May 24, 2017 - Pittsburgh City Paper by Pittsburgh City Paper

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THE BANDWAGON JUMPERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S GUIDE TO PLAYOFF HOCKEY P39

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05.24/05.31.2017

EVENTS 5.26 – 8pm SOUND SERIES: NIGHTLANDS WITH SPECIAL GUEST THE BUILDING The Warhol theater Tickets $15/$12 members & students

5.27 – 6pm LGBTQ+ YOUTH PROM The Warhol entrance space Tickets $5/$10 door

6.16 – 5-9:30pm FACTORY SWING SHIFT The Factory The Factory stays up late! Free with museum admission

7.21 – 5-8pm TEACHER WORKSHOP: POP CULTURE IN THE CLASSROOM Tickets $30

Double Feature: Andy Warhol’s Tarzan & Jane Regained… Sort Of (1963) and Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) Co-presented with Ace Hotel Pittsburgh 6.18 – 8pm The Gym at Ace Hotel Pittsburgh (East Liberty), FREE; Register at warhol.org

Ace Hotel Pittsburgh is The Warhol’s ofﬁcial hotel sponsor.

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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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We’ve made it simple! We’ve now made it even easier to purchase or reload your ConnectCard. Riders can now buy a card, purchase a pass or stored cash value and check their balance at over 150 ConnectCard sites throughout Allegheny County including: Port Authority’s Downtown Service Center, most area Giant Eagle stores, Goodwill stores, independent retailers, dozens of ConnectCard Vending Machines and online. For more information, go to connectcard.org.

...............................………………PortAuthority.org 4

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

05.24/05.31.2017 VOLUME 27 + ISSUE 21

INVIGORATED.

[EDITORIAL] Editor CHARLIE DEITCH News Editor REBECCA ADDISON Arts & Entertainment Editor BILL O’DRISCOLL Associate Editor AL HOFF Digital Editor ALEX GORDON Staff Writers RYAN DETO, CELINE ROBERTS Music Writer MEG FAIR Interns CARLEY BONK, KRISTA JOHNSON, HANNAH LYNN, JORDAN MILLER, MATT PETRAS, MARC WEEMS

How I feel after my weight loss journey. -Judy Grimm

Lost 100 lbs. with gastric sleeve surgery

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{COVER PHOTO COURTESY OF KITOKO CHARGOIS}

Director of Operations KEVIN SHEPHERD Production Director JULIE SKIDMORE Art Director LISA CUNNINGHAM Graphic Designers JEFF SCHRECKENGOST, JENNIFER TRIVELLI

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“It’s unfortunate that more people don’t know about Abbey Lincoln’s work.” PAGE 24

Associate Publisher JUSTIN MATASE Senior Account Executives PAUL KLATZKIN, JEREMY WITHERELL Advertising Representatives MACKENNA DONAHUE, BLAKE LEWIS Classified Manager ANDREA JAMES National Advertising Representative VMG ADVERTISING 1.888.278.9866 OR 1.212.475.2529

If your weight is keeping you down, the experts at UPMC Bariatric Services have so many ways to help you ﬁnd a healthier, happier you. We offer a comprehensive weight-loss program for men and women that includes everything from behavioral and medical weight loss programs, online diet resources, and new bridge therapy alternatives such as the intragastric balloon. And our team will create a personalized plan to help you meet your goals. So ﬁnd a new you and visit UPMC.com/Bariatrics, or schedule an appointment near you by calling 1-800-533-UPMC (8762).

[MARKETING+PROMOTIONS]

[NEWS]

Marketing Director LINDSEY THOMPSON Marketing Assistant LIZ VENUTO Office Coordinator THRIA DEVLIN

“We’ve found that people actually do better when people start treatment right away.”

[ADMINISTRATION]

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Circulation Director JIM LAVRINC Office Administrator RODNEY REGAN Interactive Media Manager CARLO LEO

[PUBLISHER] EAGLE MEDIA CORP.

[LAST WORD]

Most species of fireflies have a toxin that makes them taste horrible. PAGE 46

News 06 Views 12 Weird 14 Music 16 Arts 24 Events 29 Taste 33

Screen 37 Sports 39 Classifieds 42 Crossword 42 Astrology 44 Savage Love 45 The Last Word 46 NEWS

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GENERAL POLICIES: Contents copyrighted 2017 by Eagle Media Corp. 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 Eagle Media Corp. 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 Eagle Media Corp. 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.

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THIS WEEK

“AT SOME POINT, YOU HAVE TO TAKE ACTION IF YOU HONESTLY SAY YOU BELIEVE IN THIS.”

ONLINE

www.pghcitypaper.com

Last week marked the 31st Annual EQT Children’s Theater Festival. Visit www.pghcitypaper.com to see our photo essay from this year’s event.

City Paper stopped by 3 Rivers Comicon at Century III Mall over the weekend. Check out our photo essay at www.pghcitypaper.com.

{CP PHOTO BY JOHN COLOMBO}

Jayvan Tarver in front of his home in Garfield

Is the Trump Train off the rails? The story starts here, with our account of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office in the CP Longform online at www.pghcitypaper.com.

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INTERACTIVE

Our featured #CPReaderArt photo from last week is by @dmo412. Use #CPReaderArt to share your local photos with us for your chance to be featured next!

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FUNDING OPPORTUNITY AYVAN TARVER has lived in his twobedroom house in Garfield for 27 years. Even though Tarver rents the house on Hillcrest Street, he considers it his home. Over the years, he’s replaced its basement door and done some rehab on the back porch. Tarver, 64, was diagnosed with cancer in 2011. He’s since recovered, but years of medical treatments meant he couldn’t work and he’s been on disability ever since. Adding insult to injury, a few weeks ago, a “House for Sale” sign went up in his yard. Several months ago, Tarver says, he reached a verbal agreement with his landlord to purchase the home for $25,000. But a few weeks ago the landlord died, and his wife has decided to sell the house, which is currently listed for $49,000. Tarver says he can’t afford the new selling price. He’s looked for other places to stay, but most available apartments are outside of the

neighborhood and beyond his budget. He currently pays $500 a month in rent. But Tarver isn’t giving up on buying the home where he raised his kids. With help from a neighbor, he started a GoFundMe page to raise cash to purchase the Garfield house.

Stakeholders disagree on how to pay for affordablehousing programs {BY RYAN DETO} “I really feel like when I moved here, I felt like it would be my house till I pass, because everyone I knew was around me,” says Tarver. “It has been hard. I love this neighborhood, and I love the neighbors.” Even though Tarver’s story is exceptionally dire, displacement caused by

landlords selling property is common in many Pittsburgh neighborhoods, as are rising rents. Housing advocates, realestate agents, city politicians and policy experts are proposing ways to address this problem, but they are at odds on how best to do that. Pittsburgh City Councilors and housing advocates want to fund the city’s affordable-housing trust fund by raising Pittsburgh’s real-estate transfer tax (RETT), while real-estate agents say the tax will hinder city property sales. Agents believe structural changes at city departments would be more effective, and nonprofit policy experts think a mix of both taxes and reforms are best. But after a year of affordable-housing deliberations in city council, a sense of urgency is hanging over the city. The longer officials wait, the more residents like Tarver will struggle. CONTINUES ON PG. 08

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

Let’s face it. Health care is complex. We keep it simple. Our Medical Assistance plan keeps it simple. You can expect more from UPMC for You. Let’s face it. Health care is complex. Our team of Health Care Concierges can see you through that journey. Your Concierge can arrange a visit to a doctor, check on your prescription coverage, or answer other questions you have. For the most from your Medical Assistance coverage, choose UPMC for You.

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UPMC for You complies with applicable federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, creed, religious affiliation, ancestry, sex gender, gender identity or expression, or sexual orientation. ATTENTION: If you speak English, language assistance services, free of charge, are available to you. Call: 1-800-286-4242 (TTY: 1-800-361-2629). ATENCIÓN: Si habla español, tiene a su disposición servicios gratuitos de asistencia ingüística. Llame al 1-800-286-4242 (TTY: 1-800-361-2629).

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FUNDING OPPORTUNITY, CONTINUED FROM PG. 06

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LANDMARKS PRESERVATION RESOURCE CENTER - A program of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Foundation

Join us at the Landmarks Preservation Resource Center for ongoing workshops in October as we continue programming on architecture, history, design, urban planning, and other topics related to how cities function and historic preservation as a tool of community development.

THURSDAY, MAY 25 • 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM

WORKSHOP: DESIGNING AND BUILDING FIREPLACES

IAN MILLER CONSTRUCTION/ GENERAL CONTRACTOR This presentation will provide a general overview of the history, design, construction and use of fireplaces, fire pits, ovens, and other traditional means for cooking and warming ourselves. We will discuss the various types of construction and materials typically used in heating sources; the science, engineering, and dimensions used in oven building; and different aspects of design to consider when building a fireplace, oven, or outdoor fire pit. About the presenter: Ian Miller has been a general contractor since 2003 with projects ranging from changing a doorknob to building a $1.5 million house for fifteen retired nuns. He is the owner of Zambano & Sons, a residential remodeling company, as well as partner in the HL2M Group, a design/build firm focused primarily on modular and shipping container construction. Ian and his family live in a 100-year old house in Friendship.

ALL PROGRAMMING IS FREE TO PHLF MEMBERS. FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT WWW.PHLF.ORG

RSVPS ARE APPRECIATED. CONTACT MARY LU DENNY AT 412-471-5808 EXT. 527 744 REBECCA AVENUE

WILKINSBURG, PA 15221

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

412-471-5808

PITTSBURGH CITY Councilor Daniel Lavelle introduced legislation earlier this month to increase the city’s real-estate transfer tax (RETT) by 1 percent to benefit the city’s Housing Opportunity Fund; the council hopes to raise $10 million a year to contribute to affordable housing. (A real-estate transfer tax is a one-time fee, calculated as a percentage of the overall sale price. It’s part of closing costs and is typically split between buyer and seller.) Lavelle says affordable housing has been an issue for several years in Pittsburgh, but ever since the announced evictions at East Liberty’s Penn Plaza in June 2015, city officials have increased urgency to act. “We have already openly acknowledged a shortage of affordable housing, and acknowledged a lack of investment in certain neighborhoods,” says Lavelle. “At some point, you have to take action if you honestly say you believe in this.” City council created the Housing Opportunity Fund last year, but has yet to figure out exactly how best to fund it. Lavelle says that’s because Pittsburgh is limited in how it can raise revenue. Some options, like a hotel tax or a tiered realestate tax, require state authorization, and the Republican-controlled state legislature is unlikely to grant Pittsburgh extra powers to raise taxes. Lavelle is proposing the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority take out a $100 million bond, which will be repaid by revenue from the RETT-increase. That way, the city can immediately create affordable-housing programs, such as building new affordable units in expensive neighborhoods or rehabbing homes in low-investment areas. Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh President Charlene Haislip says a RETT increase will lead to fewer home purchases in the city and will hurt homebuyers looking for affordable homes, possibly pushing buyers beyond city limits. “The most affordable homes are coincidentally right on the border of the city,” says Haislip. There are many documented instances of how high property taxes lead people to purchase homes outside of cities, but it’s still unclear how exactly an increased RETT would affect the real-estate market. A Brown University study showed the 2008 creation of a 1.1 percent transfer tax in Toronto “caused a 15 percent decline in the number of sales and a decline in

