTORIAL SPONSORED BY
JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE Warrendale. 724-799-8333. No Cover charge. For more info visit jergels.com. 8p.m.
WE ARE NOW OPEN! FREE PARKING in OAKLAND! Underground Garage Sennott Square • Corner of Forbes and S. Bouquet
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HITCHCOCK IS LIGHT FARE, DESIGNED FOR THOSE ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH ITS SUBJECT
EVERYTHING XMAS
CP APPROVED
For those already burnt out on the holidays, recommending that you deeply immerse yourself in a dense hour of compiled holiday film and video clips seems counterintuitive. But holidayhaters, war-onChristmas soldiers and those who simply cannot stomach another sappy Lifetime movie about finding love under the mistletoe (see related analysis on page 40) should head for Everything Is Terrible!’s seasonal video meltdown/blow-out titled “Holiday Special 2012 Cataclysmic Transformation.” The collective of found-footage warriors known as Everything Is Terrible! has assembled an hour-long reel of funny, demented, super-cheesy and offensive seasonal material that will have you gasping in horror (prepare for un-ironic Christmas sweaters) and choking with laughter. Material is gleaned from movies, commercials, TV shows and the backwaters of cable and public-access programming. Things get off to a lively start when footage of a peacefully flickering Yule log cuts to a scene of Santa killing a dog. Then, it’s an onslaught of marauding Santas; terribly sung Christmas carols (including one by a donut); a pizzafootage interlude; a holiday death reel; Christmas trees on fire; Hanukkah hijinks; cats meowing “White Christmas” intercut with footage of Jesus writhing in agony; and Grizzly Adams saying “I want to know the connection between the elves and the Nazis.” It’s all blissfully unsentimental — if you’re crying, it’s from laughing too hard. EIT! also promises to decorate the theater, lead sing-alongs, and provide candy and a Santa. 8 p.m. Sun., Dec. 16. Melwood. $10. www.pghfilmmakers.org AHOFF@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
Get Hobbit-ized before the film (opening Dec. 14) at the Carnegie Library’s
A Night in Wilderland: Hobbit Movie Anticipation Party.
Trivia, games, Hobbit-slipper-making, Wilderland photobooth and more. Costumes encouraged. 8:30-10:30 p.m. Thu., Dec. 13. Main branch, 4400 Forbes Ave., e., Oakland. Free. www.clpgh.org
Sittin’ with Santa {PHOTO COURTESY OF HEATHER HRYCIW}
{BY AL HOFF}
PSYCHO
ANALYSIS {BY AL HOFF}
H
OW THE influential horror-thrill-
er Psycho — and its indelible association with its director, Alfred Hitchcock — came to be is the subject of Sacha Gervasi’s flawed but entertaining behind-the-scenes bauble, Hitchcock. In 1959, Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) is living in Los Angeles with his wife and longtime collaborator, Alma (Helen Mirren). He’s bored making romantic comedies, and decides to adapt a new novel, Psycho by Robert Bloch, for his next film. The studio balks, Hitch agrees to put up the financing and the filmmaking is on: casting, story re-writes, key directorial decisions and Hitch’s assorted tantrums. Hitchcock weaves together the making of Psycho with the personal and professional relationship of Hitchcock and Alma. Hanging like frayed bits are scenes depicting the couple’s dalliances — for Hitch, it’s his obsession with his leading ladies, including Psycho star Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson); for Alma, it’s a friendship with a writer (Danny Huston). There are also unnecessary extra-narra-
A table for three: Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren
tive scenes in which infamous Wisconsin killer Ed Gein (the inspiration for Bloch’s novel) advises Hitchcock. If it seems a bit cluttered, well, what else is there? Hitchcock may have been “the master of suspense,” but we all know how the making of Psycho turns out.
HITCHCOCK
DIRECTED BY: Sacha Gervasi STARRING: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson Starts Fri., Dec. 14
Overall, Hitchcock is light fare, designed to please those already familiar with its subject matter. It’s full of winks (Hitchcock introduces the film in the manner of his television show), nice period details and witty dialogue. Any serious problems that may have existed in the Hitchcocks’ marriage, on the stage set or in the studio offices are all played here for amusement. Gervasi struggles to put Psycho into
historical context, particularly in depicting how shocking the movie was originally. Unfortunately, the film can only tell us this, as characters express disgust or dismay with the work. Their concerns are beyond quaint for today’s audiences, who can now flip on network TV for even more gruesome stories. Neither Hopkins nor Mirren are particularly good physical matches for their real-life counterparts, but they’re both a delight to watch. Hopkins is heavily padded and prostheticized, and transforms mostly through lumbering mannerisms and a good imitation of Hitchcock’s peculiar plummy drawl. He finds some humanity in his portrayal, which verges on caricature (in fairness, the real Hitchcock played an exaggerated version of himself). And though we can only guess how accurate the portrait is of Alma as a patient wife and strong-willed collaborator, it’s undoubtedly Mirren who steals this film from her heavyweight co-star. Perhaps the film should have been called Alma. A HOF F @ P G HC I T Y PA P E R. C OM
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
Experience State-of-the-Art Entertainment!
FILM CAPSULES CP
ALL Digital Projection | Digital Surround Sound |
= CITY PAPER APPROVED
NEW
Chartiers Valley Stadium 18
THE GUILT TRIP. An inventor (Seth Rogen), trying to sell his product, hits the road with his mom (Barbra Streisand) in tow, in this comedy from Anne Fletcher. Starts Wed., Dec. 19.
Bridgeville | 412-914-0999
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. A hobbit named Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and a group of dwarves embark on a journey through Middle Earth to retrieve a stolen treasure from a dragon. So begins Part 1 of Peter Jackson’s trilogy, an adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel. In 3-D in select theaters. Starts Fri., Dec. 14. MONSTERS, INC. The digitally animated 2001 Pixar comedy, from Peter Docter, about morelovable-than-scary monsters returns — with an extra dimension. The film has been revamped for 3-D. Starts Wed., Dec. 19.
Monsters, Inc.
REPERTORY
SCROOGED. It’s a snarky modern update of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring the droll Bill Murray as the grumpy TV executive missing the true meaning of the holidays. Richard Donner directs this 1988 comedy. 7:30 p.m. Thu., Dec. 13. AMC Loews THE N AKED BRAN D. Can much-maligned corporations actually do good? Create better products, while being conscientious citizens and not causing further harm to the planet? Explore these possibilities in this new hourlong documentary from Jeff Rosenbloom and Shreng-Lee Huang. The screening will be followed by a discussion led by Rosenbloom and Bonin Bough, formerly of PepsiCo. 5:30 p.m. Thu., Dec. 13. Harris.
North Versailles Stadium 18
North Versailles | 412-824-9200
Opening Friday, December 14
THE HOBBIT: An Unexpected Journey The Guilt Trip
in Digital 3D & 2D
will offer an hour-long selection of these black-andwhite newsreels, shot with sound and in 35 mm. 8 p.m. Fri., Dec. 14. Warhol, North Side. $10. 412-2378300 or www.warhol.org
FREE POPCORN* with any paid admission to THE HOBBIT December 14-16, 2012
HAROLD AN D MAUDE. Hal Ashby’s offbeat yet poignant cult comedy gave new meaning to the term “odd couple.” The death-obsessed young Harold (Bud Cort) blossoms when he begins an affair with 79-year-old Maude (Ruth Gordon), a vibrant eccentric given to life-affirming, antiauthoritarian behavior. 9 p.m. Fri., Dec. 14, and 5 p.m. Sat., Dec. 15. Hollywood, Dormont (Al Hoff)
CP
THE POLAR EXPRESS. With its near-photorealism, and the imaginations of director Robert Zemeckis and crew taking off from Chris Van Allsburg’s gorgeous kiddie book, this animated film is a visual treat, from a child’s iris reflecting light like polished stone to the sight of timber wolves galloping through snowy nighttime woods. The spare story follows a boy skeptical of Santa Claus who’s among a dozen well-groomed children spirited away on Christmas Eve by a magical steam locomotive; guided by a crusty conductor (voice of Tom Hanks), they’re off to the North Pole to learn valuable lessons. But attaining feature length demands major narrative padding, and despite the sight of roughly 5,000 red-clad elves massed in a public square, awaiting their Great Leader and celebrating the triumph of a centrally planned export-driven economy, the film belies its own parables about faith: Believing is made to seem so much more pleasant than doubting that you’d be a fool to do otherwise. 10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 14, and 10 p.m. Sat., Dec. 15. Oaks (Bill O’Driscoll)
* Promotional Size popcorn
Join us on Facebook for a chance to
WIN A YEAR OF FREE MOVIES! www.PhoenixBigCinemas.com
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LS HE L APESIC.” T Y B U O S GRABS YITCHCOCKK COBLSAERVER H R LIKE RAEED, THE NE W YO RE X
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HIGH GROUN D. Michael Brown’s new documentary follows a group of American vets as they tackle a 20,000-foot Himalayan peak, seeking to heal various physical and emotional injuries sustained in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. 7 p.m. Fri., Dec. 14; 7:30 p.m. Sat., Dec. 15; and 7:30 p.m. Tue., Dec. 18. Hollywood, Dormont FIT TO PRINT: FOX MOVIETONE NEWSREELS (1928-1942). Before TV, folks saw news footage in the theater, presented as short newsreels. And like today, serious news (wars, politics, disasters) was mixed with lighter fare. The Fit to Print program, presented by Greg Wilsbacher, curator of the Newsfilm Collections at the University of South Carolina, Columbia,
“The World’s Youngest Acrobat” at Fit to Print PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA. The Japanese anime TV series about a magical girl is being compiled into three theatrical films, the first two of which — Part 1: Beginning and Part 2: Eternal — screen today. In Japanese, with subtitles. N oon,
NOW PLAYING AT THEATRES EVERYWHERE Check Local Listings For Theatres And Showtimes
CONTINUES ON PG. 40
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FILM CAPSULES, CONTINUED FROM PG. 39
Sun., Dec. 16. Hollywood, Dormont. $20 (ticket is for both films, only) IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. In Frank Capra’s beloved 1946 holiday classic, a harried man (Jimmy Stewart) re-discovers the simple joys of life. Enjoy it on the big screen. Even better — watch for free, Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ present to you. Tue., Dec. 18, through Sat., Dec. 22. Regent Square. Free ATION AL LAMPOON ’S CHRISTMAS CP NVACATION. For my money, this is the funniest
entry in the “Vacation” franchise, because it taps a universal truth: Other people’s behavior ruins your holidays, while your behavior contributes to other people’s misery. It’s all about giving and getting! Everyman Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) tries to lay on the perfect Christmas, but is undercut by his low-rent cousin (Randy Quaid), uptight neighbors, demanding elderly relatives, his boss, a squirrel and a tangle of Christmas lights. Jeremiah S. Chechik directs this 1989 neo-classic holiday comedy, penned by John Hughes. 7:30 p.m. Tue., Dec. 18. AMC Loews (AH) A CHRISTMAS STORY. Guess what Ralphie wants for Christmas? An official Red Ryder Carbine-Action
It’s A Wonderful Life 200-shot Range Model air rifle. Will he get it? Discover this and other small wonders of holidays past in Bob Clark’s 1983 holiday film, adapted from the Jean Shephard short story, and set in the 1940s. 7:30 p.m. Thu., Dec. 20. AMC Loews AN DY WARHOL FILMS. Selections from Warhol’s Factory Diaries series (1971-75) and other shorts screen. Ongoing. Free with museum admission. Andy Warhol Museum, N orth Side. www.warhol.org
Finding Mrs. Claus
Holiday Spin
Christmas Consultant
A LIFETIME OF HOLIDAY FILMS {BY AL HOFF} Made-for-TV holiday movies are like those bits of ribbon-candy: They only come out at Christmas time; lots of different colors but each piece is basically the same flavor; and too sweet to eat much of. But just as no holiday party is complete without a cut-glass bowl of the striped sugar nuggets, so too must the days between Thanksgiving and New Year’s be filled with sentimental movies about the season. In recent years, Lifetime has made it its mission to churn out an astonishing amount of “original” holiday films. Thirty-two are listed at its website, and all but a couple are screening in the next couple of weeks. (The roster looks like a make-work program for actors from 1980s TV shows.) Lest you fear that all the good ideas are gone, Santa left the following plots under the tree for Lifetime to transform onto heartwarming neo-classics.
Head Injuries Prevail: Two films in which Santa falls off his sleigh and develops amnesia (Santa Who? and The Real St. Nick). In Comfort and Joy, a single woman gets a Christmas Eve car wreck, develops amnesia and winds up thinking she has a husband and kids. And in Holly’s Holiday, a falling icicle brains a woman, and she tumbles for a department-store mannequin. Labor Issues: The moms quit in On Strike for Christmas, and for workaholics, only The Christmas Consultant can rustle up the holiday spirit. Tap the Zeitgeist: Finding Mrs. Claus puts the North Pole couple smack in the Vegas Strip, and it’s a Christmas-music dance contest in Holiday Spin. And the holidays are all about finding hunks to pose for a calendar in the 12 Men of Christmas. Get Lost, Get Back Together: Both Christmas Crash and Lost Holiday: The Jim and Suzanne Shemwell Story take just-about-divorced couples, and strand them ’til they fix their marriage. Awwww. AHOFF@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
[DANCE]
WHAT IF HE HAD DETONATED THE BOMB IN THE BUILDING, THE PIECE ASKS?
MANAGING {BY STEVE SUCATO}
INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
idiosynCrazy Productions performs PRIVATE PLACES 8 p.m. Fri., Dec. 14, and 8 p.m. Sat., Dec. 15. The Alloy Studios, 5530 Penn Ave., Friendship. $15-35. 412-363-3000 or www.kelly-strayhorn.org. N E W S
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A PLACE FOR OUR STUFF idiosynCrazy Productions’ Private Places {PHOTO COURTESY OF LINDSAY BROWNING}
In 2010, a JetBlue flight attendant who had argued with a passenger got fed up with his job, grabbed a beer, deployed the emergency slide and exited the plane. This well-publicized incident illustrated what a social psychologist might term a “deviation from structure.” The kind of emotional structure flight attendants and other service workers adopt for the sake of commerce is among the themes explored in idiosynCrazy Productions’ Private Places. Choreographed by the Philadelphiabased troupe’s founder, Jumatatu Poe, the work uses the iconography of flight attendants, and the underlying mechanics of being a service worker, to explore grander notions of order and structure in ourr lives. The Pittsburgh premiere is Dec. 14 and 15, att The Alloy Studios by the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. The 70-minute work containing nudity and sexually explicit content takes place on a narrow set made to resemble the inside of a jetliner. The audience of only 60 per show will be seated in various configurations that will shift throughout the performance. In developing the work this past June, during a residency at the Kelly-Strayhorn, Poe participated in a workshop with flight attendants and was struck by how emotional management was a significant part of their job. “The notion that a part of us can be controlled to make us more profitable really stuck with me,” says Poe. The movement for the work utilizes several dance styles, including the rapidfire and risqué hip-hop form known as J-setting (a.k.a. bucking). But Poe says that the moves will be delivered in an improvisational sequence, with the dancers in part taking cues from the audience as to how to proceed. Private Places uses little music, says Poe. Instead, the sound of a metronome acts as its soundtrack and a catalyst for another of the work’s themes: time as a system of order. The work also features segments on multitasking, the conflation of our public and private identities, and how we dole out attention in our lives. Its eight dancers, including Poe and Point Park alumna Shannon Murphy, will also employ various props, vocalizations and video projections. “As a company we are very experimental at heart,” says Poe. “The extent [to which] we will deal with a movement vocabulary traditionally is very limited.”
{PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS}
{BY CHARLES ROSENBLUM}
I
Rod Dickinson + Tom McCarthy’s “Greenwich Degree Zero,” at Wood Street Galleries
.NVENTING THE Modern World is the
ambitious decorative-arts show at the Carnegie, but its title might just as easily apply to The City & the City, currently at Wood Street Galleries. A key component of the latter is a clearly and proudly fictionalized, though highly substantive, history. A pairing of the two enterprises is instructive. The Carnegie exhibit shows works of decorative arts from World Expositions between 1851, the first true World’s Fair in London, and 1939-40, the New York World’s Fair, the last of the genre to emphasize the decorative arts. The exhibit is co-curated by the Carnegie’s Jason T. Busch and Catherine L. Futter, of the The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Certainly, few institutions could match the Carnegie’s expertise and imprimatur in gathering such rare and compelling objects. Whether your taste runs to August Herter’s astonishingly be-crocketed Gothic bookcase of 1853 or Jutta Sika’s presciently restrained modernistic tea service of 1903, you have a profu-
sion of choices in aesthetics and a wellspring of information about obscure craft techniques. The small, hands-on panels explaining material and process are particularly instructive and admirable.
THE CITY & THE CITY
continues through Dec. 31. Wood Street Galleries, 601 Wood St., Downtown. 412-471-5605 or www.woodstreetgalleries.org
INVENTING THE MODERN WORLD
continues through Feb. 24. Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. 412-622-3131 or www.cmoa.org
Yet history, the slightly shopworn aphorism goes, is written by the victors. That applies to the marketplace as much as the battlefield. Accordingly, key questions go unanswered here. How, leftist critic Walter Benjamin asked elsewhere, does a given object stand “in relation to the social relationships of production of its time?” Not nearly as comfortably as
your factory-molded but hand-polished cloisonné vase would have you believe. Industrialization was a great struggle either to bring the great comforts of modernity to the masses or to take them away, depending on which combatant you ask. So, while each of the objects in Inventing the Modern World is, in divergent ways, beautiful, each one also came with a new way of employing people — most often, fewer of them at lower wages. But you’d never know that from this exhibition. That’s why The City & the City is especially instructive. The show features artwork by British writers otherwise known primarily for their texts; it was curated by writer Justin Hopper, who recently left Pittsburgh for England. Sure, the exhibit’s different components engage the acts of viewing and ruminating upon urban experiences with imaginative variations on media. Here is Chris Petit, Emma Matthews and Iain Sinclair’s immersive, four-screen video of Rio de Janeiro, notable for its views, which are pedestrian CONTINUES ON PG. 42
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A PLACE FOR OUR STUFF, CONTINUED FROM PG. 41
DECEMBER SONGS
FEATURING SALLY BARRIS, DAN NAVARRO, AMY SPEACE, JON VEZNER SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15 7:30 PM / CARNEGIE LECTURE HALL, OAKLAND $35 ADVANCE / $39 AT DOOR / $20 STUDENT (w/ID) 412-361-1915 / www.calliopehouse.org
L A N DE S BE RG DE S IGN
both literally (i.e., street-level) and figuratively. And there is Rachel Lichtenstein’s “Sight Unseen,” a collection of delicately assembled dream-like objects in precious velvet-lined boxes. Material and aesthetic pleasures here depend on the accumulation of sensibilities and observations (and associated literary texts, as a September reading at the gallery demonstrated), rather than on technique and wealth. Perhaps the most trenchant and critical of the displayed works is Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy’s “Greenwich Degree Zero” (2008). The piece reimagines an event of 1894, in which anarchist Martial Bourdain blew himself up near the globe-defining Greenwich Observatory. What if, the piece asks, he had detonated the bomb in the building? For one thing, publications of the day, from daily papers to political leaflets and manifestoes, would have chronicled the event, MATERIAL each in its own voice. AND AESTHETIC Such documents, in PLEASURES the form of remark- HERE DEPEND able facsimiles with ON THE fictionalized articles seamlessly spliced ACCUMULATION into the format and OF SENSIBILITIES content of the actual AND day, are placed on OBSERVATIONS, easels for easy read- RATHER THAN ing. Nearby, grainy ON TECHNIQUE footage of a flamAND WEALTH. ing observatory — obviously, but still convincingly, digitally altered — shows on a large screen. Amid these, the sole three-dimensional object is a pipe bomb, with powdered contents laid bare. This, too, is obviously simulated, but still metaphorically explosive. Art, in Picasso’s dictum, is a lie that makes us realize truth. London at the time was filled with anarchists, leftists and Marxists. They weren’t simply too poor to shop for expensive decorative arts; they were actively hostile to any artifact of the expanding industrial order. They viewed such things as oppressive to the social and political interests of the working classes. Picasso might have added that art should not be in the business of concealing reality. That was certainly Benjamin’s concern. Suddenly (if it had not done so all along), the decorative-arts exhibition at the Carnegie appears to gloss over issues of poverty and protest with the seemingly willful myopia of the 1 Percent. The Wood Street show, by contrast, reminds viewers that newsprint and gunpowder formed the Modern World at least as much as precious objects ever did. Any assertion otherwise is quite an invention indeed. INF O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
[WORDS]
DR. NO {BY CATHERINE SYLVAIN}
Ernesto Barbieri and some words
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Celebrate the season with four Grammy-nominated songwriters!
It happens that while I’m reading Ernesto Barbieri’s blog Letters of Rejection — an annotated anthology of the horrorfiction writer’s correspondence with various literary editors — I receive a rejection letter myself. Only it’s an automated email from an online publication that makes the ones Barbieri scans onto his site appear quaint, archaic or, as he says, “relics of a bygone era.” “They’re becoming extinct. There are probably not going to be any rejection letters in five years,” Barbieri — pen-name Martin Slag — tells me at South Side’s Big Dog Coffee, some blocks from The Beehive, where he works as a barista. He’s been hoarding these personal curiosities for seven years. “I have into the thousands. There’s never any shortage of rejection.” Philadelphia native Barbieri, 32, settled in Pittsburgh six years ago. He’d spent his 20s drifting through writerly waters — the Bay Area, Cape Cod — and soaking up writerly afflictions: alcoholism, depression and selfdoubt. He began lettersofrejection.wordpress.com on the advice of his psychiatrist. Now a qualified nurse and signed to a literary agent, Barbieri is positioned to reflect. Twice weekly he uses a past rejection letter as a springboard to blog about writing, failure or the letter itself. While he finds the blog therapeutic, he’s somewhat perturbed by reader responses. “People say, ‘Oh my god, it’s really funny.’ It’s not supposed to be funny!” he says. “The first few posts were very serious personal essays about alcoholism and things I was going through with my girlfriend.” But those readers — Barbieri says he’s had as many as 200 page views in a single day — are right. Like his letters, Barbieri himself is something of a relic. He’s a blogger who still dreams of traditional routes to publication — from small literary journals to a big New York press. The paradox creates, if not a comic figure, certainly a comic voice. In person he is entirely in earnest. “I truly believe that writing is what I was put here to do.” he says. But his blog is tonguein-cheek and bracingly cynical. After praising the fine paper quality of a letter from Esquire, he reveals that “good work tho not right for us” is scrawled in ink across it. The reading culture is rejecting him, the letters are rejecting him, and at the same time the form of the letter of rejection is rejecting itself. This Möbius Strip of rejection renders Barbieri’s candid and articulate blog also profoundly funny. INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
TOUR PREMIERE! FEATURING THE #1 HIT SONGS YOU LOVE FLASHDANCE...WHAT A FEELING, MANIAC MANHUNT, I LOVE ROCK & ROLL, GLORIA
{PHOTO COURTESY OF DREW YENCHAK}
Luke Halferty, Lindsey Sherman (center) and Hillary Vetter in The Crucible, at the Conservatory Theater Company
[PLAY REVIEW]
TRIED AND TRUE {BY TED HOOVER} I’VE SEEN innumerable productions of The
Crucible, Arthur Miller’s drama in which the Salem witch trials of 1692 serve as a political allegory for the 1950s Red Scare. Still, I chose to review Point Park University’s Conservatory Theatre Company’s new staging of this work that premiered in 1953. I enjoy The Crucible if for no other reason than because it’s from an era when play structure and construction were considered essential elements of playwriting. And Arthur Miller wrote steel-beamed, iron-riveted tales.
THE CRUCIBLE
continues through Sun., Dec. 16. Pittsburgh Playhouse, 222 Craft Ave., Oakland. $18-20. 412-392-8000 or www.pittsburghplayhouse.com
With Shirley Tannenbaum’s textbook example of intelligent and meticulous direction, this production gives Miller’s writing its full due. Thanks to the work of Tannenbaum and company, it’s impossible not to revel in Miller’s technical genius. What I hadn’t counted on, not having seen the play in several years, is that The Crucible is, amazingly, more relevant than it’s ever been. Forget Joseph McCarthy’s HUAC hearings, to which this play was written in response. I’ve just come through the ugliest presidential election of my life. The Crucible feels as though it were written last week as a slightly fictionalized portrait of the black, venomous powers that have controlled the political landscape over the past few years. In Salem — certainly in Miller’s recre-
ation of it — all that’s required to make you a witch is to be accused. The truth doesn’t matter; in fact, when political hysteria is fueled by lies, truth and reason are actually liabilities. Brilliantly, but never obviously, Miller shows how a handful of people can, through nothing other than clear-eyed selfinterest, level a charge (the more absurd the better) and a frightened, uneducated, religiously maniacal crowd can be whipped into lethal, faith-based frenzy. And in his most breathtaking and blood-chilling stroke, the accusations, trials, convictions and executions are carried out with learned, legal righteousness. It’s no exaggeration to say that at various points I was actually nauseated. When, in the final act, a thrillingly talented Alex Walton, as John Proctor, refuses to sign a false confession to save his life, the character’s famous line “It is my name! I will never have another!” seemed to come not only from the pit of Walton’s soul, but my own as well. My sobs would have alarmed anyone around me … if they hadn’t been crying just as loudly. Zach Weirich, Luke Halferty and Joe Rittenhouse, playing three men in various stages of enthrallment to their own certitude, turn in powerful, mammoth performances, adding unfaltering support to Walton. If there is one big problem with The Crucible, it’s that Miller — as is unfortunately true in most of his work — never breaks free from the Madonna/Whore paradigm in his female characters. That makes the nuanced accomplishments of Hilary Williams, as Abigail, and Lily Davis, as Elizabeth Proctor, that much more remarkable. It’s depressing as hell, but Point Park’s Crucible is essential viewing.
JANUARY 1-6 HEINZ HALL
"8Ê" Ê /Ê/ / ,Ê-+1 , ÊUÊ/,1-/ ,/-°", {£Ó Î Ó { ääÊUÊ ,"1*-Ê£ä³Ê/ /-Ê{£Ó {Ç£ È Îä ACCESSIBLE
PNC Broadway Across America-Pittsburgh is a presentation of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Pittsburgh Symphony and Broadway Across America.
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FOR THE WEEK OF
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{PHOTO BY HEATHER MULL}
FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO SUBMIT LISTINGS AND PRESS RELEASES, CALL 412.316.3342 X161.
DEC. 13
Wünderstudies
+ THU., DEC. 13 {WORDS}
By speaking at Phipps Conservatory, David Sobel practices what he preaches. The writer and faculty member of Antioch University New England was a pioneer in the 1990s movement advocating “place-based education.” Sobel focuses on teaching students through their immediate environments, particularly through nature. He appears tonight for the Conservatory’s monthly Inspire Speakers Series, a collaboration with the Green Building Alliance. Refreshments are provided and access to the Winter Light Garden is included after the talk. Catherine Sylvain 5:30-8:30 p.m. Schenley Drive, Oakland. $25-45. 412-441-4442 or www.phipps.conservatory.org
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25 MARKET SQUARE
www.perlepgh.com
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
Feel like you’re improvising your way through the holidays? Wünderstudies is doing it on purpose. Every month since June 2011, at Steel City Improv Theater, the troupe has been making up comedic stage musicals on the spot — tunes, lyrics, storylines and all. But tonight, these six singers,
a guitarist and keyboardist take their show on the road to ModernFormations Gallery for Wünderstudies: An Improvised Christmas Musical. Yup: It might well be your suggested title that the gang seizes upon to turn into an hour-long show. Expect laughter, tears, perhaps even a reminder of the season’s true meaning.