housing prices about equal to the tax.” However, a 2015 George Washington Institute on Public Policy study of Connecticut’s realty-transfer tax landscape said “higher local [transfer-tax] rates in targeted investment communities do not significantly impact on the price of real estate or the number of transactions.” Haislip says a RETT increase isn’t necessary and wants Pittsburgh to modernize its real-estate department and make it easier to sell the 20,000 units of city-owned property. She says the current process to purchase city-owned land is complicated, especially for first-time homebuyers. By applying the same techniques and resources real-estate agents use to sell private property, the city can sell its units quickly and inexpensively to low-income homebuyers, she says. To maintain affordability on those city-sold properties, Haislip says Pittsburgh can attach deed restrictions, requiring owners to maintain affordable rents and avoid flipping the property for profit for a 15-year time period. The public-policy experts at Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group are also concerned that a RETT increase will negatively affect buyers looking for affordable homes. “There is a risk of burdening homeowners,” says PCRG Director Ernie Hogan. “We don’t want to put this on the backs of people buying and selling homes.” For example, statistics compiled by PCRG show the average home loan in Manchester, a North Side neighborhood in need of increased investment, is $128,000. With the proposed RETT increase, a homebuyer there would pay an extra $1,280 in upfront costs. But Councilor Lavelle says low-income residents buying a $50,000 home in Perry North can benefit from the Housing Opportunity Fund. Lavelle says most homes in affordable neighborhoods like Perry North are that way because they often need to be rehabbed, and he says the fund can help cover those costs for homebuyers. Hogan says one revenue stream is not enough to fix Pittsburgh’s affordable-housing problems. PCRG is suggesting a suite of solutions: a small increase to the city’s property-tax rate, a small RETT increase, a contribution from the city’s general fund, and contributions from Pittsburgh’s foundation community. Lavelle acknowledges the city could CONTINUES ON PG. 10

[CORRECTION] In the May 17 story about three Democratic candidates challenging U.S. Rep. Keith Rothfus in the 2018 elections, candidate and Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientist Tom Prigg’s length of U.S. Army service was incorrectly described. He served four years as an Army sniper, not 15.

noon-11pm noon 11pm Kaya takes over Smallman Street for their biggest block party ever! Outdoor Grilling Tropical Drinks

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draw on its $37 million surplus, which would encourage nonprofits to contribute. But he worries the surplus could be a “onetime” gain, and he says it is better used to tackle pressing infrastructure problems. Additionally, Hogan says the city can alter its zoning and tax-abatement laws and attach affordable-housing requirements when allowing new development. “How do we come collectively together, to have an affordable-housing plan that doesn’t hurt the real-estate market? We want that,” says Hogan. But Hogan also recognizes that policy experts, who already suggested many of these fixes last year, might have underestimated the urgency felt by residents, advocates and city officials. “We had a lot of smart people come up with solutions, but then we went back to our sandboxes,” says Hogan. “Maybe we should have said, ‘Let’s get back together and talk about this.’” Celeste Scott, of housing advocacy group Pittsburgh United, knows about this situation all too well. Scott says the group gathered 14,000 signatures in support of placing a RETT increase on the November 2016 ballot, but the effort was dropped in support

of city council’s RETT efforts. “It was significant; it was people from every district,” says Scott, of the public RETT support. Scott believes the RETT increase would mostly affect developers and homebuyers who can afford the extra costs. But Pittsburgh City Paper looked at 30 property transfers occurring the last week in April 2017, and an easy answer as to who would be most affected didn’t emerge. Sixteen properties were purchased by individuals with a history of buying, selling and rehabbing homes, and five of those were sold for more than $320,000. However, a handful of homes were purchased by buyers that a RETT increase might have an outsized effect on. Eight first-time buyers bought nonrehabbed homes near the edge of the city, and the purchase price for each was less than $150,000. A public hearing for the proposed RETT increase is forthcoming, although no date has been set. Scott emphasizes there’s little time for council to deliberate. “It’s a crisis for so many people,” says Scott. “There is an urgency to get it done.” RYA N D E TO@ P G HC I T Y PA P E R. C OM

www.MedMark.com

JENSORENSEN The 5th Judicial District of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County Pretrial Services urges you to enjoy your weekend out in Pittsburgh but

make the right choice,

don’t drink & drive. 10

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

PREPPING FOR THE FUTURE Pittsburgh nonprofits working to reduce transmission of HIV {BY CELINE ROBERTS} ACCORDING TO the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s most recent data, 2,830 people in Allegheny County were living with HIV/AIDS in 2015. That year, the county saw 145 new HIV diagnoses and 57 new AIDS cases. But the fight to end the epidemic is getting a hand from AIDS Free Pittsburgh, a local nonprofit managed by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation that seeks to reduce transmissions of HIV. “AIDS Free Pittsburgh has a jurisdictional effort and a public-health commitment to end AIDS as an epidemic in Allegheny County by 2020,” says project manager Julia Och. “Our two specific goals are to reduce the rate of new HIV infections by 75 percent and to eliminate new AIDS diagnoses in the county.” Initiatives like this aren’t unique to Pittsburgh. Organizations like Getting to Zero San Francisco strive for the same goals by starting treatment for HIVpositive patients as quickly as possible and providing information to vulnerable communities with campaigns on public transportation and at LGBT-friendly spaces. Getting patients on antiretroviral drugs as soon as possible (now often within 48 hours) after an HIV diagnosis, instead of waiting for T-cell counts to drop as patients become sicker, has also been tremendously effective. “We’ve found that people actually do better when people start treatment right away. Not only do they have better quality of life, but if they are virally suppressed, it’s virtually impossible to spread to someone else,” says Och. While these interventions have suppressed transmission and bettered quality of life for those diagnosed with HIV, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Now in its second year, AIDS Free Pittsburgh is focusing on preventing initial transmission of the virus with a grant that will help pay for labs, doctor’s appointments and other gap services for people who could benefit from the use of PrEP. PrEP, which stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis, is an anti-HIV medication

{CP PHOTO BY KRISTA JOHNSON}

Jason Herring, community health director of the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force, administers an HIV test to a patient, the first step in obtaining treatment for PrEP.

that comes in the form of a daily pill called Truvada. The medication helps prevent those who are HIV-negative from contracting the virus. The manufacturer, the biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, offers a payment-assistance program to eligible HIV-negative adults to help pay for the medication for about three months. But this assistance doesn’t cover the appointments, testing and tri-monthly lab work required to take Truvada. That’s where AIDS Free Pittsburgh is stepping in. In hopes of increasing access to the treatment for those who are uninsured, the organization will fund gap care for patients while they search for a long-term solution to payment issues, such as affordable health insurance or Medicaid. “We’re very uniquely funded by the two major health-care systems [Highmark and UPMC]. They came together and they said, ‘Hey, we commit to 1.5 million [dollars] over five years,’” says Och, explaining that often initiatives like this in other cities are funded by public health departments. AFP is also currently exploring the possibility of extending services to underinsured people. But money isn’t the only barrier that organizations like AFP have to deal with when it comes to PrEP. Representatives from organizations around the city like Planned Parenthood, Pittsburgh AIDS

Task Force and Project Silk say that there has been a lot of stigma associated with PrEP and that they are working to fight it. “When it first came out, it was targeted toward the highest-risk individu-

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“PREP IS FOR WOMEN, MEN, PEOPLE OF ALL GENDERS AND TRANS FOLKS.”

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als — gay men,” says Jason Herring, community-health director of PATF. “[Health] agencies were terrified people would see it as free license to have all the sex they wanted. There is a large system of fear and shame built around sex. Stigma was instantly injected into it. “We had a hard time in the beginning. I would have to call people’s primary-care physicians and say, ‘You have a patient that needs this and I will teach you how to do it.’” The stigma that Truvada is only for gay men still prevails. While it’s true that the two groups at the highest risk for HIV infection are men who sleep with men, and trans women of color, providers want to make sure to tell the public that PrEP is for everyone. “PrEP is for women, men, people of all genders and trans folks. We want to create broader acceptance,” says Katie Horowitz, vice president of education for Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania. “We’re getting together, getting to know each other and opening the lines of communication.” For more information on PrEP, visit aidsfreepittsburgh.org. Planned Parenthood will also be offering information at Pittsburgh Pride on June 11.

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[PITTSBURGH LEFT]

HOME RULE {BY CHARLIE DEITCH} IF YOU’RE A Pittsburgh Police officer, I’m imagining that May 22 was a pretty good day for you. After three years of appeals, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that officers don’t have to live within city limits. A labor arbitration panel made the same ruling in 2014. The City of Pittsburgh appealed, and eventually that decision was overturned. The police officers’ union appealed to the high court and won the right to live anywhere within 25 air-miles of the city. That means officers can move to places like Cranberry Township or Washington County if they choose. FOP union leadership, as you can imagine, was ecstatic over the victory. “It’s a great victory for the police officers of the city of Pittsburgh,” Robert Swartzwelder, president of Fraternal Order of Police Fort Pitt Lodge 1, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Bob Bauder. Swartzwelder also made no bones about what officers are going to do from here: “You’re going to get a steady exodus.” Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto had a different take on the ruling, one I’m sure most city residents agree with. How am I sure? I’ll let the mayor’s statement answer that question. “The people of Pittsburgh expressed overwhelming support for the residency requirement and we want our police officers to continue to live in the neighborhoods and communities that they serve. We defended the will of the residents of Pittsburgh, all the way to the Supreme Court, believing that the law that allowed Pittsburgh to become a Home Rule Charter city should have taken precedence.” And although politicians are known to overstate the facts when it suits them, I think Peduto is actually under-selling the support of the 2013 residency referendum. In 2013, more than 80 percent of city voters approved a measure making residency for police and fire personnel mandatory. That’s how strongly residents believe that their officers should be part of the community that they police. In a lot of ways, this feels to me like it’s about a lot more than just where an officer lays down his gun at night. It feels like another step away from the days of former Police Chief Cameron McLay. Peduto hired McLay to run the department after the mayor took office four years ago. His plan was to install someone in that job who would repair the already-strained relation-

{CP FILE PHOTO}

Former Police Chief Cameron McLay

ship between the police department and the community. That plan worked. Community groups, especially those in the African-American community, trusted McLay. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind or make decisions that the department’s rank-and-file didn’t particularly like. In fact, in September 2017, union members issued a vote of “no confidence” against the chief. But the community’s confidence was brimming. Under McLay, complaints against officers decreased by 42 percent. Not bad for a department with its share of issues in recent years, including the beating of Jordan Miles and the shooting of Leon Ford by officers. In fact, when McLay left, one of the department’s biggest critics — the Alliance of Police Accountability — hosted a public farewell for the chief. Now, in a lot of ways, the Supreme Court’s ruling feels like a bit of a backslide, as I bet it does for a lot of people. The request that the individuals charged with policing and protecting our neighborhoods be members of those neighborhoods doesn’t really seem to me like a big ask. Being part of a community takes you a long way toward understanding the people and issues at play there. A lot of officers policing highcrime areas already feel like outsiders to the people who live on those streets. Knowing that officers don’t think highly enough about the city to even want to live there can be problematic. It can erode all of the good will that Peduto and McLay worked so hard to build between the department and the community. In a lot of ways, I hope I’m overstating and being overly dramatic in how much of a difference this decision will make. A lot has been done in the past four years to improve community-police relations. Let’s hope we don’t lose that over something as simple as a ZIP code.