Just don’t expect to sing along (at least on the verses). Bill O’Driscoll 8 p.m. 4919 Penn Ave., Garfield. $5. www.wunderstudies.com
+ FRI., DEC. 14 {OUTDOORS}
Fern Hollow Nature Center’s
DEC. 15
Tabla & Dance
sp otlight
Comedy is now his job, and Aaron Kleiber is OK with that. In December 2008, the aspiring actor did his first open mic. Within two years, the former Steel Valley High School class clown was being featured at the Pittsburgh Improv. Today, Kleiber, 31, practices his high-energy standup “six nights a week” at home and on the road, opening for the likes of Jim Breuer and Josh Blue. This year, Pittsburgh Magazine named him Best Local Comedian. Not bad for a former youth pastor once best known for cult-favorite 2005 Star Wars mockumentary A Great Disturbance, in which Kleiber played a geek provacateur who went around telling fanboys that The Phantom Menace ruled. “There were people that did not like us,” Kleiber recalls. “Some kid hit me in the head with a light saber.” Kleiber also does TV commercials (Pittsburgh Power, Highmark) and film work, and hosts a couple of comedy open-mics himself. “I’m still a drinking, swearing comedian,” says Kleiber, though he adds that with two small children, his material involves more marriage-and-kids than before. Next Thursday, at the Improv, Kleiber marks a milestone by taping a gig for his first DVD/CD release. It’s a business move. “I knew I could sell more CDs and DVDs than I could T-shirts,” he notes. “And they’re easier to travel with.” Bill O’Driscoll 8 p.m. Thu., Dec. 20. 166 E. Bridge St., The Waterfront, West Homestead. $15. 412-462-5233 or pittsburgh.improv.com
annual Sewickley Owl Prowl series is so popular that they only tell the location to those who call and register. Tonight is the first of three walks, seeking Eastern screech owls, barred owls and large great horned owls. While smart-phone apps exist that can imitate owl calls, prowl leader and environmentaleducation director April Claus will use her voice to coax out the nocturnal birds. Prowlers are advised to dress warmly and bring their own transport. CS 6:30-8:30 p.m. 1901 Glen Mitchell Road, Sewickley. $7. 412-741-7536 or www.fhnc.org
interest children in reading. The Big Idea Bookstore is one, and today hosts local artist and children’s author Paula Weiner. She will read from Fred Eats a Pea, her fact-based story of a dog adopted by a family of vegans, illustrated by Pittsburgh
{STAGE}
A delightful slice of goldenage Hollywood gets a Pittsburgh makeover, and a live-radio-style production. Local writer, consultant and arts advocate Chuck Lanigan has adapted the 1934 comicmystery classic The Thin Man
DEC. 15
BurlesqueA-Pades: Holiday Inn
+ SAT., DEC. 15 {WORDS}
If nothing else, the phrase “radical bookstore” might
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South Side. $15. 412-381-6811 or www.rextheater.com
+ SUN., DEC. 16 {OUTDOORS}
At last, it’s wintry enough that ice-skating feels plausibly seasonal. Which reminds us that Schenley Skating Rink is one of your more affordable outdoor winter-sports options, Downtown-skyline view included. Today is Citiparks’ Skate With Santa, the rink’s annual kid-magnet,
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Tonight at ModernFormations Gallery local musicians and dancers perform original Middle Eastern and Indian fusion compositions for an evening of Tabla & Dance. The tabla (Indian hand drum) will be played by Michael Dodin while punk-guitarist-turnedluthier Tom Moran (pictured) will play the acoustic oud and electric sitar. They accompany bellydancing by ElectroBelly Dance Troupe director Amethyst and Bhangra dance by Anjali Soi. Wine and drinks will be provided. CS 8 p.m. 4919 Penn Ave., Garfield. $20. 412-362-0274 or www.modernformations.com
{SCREEN}
Before those Internets came along, people mostly got their news from TV. And before TV (and right alongside that antiquated medium known as newsprint), citizens scoped the wider world through movie newsreels. These current-event roundups, screened in theaters before feature films, survive today mostly in archives like the University of South Carolina’s Fox Movietone New Collection. Tonight, USC curator Greg Wilsbacher visits The Andy Warhol Museum to unspool an hour’s worth of 35 mm Movietone sound footage dating from 1928-42, drawn from the collection’s 2,000plus hours of content. The Fit to Print program covers everything from Big History to “The World’s Youngest Acrobat.” BO 8 p.m. 117 Sandusky St., North Side. $10. 412-237-8300 or www.warhol.org
even a couple of commercials. Tonight and tomorrow’s performances of The Thin Man Comes to Pittsburgh take place, appropriately enough, in the turn-of-the-century environs of the Carnegie Library of Homestead, whose cause the show benefits. BO 7:30 p.m. Also 2 p.m. Sun., Dec. 16. 510 E. 10th Ave., Munhall. $10. 421-353-3756 or www.alcstudies.org
Schenley Park, Oakland. $3-4 (skate rental: $2.50). 412-4226523 or www.citiparks.net
{SCREEN}
The artists’ collective known as Everything is Terrible — which brought you compendiums of found VHS clips in programs like DoggieWoggiez! PoochieWoochiez! — have turned their loving eyes and editing decks to the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Treasures from the video age in tonight’s hour-long Cataclysmic Transformation
DEC. 14
Sewickley Owl Prowl
{BURLESQUE}
artist Tiffany Whitfield. Weiner intends the book to encourage children ages 8 and under to try new things, much like her real-life dog Fred did. Fred himself may make an appearance to sign “pawtographs.” CS 1 p.m. 4812 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. Free. 412-687-4323 or www.thebigideapgh.org
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(itself taken from a Dashiell Hammett novella) for the stage. Now, Nick and Nora Charles banter wittily and unravel a mystery encompassing lowlifes and high society right here in Pittsburgh (and during Christmas). The cast includes actor Mark Tierno; in true radio-drama fashion, there’s also live music and
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For Angie Pontani, burlesque is for life, not just for the holidays. She won Miss Exotic World in 2008, performed at Sting’s birthday party, and founded dance trio The World Famous Pontani Sisters. Tonight the New Yorker headlines a touring show that returns to Pittsburgh in a holiday-themed incarnation. Burlesque-A-Pades: Holiday Inn at the Rex Theater is hosted by comedy sideshow magician Albert Cadabra, and features additional burlesque performers The Maine Attraction, Helen Pontani, Bella Sin and hula-hoop artist Miss Saturn. CS 9 p.m. 1602 E. Carson St.,
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with refreshments. If that’s not your style, the rink’s also open into the evening tonight. Indeed, the ice is yours seven days a week, including adultsonly skates 9:30-11:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Other attractions include skating lessons for kids and thrice-weekly discount sessions for college students. BO Skate with Santa: 1:30-3:30 p.m. Regular skate: 4-6:30 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. Rink open daily; hours vary. Overlook Drive,
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program include “fist fights over toys for tots, erotic Santas, Nazi elves” and lots of outerspace themes from misguided Yuletide cinema. Tonight, as part of a 30-city U.S. tour, EIT members will be on hand to convert the Melwood Screening Room into a winter wonderland for the occasion. See a review in this issue’s film section. BO 8 p.m. 477 Melwood Ave., N. Oakland. $10. 412-681-5449 or www.pghfilmmakers.org
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TO SUBMIT A LISTING: HTTP://HAPPENINGS.PGHCITYPAPER.COM 412.316.3388 (FAX) + 412.316.3342 X161 (PHONE) {ALL LISTINGS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY 9 A.M. FRIDAY PRIOR TO PUBLICATION}
THEATER ANNIE. Presented by Mon River Arts. Fri-Sun. Thru Dec. 16. Grand Theatre, Elizabeth. 412-384-0504. ANNIE. Presented by Stage Right’s Professional Theatre Company. Dec. 14-16. Palace Theatre, Greensburg. 724-832-7464. A CHRISTMAS STORY. The holiday classic about a child’s campaign for a special Christmas gift Thu-Sun. Thru Dec. 15. Little Lake Theatre, Canonsburg. 724-745-6300. A FUNNY NUNNY CHRISTMAS. Holiday cabaret dinner theater. Fri, Sat. Thru Dec. 15. Crowne Plaza Hotel, Bethel Park. 724-746-1178. GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING. Musical tribute to Rodgers & Hammerstein. Wed-Sun. Thru Jan. 20. Cabaret at Theater Square, Downtown. 412-456-6666. A HOLIDAY MEMORY. Dec. 14-15. New Castle Playhouse,
New Castle. 724-654-3437. THE SANTALAND DIARIES. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Fri, David Sedaris’ hilarious story Sat. Thru Dec. 15. Comtra Theatre, of experiences working in Cranberry. 724-591-8727. Macy’s Santaland. Presented MERRY CHRISTMAS by Smithfield St. Theatre. MAYHEM, SCROOGE HAS Dec. 13-15. Smithfield United LEFT THE BUILDING. Church of Christ, Downtown. Christmas one-act plays. 412-251-7904. Dec. 14-16 McKeesport THE SCHOOL FOR LIES. Little Theater, McKeesport. A freewheeling rewrite of 412-673-1100. Moliere’s The Misanthrope. A MEDIEVAL Thru Dec. 15. Charity CHRISTMAS CAROL. Randall Theatre, A medieval take Oakland. on Dickens’ tale. 412-624-PLAY. Presented by Stage SISTER’S CHRISTMAS www. per a p ty & Steel Productions. CATECHISM. Play pghci m o .c Fri-Sun. Thru Dec. 16. by Maripat Donovan. SS Peter & Paul Ukrainian Thu-Sun. Thru Dec. 16. Orthodox Church Hall, City Theatre, South Side. Carnegie. 412-276-9718. 412-431-2489. THE NATIVITY: A CHRISTMAS SOUTH SIDE STORIES. OneGIFT. Loosely based on the woman show portraying the play by Langston Hughes. dynamism of the Pittsburgh Presented by The Shona Sharif neighborhood. Tue-Sun. Thru African Dance & Drum Ensemble. Jan. 13. City Theatre, South Side. Fri-Sun, 8 p.m. Thru Dec. 23. 412-431-2489. Alumni Hall, Univ. of Pittsburgh, THE THIN MAN. Live radio Oakland. 412-206-1360. theater adaptation of the 1934 film. Presented by Advanced Labor & Cultural Studies. Dec. 15-16. Carnegie Library of Homestead. 412-353-3756.
FULL LIST ONLINE
EVERYONE IS A CRITIC CRITIC: Sherise Ford, 43, a nurse’s aide from East Liberty
THU 13
COMEDY OPEN MIC W/ DEREK MINTO. Thu. Thru Dec. 13 Hambone’s, Lawrenceville. 412-681-4318. PITTSBURGH IMPROV JAM. Thu. Thru Feb. 28 Cabaret at Theater Square, Downtown. 412-325-6769. WUNDERSTUDIES: AN IMPROVISED CHRISTMAS MUSICAL. 8 p.m. ModernFormations Gallery, Garfield. 412-362-0274.
EVENT: Shona Sharif African Dance and Drum Ensemble performs
The Nativity: A Christmas Gift, Alumni Hall, Oakland
WHEN: Sat.,
COMEDY
Dec. 9
I’m pretty impressed. I’ve never been to The Nativity here before and I’ll be back. It was awesome. I can see why this has been going for 24 years. It’s powerful, it’s inspirational, and it brings us all together for a good cause. I’m going to tell everybody. I liked the dancing and the singing and just the whole concept of Jesus and what the meaning of Christmas is. There was a good mix of contemporary and gospel music, and the drumming was awesome. I hadn’t heard that since I was a kid. It took me way back to when I used to go to the YMCA and they had West African drumming. I think that mix of culture from different time periods really distinguishes this from a standard nativity play. This is a show that you must see. You get your money’s worth. I only wish it was longer. BY CATHERI N E SYLVAI N
THU 13 - SUN 16
STEVE RANNAZZISI. Dec. 13-16 The Improv, Waterfront. 412-462-5233.
FRI 14
COMICS ON LIFE: LIVE ON STAGE. Feat. Ty Mac, Sharon Daly, Miss Gayle, David “The Frog” Bey. Hosted by Stephen Braxton. 7 p.m. Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, Downtown. THE DEATH SHOW: AN IMPROVISED FUNERAL. 8 p.m. Steel City Improv Theater, North Side. 412-322-1000. PITTSBURGH COMEDY SHOWCASE W/ MIKE WYSOCKI. Fri, 9 p.m. Corner Cafe, South Side. 412-488-2995. CONTINUES ON PG. 48
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Work (detail) by John Ubinger, from Wanderlust at Imagebox Productions, Inc.
VISUAL
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NEW THIS WEEK
419 BEAVER ST. Pretty: Functional. Work by Tadao Arimoto, Melissa Fitzgerald, Jason Forck, Adrienne Grafton, Jon Radermacher, Michael Smithhammer, more. Opening reception Dec. 14, 6-9 p.m. Dec. 14 & 15 only. Sewickley. BOXHEART GALLERY. Celebrate the Season. Group show feat. painting, jewelry, ceramics, more. Holiday reception: Dec. 15, noon-3 p.m. Bloomfield. 412-687-8858. EVOLVER TATTOO ARTS. OnSIGHT Art Night. 3D paintings by Nathan Van Patter. Opening reception: Dec. 14, 7-10 p.m. South Side. 412-481-1004. FEIN ART GALLERY. 5th Annual Holiday Show. Affordable art for the holidays. Curated by Kathleen Zimbicki. Opening reception: Dec. 14, 5-8 p.m. North Side. 412-321-6816. SHAW GALLERIES. David Biber: Recent Works. Abstract art. Opening reception: Dec. 14, 5-8 p.m. Downtown. 412-281-4884.
ONGOING
28 WEST SECOND GALLERY & STUDIO SPACE. Deck the Halls: Annual Holiday Exhibition. Group show. Greensburg. 724-205-9033. 707 PENN GALLERY. After
Dark. Mysterious & evocative images by Carolina LoyolaGarcia & Colter Harper. Downtown. 412-325-7017. AMERICAN JEWISH MUSEUM. Radiant Circles: Ruth E. Levine’s Generous Life. Key work from Levine’s various artistic stages. Squirrel Hill. 412-521-8010. ANDY WARHOL MUSEUM. Deborah Kass: Before & Happily Ever After. A major mid-career retrospective of paintings, photographs & sculpture. Warhol:Headlines. A collection of works by Warhol based largely on headlines from tabloid news. Jeremy Kost: Friends w/ Benefits. Photography. I Just Want to Watch: Warhol’s Film, Video and Television. Long-term exhibition of Warhol’s film & video work. Permanent collection. Artwork and artifacts by the famed Pop Artist. North Side. 412-237-8300. ARTFORM GALLERY & TATTOO. If These Trees Could Talk. Work by Donnie Toomer. Lower Burrell. 724-212-3153. ARTISTS IMAGE RESOURCE. Printwork 2012. National juried print exhibition feat. over 20 artists. North Side. 412-321-8664. BARCO LAW LIBRARY. Preta. New paintings by Joshua Nickerson. Oakland. BE GALLERIES. In the Words of Daria Sandburg. Sculpture & jewelry. Lawrenceville. 412-687-2606.
BIDDLE’S ESCAPE. The Collective Works of Joyce Werwie Perry. Oil & knife paintings. Regent Square. 412-999-9009. BLUE OLIVE GALLERIES. All Local Artists. Multi media work. Artist in the Window. Photography by Matt Kisasonak. Frazier. 724-275-7001. BOULEVARD GALLERY. A Little Bit of Everything. Multimedia work by Mary Ann Saccomanno & Autumn Delellis Stankay. AVerona. 412-828-1031. CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART. White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes. 6 innovative institutions dedicated to the experience of culture & nature. Cory Arcangel: Masters. Repurposed readymade digital technology. Oakland. 412-622-3131. CATHOLIC CHARITIES BUILDING. Park Journeys: Yellowstone. Work by Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild students. Downtown. 412-456-6999. CHATHAM UNIVERSITY. Culture in Context. African Art from the Olkes Collection. Shadyside. 412-365-1232. CHRISTINE FRECHARD GALLERY. Fractures. Paintings by Eva Rorandelli. Squirrel Hill. 412-421-8888. CRAZY MOCHA COFFEE COMPANY. Prints by Justseeds Artists Cooperative. Bloomfield. 412-681-5225. CONTINUES ON PG. 49
NEED A MILLER TIME DURING THE HOLIDAYS? STOP IN AT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS AND ENJOY A MILLER LITE!
D’S
RACER’S TAVERN
GRAPEVILLE STATION
MONROEVILLE
LATROBE
GRAPEVILLE
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JEANNETTE
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LIGONIER
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IRWIN
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NEW STANTON
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JOHNNY’S WIFE’S PLACE
NORTH HUNTINGDON
SCOOBY’S
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GREENSBURG
GRANDE PIZZA
JEANNETTE
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TJ RESTAURANT & SPORTS BAR
LATROBE
RIALTO
NEW STANTON
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GREENSBURG
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GEO’S
LATROBE
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RED DAWGS SPORTS BAR
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SHOOTING BULL TAVERN RT. 380 MURRYSVILLE
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BIG LIST, CONTINUED FROM PG. 46
SAT 15
BAND NIGHT Every Thursday!
DECEMBER 13 WINTER WONDER-LESQUE: BURLESQUE SHOW DECEMBER 20 PETE BUSH & THE HOI POLI, SLIM FORSYTHE & THE NEW PAY DAY LOANERS, GRAND PIANO DECEMBER 27 EMO NIGHT 9
$1.75 PBR Drafts Everyday 9-11
2204 E. CARSON ST. (412) 431-5282
CSI IMPROV: MURDEROUS IMPROV. 9:30 p.m. Steel City Improv Theater, North Side. 412-322-1000. THE JASON COLL VARIETY SHOW HOLIDAY REUNION SPECIAL. 10:30 p.m. Cabaret at Theater Square, Downtown. 412-325-6769. SCIT SOCIAL IMPROV JAM. For new & experienced improvisers. Sat, 6:30 p.m. Steel City Improv Theater, North Side. 412-322-1000. TONY MONTELEONE, MATT WOHLFARTH. Dormont Comedy Night. 8 p.m. Cip’s, Dormont. 310-909-6446. THE UNION PRESENTS: THE LAST ONE. 10:30 p.m. Steel City Improv Theater, North Side. 412-322-1000.
MON 17
COMEDY KICKOFF. Free Pizza and DJ 6-8 p.m., comedy, sketches, videos 8-9 p.m., Band 9-10 p.m., DJ till 11 p.m. Presented by Performance for People. Mon, 6 p.m. Thru Dec. 17 Rex Theater, South Side. 412-381-6811. OPEN MIC COMEDY. Hosted by Aaron Kleiber. Mon, 9 p.m. Thru Dec. 31 Pleasure Bar, Bloomfield. 412-682-9603. TOTALLY FREE MONDAYS. Mon, 8 p.m. Steel City Improv Theater, North Side. 412-322-1000.
The City’s Hottest Live Music Scene!
UPCOMING NATIONAL SHOWS
[HOLIDAY]
TUE 18
OPEN MIC STAND UP COMEDY NITE. Hosted by Derek Minto & John Pridmore. Tue, 9:30 p.m. Smiling Moose, South Side. 412-612-4030. SCHITZNGIGGLZ COMEDY NIGHT. Hosted by Brad Ryan. 8:15 p.m. Inn-Termission Lounge, South Side.
WED 19
JOE EBERLE, NANCE MARSHALL. Peter B’s, Sarver. 724-353-2677. JOKEE OAKEE. Comedy open stage hosted by Tonnochi:B. Wed Younger’s, North Side. 412-452-3267. STAND-UP COMEDY OPEN MIC. Wed, 8 p.m. The BeerHive, Strip District. 412-904-4502.
EXHIBITS ALLEGHENY-KISKI VALLEY
HERITAGE MUSEUM. Military artifacts and exhibits on the Allegheny Valley’s Unwind with some mid-week drinking and industrial heritage. Tarentum. 724-224-7666. dancing — and shopping — at Pgh Vinyl Con’s AUGUST WILSON CENTER . A sort-of FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE. The Nazi Olympics: mini-version of PVC’s larger record sales, the happy Berlin 1936. An exhibit hour — in the Brillobox green room, which has exploring 1936 Olympic Games including use of propaganda, never before been used for an event — features the boycott debate, history half-a-dozen vendors, DJs, a gift-wrapping station of the torch run, & the historic and a “record check,” so you can safely stash your performance of Jesse Owens. Curated by the United States new treasures while you party. 6 p.m. Wed., Dec. 19. Holocaust Memorial Museum. 4104 Penn Ave., Bloomfield. Free. Call 412-621-4900 Downtown. 412-258-2700. BAYERNHOF MUSEUM. or visit www.facebook.com/PghVinylCon. Large collection of automatic roll-played musical instruments and music boxes in a mansion FALLINGWATER. Tour the setting. Call for appointment. Winging It: Experimental Gallery famed Frank Lloyd Wright house. O’Hara. 412-782-4231. About Birds thru March, Lord Ohiopyle. 724-329-8501. BOST BUILDING. Collectors. of the Crane Flies thru April. FIRST PRESBYTERIAN Preserved materials reflecting Ongoing: Earth Revealed, CHURCH. Tours of 13 Tiffany the industrial heritage of Dinosaurs In Their Time, more. stained-glass windows. Southwestern PA. Homestead. Oakland. 412-622-3131. Downtown. 412-471-3436. 412-464-4020. CARNEGIE SCIENCE CENTER. FORT PITT MUSEUM. CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF Ongoing: Buhl Digital Dome Reconstructed fort houses ART. Inventing the Modern (planetarium), Miniature museum of Pittsburgh history World: Decorative Arts at Railroad and Village, USS Requin circa French & Indian War and the World’s Fairs, 1851–1939. submarine, and more. North American Revolution. Downtown. Furniture, metalwork, glass, Side. 412-237-3400. 412-281-9285. ceramics, textiles, & jewelry CARRIE FURNACE. Built in FRICK ART & HISTORICAL produced by Herman Miller, 1907, Carrie Furnaces CENTER. Ongoing: tours Tiffany, more. Oakland. 6 & 7 are extremely rare of Clayton, the Frick estate, 412-622-3131. examples of pre World with classes, car & carriage CARNEGIE MUSEUM War II iron-making museum. Point Breeze. OF NATURAL technology. Rankin. . w ww per 412-371-0600. HISTORY. Neapolitan 412-464-4020 x.21. a p ty ci h pg HARTWOOD ACRES. Tour Presepio. Nativity scene COMPASS INN. .com this Tudor mansion and stable feat. more than 100 Demos and tours complex, and enjoy hikes human & angelic figures, with costumed guides and outdoor activities in the along w/ animals, accessories, featuring this restored surrounding park. Allison Park. & architectural elements. stagecoach stop. Ligonier. Empowering Women: Artisan 412-767-9200. 724-238-4983. Cooperatives that Transform KENTUCK KNOB. Tour the CONNEY M. KIMBO GALLERY. Communities. Folk art objects other Frank Lloyd Wright house. University of Pittsburgh illustrating the power of women Chalk Hill. 724-329-8501. Jazz Exhibit: Memorabilia & working together to provide KERR MEMORIAL MUSEUM. Awards from the International for their families, educate Tours of a restored 19th-century, Hall of Fame. Oakland. their children, promote middle-class home. Oakmont. 412-648-7446. equality, & give back to their 412-826-9295. DEPRECIATION LANDS communities. BugWorks. Feat. MARIDON MUSEUM. Collection MUSEUM. Small living history beautiful photography of insects, includes jade and ivory statues museum celebrating the amazing specimens, & live bugs! from China and Japan, as well settlement and history of the Life: A Journey Through Time as Meissen porcelain. Butler. Depreciation Lands. Allison Park. & Population Impact thru Jan., 724-282-0123. 412-486-0563.
Holiday Happy Hour
FULL LIST ONLINE
F OR M E R LY T H E
Povertyneck Hillbillies
Visit jergels.com/calendar for a complete list of shows & to buy tickets!
MCGINLEY HOUSE & MCCULLY LOG HOUSE. Historic homes open for tours, lectures and more. Monroeville. 412-373-7794. NATIONAL AVIARY. Home to more than 600 birds from over 200 species. With classes, lectures, demos and more. North Side. 412-323-7235. NATIONALITY ROOMS. 26 rooms helping to tell the story of Pittsburgh’s immigrant past. University of Pittsburgh. Oakland. 412-624-6000. OLD ST. LUKE’S. Pioneer church features 1823 pipe organ, Revolutionary War graves. Scott. 412-851-9212. OLIVER MILLER HOMESTEAD. This pioneer/Whiskey Rebellion site features log house, blacksmith shop & gardens. South Park. 412-835-1554. PENNSYLVANIA TROLLEY MUSEUM. Trolley rides and exhibits. Includes displays, walking tours, gift shop, picnic area and Trolley Theatre. Washington. 724-228-9256. PHIPPS CONSERVATORY & BOTANICAL GARDEN. Winter Flower Show & Light Garden. Feat. poinsettias, evergreens, whimsical lights & adornments. 14 indoor rooms & 3 outdoor gardens feature exotic plants and floral displays from around the world. Oakland. 412-622-6914. PHOTO ANTIQUITIES. Tintypes. Photographs on polished steel that brought the first lower-cost, indestructible photos within price range of the average person. North Side. 412-231-7881. PINBALL PERFECTION. Pinball museum & players club. West View. 412-931-4425. PITTSBURGH ZOO & PPG AQUARIUM. Home to 4,000 animals, including many endangered species. Highland Park. 412-665-3639. RACHEL CARSON HOMESTEAD. A Reverence for Life. Photos and artifacts of her life & work. Springdale. 724-274-5459. RIVERS OF STEEL NATIONAL HERITAGE AREA. Exhibits on the Homestead Mill. Steel industry and community artifacts from 1881-1986. Homestead. 412-464-4020. SENATOR JOHN HEINZ HISTORY CENTER. Gridiron Glory: The Best of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. More than 200 football artifacts, rare photos, & one-of-a-kind documents. Ongoing: Western PA Sports Museum, Clash of Empires, and exhibits on local history, more. Strip District. 412-454-6000. SEWICKLEY HEIGHTS HISTORY CENTER. Museum commemorates Pittsburgh industrialists, local history. Sewickley. 412-741-4487. SOCIETY FOR CONTEMPORARY CRAFT SATELLITE GALLERY. Badges & Buttons, Waistcoats & Vests. Highlights badges by 20
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EASTSIDE GALLERY. Ceramic Creatures. Work by Bernie Pintar. East Liberty. 412-465-0140. FE GALLERY. Beautiful Dreamers: A Celebration of Pittsburgh Women. Portraits by Sonja Sweterlitsch. Lawrenceville. 412-254-4038. FILMMAKERS GALLERIES. Marcellus Shale Documentary Project. More than 50 photographic images which tell the stories of Pennsylvanians affected by the Marcellus Shale gas industry. Curated by Laura Domencic. Oakland. 412-681-5449. FIREBORN STUDIOS & GALLERY. Holiday Pottery Sale. Through Dec. 24. South Side. 412-488-6835. FRICK ART & HISTORICAL CENTER. Impressions of Interiors. Paintings by Walter Gay. Permanent collection of European Art. Point Breeze. 412-371-0600. GALERIE WERNER, THE MANSIONS ON FIFTH. Moods of Pittsburgh II: Expired Mills, Inspired Landscapes. Group show. Oakland. 412-716-1390. GALLERIE CHIZ. Crossing Borders. Work by Peter Calaboyias, Manuela Holban, Japa, Marina Mozhayeva, more. Shadyside. 412-441-6005. THE GALLERY 4. The Sepia Show. New Works by Anthony
Purcell. Shadyside. 412-363-5050. GALLERY ON 43RD STREET. Small Works from Norway. Paintings by Dylan Cridtchfield-Sales. Lawrenceville. 412-683-6488. GAY & LESBIAN COMMUNITY CENTER. Royal Portrait Show. Drag portraits. Downtown. 412-422-0114. GLENN GREENE STAINED GLASS STUDIO INC. Original Glass Art by Glenn Greene. Exhibition of new work, recent work & older work. Regent Square. 412-243-2772. HUNT INSTITUTE FOR BOTANICAL DOCUMENTATION. Portraits of a Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden Florilegium. Showcasing watercolors & drawings of 48 American botanical artists, archiving plants growing at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Oakland. 412-268-2434. IMAGEBOX. Wanderlust. International Travel Photography Exhibit by John Ubinger. Garfield. 412-592-8885. IRMA FREEMAN CENTER FOR IMAGINATION. Dolls3. Artistic doll interpretations by Joyce Compton, Emily Eckel & Chris Fondi. Garfield. 412-924-0634. JAMES GALLERY. NIGHT/ LIGHT. Fire Drawings by Paul Chojnowski. West End. 412-922-9800.
LA PRIMA ESPRESSO. Paintings/ Prints of Italy. Prints of Vince Ornato’s oil paintings of Italy. Strip District. 412-281-1922. LAKEVUE ATHLETIC CLUB. Pop-Up Gallery. Work by a variety of artists. Valencia. 724-316-9326. LAWRENCE HALL GALLERY. Landscape Expressions. Work by Lynn Fero. Downtown. 412-392-8008. MANCHESTER CRAFTSMEN’S GUILD. Flat Files. Illustration & cartoon art by Wayno. North Side. 412-322-1773. MATTRESS FACTORY. Feminist and.. New work by Julia Cahill, Betsy Damon, Parastou Forouhar, Loraine Leeson, Ayanah Moor, & Carrie Mae Weems. Ongoing Installations. Works by Turrell, Lutz, Kusama, Anastasi, Highstein, Wexler & Woodrow. North Side. 412-231-3169. MENDELSON GALLERY. Mark Gualtieri & Friends: A Linear Conversation. Shadyside. 412-361-8664. MICHAEL HERTRICH ART & FRAME. Out of the Woods. Paintings by Patrick Ruane. South Side. 412-431-3337. MILLER GALLERY AT CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY. Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture. Feat. photographs, sculpture, architectural models &
drawings, that together examine the relationships between design & health. Oakland. 412-268-4754. MODERNFORMATIONS GALLERY. Ghosts, etc. Work by David Bernabo, Ben Filio, Mark Mangini, Talon Smith, Emily Zuzack, more. Garfield. 412-362-0274. MORGAN CONTEMPORARY GLASS GALLERY. Cheers, Salute, L’chaim To The Next 50! Group show feat. Ellen Abbott & Marc Leva, Alex Bernstein, Judi Charlson, more. Shadyside. 412-441-5200. THE MR. ROBOTO PROJECT. Cowboy House Presents. Feat. work by Fred Frances, Jeff Gibbons, Matt Glove, & Mike Madsen. Bloomfield. OLD ECONOMY VILLAGE. Faces & Places: Photographs of Old Economy. Never before seen photography from the late 19th & early 20th centuries. Ambridge. 724-266-4500. PANZA GALLERY. New Classic Images. Silk screens & limited edition prints by Dave Klug. Millvale. 412-821-0959. PHOTO ANTIQUITIES. The History of Photography. Plus preservation and education exhibits. Shantytown - The Ed Salamony Photographs. Experience the Depression in Pittsburgh’s shantytown through
this historic photographic documentary. North Side. 412-231-7881. PICTURESQUE PHOTOGRAPHY & GIFTS. Photography by Brenda Knoll. Lawrenceville. 412-688-0240. PITTSBURGH CENTER FOR THE ARTS. White Show: Subtlety in the Age of Spectacle. Group show feat. Jaq Belcher, David Burke, Ellen Carey, Mark Franchino, Jane Haskell, Marietta Hoferer, more. Romancing the Tone. Group show feat. Lenka Clayton, Corey Escoto, Rachel E Foster, David Leggett, Rebecca Mir & Sayward Schoonmaker. Small Step Giant Leap. Group show feat. members of the Keystone West artist collective. Shadyside. 412-361-0873. PITTSBURGH GLASS CENTER. American Idols. Exhibition by John Moran feat. glass busts of all 43 U.S. presidents. Friendship. 412-365-2145. SCHOOLHOUSE ART CENTER. South Arts Winter Show. Feat. life sized owl carved by wood sculptor George Nichol, paintings by local artists. Bethel Park. 412-835-9898. SPACE. Romper Room. Work by Jae Roberto, Jacob Ciocci, Jim Lingo, Jen Cooney, Matt Barton & Thad Kellstadt. Curated by Ladyboy. Downtown.
412-325-7723 THE SOCIETY FOR CONTEMPORARY CRAFT. Bridge 12. Work by Melissa Cameron, Betty Vera, & Kevin Snipes. Strip District. 412-261-7003 x 12. THE TOONSEUM. New Action Evolution. Impressionistic superhero paintings by David Leblanc. Downtown. 412-232-0199. TUGBOAT PRINT SHOP. Tugboat Printshop. Open studio 3rd Sat of every month. Lawrenceville. 412-621-0663. UNSMOKE ART SPACE. Sweetness & Light. A collaborative installation by Keith Lemley & Taryn McMahon. Braddock. 415-518-9921. WESTMORELAND MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART. Your Art Needs You. 177 faded or damaged works which visitors can adopt, funding restoration. Born of Fire: The Valley Work. Greensburg. 724-837-1500. WOOD STREET GALLERIES. The City & the City: Artwork by London Writers. Visual art by authors of experimental poetry, fiction, history & geography, exploring new ways to combine literature & art in an examination of the modern city. Downtown. 412-471-5605.
SMILING MOOSE SOUTHSIDE
$5.00 Bud Light Pitchers
RICH’S PARKSIDE MCKEESPORT
$1.75 Bud Light Bottles
UGLY DOG SALOON SALOON GREENTREE
$3.50 Bud Light 20oz draughts
RUSTIC LANTERN ETNA
$2.25 Bug Light draughts
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makers from the US & the UK. Downtown. 412-261-7003 x 12. SOLDIERS & SAILORS MEMORIAL HALL. Military museum dedicated to honoring military service members since the Civil War through artifacts & personal mementos. Oakland. 412-621-4253. ST. ANTHONY’S CHAPEL. Features 5,000 relics of Catholic saints. North Side. 412-323-9504. ST. NICHOLAS CROATIAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. Maxo Vanka Murals. Mid-20th century murals depicting war, social justice and the immigrant experience in America. Millvale. 421-681-0905. THE TOONSEUM. Pittsburgh Scores! The Pro Scoreboard Art of Kensington Falls Animation. Animations feat. on the Jumbotron at Pirates, Steelers & Penguin games. Downtown. 412-232-0199. WEST OVERTON MUSEUMS. Learn about distilling and coke-making in this pre-Civil War industrial village. Scottdale. 724-887-7910.