THIS IS ABOUT A LOT MORE THAN JUST WHERE AN OFFICER LAYS DOWN HIS GUN AT NIGHT.

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

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News of the Weird

S E N D YO UR WE I R D N E WS TO W E I RD N E W S @ E ART HL I NK . N E T O R WWW. NE WS O F T HE WE I R D. C OM

{BY CHUCK SHEPHERD}

$20 Pre-Sale $25 At Gate (if available) This event will sell out! Buy Tickets Now! 231 Beacon Rd., Renfrew

724-586-6233 gotothebeacon.com

Officials in charge of a Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal heritage site installed “speed bumps,” like those familiar to Americans driving residential streets — but on a pedestrian walkway, with row upon row of risers resembling a washboard. A Western travel writer, along with editors of People’s Daily China, suggested that officials were irked that “disorderly” tourists had been walking past the ancient grounds too rapidly to appreciate its beauty or context.

ered a crawlspace above the urinal area, which had apparently been a man’s home (with a space heater, gas stove and clothing). Investigators learned that Takashi Yamanouchi, 54, a homeless wanderer, had been living there continuously for three years — and had arranged everything very tidily, including the 300-plus plastic twoliter bottles of his urine. (It was unclear why he was storing his urine when he resided above a public restroom.)

“Marine mammologist” Dara Orbach’s specialty is figuring out how bottlenose dolphins actually fit their sex organs together to copulate. When dolphins die of natural causes, Orbach, a post-doctoral fellow at Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University, is sent their genitals (and also those of whales, porpoises and sea lions) and fills each one with silicone to work from molds in understanding the sex act’s mechanics. Dolphins’ vaginas are “surprising” in their “complexity,” she told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News in April, for example, with the ability to twist inner folds to divert the progress of any sperm deposited by undesirable mates.

Medical researchers have been frustrated at failures in getting certain cancer-fighting drugs to reach targeted areas in women’s reproductive tracts, but in April doctors in Germany announced a bold technique that appeared to work: sending the drugs via sperm cells, which seem to roam without obstruction as they search for an egg. The process involves coating sperm cells with an iron adhesive and magnetically steering them to their internal targets.

#CPStreetPortraits A new weekly Instagram series by photo intern Jordan Miller

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

In April, Tennessee state Rep. Mike Stewart, aiming to make a point about the state’s lax gun-sales laws and piggybacking onto the cuddly feeling people have about children’s curbside lemonade stands, set up a combination stand on Nashville’s Capitol Hill, offering for sale lemonade, cookies — and an AK-47 assault rifle (with a sign reading “No Background Check,” to distinguish the private-sale AK-47 from one purchased from a federally licensed dealer). (In fact, some states still regulate lemonade stands more than gun sales — by nettlesome “health department” and anticompetitive rules and licensing, though Tennessee allows the stands in most neighborhoods.)

Ironies: (1) The Wall Street Journal reported in February that among the most popular diversions when Syrian households gather to escape the country’s bombs and bullets is playing the Hasbro war board-game Risk (even though the game’s default version contains only five armies — not nearly enough to simulate the many Syrian factions now fighting). (2) The parliament of Australia’s New South Wales, entertaining a February citizen petition to cut societal “waste,” admitted that the petition’s required 107,000 signatures (already on a USB stick) would, by rule, have to be submitted in hard copy (4,000 pages), even though the pages would immediately be electronically scanned.

In March, an electrician on a service call at a public restroom in Usuki, Japan, discov-

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Not Ready For Prime Time: (1) In March, WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C., broadcast surveillance video of a 7-Eleven armed robbery in the city’s northeast sector — since some footage offered a clear picture of the suspect’s face. Moments into the robbery, the man peered upward, caught sight of the camera and, shocked, reached for his apparently forgotten ski mask on top of his head, where (better late than never) he pulled it into place. (2) In November, three teenagers were arrested after stealing superfast Dodge cars in the middle of the night from a dealership in St. Peters, Mo.

(After driving less than a mile, police said, the three had lost control of their cars, crashing them, including “totaling” two 700-horsepower Challenger Hellcats.)

News whose patterns have become so tedious that the stories deserve respectful retirement: (1) On May 5, an elderly woman in Plymouth, England, became the most recent to drive wildly afield by blindly obeying her car’s satellite navigation system. Turning left, as ordered, only to confront a solid railing, she nonetheless spotted a narrow pedestrian gap and squeezed through, which led to her descending the large concrete stairway at the Mayflower House Court parking garage (until her undercarriage got stuck). (2) Police in East Palestine, Ohio, said the 8-year-old boy who commandeered the family car and drove his sister, 4, to the local McDonald’s for a cheeseburger on April 9 was different from the usual underaged drivers in that he caused no problems. Witnesses said he followed traffic signals en route, which the boy attributed to learning from YouTube videos.

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BEAT

{BY MEG FAIR}

The Spectres are a rock ’n’ roll two-piece that fuses a doo-wop sound with garage sensibilities and the ability to make all eight of their limbs count. Dan Spagnolo plays guitar and sings, and James Thompson sings and plays guitar while operating a drum set with his feet. Thompson and Spagnolo met via Craigslist. Spagnolo was immediately intrigued by Thompson’s recordings as a one-man-band; the two meshed from the start. “I’m learning a lot from him,” says Spagnolo. “I’ll bring in a song and he’ll think it’s too pretty, so we work on making them grittier and dirtier. He’s good about pushing me to make better music using fewer chords.” The result is a collection of songs with catchy hooks, grimy guitar solos and danceable beats that hone in on the energy of early rock ’n’ roll — the kind that made parents sweat about their kids getting into trouble. There’s a balance between Spagnolo’s strong tenor voice and Thompson’s softer drawl, as the two employ clever doo-wop harmonies. Thompson and Spagnolo joke that they’re Pittsburgh’s only Greenfield-only band. The two practice in Thompson’s basement, which is also where they recorded their first demo. Their latest tape, Baby, You’re Too Pretty to Rumble, got its name from a conversation the pair heard outside a Greenfield bar. A boyfriend was explaining to his girlfriend why she shouldn’t partake in the bar fight that had broken out inside. “It felt like a line straight out of a movie,” says Spagnolo. “It was too good to pass up.” The 10 tracks really exemplify the balance between Thompson’s and Spagnolo’s musical inclinations, as well as their desire to play with traditional formats. Rather than rely upon thin leads over full rhythm work, the duo likes to play with thick leads and treble-heavy rhythm guitars. All of Baby was recorded in live takes to an 8-track. “We did three takes of each song and just picked the best for each song you’ll hear on the cassette,” says Spagnolo. The charm of the live sound reflects the mission of The Spectres. Says Spagnolo, “James once said, ‘I just want to make rock ’n’ roll music that makes people dance.’” With Baby, The Spectres certainly do. MEGFAIR@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

THE SPECTRES RECORD-RELEASE SHOW with JIANT EAGLE, FRANNY MOON and SECOND LADIES 8 p.m. Sat., May 27. Howlers, 4509 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. $5. 412-682-0320 or www.howlerspittsburgh.com

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

The Spectres {CP PHOTO BY JORDAN MILLER}

LESS IS MORE

SOLID DOCUMENTATION {PHOTO COURTESY OF CHUCK STEWART}

{BY MIKE SHANLEY}

HE MAIN challenge in producing a documentary on jazz artists is choosing the best way to frame the story. How should a director discuss an artist’s life and music? Does the straight biography or the artist’s mythology take precedence in the narrative? When discussing the music, a technical approach can lose casual fans, while metaphors can digress into ridiculous descriptions. It’s hard to tie both parts together in a manner that shows why the subjects are worthy of such attention in the first place. Two new documentaries screening locally attempt to find that balance. In the jazz canon, few musicians are as highly regarded as tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. From his classic recordings with the Miles Davis Quintet to his own diverse work as a leader, he exemplified the best aspects of jazz, constantly pushing himself toward greater heights as an improviser, unafraid of any backlash from listeners or critics. Fifty years after his death from liver cancer at age 40, he is still revered by musicians of all stripes. Chasing Trane, directed by John Scheinfeld, peels back the layers of the Coltrane mythology through interviews

05.24/05.31.2017

John Coltrane, from Chasing Trane

with numerous biographers, peers, children and fans. The ﬁlm succeeds because not only does it give a relatively linear storyline of Coltrane’s life, it discusses the background that shaped him — from the Southern preachers in his family to fellow saxophonists he met in Philadelphia to the civil-rights movement. The latter topic presents one of

CHASING TRANE AND I CALLED HIM MORGAN May 26 through June 1 at the Hollywood Theater, 1449 Potomac Ave., Dormont. For times, call 412-563-0368 or visit www.hollywooddormont.org.

the ﬁlm’s most harrowing moments, playing Coltrane’s deeply meditative “Alabama” atop footage of the aftermath of attack on Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, where four girls were killed in 1963. While Chasing Trane could have digressed into a succession of talking heads, most of them offer insightful commentary. So, balancing Carlos Santana’s hyperbolic

thought that Coltrane’s sound “rearranges molecular structure,” Japanese Coltrane obsessive/author Yasuhiro “Fuji” Fujioka sums up the saxophonist’s power easily: “He makes me happy.” Spliced with live footage of Coltrane’s “Classic Quartet,” pianist McCoy Tyner (the only living member of that band) says Coltrane made his bandmates believe they were put on earth to play their brand of energetic music. When the ﬁlm cuts back to a young Tyner banging out an aggressive solo, it’s clear these aren’t just words. Denzel Washington voices Coltrane’s thoughts, reading quotes from interviews and album notes, without getting heavyhanded. Snippets of home movies also present a more relaxed side, with the saxophonist playing with his family, dancing around his yard and smiling, away from the scrutiny of fanatical followers. In the end, Chasing Trane offers a strong enough story to those new to the saxophonist’s life, while presenting it to the die-hard fans in a way that keeps it exciting. (The late-period footage of the Newport Jazz Festival is especially valuable.) And any chance CONTINUES ON PG. 18