HOLIDAY THU 13
HOLIDAY CHRISTMAS PARTY & COOKIE EXCHANGE. Presented by the Wissahickon Nature Club. 7 p.m. Fern Hollow Nature Center, Sewickley. 412-771-4737. HOLIDAY RECEPTION/ END OF THE WORLD CELEBRATION. 5:30-7:30 p.m. Eastside Gallery, East Liberty. ORIGINAL CHANUKAH SHPIEL. By the Clubhouse Maccabees. 4:30 p.m. Jewish Community Center, Squirrel Hill. 412-521-8011.
THU 13 WED 19
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FRI 14 - SAT 15
HOLIDAY SHOPPING PARTY. Wine, hors d’oeuvres, more. Dec. 14-15, 7-10 p.m. Artdfact, North Side. 724-797-3302.
SAT 15
4TH ANNUAL WILKINSBURG A’ CAROLING. Hamnett Square, Wilkinsburg. 5:30-6:30 p.m. 412-225-6943. THE CHRISTMAS STORY: A LIVE NATIVITY SCENE & WORSHIP EXPERIENCE. Live re-enactment of the birth of Jesus Christ. There will be live animals, singing of Christmas carols, more. Presented by the Baptist Temple Church. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Greater Pittsburgh Coliseum, Homewood. 412-608-9767. HOLIDAY BAZAAR. 11 a.m.3 p.m. Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, East Liberty. 412-363-3000. HOLIDAY OPEN STUDIO. Feat. handcrafted canvas & waxed canvas bags for men & women. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Moop, Carnegie. 412-489-5477. HOLIDAY PHOTO BOOKBINDING. w/ Amy Williams. 1 p.m. Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse, Homewood. 412-473-0100. PITTSBURGH YOUTH PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA. 11:30 a.m. The Wintergarden, Downtown. 412-403-0002.
SAT 15 - SUN 16
MAKE YOUR OWN ORNAMENTS & GLASS SALE. Sat, Sun. Thru Dec. 16 Vessel Studio Glass, South Side. 412-779-2471.
FULL LIST E ONwLwIN w.
SUN 16
HOLIDAY CO-OP. A CATHEDRAL Showcase of unique, CHRISTMAS. r e p handmade works a p ty pghci m Chancel Choir, the for sale. Thru Jan. 6, .co Fox Chapel Area High 2013 709 Penn School Madrigal Singers & Gallery, Downtown. Ambassador Orchestra. 2 p.m. 412-471-6070. East Liberty Presbyterian Church, HOLIDAY LIGHT & East Liberty. 412-441-3800. MUSIC SHOW. Thru Jan. 2, 2013 SEW AWESOME STOCKINGS. w/ Pittsburgh Technical Institute, Katy Dement. Pittsburgh Center Oakdale. 1-800-784-9675. for Creative Reuse, Homewood. PEOPLES GAS HOLIDAY 412-473-0100. MARKET. Entertainment, STEEL CITY SKEPTICS shopping, more. Thru Dec. 23 FESTIVUS PARTY. 5-9 p.m. Market Square, Downtown. Church Brew Works, 412-471-1511. Lawrenceville. 412-731-1901.
Holiday Skin Care Packages
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more. Gently used or new toy donations will be accepted for Play it Forward toy drive. 7:30 p.m. The ToonSeum, Downtown. 412-232-1099.
412-259-8628
CHANUKAH FAMILY SHABBAT DINNER. Reservations required. 5:45 p.m. Jewish Community Center, Squirrel Hill. 412-521-8011 x 852. COOKIE WALK. Christmas cookies, pork & sauerkraut lunch, more. 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Smithfield United Church of Christ, Downtown. 412-281-1811. ISLAND OF MISFIT TOONS HOLIDAY PARTY. Cocktails, Christmas crafts, photo booth,
DANCE
FRI 14
APOCALYPSE WOW BURLESQUE: THE END OF THE WORLD HOLIDAY SHOW. Feat. Elizabeth Couteau, Boom Boom Bridgette, Veronica Lustt, Janet Granite, Lusciouss Lottie, Cindy Crochford, & Lita D’Vargas. 9 p.m. Cattivo, Lawrenceville. 412-687-2157.
FRI 14 - SAT 15
PRIVATE PLACES. Highpowered original work directed by Philadelphia-based choreographer Jumatatu Poe. Presented by idiosynCrazy Productions. Dec. 14-15 KellyStrayhorn Theater, East Liberty. 412-363-3000.
FRI 14 - SUN 16
THE JAZZ NUTCRACKER. Presented by Point Park University’s Conservatory Dance Company Fri-Sun. Thru Dec. 16 Pittsburgh Playhouse, Oakland. 412-621-4445. THE NUTCRACKER. Presented by the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. Fri-Sun. Thru Dec. 30 Benedum Center, Downtown. 412-456-6666.
SAT 15
BURLESQUE-A-PADES: HOLIDAY INN. Feat. Angie Pontani. 9 p.m. Rex Theater, South Side. 412-381-6811.
FUNDRAISERS THU 13
THE ART OF LOVE. Art auction benefiting Jeremiah’s Place. 5:30-9 p.m. Pittsburgh Public Market, Strip District. 412-281-4505.
THU 13 - FRI 14
SUNSHINE FOUNDATION CLOTHING DRIVE. Helps benefit Dominic, a little boy w/ Type 1 diabetes. Thru Dec. 14 Hampton High School, Allison Park. 412-519-6541.
THU 13 - TUE 18
MISTER ROGER’S SWEATER DRIVE. Collecting new & gently used sweaters. Thru Dec. 18 Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, North Side. 412-322-5058.
SAT 15
7TH ANNUAL VODKA/LATKE PARTY. Benefits Shalom Pittsburgh. 8 p.m. Space, Downtown. 412-992-5204.
SUN 16
WINTER WONDER-LESQUE. Feat. Kat De Lac, Gigi Holliday, Becky Bux Om, Betty Le Roux, & Pookie Pseu. 10 p.m. Lava Lounge, South Side. 412-431-5282.
BOOK ‘EM BOOKS TO PRISONERS WORK PARTY. Read & code letters, pick books, pack ‘em or database ‘em! Sundays 4-7 p.m. or by appt. Thomas Merton Center, Garfield. 412-361-3022.
THU 13 - SUN 16
MON 17
THU 13
THE NUTCRACKER. Dec. 13-16 Geyer Performing Arts Center, Scottdale. 724-887-0887.
YOUR PASSPORT TO PITTSBURGH: MAKING THE WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
CONNECTION. GlobalPittsburgh’s annual dinner feat. live music, photo booth, more. Emcee: Bill Flanagan. 5:30 p.m. Lemont, Mt. Washington. 412-392-4513.
[LITERARY]
THU 13 - SUN 16
GLOW: GLOW IT OUT! Make a different lantern each day of the week. Thru Dec. 16, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, North Side. 412-322-5058.
POLITICS THU 13
DAVID DEANGELO AT THE CENTER FOR INQUIRY. The 2 Political Junkies blogger will discuss Religion & Politics in Western PA. 7 p.m. Carnegie Science Center, North Side. 412-731-1901. GERTRUDE STEIN POLITICAL CLUB OF GREATER PITTSBURGH. Meetings of group devoted to LGBT issues in electoral politics. Second Thu of every month, 7 p.m. United Cerebral Palsy of Pittsburgh, Oakland. 412-521-2504.
LITERARY
THU 13 - WED 19
“Revision” by Karen Dietrich
THU 13
BOUND TOGETHER BOOK CLUB. Eiffel’s Tower by Jill Jonnes. 6:30 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. ENGLISH LEARNERS’ BOOK CLUB. For advanced ESL students. Presented in cooperation w/ the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council. Thu, 1 p.m. Mount Lebanon Public Library, Mt. Lebanon. 412-531-1912. THE HOUR AFTER HAPPY HOUR WRITER’S WORKSHOP. Young writers & recent graduates looking for additional feedback on their work. Thu The Big Idea Bookstore & Cafe, Bloomfield. 412-687-4323. PITTSBURGH WRITES. Weekly writer’s workshop. Thu Crazy Mocha Coffee Company, Sewickley. 412-708-3312. SPANISH CONVERSATION CLUB. Second and Fourth Thu of every month, 6 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151.
FRI 14
CONVERSATION SALON. Second Fri of every month, 2 p.m. and Fourth Wed of every month, 1 p.m. Northland Public Library, McCandless. 412-366-8100. EMILY MOHN & DANIELA BUCCIELLI. Mad Fridays Reading Series. 7 p.m. Delanie’s Coffee, South Side. 412-927-4030. LET’S READ ENGLISH. Book club for non-native English speakers. Second Fri of every month, 2 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. OAKLAND OPEN MIC. Poetry, music & political speeches welcome. Second and Fourth Fri of every month, 7 p.m. 610-731-1804. WRITERS’ OPEN MIC NIGHT. All genres of written/spoken word welcome. Second Fri of every month, 7-9 p.m. Reads Ink Bookshop, Vandergrift. 724-567-7236.
Superstar Pole Dancer:
KIDSTUFF
I didn’t imagine thimbles of milk — just white skin shedding like snow sawdust curling from naked pine It wasn’t death, but revision — find flesh, replace with air find falling, replace with flight Dietrich — along with poets Adam Matcho and Kelly Scarff — appears at the Carnegie Library in Oakland, as part of the Sunday Poetry and Reading Series. 2 p.m. Sun., Dec. 16. 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. Free. Call 412-622-3151 or visit www.carnegielibrary.org.
SAT 15
LITANALYSIS: READING FICTION W/ FREUD. Discuss contemporary fiction w/ insight from professional psychoanalysts from the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center. Third Sat of every month, 2 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. PENNWRITERS SPRINGDALE WRITERS GROUP. Third Sat of every month Springdale Free Public Library, Springdale. 724-274-9729.
SUN 16
ADAM MATCHO, KAREN DIETRICH, KELLY SCARFF. Sunday Poetry & Reading Series. 2 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151.
MON 17
OUT OF THE GUTTER: GRAPHIC NOVEL DISCUSSION GROUP. Third Mon of every month, 6:30 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151.
TUE 18
JAPANESE CONVERSATION CLUB. First and Third Tue of every month, 6 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. STEEL CITY POETRY SLAM. Third Tue of every month, 9 p.m. Shadow Lounge, East Liberty. 412-363-8277.
WED 19
CARNEGIE KNITS & READS. Informal knitting session. Wed, 5 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3116. POETRY DISCUSSION GROUP. The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin. Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. 7:30 p.m. Coffee Tree Roasters, Shadyside. 412-481-7636. SMITHFIELD CRITICS BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. 12 p.m. Carnegie Library, Downtown. 412-281-7141.
BACKYARD EXHIBIT. Musical swing set, sandbox, solarpowered instruments, more. Ongoing Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, North Side. 412-322-5058. CHARLIE & KIWI’S EVOLUTIONARY ADVENTURE. Join Charlie as he travels back to the Age of Dinosaurs to discover how evolution works. Feat. story theater & discovery area. Presented by Commonwealth Connections Academy. Tue-Sun. Thru May 12 Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Oakland. 412-622-3131. GLOW: FLUORESCENT PAINTING & SILKSCREENS. Create w/ fluorescent colors in the Silk Screen & Painting areas of the Studio. Thru Dec. 31, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, North Side. 412-322-5058. MISSING LINKS (THE RAINBOW JUMPY). Bounce, jump, roll, run & walk through a 30-foot inflatable “jumpy” art piece created by Felipe Dulzaides. On loan from The New Children’s Museum, San Diego CA. Thru Feb. 3, 2013 Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, North Side. 412-322-5058. TOUGH ART. Interactive artworks feat. John Pena, Scott Andrew, Jonathan Armistead, Jeremy Boyle, Kevin Clancy & Will Schlough. Thru Jan. 13, 2013 Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, North Side. 412-322-5058.
SAT 15
ART LAB: HOLIDAY CRAFTY EDITION. Stamp wrapping paper & create wintery cards/gift tags. 1-4 p.m. Mattress Factory, North Side. 412-231-3169. BEADED DOLL WORKSHOP W/ CHRIS FONDI. Learn simple beading stitches to embellish your own art doll. Ages 6+. 1-4 p.m. Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, Garfield. 412-924-0634. CELEBRATE! THE HOLIDAYS. Make seasonal cards & garlands. Ages 4-5: 10 a.m., Ages 6-7: 1 p.m. Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Garden, Oakland. 412-441-4442 x 3925. FRED EATS A PEA: READING & PAWTOGRAPH SESSION. A story about Fred, a dog who was adopted by a family of vegans. Appearance by Fred will depend on the
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weather. 1 p.m. The Big Idea Bookstore & Cafe, Bloomfield. 412-687-4323. FREE COMMUNITY ORCHESTRA FOR FAMILIES. All levels of orchestra instruments are invited. Parents are invited to join & play w/ their children. Sat, 3-4:30 p.m. Thru May 18 East Liberty Presbyterian Church, East Liberty. 412-441-3800 x 11. GLOW: LIGHT FIXTURE MAKING. Make a unique nightlight in the MAKESHOP. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, North Side. 412-322-5058. SATURDAYS W/ THE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY. Creative movement dance class & story time session w/ a costumed dancer. Presented by Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. Sat, 10:30-11 a.m. Thru Dec. 22 Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Garden, Oakland. 412-622-6914.
SAT 15 - SUN 16
BEAUTY & THE BEAST HOLIDAY. Sat, Sun. Thru Dec. 23 Gemini Theater, Point Breeze. 412-243-5201. KNIT THE BRIDGE. Learn about knitting & help make panels for the Knit the Bridge project. Dec. 15-16 Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, North Side. 412-322-5058. SANTA TROLLEY. Trolley ride w/
Santa, crafts, more. Sat, Sun. Thru Dec. 16 Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, Washington. 724-228-9256.
TUE 18
TUE 18
WED 19
TUESDAYS WITH TESS. Tue, 10 a.m. Penguin Bookshop, Sewickley. 412-741-3838.
OUTSIDE FRI 14
WISE WALK. 1-mile walk around Oakland. Fri, 10:30 a.m. Thru Jan. 25 Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151.
[STAGE]
SURVIVAL BASICS. Tue, 3-4:30 p.m. Schenley Park, Oakland. 412-477-4677. WEDNESDAY MORNING WALK. Naturalist-led, rain or shine. Wed Beechwood Farms, Fox Chapel. 412-963-6100.
OTHER STUFF THU 13
CHINESE CONVERSATION CLUB. Second Thu of every month, 6-7 p.m. and Fourth Thu of every month Carnegie Library, Oakland. CHRISTMAS BIRD 412-622-3116. COUNT. Free, www. per pa CITY DHARMA. informal birding sespghcitym .co Soto Zen Meditation. sion. jenningssp@pa.gov jisen@deepspringzen.org 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Jennings Thu, 6:30-8:15 p.m. Environmental Center, Church of the Redeemer, Slippery Rock. 724-794-6011. Squirrel Hill. STEP INTO SNOWSHOES. HOLIDAY WINE DINNER. Snowshoeing/skiing every Presented by Dreadnought Sat. w/ at least 4” of snow Wines. 6 p.m. Omni on the ground. Call Friday William Penn, Downtown. to confirm. Sat. Thru March 30 412-391-1709. Jennings Environmental INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S Center, Slippery Rock. ASSOCIATION OF PITTSBURGH. 724-794-6011. Social, cultural club of American/ international women. Thu First Baptist Church, Oakland. iwap. OWL PROWL. 7 p.m. pittsburgh@gmail.com. Jennings Environmental LAUGHTER CLUB. Holiday Center, Slippery Rock. edition. 10 a.m. Peters 724-794-6011.
SAT 15
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
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Township Public Library, Peters. 724-941-9430. MEDITATION & WHOLE LIFE TRANSFORMATION. Supreme Meditation & the Science of Transformation w/ Acharya Kedar. Free public program. Doors open at 7:15, seating ends at 8 p.m. 7:30 p.m. and Thu., Dec. 20, 7:30 p.m. Winchester Thurston, Upper School, Shadyside. 724-420-5826. MEET ‘N MAKE. Open crafting night. Second Thu of every month, 6-8 p.m. Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse, Homewood. 412-473-0100. PFLAG BUTLER. Support, education & advocacy for the LGBTQ community, family & friends. Second Thu of every month, 7 p.m. Covenant Presbyterian Church, Butler. 412-518-1515. RENAISSANCE DANCE GUILD. Learn a variety of dances from the 15-17th centuries. Porter Hall, Room A18A. Thu, 8 p.m. Carnegie Mellon University, Oakland. 412-567-7512. THINKING BIG: INTERDISCIPLINARY SUSTAINABILITY LEARNING. Speaker: David Sobel. Inspire Speakers Series. 5:30-8:30 p.m. Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Garden, Oakland. 412-622-6914. WEEKLY WELLNESS CIRCLE. Group acupuncture & guided meditation for stress-relief. Thu DeMasi Wellness, Aspinwall. 412-927-4768. WEST COAST SWING. Swing dance lessons for all levels. Thu, 7 p.m. Pittsburgh Dance Center, Bloomfield. 412-681-0111. WHAT IS ZAZEN?: CONVERSATIONS W/ REV. DAISHIN MCCABE. Buddhist conversation, meditation, more. jisen@deepspringzen.org. 6:30-8:30 p.m. Church of the Redeemer, Squirrel Hill.
FRI 14
ART ON TAP 5.2.7. Happy hour, live music, scavenger hunts, more. Second Fri of every month, 5-7 p.m. Thru Feb. 8 Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg. 724-837-1500. CALVIN SINGLES DANCE. Second Fri of every month, 7-11 p.m. Calvin Presbyterian Church, Zelienople. 724-452-7560. FIT TO PRINT: FOX MOVIETONE NEWSREELS FROM THE SILVER SCREEN. 35mm newsreels from headlines past. 8 p.m. Andy Warhol Museum, North Side. 412-237-8300. LUBE IDOL. American Idol-style singing contest. Fri, 10 p.m. Thru Jan. 18 Quaker Steak & Lube, Cranberry. 724-778-9464. NINA BARBUTO. Creative-
Kayleen and Doug meet as accident-prone 8-year-olds, in the nurse’s office — and over the next 30 years, proceed to run into each other, tellingly, at places like the ER and a funeral parlor. Off the Wall Productions presents the 2009 play Gruesome Playground Injuries. It’s the first area production of a work by Rajiv Joseph, the fast-rising young playwright who was a Pulitzer finalist for 2009’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Erika Cuenca and Tony Bingham (pictured) play Kayleen and Doug. The drama, directed by Maggie Balsley, opens Fri., Dec. 14. Show continues through Dec. 29. 25 W. Main St., Carnegie. $5-35. 888-718-4253 or www.insideoffthewall.org
Mornings breakfast lecture series. 8:30 a.m. Andy Warhol Museum, North Side. 412-237-8300. PUBLIC ART WALKING TOUR. Union Trust Building Lobby, Downtown. 12 p.m. 412-391-2060 x 237.
SAT 15
KOREAN FOR BEGINNERS. Korean grammar & basic conversation. Sat, 1 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. KOREAN II. For those who already have a basic understanding of Korean & are interested in increasing proficiency. Sat Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. OBVIOUS PRESENTS BUKU + ART + FASHION W/ CLAUDE VONSTROKE. 7 p.m. Mr. Smalls Theater, Millvale. 866-468-3401. SATURDAY NIGHT SALSA CRAZE. Free lessons, followed by dancing. Sat, 10 p.m. La Cucina Flegrea, Downtown. 412-708-8844. SCOTTISH COUNTRY DANCING. Lessons 7-8 p.m., social dancing follows. No partner needed. Mon, 7 p.m. and Sat, 7 p.m. Grace Episcopal Church, Mt. Washington. 412-683-5670.
SPANISH CONVERSATION GROUP. Friendly, informal. Union Project cafe. Sat, 3:30-5:30 p.m. Union Project, Highland Park. 412-362-6108. SWING CITY. Learn & practice swing dancing skills. Sat, 8 p.m. Wightman School, Squirrel Hill. 412-759-1569. VOICES: GALLERY TALK: ANN ROSENTHAL. Part of the Deborah Kass: Before & Happily Ever After exhibit. 2-3 p.m. Andy Warhol Museum, North Side. 412-237-8300.
SUN 16
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CAFE. Weekly letter writing event. Sun, 4-6 p.m. Panera Bread, Oakland. 412-683-3727. ARABIC FOR BEGINNERS. Second and Third Sun of every month Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. BRUNCH IN BLOOM. Seasonal & sustainably-grown brunch. Call for reservation. 11 a.m. & 1 p.m. Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Garden, Oakland. 412-622-6914. IN INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM. w/ Jane Dudley, Pittsburgh Theosophical Society. 1:30-3 p.m.
Chatham University, Shadyside. 412-462-4200. PFLAG GREENSBURG. Support, education & advocacy for the LGBTQ community, family & friends. Third Sun of every month, 2 p.m. Trinity United Church of Christ, Greensburg. 412-518-1515. PITTSBURGH REPTILE SHOW & SALE. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Futules’ Harmar House, Cheswick. 724-516-0441.
MON 17
SCOTTISH COUNTRY DANCING. Lessons 7-8 p.m., social dancing follows. No partner needed. Mon, 7 p.m. and Sat, 7 p.m. Grace Episcopal Church, Mt. Washington. 412-683-5670. SPELLING BEE WITH DAVE AND KUMAR. Mon Lava Lounge, South Side. 412-431-5282.
TUE 18
ANTIQUE APPRAISALS. w/ John Mickinack. Third Tue of every month. Thru Dec. 18 West Overton Museums, Scottdale. 724-887-7910.
WED 19
COMPETITIVE SCRABBLE. Seeking new players, no experience necessary. Wednesdays, Squirrel Hill. 412-422-7878. LET’S SPEAK ENGLISH! Practice conversational English. Wed, 5 p.m. Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. PGH VINYL CON HOLIDAY HAPPY HOUR. Vinyl vendors, open turntables, gift wrapping, more. 6 p.m. Brillobox, Bloomfield. 412-621-4900. THE PITTSBURGH SHOW OFFS. A meeting of jugglers & spinners. All levels welcome. Wed, 7:30 p.m. Union Project, Highland Park. 412-363-4550. SPANISH II. Geared toward those who already have a basic understanding of Spanish & are interested in increasing proficiency. First and Third Wed of every month Carnegie Library, Oakland. 412-622-3151. WEST COAST SWING WEDNESDAYS. Swing dance lessons. Wed, 9 p.m. The Library, South Side. 916-287-1373.
AUDITIONS ATL-NYC PRODUCTIONS. Auditions for new TV show, I Want To Be Discovered. Log onto www.iwant2b discoveredonline.com & post video of group or individual talent. 3 minutes max. DISCOVER ME! Looking for actors (men only), between the ages of 18-30 for auditions. Call Robert for further details. 412-904-2954. LATSHAW PRODUCTIONS. Auditions for fall & Christmas traveling orchestra shows.
N E W S
Ongoing. Male/female singers & dancers. 412-728-2193. MCCAFFERY MYSTERIES. Ongoing auditions for actors ages 18+ for murder mystery shows performed in the Pittsburgh area. 412-833-5056. MCKEESPORT LITTLE THEATER. Auditions for Lend Me A Tenor. Dec. 17, 19. Cold readings, ages 20+. McKeesport. 412-673-1100.
from Western PA, aged 30+, who have published at least one full-length book of poetry, fiction, or non-fiction, to submit applications for a residency in Brussels, Belgium. More information at http://www.cityofasylum pittsburgh.org/. DIGITAL FILM COMPETITION. Competition for middle and high school students on
[VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY]
FIRST TRINITY HOMELESS MINISTRY
Each Sunday afternoon, volunteers with First Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church’s Homeless Ministry head to the Oakland area to hand out homemade lunches and personally connect with people who are homeless or marginally housed. Interested in joining in? Contact FTHMdirector@gmail.com or visit www.firsttrinity.net for information. Volunteers must be 18 or older.
NEW CASTLE PLAYHOUSE. Auditions for 9 to 5 The Musical. Jan. 14-15. Men/women age 18+, 2-min. selection showing vocal range, bring sheet music. New Castle. 724-654-3437. THE RAGE OF THE STAGE PLAYERS. Auditions for “Winnie-the-Pooh & The Seven Deadly Sins. Worldpremiere of the racy, adult comedy! Must be 18+. Email rageofthestage@yahoo.com w/ questions & submission. More info at www.facebook.com/ rageofthestage. 724-292-8427. THE TALENT GROUP. Open casting for models and actors 1st Monday of every month. 11:45 AM, 5:45 PM. 412-471-8011. THE THEATRE FACTORY. Auditions for “Moon Over Buffalo,” by Ken Ludwig. Dec. 15. 4 men (20’s-50’s) & 4 women (20’s-’60’s). Prepare a 2 min. comic monologue; Cold readings; Equity & Non-Equity. Call for appointment. Trafford. 724-454-7193. UNDERCROFT OPERA. Auditions for Carmen, Norma & 2014 operas. Dec. 14-17. All voice parts. https://www. undercroftopera.org/secure/forms/ opera_audition_request.php 412-422-7919. UNSEAM’D SHAKESPEARE COMPANY. Filling positions for 20th Anniversary Season. Accepting resumés from stage managers, costumers, prop masters, lighting designers & set designers. Volunteers are also needed. Not seeking actors at this time. Please send resumes & inquiries to unseamdshakes@gmail.com.
SUBMISSIONS CITY OF ASYLUM/ PITTSBURGH. Seeking writers
+
TA S T E
+
the impact of STEM (science, technology, engineering & math) in their lives. Presented in partnership with Pittsburgh Filmmakers. Visit www.scitechfestival.org/film for information. GALLERY FLYNN. Seeking work by film & visual artists to display in new gallery. McKees Rocks. 412-969-2990. INDEPENDENT FILM NIGHT. Submit your film, 10 minutes or less. Screenings held on the second Thursday of every month. DV8 Espresso Bar & Gallery, Greensburg. 724-219-0804. MCKEES ROCKS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION. Seeking qualified architect for design of the renovated facade & building exterior of the historic Roxian Theatre. For more information, email office_admin@mckeesrocks.com. 412-331-9901. NEW SLANG LITERARY MAGAZINE FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS IN PITTSBURGH. Literary magazine supported by The Women and Girls Foundation. Taking submissions of creative writing, visual art, photographs, and essays from women and girls of all ages. www.new-slang.org PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST. Seeking artists to design & develop functional bicycle racks to be located in various locations within the Cultural District. For design requirements & other information: http://trustarts.org/ visualarts/bike 412-471-6070. PITTSBURGH PUBLIC MARKET. Seeking artists to donate & exhibit pieces for a fundraising auction benefiting
M U S I C
+
Jeremiah’s Place. Strip District. 412-661-1391. THE POET BAND COMPANY. Seeking various types of poetry. Contact wewuvpoetry@ hotmail.com REGENERATIONS. Seeking local artists, environmentalists, historians & other interested parties for Homewood & Allegheny cemeteries tree reclamation-art project. Email kennthomas2@gmail.com for information. Thru SAINT VINCENT COLLEGE’S CENTER FOR POLITICAL & ECONOMIC THOUGHT. Seeking submissions to the Douglas B. Rogers Conditions of a Free Society Essay Competition. Open to fulltime undergrad students in any field at any 4-year college or university in the US or Canada. Visit www.stvincent.edu/cpet/ for information. SILVER EYE CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY. Seeking submissions for Fellowship 13. Submit a 1-page Artist’s Statement in PDF format, a biography or CV in PDF format, & your work sample to silvereye. slideroom.com Email jzipay@ silvereye.org for information. South Side. 412-431-1810.
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53
Cri cket ge Loun XXX-Mas Party Saturday December 22 Food, fun & freebies
Savage Love {BY DAN SAVAGE}
At a dinner party, a straight man put a question to my boyfriend and me. He assumed that we, being gay men, would have an answer. We did not. So what happens to one if one has to fart while one is wearing a butt plug? GAYS ARE SIMPLY STUMPED, YES AND SINCERELY SO
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If one is wearing a butt plug (“wear: to carry or to have on the body or about the person as a covering, ornament or the like”), GASSYASS, then one may pass gas, as one is wont to do, because a butt plug worn as a hat or a brooch or an epaulet presents no impediment. But if one has fully inserted the bulbous end of the butt plug into one’s rectal cavity, and one’s sphincter muscles are gripping the neck of the butt plug, as they are wont to do, thereby ensuring that the bulbous end remains lodged in the rectal cavity while the flared base remains outside, what would then happen if one attempted to pass gas? The force of the gas would either dislodge one’s butt plug, sending it flying across one’s room, or, if one’s butt plug failed to dislodge, cause one to simply explode.
s alway ou’ve r. y e s p s a e s in ty P u i b C e n i h t e r ti s e Star t 42 & adv d e t n wa 6-33 lts.
1 esu 412-3 We get r
54
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
As I was reading the letters in the last Savage Love, it occurred to me that the debate over polyamory as a “sexual orientation” is primarily one of definitions. Some folks who are poly see that as just as “core” to their nature as their gender preference. Therefore, I propose the following framework. We all have a sexual identity composed of four components: 1. Our gender identity ranging from cis to trans. 2. Our sexual orientation ranging from homo to hetero. 3. Our sexual exclusivity ranging from purely monogamous to purely polyamorous. 4. Our sexual interest ranging from asexual to highly sexual. In my view, these four components are things that we are rather than things that we choose. While it is possible to choose a lifestyle that deviates from one’s sexual identity, doing so entails stress, cognitive dissonance and some degree of self-loathing. Like all conceptual frameworks, this one is not necessarily complete. It fails to include sexual interest in animals, particular age groups, or any of several hundred kinks, all of which seem to be more identity than choice. That said, I do think there is something universally applicable in the four-component scheme.
EACH OF US IS FREE TO IDENTIFY HOWEVER WE WISH, AND TO APPLY THE LABELS “IDENTITY” AND/OR “ORIENTATION” HOWEVER WE PLEASE.
A friend who is an emergency-room physician told me about removing something — I can’t remember what — from a gentleman’s ass. My immediate response was to ask whether he had the flared-base talk with the gentleman. His response? “What are you talking about?” I explained that if the gentleman had used a butt toy with a flared base, he wouldn’t have been in the circumstances that brought him to the hospital. My partner is a physician and has treated patients with anal “encumbrances.” He gives the flared-base advice to anyone who seems like they might benefit from it — but he tells me this isn’t something they go over in med school. You should use your column to bring this to the attention of medical-school administrators. CONSCIENCE CLEARED
ROLL THE DICE
just the first guy — perhaps the first person — that you couldn’t get hard with. Let me guess: This has never happened to you before. Of course it hasn’t — you’re 19. But it happens to every guy sooner or later, and you’re much likelier to attach some deeper meaning to it the first time it happens. Don’t waste your time. Sometimes a soft dick is just a soft dick. If it keeps happening, you may have a problem. But if you obsess about an isolated incident — perhaps brought on by nerves (you liked this guy, right?) — you run the risk of creating a problem.