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to hear fellow saxophonist Sonny Rollins (himself very much a musical guru) speak is valuable. His thoughts, together with those of Coltrane biographer Ashley Kahn and the dynamic philosopher Cornell West, make the film even stronger. Trumpeter Lee Morgan also has a good deal of mythology surrounding him. He became one of the top musicians in the hard-bop style of the 1950s and ’60s, virtually making that style commercially popular with his funky hit, “The Sidewinder.” In 1973, at age 33, he was shot and killed between sets at the rough New York bar Slug’s Saloon. The shooter was his common-law wife, Helen. I Called Him Morgan, a film by Swedish director Kasper Collin, is a film as much about Helen Morgan as it is about Lee Morgan, and how their lives intertwined. Growing up in North Carolina, Helen eventually moved to New York, befriending musicians and artists, taking care of anyone who needed a meal or shelter. Dizzy Gillespie hired the precocious 19-year-old Lee Morgan for his band, and he quickly rose in popularity, becoming a leader who recorded numerous albums for Blue Note Records, including Coltrane’s Blue Train. The film doesn’t give specifics about his career (“The Sidewinder,” which turned the corner for his label commercially, isn’t even mentioned). It also mentions very little about his social activism in his final years. But it includes excerpts of his music, live footage, and numerous photographs taken at recording sessions. Lee Morgan’s peers tell his story, a list that includes bassist Jymie Merritt and saxophonists Bennie Maupin and Wayne Shorter. The latter forgoes his usual elliptical delivery in favor of more linear stories. The recurring plot device in I Called Him Morgan is an audio interview with Helen. After pleading guilty to second-degree manslaughter and receiving probation after a reduced prison term, she eventually moved back to North Carolina. Captured on a squeaky cassette, her voice reveals the church lady she has become, speaking matter-of-factly about her life with Lee and how it unraveled. Ironically, she died a month after the conversation, in 1996. Collin’s pacing frequently veers toward the overly dramatic. Much tension is created by re-enacting the snowstorm that hit New York the night of the murder. “Search for the New Land,” a meditative, flowing piece by Lee Morgan, is used to create suspense repeatedly. But ultimately, Collin takes what seems like a simple story of love, jazz and murder, and shows how there were more pieces to the puzzle. Best of all, it compels one to find Lee Morgan records to rediscover his bright, inventive playing. INF O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M

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NEW RELEASES {BY MEG FAIR}

SERPENTINE CRIMINAL HYMNAL SELF-RELEASED SERPENTINE.BANDCAMP.COM

Serpentine’s criminal hymnal is a mystical journey through classic rock, spooky storytelling and headbanginducing riffs. The band describes the album as a “sigil for self-transformation, drawn in audible range-vibrations,” and it certainly evokes that description. The ritualistic album carries somber, minor chords in high-energy psychpunk compositions. It feels larger than life, the kind of album that reads like a story told around a fire and passed down through generations. Lily Molloy’s grandiose vocal delivery and emotive timbre provides the central hinge to the album’s intrigue, as Molloy uses her voice as its own instrument. Instead of being just a vehicle for the storytelling, her voice adds texture and stylistic pops that make the album compelling. The harmonies on tracks like “entanglement” and “magmatic ascendant” are ornate but delicate, also creating a dramatic cherry on top of the vocal performance. “I don’t wanna be a ghost” is a fast-paced venture fit for mosh-pitting and shouting the lyrics with fervor with a crowd of sweaty others, while slowburners like “from jerusalem to salem massachusetts” and “wastoid blues” shine in their methodic heaviness. “Song for a selkie” is a prime example of what makes Serpentine so addicting. The layered vocals, theatrical composition and suspenseful tale congregate around a dance-inducing chorus. The song itself feels like it’s alive. criminal hymnal is a strong debut, one that feels like it has been marinating for awhile. It’s an arrival for a set of talented performers who have just been waiting for the right moment to show themselves. FOR FANS OF: shaking your demons free from your body through dance, early Black Sabbath, weed MEGFAIR@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

{PHOTO COURTESY OF ZACH INSCHO}

Wildhoney

HUMBLE AND SWEET {BY MEG FAIR} WILDHONEY IS a band from Baltimore that

makes guitar-pop music drenched in chorus pedals and saccharine fuzz. It’s sweet and sticky, like cotton candy on a hot day, and just as persistent. Just like the residue of the spun sugar clings to your hands after indulging in cotton candy, the vibrations of this music dance around your brain long after the notes have reverberated into nothingness. The band appears to have no idea how good it is. When City Paper speaks to guitarist Joe Trainor by the phone, he laughs about how hard the band is on itself. “If you ever asked any band who has toured with us about us,” Trainor says, “they’d probably say, ‘They are so nice, but they really think they suck!’” The band is currently working on new music. Over its last few albums, Wildhoney has continued to be loud, while consistently moving in a slightly poppier direction, shedding the “shoegaze” tag that many music critics assigned the band early in its career. “With our newer stuff, we’ve tried to pull back a little bit, but still make things sound weird and interesting, even if we’re using less pedals,” explains Trainor. “While we like guitars, and pedals are fun, it’s ultimately about the song. If we stripped away all the extra crap and just performed it on acoustic guitar, is it still good?” It has been two years since Wildhoney released Sleep Through This, and since then the band has only released tracks on compilations. The members are in no hurry to rush the process just to get a new album out. “We’ve been hard at work on the next

LP, but we’re taking our time. We have no deadline this time,” explains Trainor. “If songs don’t have enough time to breathe or percolate, they aren’t as good.” Wildhoney will be playing four of those new tracks on this upcoming tour, but the ﬁnal recorded songs may sound a little different. “Playing these songs on tour gives us the chance to experiment with them,” says Trainor. “It’s good to take time and try not to rush, because we’re really hard on ourselves. We’ve never been collectively happy with any of our releases [that were rushed.]” The band is excited for the upcoming tour. The members booked it themselves, choosing a low-key string of gigs that would feature bands they liked in different cities.

WILDHONEY WITH HEARKEN AND THE BIRD HOUR 7 p.m. Sun., May 28. Mr. Roboto Project, 5106 Penn Ave., Bloomfield. $6. 412-345-1059 or www.therobotoproject.com

On the Pittsburgh date, the band is playing with Hearken and The Bird Hour. During our conversation, it’s clear that Trainor did his Pittsburgh Bandcamp homework when looking for bands to open the show, mentioning IT IT and Same as well. It’s no surprise that Trainor has the scoop on Pittsburgh bands. During our conversation, he passionately talks about dozens of bands he loves at the moment, even sending a YouTube playlist of some of the bands he digs, including fellow Baltimore acts like Wume and Romantic States. When CP points out that he sounds like a music journalist, he laughs, responding with the humility that threads through everything the band does. “People have told me that before,” he says, “but, you know, I have terrible grammar skills.” MEGFAIR @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M

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[ROCK] + SUN., MAY 28

Professional synth-pop wizards Good Great Fine OK are bringing their dreamy, danceable tunes to Cattivo tonight. Only one adjective of their name actually describes their music, and it’s not good, fine or OK. The latest EP, III, builds off the group’s past work collaborating with artists like The Chainsmokers and X Ambassadors, but firmly establishes its own synth-pop sound. Adding to the show is the equally dreamy Morgxn, who promises to “Love You With the Lights On,” per his hit single. Rounding out the night are Emerson Jay’s easy electronic sounds. Hannah Lynn 7 p.m. 146 44th St., Lawrenceville. $12-14. All ages. 412687-2157 or www.cattivo pgh.com

Please don’t let the fact that Cayetana is from Philly deter you from seeing it play. Relatability is the band’s strength as it croons about feeling like shit and getting day-drunk in a distressingly familiar way, but also, refreshingly, about how to keep going. The mid-tempo punk tunes want listeners to feel less alone in whatever they’re feeling. The band is at Smiling Moose tonight, on tour for its latest, (aptly titled) A New Kind of Normal, along with Pittsburgh-based AllegrA and Rue. HL 6:30 p.m. 1306 E. Carson St., South Side. $10-12. All ages. 412-431-4668 or www. smilingmoose.com

[ROCK] + FRI., MAY 26

’68 mixes extravagant rock ’n’ roll, catchy hooks and manic punk energy that swirls together to create a cacophony so loud it rattles bones. It’s grimy but catchy; vocalist Josh Scogin (formerly of The Chariot) has a voice that carves through the rawness. Be further challenged by tour mates Listener, a spoken-word rock band that creates instrumentals powerful enough to evoke a whole spectrum of human emotion, while Dan Smith’s unique, emotive Southern timbre drives forward with powerful poetry. Hometown hero The Homeless Gospel Choir is also on this tour, and locals Old Game and Lawn Care kick it all off tonight at the Smiling Moose. Meg Fair 6:30 p.m. 1306 E. Carson St., South Side. $13-15. All ages. 412-431-4668 or www.smiling-moose.com

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[BLUEGRASS/ FOLK] + TUE., MAY 30

When seeing Old Crow Medicine Show, you’ll probably wonder if you’ve ever seen so many tiny, old-timey instruments on stage at the same time. You might also question if you’ve taken a time machine back to the Dust Bowl. You’ll definitely be impressed, though. Old Crow has indulged a long-standing infatuation with Bob Dylan, but takes the relationship to the next level by touring its version of Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde for the album’s 50th anniversary, at Stage AE. It’s a fun twist on some Dylan favorites — just don’t be surprised if someone whips out a literal washboard. HL 7:30 p.m. 400 North Shore Drive, North Side. $35. 412-229-5483 or www.promowestlive.com

TO SUBMIT A LISTING: HTTP://PGHCITYPAPER.COM/HAPPENINGS {ALL LISTINGS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY 9 A.M. FRIDAY PRIOR TO PUBLICATION}

ROCK/POP THU 25 DIESEL. Affiance w/ Convictions & Everyone Dies In Utah. 7 p.m. South Side. 412-431-8800. HOWLERS. Murder Junkies w/ The Jasons & Only Flesh. 9 p.m. Bloomfield. 412-682-0320. JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. The Semi-Supervillains. 8 p.m. North Side. 412-904-3335. SMILING MOOSE. Kerchief w/ Chilhowee Royal, Swampwalk & Proseed. 10 p.m. South Side. 412-475-8409.

FRI 26 ANDY WARHOL MUSEUM. Sound Series: Nightlands with special guest The Building. 8 p.m. North Side. 412-237-8300. CLUB CAFE. Blue Clutch, The Megan Pennington Trio & Sarah Halter. 6 p.m. The Hernies w/ Vireo. 10 p.m. South Side. 412-431-4950.

JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Clintones. 9 p.m. Warrendale. 724-799-8333. LINDEN GROVE. Totally 80s. 9:30 p.m. Castle Shannon. 412-882-8687. MOONDOG’S. The Relics. 8:30 p.m. Blawnox. 412-828-2040.

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Bill Toms & Hard Rain. 8 p.m. Red Room Effect. album release. 9 p.m. North Side. 412-904-3335. KNUCKLEHEAD’S BAR. Tobacco Road. 9:30 p.m. Ross. 412-366-7468. MUSIC TO MY EAR. Marty Zundel. 12:30 p.m. Ross. 412-223-9747. BAJA BAR AND GRILL. In NIED’S HOTEL. JJ Bickle Transit Band. 9 p.m. Fox & the Liberators. Chapel. 412-963-0640. 7 p.m. Lawrenceville. CATTIVO. King Fez, 412-781-9853. Love Dumpster, PALACE THEATRE. www. per VertiGo Go. Campaign a p pghcitym Crystal Blue Band. fundraiser for Democrat .co 7:30 p.m. Greensburg. Mike “Zombo” Devine, 724-836-8000. running for PA House Rep THE R BAR. The ROCKIT Band. in the 20th District. 8 p.m. 9:30 p.m. Dormont. 412-942-0882. Lawrenceville. 412-687-2157. SMILING MOOSE. Pop Punk CLUB CAFE. Army Of Optimism. Night. 10 p.m. South Side. 6 p.m. South Side. 412-431-4950. 412-439-5706. DOWNEY’S HOUSE. The STAGE AE. Franz Ferdinand. Good Guys. 8:30 p.m. Robinson. 7 p.m. North Side. 412-229-5483. 412-489-5631. THE SUB ALPINE. Easy Action & THE FIREPIT WOOD FIRED Deliverence. 9 p.m. Turtle Creek. GRILL. Lenny & Denny. 8 p.m. 412-823-6661. North Huntingdon. 724-515-2903.

SAT 27

FULL LIST ONLINE

SUN 28 JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. B.B. Steal. 3:30 p.m. Warrendale. 724-799-8333. THE R BAR. Billy The Kid & the Regulators. 6 p.m. Dormont. 412-942-0882.

MP 3 MONDAY {PHOTO COURTESY OF BRAEDEN MCCLAIN}

ALLEGRA

Each week, we post a song from a local artist online for free. “I made these songs alone in my basement,” reads the text on AllegrA’s Bandcamp for her latest two-track, cuties / smudged glasses. It sounds like it: These smartly written guitardriven songs have an intimate, restrained and slightly gloomy vibe. Good basement stuff. Stream or download “Smudged Glasses” for free at FFW>>, the music blog at pghcitypaper.com.

MON 29 BAJA BAR AND GRILL. Told Ya So Band. 2 p.m. Fox Chapel. 412-963-0640. SMILING MOOSE. Uada, Slaves BC & Savage Nekropolis. 7 p.m. South Side. 412-431-4668.

TUE 30 JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Dan Bubien. 7:30 p.m. Warrendale. 724-799-8333.

WED 31 CLUB CAFE. Joe Hertler & the Rainbow Seekers. 7 p.m. South Side. 412-431-4950. MR. SMALLS THEATER. Morbid Angel w/ Suffocation, Revocation, Withered. 6:30 p.m. Millvale. 412-821-4447. REX THEATER. Pallbearer. 8 p.m. South Side. 412-381-6811. THE FUNHOUSE @ MR. SMALLS. The One-Human Band, BRIAN FITZY w/Jean-Paul De Roover, Dennis Malley, more. host Mike Why. 6:30 p.m. Millvale. 412-945-0079.

DJS THU 25 MR. SMALLS THEATER. Centrifuge Thursdays. At the Funhouse. 9 p.m. Millvale. 412-821-4447. CONTINUES ON PG. 22

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CONCERTS, CONTINUED FROM PG. 21

HEAVY ROTATION

PERLE CHAMPAGNE BAR. Bobby D Bachata. 10 p.m. Downtown. 412-471-2058.

Here are the four songs that Pittsburgh City Paper editor Charlie Deitch can’t stop listening too:

FRI 26 ANDYS WINE BAR. DJ Malls Spins Vinyl. 5 p.m. Downtown. 412-773-8884. BELVEDERE’S. Down N Derby. 9 p.m. Lawrenceville. 412-687-2555. THE FLATS ON CARSON. Pete Butta. 10 p.m. South Side. 412-586-7644. ONE 10 LOUNGE. DJ Goodnight, DJ Rojo. 9 p.m. Downtown. 412-874-4582. ROWDY BUCK. Top 40 Dance. 10 p.m. South Side. 412-431-2825. RUGGER’S PUB. 80s Night w/ DJ Connor. 9 p.m. South Side. 412-381-1330.

Audioslave

“Like a Stone”

Chris Cornell

“Billie Jean”

Soundgarden

“The Day I Tried to Live”

Chris Cornell

“Ave Maria”

TUE 30

WED 31 SMILING MOOSE. Rock Star Karaoke w/ T-MONEY. 9:30 p.m. South Side. 412-431-4668.

BLUES FRI 26 ELWOOD’S PUB. Jack of Diamonds. 8:30 p.m. Rural Ridge. 724-265-1181.

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Benny Benack. 8 p.m. Speakeasy. High Standards. 8 p.m. Ballroom. North Side. 412-409-3335. WOOLEY BULLY’S. The Bobby Short Organ Trio w/ Southside Jerry. 9 p.m. New Brighton. 724-843-4702.

SAT 27

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & JAMES STREET SPEAKEASY. Tony GASTROPUB & Campbell Jam Session. SPEAKEASY. Bill Toms 5 p.m. North Side. & Hard Rain. Speakeasy. www. per a p 412-904-3335. pghcitym 8 p.m. North Side. .co THE MONROEVILLE 412-904-3335. RACQUET CLUB. MOONDOG’S. Jazz Bean Live. 7 p.m. Something’s Cookin’. 8:30 p.m. Monroeville. 412-728-4155. Blawnox. 412-828-2040.

Check out our photos from

Chance the Rapper’s Pittsburgh tour stop at PPG Paints Arena on our FFW> music blog online at www.pghcitypaper.com

THU 25 JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Roger Humphries Jam Session. Ballroom. 8 p.m. North Side. 412-904-3335. VALLOZZI’S PITTSBURGH. Eric Johnson. 5:30 p.m. Downtown. 412-394-3400.

FRI 26 ANDORA RESTAURANT FOX CHAPEL. Pianist Harry Cardillo & vocalist Charlie Sanders. 6:30 p.m. Fox Chapel. 412-967-1900.

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Davisson Brothers. 8 p.m. Warrendale. 724-799-8333.

CLASSICAL A SPACE ODYSSEY CONCERT. The Brass Roots and organist Dr. Edward Alan Moore join forces for a sonic spectacular of music for brass and organ. The concert will feature film score arrangements by guest conductor and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra trombonist James Nova. East Liberty Presbyterian Church, East Liberty. 412-441-3800.

WED 31 MILLBILLYS. Jergel’s Rhythm Grille, Warrendale. 724-799-8333.

OTHER MUSIC THU 25

THE GOLDMARK. Pete Butta. Reggae & dancehall. 10 p.m. Lawrenceville. 412-688-8820.

JAZZ

COUNTRY

FRI 26

BELVEDERE’S. DJ ADMC. Kanye night. Lawrenceville. 412-687-2555. DIESEL. DJ CK. 10 p.m. South Side. 412-431-8800. MIXTAPE. DJ Antithesis. ‘The 1990s (& a bag of chips)’ dance party. 9 p.m. Garfield. 412-661-1727. PERLE CHAMPAGNE BAR. DJ Tenova. ladies night. 9 p.m. Downtown. 412-471-2058. ROWDY BUCK. Top 40 Dance. 10 p.m. South Side. 412-431-2825.

{CP PHOTO BY LUKE THOR TRAVIS}

CLUB CAFE. Taj Weekes, Adowa & Truth and Rites. 7 p.m. South Side. 412-431-4950.

THU 25

SAT 27

TUE 30

FULL LIST ONLINE

SUN 28 ROCKS LANDING BAR & GRILLE. Tony Campbell, John Hall, Howie Alexander & Dennis Garner. 7 p.m. McKees Rocks. 412- 875- 5809.

MON 29

ACOUSTIC THU 25 BOULEVARD PUB. Eclectic Acoustics. 5 p.m. Canonsburg. 724-746-2250.

SAT 27

LINDEN GROVE. Karaoke. 8 p.m. Castle Shannon. 412-882-8687. RIVERS CASINO. Nina Sainato. 7 p.m. North Side. 412-231-7777. SMILING MOOSE. Kerchief, Chilhowee Royal, Proseed, Swampwalk. 9:30 p.m. South Side. 412-758-6724.

DOROTHY SIX BLAST FURNACE CAFE. Three Sides. 7 p.m. Homestead. 412-464-9023. PARADISE PUB. Eclectic Acoustics. 9 p.m. Monaca. 724-888-2346.

FRI 26

WED 31

SAT 27

ALLEGHENY ELKS LODGE #339. Pittsburgh Banjo Club. 8 p.m. North Side. 412-321-1834. PARK HOUSE. Shelf Life String Band. 9 p.m. North Side. 412-224-2273. PENN HEBRON GARDEN CLUB. Penn Hills Coffeehouse. Singer songwriter showcase featuring a rotating lineup of jazz, acoustic, bluegrass & world music. 7 p.m. Penn Hills. 412-204-7147. WHEELFISH. Jason Born. 7 p.m. Ross. 412-487-8909.

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Travlin’. 8 p.m. North Side. 412-904-3335. KEYSTONE OAKS HIGH SCHOOL. “DOUBLE PLAY” w/ organist Ken Double & singer Daniel Mata. 7:30 p.m. Dormont. 412-241-8108. RIVERS CASINO. Rick & Shari Richards. 9 p.m. North Side. 412-231-7777.

HAMBONE’S. Ian Kane, Ronnie Weiss & Tom Boyce. Jazz Standards, showtunes & blues. 6:30 p.m. Lawrenceville. 412-681-4318.

REGGAE

WED 31

SUN 28

RIVERS CLUB. Jessica Lee & Friends. 5:30 p.m. Downtown. 412-391-5227.

BAJA BAR AND GRILL. Ras Prophet. 2 p.m. Fox Chapel. 412-963-0640.

THU 25 PIRATA. The Flow Band. 9 p.m. Downtown. 412-323-3000.

RIVERS CASINO. Jeff Jimerson & Airborne. 9 p.m. Levelz. Mark Ferrari. 9 p.m. North Side. 412-231-7777.

SUN 28 STAGE AE. Future Islands. 6:30 p.m. North Side. 412-229-5483.

WED 31 JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. CAPA Class Recital. 7 p.m. North Side. 412-904-3335.

What to do IN PITTSBURGH

May 24 - 30 WEDNESDAY 24 Wale

STAGE AE North Side. With special guests Chazz French, Rotimi & Phil Ade. All ages show. Tickets: ticketmaster. com or 1-877-745-3000. Doors open at 7p.m.

guests Migos, Tory Lanez & Kodak Black. Tickets: livenation.com. 7p.m.

Abbey: In the Red

Oddisee & Good Company

VARIOUS LOCATIONS. For more info visit sandwich week.pittsburghnorthside. com. Through May 28.

MR. SMALLS THEATRE Millvale. 412-421-4447. With special guests Olivier St. Louis & Amir Miles. All ages show. Tickets: ticket web.com/opusone. 8p.m.

PETERSEN EVENTS CENTER Oakland. Tickets: cirquedu soleil.com/ovo. Through May 28.

THURSDAY 25 Annual Gala Benefit

SCHENLEY PLAZA Oakland. With special guest Billy Price. For tickets and more info visit peoplesoakland.org. 6p.m.

MONDAY 29

AUGUST WILSON CENTER Downtown. 412-456-6666. Tickets: trustarts.org. Through May 27.

North Side Sandwich Week

Cirque du Soleil: Ovo

special guest Zack Mexico. Tickets: ticketmaster.com or 1-800-745-3000. Doors open at 7p.m.

FRIDAY 26 265 Sound Series: Nightlands

ANDY WARHOL MUSEUM North Side. With special guest The Building. For tickets and more info visit warhol.org. 8p.m.

FUTURE

Live Music PGH presents Local Limelight

KEYBANK PAVILION Burgettstown. With special

LOT 17 Bloomfield. Free show. For more info visit

Hands-On Harley Davidson

CHILDREN’S MUSEUM North Side. For more info visit pittsburghkids.org. Through Sept. 10.

TUESDAY 30 Old Crow Medicine Show

STAGE AE North Side. Tickets: ticketmaster.com or 1-800-745-3000. Doors open at 7:30p.m.

FUTURE KEYBANK PAVILION MAY 25 With special guests NVSV, Choo Jackson, Brittney Chantele & Mikey P. For more info visit trapdojo. splashthat.com. 7p.m.

livemusicpgh.com. 8p.m.