I am sharing your letter in the hopes that doctors all over the world incorporate your advice into their practice. If they don’t, well, then we will just have to conclude that flared-base advice isn’t given to patients because doctors secretly enjoy digging various foreign objects out of the variable rectums of various gentlemen. I’m a 19-year-old bisexual male. I’ve been in a relationship with a girl who has a low sex drive, so we are in an open relationship and I occasionally have sex with guys. I really liked the last guy I got with and enjoyed having sex with him a lot. The problem was, I couldn’t get hard. Is the problem that I’m still trying to figure out who I am and what I want? Or could it be guilt, even though my girlfriend is OK with it? BISEXUALLY ORIENTED NERVOUSLY EXPERIENCING REVERSAL
You say you “occasionally have sex with guys,” BONER, which means this guy isn’t your first. He’s
JUST MY THOUGHTS
I like your model, but at a certain point, debates about sexual identity, gender identity, sexual orientation and sexual interest take on the flavor of those how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-headof-a-pin debates that obsessed theologians in the Middle Ages. For the record: Each of us is free to identify however we wish, and to apply the labels “identity” and/or “orientation” however we please. If a particular person isn’t trying to take anything away from you, then the fact that the person holds slightly differing views on identity or orientation isn’t an enormous deal, is it? And, in my opinion, those who spend time debating, classifying, and unpacking sex and identity run a very real risk of disappearing up their own ass in a puff of santorum. Which is my way of saying … No, I won’t be giving a column over to letters from buttsore people who feel that D/s is their sexual orientation, despite the fact that last week I suggested that, from my point of view, D/s is a sexual identity, not an orientation, and I gave a column to angry poly folks so it’s only fair and blah blah blah.
SEND IN YOUR QUESTIONS TO MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET AND FIND THE SAVAGE LOVECAST (DAN’S WEEKLY PODCAST) AT THESTRANGER.COM/SAVAGE
Ink Well
EASTERN BOWL GAME
{BY BEN TAUSIG}
ACROSS
1. Bohemian, e.g. 5. Popped (out) 10. Result of ruminating 14. Either brother in a Nickelodeon show 15. Belgian book 16. ___ contendere 17. Netbook name 18. Duck, as the Feds 19. Fleetwood Mac’s “cocaine opus” 20. “What’s up with ___?” 21. Racism’s cousin 23. “Closing Time” band 25. Phillie Chase on Sports Illustrated’s “MLB All-Decade Team” 26. Fritz Lang’s lang. 27. ROFL alternative 28. Mustard with white wine 31. Film in which Joe Pesci does not curse 36. Label for Alicia Keys 37. Small taste or, pronounced aloud, a hint to this puzzle’s theme 39. Eating sound 40. 747s, e.g. 42. Fires from Washington 44. Course averages? 45. Emperor Qinshihuang’s dynasty 46. “Business is fun” company
56
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
48. Jon Stewart or Mark Twain 54. Bee locale 56. Modifiable site 57. “Lord of the Rings” weapon 58. Break point, in tennis 59. Leakes of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” 60. Transnational highway built by Ike 61. Frau in a really dark Brothers Grimm story 62. Paul Krugman’s subj. 63. Some UPS deliveries 64. Carried, as a gun 65. Morning moistures
DOWN
1. Certain sibling interactions 2. Bebè’s treat 3. Group that included Mr. T as “Bad Attitude” Baracus 4. Hitchcock film that ends with a nun saying “God, have mercy” 5. Biceps, e.g. 6. Jazz (up) 7. Russian prince known as “Moneybag” 8. Colleague of Nurse Jackie, casually 9. Profound
10. All told 11. Pirate’s coins 12. Smiling cow of advertising 13. Fine 22. Like many “Star Trek” races 24. Perceptions 27. Astrological diva 28. Winner of the 1976 ABA Slam Dunk contest 29. Post-op place 30. Mobbed 31. One of fifty shades of grey, say? 32. ___ out (stop subscribing) 33. XXL article subjects 34. Sarcastic ‘90s negation 35. Big name in
outdoor equipment, for short 38. Brunch special drinks 41. Pine plains 43. Like the moon, in real estate terms 45. Gave, as an estimate 46. Jelly dish 47. “Space Invaders” maker 48. Class presidential nominee in “Napoleon Dynamite” 49. Afghan protrusion 50. Piano student’s practice 51. Jenna, to Jeb 52. “Amirite?” 53. Manners 55. Bart and Lisa’s creator {LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS}
Free Will Astrology
FOR THE WEEK OF
12.12-12.19
{BY ROB BREZSNY}
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): venturous and experimental. He didn’t invent abstract painting, but he
Maybe their example could inspire you, Cancerian. Is there any pest you could develop a more playful and festive relationship with? Could you possibly turn into the equivalent of a Fire Ant Whisperer?
was instrumental in popularizing it. And yet in his early years he was a
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
For the last six decades of his life, Pablo Picasso created art that was ad-
master of realism, and had an impressive ability to capture the nuances of human anatomy. Commenting on Picasso’s evolution, travel writer Rick Steves says that when he was young, “he learned the rules he would later so skillfully break.” I suspect you’re in a phase of your own development when you could profit from doing the same thing. So I ask you, Sagittarius: What are the rules that are so ripe for you to bend and twist as you graduate to a more mature level of self-expression?
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Through some cosmic intervention, a sad or bad or mad story will get tweaked prior to the final turn of the plot. Just as you’re getting ready to nurse your regrets, an X-factor or wild card will appear, transforming the meaning of a series of puzzling events. This may not generate a perfectly happy ending, but it will at least result in an interesting and redemptive climax. What is the precise nature of that X-factor or wild card? Perhaps a big secret will be revealed or some missing evidence will arrive or a mental block will crumble. And it’s likely that you will have an epiphany abut how valuable your problem has actually been.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
Be honest. Have you had any of the following symptoms? (1) Lack of interest in trivial matters and a yearning for big, holy mysteries. (2) Unfamiliar but interesting impulses rising up in you and demanding consideration. (3) Fresh insights into people and situations you’ve known a long time. (4) An altered sense of the flow of time. (5) Out-of-the-blue recall of long-forgotten memories. If you haven’t experienced any of the above, Aquarius, I must be totally off in my analysis and this horoscope isn’t for you. But if you’ve had even two of these symptoms, you are on schedule to get what those of us in the consciousness industry call a “religious experience.”
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
You just might be able to teach a statue to talk this week — or at least coax a useful message out of a stone-like person. You could also probably extract a delicious clue from out of the darkness or wrangle a tricky blessing from an adversary or find a small treasure hidden in a big mess. In short, Pisces, you now have a knack for accessing beauty and truth in unexpected sources. You can see what everyone else is blind to and love what everyone else has given up on. You’re practically a superhero. Use your powers wisely, my friend. Be benevolently unpredictable.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Can you manage to be both highly alert and deeply relaxed? Could you be wildly curious and yet also serenely reflective? Can you imagine
yourself being extra hungry to crack life’s secrets but also at peace with your destiny exactly the way it is? If you can honestly answer yes to those questions, you’ll get a lot of help in the coming week. The universe may even seem to be conspiring to educate you and heal you. You will receive a steady flow of clues about how to get closer to living your dreams.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
In the coming week, you would be wise to deal with your vulnerability, your fallibility and your own personal share of the world’s darkness. If you refuse to do that, either out of laziness or fear, I’m worried that you will reinforce a status quo that needs to be overthrown. You may end up rationalizing your mistakes, clinging to false pride, and running away from challenges that could make you smarter and stronger. Don’t do that, Taurus! Be brave. Be willing to see what’s difficult to see. There will be big rewards if you choose to explore the weaker and less mature parts of your personality.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
In the 1968 Olympics, Bob Beamon broke the world record for the long jump. His leap was so far beyond the previous mark that the optical device designed to calculate it didn’t work. Officials had to resort to an old-fashioned measuring tape. After that, the word “Beamonesque” came to signify a feat that vastly outstripped all previous efforts. According to my analysis, you Geminis will have an excellent chance to be Beamonesque in 2013. I expect that you will at least surpass your own peak levels of accomplishment. If you have not yet launched your ascent, get started now.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
The fire ants that invaded the southern U.S. back in the 1930s are an annoyance. They swarm and bite and sting. The venom they inject makes their victims feel like they’ve been burned. Two communities have decided to make the best of the situation. Auburn, Ga., and Marshall, Texas, both stage annual Fire Ant Festivals, with events like the Fire Ant Call, the Fire Ant Round-Up and the Fire Ant Chili Cook-Off. (To win the latter, your dish must contain at least one fire ant.)
APPOINTMENTS AVAILABLE
While reading William Kittredge’s book The Nature of Generosity, I learned about the oldest known sentence written in ancient Greek. It was inscribed on a wine jug that dates back to 740 B.C. Translated into English, it says, “Who now of all dancers sports most playfully?” Another possible translation is “Which of these dancers plays most delicately?” I’d love to make something like that be your mantra in the coming week, Leo. The time is right for you to do more dancing and playing and sporting than usual — and to seek out companions who’d like to help you achieve record-breaking levels of those recreational activities.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a man who gets trapped in a time loop. Over and over again, he experiences the same 24 hours. When he wakes up each morning, it’s still Feb. 2. At first it drives him crazy, pushing him to the verge of suicide. But eventually he decides to use his time wisely. He becomes a skilled pianist and a fluent French-speaker. He does good deeds and saves people’s lives. He even learns what he needs to do to win the heart of the woman he desires. This transformation turns out to be the key to gaining his freedom. N ear the end of the film, he escapes to Feb. 3. A comparable opportunity is looming for you, Virgo. You have a chance to break a spell you’ve been under or slip away from a rut you’ve been in. Generosity may play a major role.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Events in the immediate future may have resemblances to reading a boring book that’s packed with highly useful information. You might feel that there’s a disjunction between the critical clues you need to gather and the ho-hum style in which they are offered. It’s OK to be a bit disgruntled by this problem as long as you promise to remain alert for the partially disguised goodies. Don’t fall asleep in the middle of the unspectacular lesson.
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NOW HIRING Part Time Counselors for Afternoon/Evening Hours jobs@freedomtreatment.com • MOST INSURANCES ACCEPTED UPMC4U/GATEWAY/HIGHMARK/UPMC • NOW ACCEPTING ALLEGHENY COUNTY MEDICAL ASSISTANCE PATIENTS CLOSE TO SOUTH HILLS, WASHINGTON, CANONSBURG, CARNEGIE, AND BRIDGEVILLE
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SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
“Instinct tells us that sharks are more deadly than delicious fatty foods,” writes Jason Daley in Discover magazine. But “instinct is wrong,” he adds. In fact, eating food that tastes good but is actually bad for us is a far greater threat than shark bites. That’s just one example of how our uneducated urges can sometimes lead us astray. I invite you to keep this possibility in mind during the coming week, Scorpio. It’s by no means certain that you will be misled by your natural inclinations, but it is crucial that you monitor them with acute discernment.
DELIGHT
In the astrological worldview, this week is the last gasp of the yearly cycle. A good way to celebrate is to bid farewell to outworn approaches and lost causes. Tell me if you do. Freewillastrology.com
Pittsburgh’s only Peanut Butter Burger!
GO TO REALASTROLOGY.COM TO CHECK OUT ROB BREZSNY’S EXPANDED WEEKLY AUDIO HOROSCOPES AND DAILY TEXT-MESSAGE HOROSCOPES. THE AUDIO HOROSCOPES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE BY PHONE AT 1-877-873-4888 OR 1-900-950-7700
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FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO PLACE A CLASSIFIEDS ADVERTISEMENT, CALL 412.316.3342 EXT. 189
WORK 58 + STUDIES 59 + WELLNESS 60 + LIVE 62 + SERVICES 62
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WANTED Pittsburgh City Paper needs friendly drivers to work (early morning hours) to distribute the paper in the Downtown Pittsburgh area. Interested candidates must have a clean DMV history and current proof of insurance. Regular lifting of up to 50 lbs is required. Heavy, bulk retail delivery to CP sites weekly.
Must have a full-size truck/van. CONTACT >> 412.316.3342 x173 JIM for an application
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Do you have 2 or more years of sales experience? Are you creative, relentless and driven to succeed?
If the answer to the above questions is YES, City Paper might be your new home. We are currently looking for outside sales representatives to join our advertising team. Send your resume and cover letter to jbrock@steelcitymedia.com NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE!
EOE
DISCLAIMER: ALTHOUGH MOST ADVERTISING IN PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER ARE LEGITIMATE BUSINESSES, PRIOR TO INVESTING MONEY OR USING A SERVICE LOCATED WITHIN ANY SECTION OF THE CLASSIFIEDS WE SUGGEST THE FOLLOWING PROCEDURE: ASK FOR REFERENCES & BUSINESS LICENSE NUMBER, OR CALL/WRITE: THE BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU AT 412-456-2700 / 300 SIXTH AVE., STE 100-UL / PITTSBURGH, PA 15222. REMEMBER: IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT USUALLY IS! 58
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
STUDIES CLINICAL STUDIES
CLINICAL STUDIES
NAMASTE! Find a healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit with one of our massage therapists, yoga, or spa businesses!
We are looking for persons in general good health, and on no prescription or illicit drugs to participate in our paid out-patient studies. Please call our Recruiting Department today at 1-800-5860365
Blood Pressure and
The Brain Research study with one MRI and two interview sessions seeks healthy adults ages 35-60. Cannot have low blood pressure, hypertension, heart disease, or diabetes. $150 compensation. Will be invited to repeat study in 2 years with additional compensation. Contact Kim Novak 412-246-6200 novakkj@upmc.edu
Find your next place to “WORK” in City Paper!
CLINICAL STUDIES
CLINICAL STUDIES
OVEREATING AND OVERWEIGHT?
VAGINAL DRYNESS?
CALL TODAY!
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412.363.1900 CTRS
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DIABETES? CONSTIPATION? CALL TODAY!
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IBS? Call Preferred Primary Care Physicians at
412-650-6155
Our board-certified physicians have been conducting clinical trials to advance primary care practice and the health of patients since 2003. We are currently enrolling for clinical trials in the following areas: • Asthma • COPD • Migraine • Diabetes • Cardiovascular • High cholesterol • IBS with diarrhea
HIGH CHOLESTEROL? Call Preferred Primary Care Physicians at
412-650-6155
412-650-6155
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The first hit is free. Actually, so are all the others. N E W S
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Addiction & Recovery Health Services
WELLNESS
SUBOXONE TREATMENT Caring Help for Opiate Addiction • Experienced, caring therapy and medical staff. • Private, professional setting. • Downtown office near public transportation and parking. • Medication by prescription coverage or self-pay. Immediate Openings for Self-Paying Clients!