Flo Rida PNC PARK North Side. For tickets and more info visit pirates.com/fanjam. 7:05p.m.

Franz Ferdinand STAGE AE North Side. With special guest Omni. Tickets: ticketmaster.com or 1-800-745-3000.

SATURDAY 27 Trap Dojo

BOOM CONCEPTS Garfield.

Doors open at 7p.m.

An American In Paris BENEDUM CENTER Downtown. 412-456-6666. Tickets: culturaldistrict.org/ paris. Through June 11.

LGBTQ + Youth Prom ANDY WARHOL MUSEUM North Side. For more info visit warhol.org. 6p.m.

Com Truise & Clark

SUNDAY 28

REX THEATER South Side. 412-381-1681. All ages show. Tickets: ticketfly.com or 1-877-4-FLY-TIX. 8:30p.m.

Future Islands

STAGE AE North Side. With

Kids learn best when they have an adult to encourage them.

READing

Buddies

Volunteers support kids at the library by: • Reading together • Playing games • Exploring technology • Providing homework help Volunteer for as few as four hours per month!

carnegielibrary.org/volunteer NEWS

MUSIC

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THERE IS THE SENSE OF BEING PERMITTED TO LOOK UPON SOMETHING MAGNIFICENT

[DANCE]

READY TO GO “I was initially against it,” says KG Dynasty director Gabriel “KG” Ash, by phone from Los Angeles. The “it” is Pittsburgh-based KG Dynasty’s first-ever mainstage dance showcase, Infinity. Ever the perfectionist, Ash was concerned there wasn’t enough preparation time to assemble a showcase that would meet his expectations. His staff convinced him otherwise. “The longer we continue to wait and think we are not ready, the more room that leaves us to not actually do it,” says KG Dynasty spokesperson Sean W. Green. Ash, a star on the Pittsburgh hip-hop dance scene, has been the face of KG Dynasty, which is perhaps best known as a semifinalist on season 7 of MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew. Today, Ash splits his time between Los Angeles, where he works as a choreographer and dance instructor, and Pittsburgh. For Infinity: A Dance Showcase, which premieres May 26 and 27 at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, he says he will take a backseat to KG Dynasty’s other talented choreographers and dancers. “The showcase’s focus is about the company and establishing all our choreographers,” says Ash. The 90-minute showcase in four acts, hosted by Los Angeles-based actor, dancer and comedian Terrence Green (a.k.a. @RawSwagger), will feature a bevy of dance works by dancer/choreographers Green, LJ Duncan, Antwane Younger, Sharnell Younger, Ash and more. Set to music by artists such as Jay-Z, Kanye West, Erykah Badu and Chris Brown, the numbers will highlight KG Dynasty’s dancers and various crew members, such as the Dynasty Hitmen in Ash’s 2016 work “Initiation,” about a new dancer looking to join the Hitmen, and “Orange Is the New Black,” a new work by Sharnell Younger and Green for an all-female cast about female empowerment. Also on the program is “Hypnosis,” a piece about a group of women taking control of a group of men, choreographed by Green, Akela Bey and Sharnell Younger, and a series of dance medleys set to the music of Drake, Missy Elliott and Rihanna. The showcase will close with Ash and Sharnell Younger’s “Humility,” a work for the production’s entire cast of 20 reflecting how the company has overcome obstacles, set to Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble.” INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

KG DYNASTY presents INFINITY: A DANCE SHOWCASE 6:30 p.m., Fri., May 26, and 6:30 p.m. Sat., May 27. Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, 5941 Penn Ave., East Liberty. $20-25. 412-295-9977 or www.kelly-strayhorn.org

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

KG Dynasty’s Dynasty Pres {PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDRE RAND}

{BY STEVE SUCATO}

{PHOTO COURTESY OF TAYLOR DABNEY}

Sonya Clark’s “Pearl of Mother”

[ART REVIEW]

HAIR FORCE {BY LISSA BRENNAN}

ATHS AND Epithets — Works by Sonya Clark, an exhibit at Contemporary Craft, communicates massive ideas and complicated concepts through simple, direct works possessed of quiet strength and subtle majesty. It’s an unsettling and invigorating collection that resonates with the viewer long after the gallery has been left behind, leaving a memory of aesthetically potent images, of their connotation beyond their appearance, and of our response to the heft of the history they carry. Clark, based in Richmond, Va., is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Her work, which has been exhibited nationally, focuses on radically transforming the implications and functionality of everyday objects by recasting them with different and unexpected materials. A ﬁve-

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dollar bill thoroughly coated with sparkling crystalline sugar (“Encrusted”) is no longer valid as currency but multiplies in value as something beautiful.

OATHS AND EPITHETS — WORK BY SONYA CLARK continues through Aug. 19. Contemporary Craft, 2100 Smallman St., Strip District. 412-261-7003 or www.contemporarycraft.org

These metamorphoses are transﬁxing from a purely visual perspective, but become transcendent in their signiﬁcance. All reference the kidnapping of African people, their enslavement in the United States, their mistreatment and subjugation un-

der the Confederacy, and their continuing struggle in this country. Confederate battle ﬂags show up torn apart and sewn back together in emulation of the nation’s present-day banner in “Reconstruction,” then completely unwoven as thread red, white and blue in “Unraveled,” neatly piled like burial mounds. In “Uncurl,” hundreds, maybe thousands, of shiny, plain-black plastic combs are animated into a sinewy, undulating rope, cascading from the gallery ceiling to coil into a puddle of curls upon the ﬂoor. It’s alive, muscle-y and taut in repose, and possessed of a formidable strength. “Seven Layer Tangle” gathers another spiny cluster of combs in a Charybdis nest of teeth and sharpness; more are employed in the collaborative work created with Castro Kissiedu, “America Warp, Ghana Weft,” bringing the colors

PAGE TURNERS {BY BILL O’DRISCOLL}

INFO@ PGHC ITY PAP ER.CO M

NEWS

E.. YOU’LL HA HAV E THE TTIIME ME OF YOUR YOU UR R LIFE. LLIIFE

[WORDS]

Harper’s editor James Marcus

of a nation again to the forefront. Combs appear again bearing a message from Madam C.J. Walker as “In Her Own Words.” The Confederate flag of truce is roughly mended across its middle with suturing thread in “Monumental Cloth (sutured)”; it’s teastained and rough and powerful, and to some will reverberate as deeply personal. For this viewer, it was a sucker-punch reminder of her first realization that it wasn’t that black people healed from incisions differently, it was that white doctors weren’t as careful stitching them up. While all of the explorations utilizing combs, flags and fabric hit hard, it’s the works using a more unexpected material that make this exhibition sublime. Clark often employs human hair as the dominant or only textile in her sculptures, and it’s thrilling. It is employed as a primary material in the construction of the functional, and as an accessory in the creation of the decorative. It’s natural, generated often from the scalp of the artist herself, occasionally off the head of her mother, here and there harvested from a donor left uncredited. And when a viewer gazes at the pieces that it forms, there is the sense of being permitted to look upon something magnificent, sacred and hallowed, being allowed to share a truth as primal as blood. “Skein” gathers the fiber in a yarn-like ball, mostly wound sound but with one tendril extending. The artist states that the number of hairs used to construct this piece is the same as the number of Africans stolen from their country during a single year of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It’s approximately 80,000. Hair replaces the end of a pencil in “Untitled (a version of history),” prompting thoughts on erasure, and in “Hair Necklace” it creates impenetrable links. One gorgeous piece is “Pearl of Mother,” a tiny round perfect pale sphere of the artist’s mother’s hair, resting in a hand-shaped cradle built of the artist’s own, like a tiny animal sleeping safely in a nest. There is a poignancy to this work small in size but huge in consequence that is almost unbearable to witness. In replacing the standard materials used to form the tools of subjugation, Clark subverts the intentions of the abductors by rendering the tools, in their new construction, useless; this takes the power away from those who would use it poorly, and is restorative to behold. But the usage of the body’s own materials nourishes the soul. Chains constructed with sugar are impotent to hold even the captive whose power has been stolen, but a ladder plaited from discarded locks can bear the weight of all who use it to ascend.

MUSIC

Magazine stands are harder to find these days, but apparently magazines are doing OK: By some metrics, their audience keeps growing, with digital gaining ground but print still popular. Of course, “magazine” covers lots of terrain, from Us Weekly to The New York Times Magazine. What of mags publishing literary nonfiction? The Pittsburgh-based Creative Nonfiction Foundation’s 2017 Writers’ Conference — with two days of talks, panel discussions and networking, about everything from the writer’s craft to the business side — is chance to check in. And the answer is: Also not doing too badly, at least for the employers of two participants in the conference’s May 26 keynote panel, The State of the American Magazine. “We seem very healthy at the moment,” says Cressida Leyshon, deputy fiction editor of The New Yorker. The storied weekly has a print-plus-digital circulation of 1.1 million — its highest ever, Leyshon says, and its website gets 10 million visitors a month. Much of that traffic is due to web-only content, including daily dispatches on popular culture and the insanity in Washington, plus the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast and features like authors reading their own short stories. Leyshon, whose editing duties include the nonfiction of such stalwarts as John Seabrook, David Sedaris and Jane Kramer, came to The New Yorker 21 years ago, when it was print-only. “The idea of what the magazine is is really shifting and changing and expanding,” she says. Harper’s Magazine, meanwhile, is unusual in that it’s backed by the MacArthur Foundation, a nonprofit family outfit that ensures that “we’re not under pressure to make money,” acknowledges editor James Marcus, another panel participant. The venerable monthly is left free to swim against the commercial current, with minimal online-only content and a focus on long-form features and criticism. In some ways, of course, Harper’s anticipated Twitter culture with its long-running Harper’s Index feature. But in the current polarized political climate, “We hope to bring more nuance to the table,” says Marcus. “There are some things that must be explored in depth.” He cites Kentucky native Chris Offutt’s November 2016 article “In the Hollow,” about life in Appalachia and its role in the presidential race. “These are exciting times for magazines,” Marcus adds. “But there’s great cultural work to be done.”

MAY 23-28 • HEINZ HALL TRUS TRUS U TA TARTS. S ORG • BOXX OF O FICE AT THHEA EATE TERR SQ SQUUARE UA REE 4122-39 41 392-4900 • GROUP P S 10 10+ TI T CKK ET ETS 41 4122 47711 699300 PNC BROADWAY WAY I N PIT PI TSBURGH IS A PRESENTATION P N OF O T HEE PIT P T SSBUR SBURGH B CULTURAL TRUST, TRUST , PIT TSBURGH TS BURGH RGH GH S YMPHO YMPHH Y AND YMPHON YMPHONY NDD BBR OADWAY ADWAY DDWAY WAY WAA Y ACROSS AMERICA.

[ MAY 13 – JUNE 4, 2017]

“Vivid, perceptive, and quietly gripping.” — The New York Times

IRONBOUND BY Martyna Majok

DRISCOLL@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

CREATIVE NONFICTION WRITERS’ CONFERENCE Fri., May 26, and Sat., May 27. $125-385 (May 26 keynote only: $7-15). Point Park University, Downtown. Complete schedule is at www.creativenonfiction.org. +

ARTS

EVENTS

DIRECTED BY Tracy Brigden

Use code CITYCITY to save $5 on single tickets

BUY YOUR TICKETS TODAY! 412.431.CITY (2489) / CityTheatreCompany.org / South Side +

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[PLAY REVIEWS]

GET ON THE BUS {BY TED HOOVER} THERE’S NO other way to say this: Front Porch Theatricals’ production of Violet is one of the most magnificent evenings I’ve ever spent inside a theater. The show, with music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Brian Crawley, first played off-Broadway, to acclaim and awards, in 1997. It made it to Broadway in 2014 — great reviews but only a fivemonth run. The title character is a young woman from the North Carolina backwoods in 1964 traveling to see an Oklahoma televangelist, hoping he’ll heal her face, which was disfigured in a childhood accident. On the bus she meets two soldiers heading for an Army base: Flick, a black sergeant, and Monty, a white corporal. The three quickly bond, and most of the musical is their bus ride and the highly complex relationship they create. This intermissionless show ends with Violet’s meeting the televangelist and the fallout. Nothing happens the way you think it will, not just in the story but in Tesori’s musical score as well. She snakes in and out of myriad styles — blues, jazz, country, gospel, hillbilly and God knows what else — and somehow creates a cohesive, but endlessly surprising, whole. I don’t know if they’re practicing witchcraft over there, but Front Porch has managed to summon the perfect person for every role — from director Robyne Parrish and her forceful, deeply human vision to musical director Deana Muro and her extraordinary band. Creating a rock-solid temporal specificity as light, sound, set and costume designers are, respectively, Annmarie Duggan, Angela Baughman, Johnmichael Bohach and, especially, Kim Brown. And then this cast. Elizabeth Boyke,

{PHOTO COURTESY OF MARTHA DOLLAR SMITH}

Elizabeth Boyke and Lamont Walker II in Violet, at Front Porch Theatricals

VIOLET continues through May 28. Front Porch Theatricals at the New Hazlett Theater, 6 Allegheny Square East, North Side. $24-35. www.frontporchpgh.com

gether in one evening I couldn’t tell you, but I can say you’d be a fool to miss it. INF O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M

METTLE {BY MICHELLE PILECKI}

as Violet, is as heart-pounding and soullifting as any performer I’ve ever seen. Daniel Mayhak and Lamont Walker II, as Monty and Flick, are intensely engaging. (Walker soars with his solo number.) Gena Sims, Missy Moreno and Becky Toth raise the roof effortlessly. Erich Lascek and Jonathan Visser shine as preacher and father, while Samantha Lucas, Daniel Pivovar, David Ieong and Corwin Stoddard dazzle in their supporting roles. How all this managed to come to-

her life, always at a bus stop. She waits for many things (including the public transport to her jobs and her homes) as we meet her at age 42 (in “now”), as a newly arrived 20-year-old bride, and at various stops between and beyond. City’s artistic director, Tracy Brigden, wraps the audience around the stage (three-quarter) to heighten the urban claustrophobia, excellently and explicitly portrayed in Anne Mundell’s nearapocalyptic set. Sound designer Eric Shimelonis adds original music as well as evocative rail and traffic sounds, with appropriately creepy lighting from Andrew David Ostrowski. It’s a daunting atmosphere, but Rebecca Harris dominates the play as Darja. Rarely off the stage, Harris takes us through more than 20 years of heartache and hope, marriages and domestic abuse in varying relationships with five men. Two of them never appear physically, but pervade the action nonetheless. JD Taylor excels as Maks, Darja’s first husband, charming Polish dreamer (thank you, dialect coach Don Wadsworth) and father of her son. Erik Martin credibly portrays the quirky stranger who comes upon Darja in a mutual time of need. But the signal man in the plot is Rod Brogan as Tommy, a randy postal worker who delivers more than mail, and much grief to Darja. While not the most credible of characters, Tommy in Brogan’s hands becomes almost likable in a New Jersey kind of way.

REMEMBER Solidarność? Those heady days

when a Polish labor union, abetted by a Polish pope, led to the literal collapse of the Berlin Wall and the figurative one of the Soviet Union? And what happened to those spirited Poles after? Some came to America — people like Darja, the central figure in City Theatre’s production of Ironbound. The 2014 comedy-drama by Martyna Majok, herself a young Polish émigré, tightens around Darja at various crises in

IRONBOUND continues through June 4. City Theatre, 1300 Bingham St., South Side. $15-59. 412-431-2489 or www.citytheatrecompany.org

The title refers to an industrial neighborhood in Newark, but also to Darja’s character: stubborn, resilient, maybe a little rusty around the edges; but not hard, not brittle. I N F O@ P G HC I T Y PA P E R. C OM

OPENS TUESDAY! AN AMERICAN IN PARIS MUSIC AND LYRICS BY

GEORGE GERSHWIN AND IRA GERSHWIN BOOK BY

CRAIG LUCAS DIRECTED AND CHOREOGRAPHED BY

CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON Illustration: Don Oehl; Logo: Esther Wu

MAY 30-JUNE 11 • BENEDUM CENTER 26

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

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CULTURALDISTRICT.ORG/PARIS

412-456-6666 • BOX OFFICE AT THEATER SQUARE GROUPS 10+ TICKETS 844-PGH-SHOW (844-744-7469)

PRESENTED IN COOPERATION WITH

{PHOTO COURTESY OF KITOKO CHARGOIS}

Dancers rehearse SPdp’s Abbey: In the Red

[DANCE] Ahead.” Starting with original recordings and archival scores from Rutgers Univer{BY STEVE SUCATO} sity, the songs have been given modern arrangements by noted local saxophonist A LOT CAN be learned from STAYCEE PEARL and composer Ben Opie. The music will be dance project (SPdp) works about the eclec- performed live by a six-member ensemble tic tastes of Staycee and Herman “Soy Sos” including Opie, Herman Pearl and singer Pearl. OCTAVIA (2011) revealed that Octavia Anqwenique Wingﬁeld. Butler is a favorite author of Staycee Pearl’s, Staycee Pearl says that the non-narrative while 2016’s FLOWERZ work for a dozen dancers, grew out of the pair’s love including guest artists from of house music and its role Legacy Arts Project, conjures in how the married couple the mood of Lincoln’s songs met. SPdp and Soy Sos’ latest and her activism and draws project, ABBEY: In the Red, parallels to today’s AfroMay 25-27 at the August punk scene and the Black Wilson Center, celebrates Lives Matter movement. the couple’s respect for the “Here we are dealing music of jazz vocalist, comwith a whole other set of poser and civil-rights activ[social] issues that are very ist Anna Marie Wooldridge (1930–2010), much the same as my parents dealt with a.k.a. Abbey Lincoln. back then [in the 1960s],” says Staycee Pearl. The Pearls see ABBEY: In the Red not as an exploration of the social and political arSTAYCEE PEARL DANCE PROJECT guments surrounding both eras’ civil-rights AND SOY SOS PRESENT movements, but a nod to the art and music ABBEY: IN THE RED that evolved out of those movements. 7 p.m. Thu., May 25; 8 p.m., Fri., May 26; Adding to the work’s somewhat abstract and 8 p.m. Sat., May 27. August Wilson Center, 980 Liberty Ave., Downtown. $15-25. choreography, which blends contemporary, 412-456-6666 or www.trustarts.org modern and African movement styles, will be a sculptural metal set by Atticus Adams, The Pearls are one of Pittsburgh’s top and avant-garde costumes by Adams and artist couples, and for ABBEY: In the Red, Tereneh Mosley. they fused her choreography and directing “It’s unfortunate that more people and his sound design and musical direction. don’t know about Abbey Lincoln’s work,” The hour-long, intermissionless produc- says Herman Pearl. “We feel she should be tion is structured around seven songs that mentioned in the same sentence as Nina Lincoln wrote and/or sang, including “Free- Simone and Billie Holiday. She was really dom Day,” “Garvey’s Ghost” and “Straight on that level.”

“RED” ALERT

LET S GET ’

THE WORK CONJURES THE MOOD OF LINCOLN’S SONGS AND ACTIVISM.

S CIAL

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I NF O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M

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T H E

P I T T S B U R G H

C U L T U R A L

T R U S T

P R E S E N T S

[COMEDY]

HOME VIDEOS {BY CHARLIE DEITCH}

LONDON CALLING : AN EVENING WITH

Comedian Jim Breuer may be best known from Saturday Night Live or the stoner classic Half Baked. But lately he’s more excited about baseball. For the past few seasons he’s been doing video recaps of Mets games on Facebook. This weekend, he brings his standup tour here, and the timing seems a little suspicious. Read the full story at www.pghcitypaper.com.

“Brilliantly ﬁerce and ﬁercely brilliant” — THE LOND ON EVE NING STANDARD

Award–winning British singer Laura Mvula, has been the critics’ choice in the United Kingdom for the last four years. Don’t miss this soulful vocalist known for her inventive, atmospheric mix of R&B, jazz, classical, and pop.

THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 2017 • 8 PM DEBUT ! AUGUST WILSON CENTER PITTSBURGH

TRUS TARTS.ORG BOX OFFICE AT THEATER SQUARE 412-456-6666 GROUPS 10+ TICKETS 412-471-6930 28

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

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“Hey, you suck”: Jim Breuer {PHOTO COURTESY OF GREGORY PALLANTE}

L AU R A M V U L A

YOU’RE HERE THE SAME WEEKEND THAT YOUR METS ARE PLAYING THE PIRATES. ARE YOU PLANNING YOUR TOUR AROUND THE METS’ SCHEDULE? I would be a liar if I said I didn’t [laughs]. I’m also looking for a really good Pittsburgh fan that I can hang out with during the game. What I’m trying to do is create this thing [www. batsballsandbreu. com] where it’s baseball for the fans and run by the fans. When I did my recaps I really started connecting with the people who would [comment]. I got a lot of “Hey, you suck,” but then you get the fans who are like, “You’ve got a cool team.” ... The next thing I know, I’m hanging out with them and going to baseball games. And it’s not like you’re hanging out with “Jim Breuer the comedian,” it’s just a couple of baseball fans. WHY DID YOU START MAKING THESE VIDEOS? My wife was going through chemo and I had a manager who said I needed to make videos every day on Facebook. I didn’t want to do that. I have a wife with cancer, three kids and I’m taking care of my parents. It’s exhausting to try and be funny every day. But then comes April … and the Nationals had just signed Max Scherzer and everybody talked about how they were going to the World Series and he had a gazillion-dollar contract. And who do the Mets have? Forty-two-year-old Bartolo Colon. … [M]y wife had chemo that day and she’s there, she has no energy and her skin is gray. Anyway, Scherzer has a no-hitter going and Colon has a two-hit shutout. So, we go to the ninth and I’m watching this like it’s game 7 of the World Series. I’m yelling … I’m losing my mind and pacing around and I look back and my wife has this giggle going on, and she doesn’t even have the energy to giggle. I said, “What are you laughing at?” She said to me, “This is what you need to make videos of.” So, the idea came from a dark time, but it ended up as something beautiful. CDEITCH@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

JIM BREUER 7 p.m. Sat., May 27. Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall, 510 E. 10th Ave., Munhall. $27-47. All ages. 412-462-3444 or www.carnegieofhomestead.com

FOR THE WEEK OF

05.25-06.01.17 Full events listed online at www.pghcitypaper.com

{PHOTO COURTESY OF SUICIDEGIRLS}

Vice calls SuicideGirls Blackheart Burlesque “comic-con meets burlesque nerd orgy.” The troupe itself offers “geek fantasy spectacular” and founder Missy Suicide’s characterization of traditional burlesque merged with cosplay. Any way you label it, Blackheart Burlesque is on its biggest U.S. tour ever: 63 cities in not many more days. On May 27, the troupe hits the Rex Theater for the first time since 2015, with six dancers performing a unique program of numbers inspired by pop-cultural touchstones old and new, ranging from Sailor Moon and Star Wars (think: helmeted stormtroopers) to Harry Potter and TV’s Westworld.