412.246.8965, ext. 9
COUNSELING
MIND & BODY
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Sneakers not meant to be in the box. New Balance Pittsburgh. Oakland & Waterfront. www.lifestyleshoe.com
SELF-ESTEEM WORKSHOPS 412-400-7159 selfesteemworkshops.com ;;;;;;;;;;;;
MIND & BODY
Mingkun Massage DEEP TISSUE MASSAGE • $40 per 60 min massage • 2hr free valet parking at the Concourse with the purchase of a 60 or 90 min massage
Wellness Center
Includes Med Management & Therapy LOCATIONS IN: Oakland, PA Downtown Pgh, PA Bridgeville, PA West View, PA Butler, PA
Family Owned and Operated Treating: Alcohol, Opiates, Heroin and More
125 W. Station Square Dr. Station Sq. Freight Shops minkunmassage.com
Chinese So Relax Massage
• SUBOXONE
• NOW Treating Pregnant Women
NO WAIT LIST Accepts all major insurances and medical assistance
IMMEDIATE OPENINGS
STAR Superior Chinese Massage Free Table Shower w/60min Open 10-10 Daily
1310 E. Carson St. 412-488-3951
China Massage $50/HR Free Table Shower 1788 Golden Mile Hwy Monroeville, PA 15146 Call for more information
724-519-7896
Find your next place to “LIVE” in City Paper! THERAPEUTIC MASSAGE FOR MEN
Sports, Swedish, Shiatsu. $50/Hour Northside Location Near Heinz Field Call Rick: 412-512-6716 www.pittsburghbodyworks.com
massage Therapy
BAD BACK OR NECK PAIN?
Trigger point Deep tissue Swedish Reflexology BLOOMFIELD 412.683.2328
Chinese Tuina Massage Walk-Ins Welcome 412-561-1104 3225 W. Liberty Ave. • Dormont
GRAND OPENING
CHINESE MASSAGE
Aming’s Massage Therapy
412-308-5540 412-548-3710
TWO LOCATIONS 1190 Washington Pike, Bridgeville
3348 Babcock Blvd. Pittsburgh
412-319-7530
(across from Eat n’ Park)
4972 Library Road, Bethel Park (in Hillcrest Shopping Center)
Professional Massage Therapists
a new once a month injection for alcohol and opiate dependency
Find your next place to “WORK” in City Paper!
MIND & BODY
WELLNESS CENTER
South Side
• VIVITROL -
• Group and Individualized Therapy
Xie LiHong’s
PH. 412.389.8637
We treat: ~ Opiate Addiction ~ Heroin Addiction ~ And Other Drug Addiction
Premiere Outpatient Drug and Alcohol Treatment
412-595-8077 Zhangs Wellness Center
$10 Off Massage Before Noon!
412-401-4110 $40/hr
Water table and hot oil massages, body scrubs, and 10 different types of massages! Best Chinese Massage Open 7 days a week 9:30am til 2am 2508 E. Carson St.
DOWNTOWN 322 Fourth Ave.
412-677-6080 412-918-1281
(1st Floor)
Phoenix Spa New Young Professional Free Table Shower w/60 min. Open 10-10 Daily 4309 Butler Street (Lawrenceville)
Walk in or Call
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Find your next place to “WORK” in City Paper!
JADE
Advertise your GOODS in City Paper and reach over 300,000 readers per month. Now that’s SERVICE!
MIND & BODY
412-621-3300
Therapeutic Massage Therapy Relief is just a call away. Our licensed professional staff can assist with Fibromyalgia, Circulation, Low Back Pain, Muscle Spasms. Shadyside Location
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www.ThereToHelp.org We Accept: - UPMC for You - Gateway - United Health - And Many Others 60
WE have been there WE know your pain Don’t Wait Any Longer! MONROEVILLE, PA
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
Suboxone Services Pittsburgh- 412-281-1521 Beaver- 724-448-9116
Xin Sui Bodyworks
TIGER SPA
Grand Opening
GRAND OPENING!!! Best of the Best in Town! 420 W. Market St. 76 West, 11 North, 82 West to Market St. 6 lights and make a left. 1/4 mile on the left hand side. Open 9am-12 midnight 7 days a week!
$49.99/ hour Free Vichy Shower with 1HR or more body work (Body shower and Body Scrub) Essential Oil used at no extra charge
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Licensed Professionals Dry Sauna, Table Shower, Deep Tissue, Swedish
2539 Monroeville Blvd Ste 200 Monroeville, Pa 15146 Next to Twin Fountain Plaza 412-335-6111
330-373-0303 Credit Cards Accepted
GRAND OPENING!
Judy’s Oriental Massage Appointments & Walk-ins are both welcome 10am to 10pm
FULL BODY MASSAGE $40/hr Now with Vichy Shower
@PGHCityPaper
4125 William Penn Hwy, Murrysville, PA 15668 Across the street from Howard Hanna’s
724-519-2950
412.316.3342
Accepting All Major Cards
Get Your YOGA On!
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LIVE MOVING SERVICES ABC SELF STORAGE5x10 $45, 10x10 $65, 10x15 $95. (2) locations Mckees Rocks & South Side. 412-403-6069
ROOMMATES ALL AREAS - ROOMMATES.COM. Browse hundreds of online listings with photos and maps. Find your roommate with a click of the mouse! Visit: http:// www.Roommates.com. (AAN CAN)
REAL ESTATE SERVICES 20 ACRES FREE. Buy 40Get 60 acres. $0-Down, $168/month. Money back gaurentee. NO CREDIT CHECKS. Beautiful views. Roads/ surveyed. Near El Paso, Texas. 1-800-843-7537 www.SunsetRanches. com
SOUTH FOR RENT Brookline Clean 2nd Fl dplx, 2BR, kitch, LR, DR, Laud,$705 +util,412-833-3803 Find your next place to “WORK” in City Paper!
HOUSES FOR RENT MUST SEE!!! 3 BR house, closets, fenced yard, appl, eq. kit, central heat & a/c, $700+utils. 5 minutes from Southside and Waterfront shopping. Call after 7pm 412-421-8559 Place your Classified advertisment in City Paper. Call 412.316.3342 Sq. Hill- Spac. 2 stry, 3BR, 2BA, office/den, PRIME LOCATION! Newer fully eq e-i-k, basement, lndry, lg rear yrd, no pets. $1,550+g&e 412-521-5920
EAST FOR RENT
FOR SALE
Sq. Hill- Spac. 2 stry Apt, 3BR, 2BA, office/ den, PRIME LOCATION! Newer fully eq e-i-k, basement, lndry, lg rear yrd, no pets. $1,550+g&e 412-521-5920
Amazing Church Condo Conversion All new, 2 bed, 1.5 bath condo, last one left. MLS 940789 $90,000 2105 Hazeltine Way, Swissvale More information at www.monvalleyhome. com Christa Ross, RE/MAX Select Realty 724-933-6300 x214
Advertise your GOODS in City Paper and reach over 300,000 readers per month. Now that’s SERVICE!
Call 412.316.3342 to advertise in City Paper. Find your next place to “WORK” in City Paper!
Amazing Church Condo Conversion All new, 2 bed, 1.5 bath condo, last one left. MLS 940789 $90,000 2105 Hazeltine Way, Swissvale More information at www. monvalleyhome.com Christa Ross, RE/MAX Select Realty 724-933-6300 x214
3 Bedroom Apartments with newer everything! Includes appliances, some w/hook-ups, central heat & air Includes appliances Washer/dryer hook-ups Apply: 2320 East Hills Dr. 412-243-8400 Equal Housing Opportunity
SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENTS
REHEARSAL
Become a friend of Gordon Shoes on Facebook for your chance to win great prizes and merchandise! Facebook.com/GordonShoes
Rehearsal Space starting @ $150/mo Many sizes available, no sec deposit, play @ the original and largest practice facility, 24/7 access, 412-403-6069
CASH FOR CARS: Any Car/Truck. Running or Not! Top Dollar Paid. We Come To You! Call For Instant Offer: 1-888-420-3808 www. cash4car.com (AAN CAN) REACH 5 MILLION hip, forward-thinking consumers across the U.S. When you advertise in alternative newspapers, you become part of the local scene and gain access to an audience you won’t reach anywhere else. http:// altweeklies.com/ads
GENERAL FOR SALE STEEL BUILDINGS: 6 only 20x20, 25x30, 30x38, 40x54, 45x74, 60x140 Must Move Now! Selling for Balance Owed! Still Crated/Free Delivery! 1-800-211-9593x30
HAULING
Manning, S.C. New townhomes on Golf Course, all brick 2 bdr 21/2 bath, all appliances including washer & dryer, plus One year membership to Shannon Greens G.C. for two, cart included. Winter Get-away, retirement home, summer vacation, make it whatever suits your needs. One thing for sure “you will love it”! See our website at ShannonGreens.com to view townhomes and golf course. $89,900.00 Call Dee O’Steen @ 1-803-225-7007, for details and/or questions.
D & S HAULING Reliable Low Rates Call NOW
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CLASSES ATTEND COLLEGE ONLINE from Home. *Medical, *Business, *Criminal Justice, *Hospitality. Job placement assistance. Computer available. Financial Aid if qualified. SCHEV authorized. Call 800-481-9472 www. CenturaOnline.com AIRLINE CAREERS – Become an Aviation Maintenance Tech. FAA approved training. Financial aid if qualified – Housing available. Job placement assistance. CALL Aviation Institute of Maintenance 877-492-3059
Screenwriting Lessons Learn the art & science of outlining, writing and rewriting motion picture screenplays.
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.12/12.19.2012
Need a new employee? Call today to speak with one of our Classified advertising representatives. We get results! ;;;;;;;;;;;;
Need Computer Help?
DANCE INSTRUCTOR Looking for your next tenant? Advertise in City Paper’s “LIVE” section and reach over 250,000 people who read CP classifieds! Call 412316-3342 TODAY!
Computer running slow? We come to you! Contact AP IT Service today for questions or details on all of our services.
412-979-4587 ;;;;;;;;;;;;
ADOPTION ADOPTION College Sweethearts, Music, Beach House, Laughter, Unconditional LOVE Awaits 1st Baby.
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Adopt. Adoring woman looking to adopt a baby. Unconditional love & security forever promised. Exp.Pd. Elisa 1-855-586-8848
PITTSBURGH STEEL CITY STEPPERS CHICAGO-STYLE STEPPIN’ DANCE LESSONS Wednesdays 7 -8:30 PM Wilkins School Community Center CONTACT: steelcitysteppers@ hotmail.com “friend” us on Facebook and Meetup.com
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COMPUTERS
Find your next job in the City Paper’s “WORK” section.
RAISING THE ROOF Local nonprofit offers respite from the streets {BY ROBERT ISENBERG}
SHARON DANIELS looks tired. She sits on the last step of her
stairway, in the house where she grew up. Three teen-agers slouch in her leather couch; a fourth sits in the easy chair. Daniels’ living room is quiet. The sun has faded behind the curtains, and rain sprinkles outside. The way Daniels describes it, people in Beltzhoover don’t often leave their homes. They fear what can happen out on the sloping streets. “Kids are afraid to go to school,” Daniels says. “They’re afraid of trouble. They could die out there.” Daniels knows this better than anyone. In 2001, her son Charlie was shot repeatedly while trying to protect his younger brother Terrell. The memory of his death is written on Daniels’ face and flickers behind her eyes. She speaks in the affirmative tone of a veteran teacher and strong-willed mother, but the pain never eases. Since 2008, Daniels has devoted her life to curbing violence — not with bullets, but with shelter. “Do I get a day off?” Daniels says. “No. Do I want a day off? No. I’m doing God’s work.”
They don’t go into details, because that other life is too ugly to articulate. Working for Isaiah is a paying gig: Participants make $7.25 an hour for meaningful chores. Most of their schedule involves doing simple stuff — tutoring, gardening, taking field trips — that local schools can no longer provide. Some of Isaiah’s excursions might seem unimpressive to middle-class kids, but no one in this room had ever eaten at a Japanese steakhouse, or ridden horses, or kayaked or camped in the woods. Daniels has helped open doors to a larger world. Still, Daniels is tough. When asked how old she is, her expression sours, and she says, “You trying to hit on me or something?” “In our community, we forgot to teach our kids to say please and thank you,” she says. “I teach them that. I teach them to be responsible. There’s not a child [at The Isaiah Project] I couldn’t ask to do anything. I’ve given them checks to cash at the bank. I trust every one of them.” Perhaps the most astonishing fact of The Isaiah Project is
IN THEORY, KIDS FROM THESE RIVAL NEIGHBORHOODS SHOULD HATE EACH OTHER. BUT HERE THEY ARE, QUIETLY SITTING TOGETHER, BOASTING OF THEIR COLLEGE TOURS. Daniels is executive director of The Isaiah Project, formerly My Brother’s Keeper, a mentoring program for at-risk youth. In only four years, Daniels says, 125 youths have “crossed my threshold.” Participants come and go, but she is equipped to mentor up to 25 at a time. The teens in this room are all members of Isaiah: Klay Walker is a sweet-looking kid from Beltzhoover. Koren Walker is a sassy girl from Knoxville. Nervous Raekwon Johnson is from Allentown. Ultra-polite Javon Knight just arrived in Allentown, fresh from Florida. In theory, kids from these rival hilltop neighborhoods should hate each other. They shouldn’t share space. They shouldn’t study together, or paint walls or do yard work together. But here they are, quietly sitting together, boasting of their college tours. Koren wants to open her own cosmetology studio. Klay raised his GPA from a 0.6 to a 2.5. He dreams of becoming a mechanical engineer. “Before Isaiah, I was ‘Yo this, yo that,’” Klay says. “Now I’m, ‘Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am.’” “I would’ve gone in a bad direction,” adds Raekwon. “Drugs …” He shrugs. They all know what a bad direction means.
that the teen-agers built their own headquarters. Isaiah procured a row house two doors down from Daniels’ home, and the students refurbished the building themselves. Daniels doesn’t feel like meeting at Isaiah tonight; there’s not enough furniture, she says, and she’s too tired to even put on shoes and take the one-minute walk. But after three years of gathering in church basements, Daniels is proud of their new home, and the kids who put it together. Despite its biblical name, Isaiah is not a religious organization. Still, almost everyone involved is some kind of Christian, and Daniels begins every workday with a prayer. When asked what the prayer entails, she says, “Why don’t we pray now?” Everyone bows a head. Each person clasps his or her hands together. Daniels voices a prayer for Isaiah, for her flock and for a visiting City Paper writer. She gives thanks. She says, “Amen.” Short and sweet and perfect. “That sounded good, didn’t it?” she says with a monosyllabic laugh. Then she abruptly turns serious again. “I always tell them, ‘I don’t care what you believe in, but you better believe in something other than yourself.’” INF O@ P G HC I T Y PA P E R. C OM
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BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY
BRIGHT LIGHTS $489 a couple PACKAGE
BIG CITY $379 PACKAGE a couple
YOU & A GUEST 7PM CHECK-IN 8PM DINNER Banquet Room LIVE ENTERTAINMENT
YOU & A GUEST DINNER FOR TWO
with Pittsburgh’s No Bad JuJu
SEATINGS AT:
ONE NIGHT ACCOMMODATION Downtown Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh with complimentary hotel shuttle service to and from the casino throughout your stay.
Andrew’s Steakhouse Banquet Style Seating 5:00PM, 7:30PM & 9:30PM
ONE NIGHT ACCOMMODATION Downtown Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh with complimentary hotel shuttle service to and from the casino throughout your stay.
NEW YEAR’S DAY CHAMPAGNE BRUNCH (INCLUDED WITH BOTH PACKAGES) Inside Rivers Casino’s Banquet Room from 11:00am-1:00pm
Call 412-231-7777 or visit riverscasino.com to purchase your package today! SLOTS | TABLE GAMES | DINING | NIGHTLIFE 777 CASINO DRIVE, PITTSBURGH NEXT TO HEINZ FIELD RIVERSCASINO.COM
GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER. MUST BE 21 YEARS OR OLDER TO BE ON RIVERS CASINO PROPERTY.