SuicideGirls, an online alt-beauty/ indie-culture community, produced its first burlesque show in 2002, and toured with Guns N’ Roses and Courtney Love. Missy Suicide says the troupe took a self-imposed hiatus, during which the neo-burlesque movement exploded. When a 2010 comeback loomed, “We had to up our game and distinguish ourselves,”says Suicide, reached by phone from the road. Hence the pop-culture themes that have served it well. For this tour, Missy Suicide’s creations include a combined Prince/David Bowie tribute. And audiences love a number inspired by TV’s Stranger Things, she says, from the instant the eerie theme music starts. “People go nuts,” she says. Christmas lights are also involved. “It’s impossible to leave without a smile on your face.”

{PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER SPROWLS}

^ Fri., May 26: Down & Derby

thursday 05.25

BY BILL O’DRISCOLL

9 p.m. Sat., May 27. Rex Theater, 1602 E. Carson St., South Side. $30-50 (VIP: $90-110); 18 and over. www.blackheartburlesque.com

The Bridge Series connects Pittsburgh’s literary and activist communities. The monthly series’ new installment on Wed., May 31 features Yona Harvey, a poet and Pitt professor lately known for co-writing Marvel Comics’ “World of Wakanda” series. Joining Harvey at Brillobox are Cheryl Hall-Russell, a poet and president of the consultancy Black Women, Wise Women, and writer Brian Broome. The evening includes a performance by members of tonight’s guest organization, Alumni Theater Company. 8 p.m. 4106 Penn Ave., Bloomfield. $5. www.facebook.com (“bridge series harvey”)

friday 05.26

ART

ROLLER-SKATING

Witness some Shakespeare-inspired drawings come to life at Spinning Plate Gallery. Richard Claraval’s Shakespeare Drawings exhibit imagines scenes by the Bard; tonight, Claraval will discuss the works, and then performers from area troupes Shakespeare in the Parks, Unrehearsed Shakespeare and Mrs. Shakespeare will act them out. The free event is sponsored by Britsburgh. Bill O’Driscoll 7-9 p.m. 5821 Baum Blvd., Friendship. Free. www.facebook.com (“art shakespeare”)

OK, it’s technically not roller derby. But neither that, nor even a 2014 fire that once closed down home base Belvederes Ultra-Dive for more than a year has ever stopped Down & Derby. Tonight, the monthly roller-skating dance party marks its 11th year of skating, drinking and dancing with not only DJ’d tunes by JX4 and Hank D but a special guest: Michelle Steilen, founder of California’s Moxi Roller Skate Shop. As always, you can bring skates or rent them on-site, but RSVPing is recommended. BO 9 p.m.-2 a.m. 4016 Butler St., Lawrenceville. $5-8 (21 and over). RSVP at www.downandderby.org.

OPERA Undercroft Opera stages La Rondine, Puccini’s opera from 1917. La Rondine follows protagonist Magda’s wistful journey for love. The work represents “a daring attempt to cross the boundary between opera and operetta,” according to the New York Times’ Micaela Baranello. Operettas are sometimes dismissed for their lighter content, but La Rondine incorporated aspects of the genre to create a classic. The first of three performances takes place tonight at Carlow University’s Antonian Theater. Matt Petras 8 p.m. Continues through Sun., May 28. 3333 Fifth Ave., Oakland. $10-35 ($5 for children under 12). 412-422-7919 or undercroftopera.org

saturday 05.27 EXHIBIT Step into a remote jungle where you’re surrounded by poisonous plants and animals — and that’s just your first contact with The Power of Poison, a touring exhibit that opens today at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The exhibit, organized by New York’s American Museum of Natural History, includes everything ^ Thu., May 25: Shakespeare Drawings {ART (DETAIL) BY RICHARD CLARAVAL}

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{ART BY JEFF BRUNNER}

^ Sat., May 27: This Land is Your Land Love Party

from dioramas depicting poisonings in folklore (Snow White, et al.) to interactive elements like an “enchanted book” and an iPad station that lets you attempt to solve poisoning mysteries. There are also live animals including a poison golden frog and a tarantula, and daily live animal shows. BO 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Exhibit continues through Sept. 4. 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. $11.95-19.95 (free for kids under 2). 412-622-3131 or www.carnegiemnh.org

FESTIVAL Union Project presents the This Land Is Your Land Love Party for kids. The event hopes to let kids know they’re “stronger than they know in the face of adversity.” Various stations will offer art activities like drawing and writing poetry. The event is a collaboration with #notwhite, a group of 10 women artists who are immigrants or of immigrant descent. All children must have adult supervision during the event. Admission is pay-what-you-wish. MP 3-8 p.m. 801 N. Negley Ave., Highland Park. 412-363-4550 or www.unionproject.org

sunday 05.28 OUTDOORS OpenStreetsPGH opens its season with a new {PHOTO COURTESY OF BIKE PITTSBURGH} route where walkers, ^ Sun., May 28: OpenStreetsPGH cyclists and fitness enthusiasts can reclaim the streets from cars for a few hours. Today’s car-free route runs from Market Square to Uptown, where it begins a big loop running through the Armstrong Tunnel, up East Carson Street, across the Birmingham Bridge and down Forbes back to the tunnel. The event, organized by Bike Pittsburgh, includes “hubs” that dot the way with yoga, dance and fitness workshops, community arts and more. (Cars can cross at a dozen designated intersections.) The June 25 OpenStreets hits the West End and North Side, and the July 31 iteration heads to Lawrenceville. BO 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Downtown, Uptown, South Side. Free. www.openstreetspgh.org

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

EVERYONE IS A CRITIC

LYNN CULLEN IS GOING BACK TO SCHOOL!

EVENT: 3 Rivers Comicon at Century III Mall, West Mifflin CRITIC: Cash from Wexford

Branson, 34, a recruiter

WHEN: Sat.,

May 20

In case it wasn’t obvious by the outfit, I’m a comic-book fan. So I thought I’d come, check it out. It’s a good comic-book convention, especially for comic books specifically. It’s not necessarily all pop culture, but if you’re into full-on comic books, Marvel, DC, Image, that kind of thing, it’s a really good con for that. That’s one of the reasons I like it so much. I like all of the artists that are here, especially the local ones. I think that’s really cool to see, some of the local Pittsburghers with the creative stuff that they have. Every con kind of has its own feel, right? This one is unique for this area so I don’t think it needs to change that much. I [attended] last year. I don’t know if it’s bigger this year; it kinda feels like it might be, but under the red mask, it’s hard to tell. B Y MAT T PE T R AS

tuesday 05.30 ART Two art shows open at BoxHeart Gallery. “Black and Blue” is a collection of work, utilizing paint, drawing and sculpture, that came out of a desire from artist Carolyn Reed Barritt in January 2017 “to escape a world that had started to feel hostile.” Theodore Bolha’s show, “Before We Were Born,” incorporates a paper-cutting art style. Bolha’s works are also abstract; most look vaguely like something familiar, like a fish, but have a lot more to them. Free receptions are planned for June 3 from 5-8 p.m. MP 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Continues through June 30. 4523 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. Free. 412-687-8858 or www. boxheartgallery.com

Lynn Cullen Live is now broadcasting daily from studios at Point Park University’s

WORDS

Center for Media Innovation

Kate Moore, British author of The Radium Girls, visits to chat with locally based novelist and attorney Heather Terrell at Penguin Bookshop. Moore’s nonfiction work follows the strange, {ART BY THEODORE BOLHA} harrowing story of ^ Tue., May 30: BoxHeart Gallery a group of workers in the 1920s who fell victim to poisoning from a glowing, radioactive paint they used to paint watch dials. The book is written tells the story of the women “from their perspectives,” rather than “focusing on the legal … or the scientific side,” Moore told the New York Times. MP 6:30 p.m. 417 Beaver St., Sewickley. Free. 412-741-3838 or www.penguinbookshop.com

The show, presented by Pittsburgh City Paper in conjunction with Point Park University, airs daily at 10 a.m. at

www.pghcitypaper.com

STAGE A classic movie musical that became a critically acclaimed Broadway hit makes its Pittsburgh debut in a touring version. An American in Paris — the Gershwin-scored, Gene Kelly-starring 1951 fave set just after World War II — was a Tony-winning stage show in 2015, directed and choreographed by famed British talent Christopher Wheeldon. A two-week run at the Benedum Center, presented by Pittsburgh CLO as part of the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series, begins tonight. McGee Maddox and Sara Esty play the leads, and that iconic score CONTINUES ON PG. 32

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{PHOTO COURTESY OF MATTHEW MURPHY}

^ Tue., May 30: An American in Paris

by George and Ira includes “I Got Rhythm,” “’S Wonderful” and the title tune. BO 7:30 p.m. Continues through June 11. 237 Seventh St., Downtown. $26-80. 412456-6666 or www.trustarts.org

wednesday 05.31 STAGE City Theatre does more than stage plays; it also helps birth new work, including the crucial process of hosting readings and workshop presentations of plays in development. The annual free, five-day showcase Momentum ’17: New Plays at Different Stages, which starts today, features two plays that are part of City’s 2017-18 season: Citizens Market, by Cori Thomas (pictured), and The White Chip, by Sean Daniels. You can also see excerpts from The Consequences, a musical by Nathan Leigh and Kyle Jarrow, and a reading of Caroline V. McGraw’s I Get Restless. And you can participate in Questioning Color, a series of one-on-one conversations about race with patrons by playwright Tami Dixon (South Side Stories). BO Continues through June 4. 1300 Bingham St., South Side. Reservations encouraged at 412-431-24889 or www.citytheatrecompany.org.

thursday 06.01 STAGE

^ Wed., May 31: Momentum ‘17:

New Plays at Different Stages Monteze Freeland, creator of Kalopsia, describes the show as a musical, and a comedy, about mental illness in the black community. “Kalopsia” is the delusion that things are more beautiful than they really are; Freeland, a busy Pittsburgh-based actor and director, guides a cast of eight, backed by a four-piece band. Tonight’s show is part of the New Hazlett Theater’s Community Supported Art series. BO 8 p.m. 6 Allegheny Square East, North Side. $25. www.newhazletttheater.org

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

the

AREPAS ARE CORN CAKES THAT ARE SPLIT OPEN LIKE MINIATURE PITAS

NEW CHEESES {BY REBECCA ADDISON} A long-time staple at the Farmers Market Cooperative of East Liberty, cheesemonger Wheel and Wedge recently opened a new retail location at the Engine House 25 Wines tasting room, in Lawrenceville. The new space offers cheeses and meats from right here in Pennsylvania — such as Strip Distict’s Parma Sausage — and as far away as Sheboygan, Wis., Greensboro, Vt., and Kansas City. Patrons can sample a cheese board or charcuterie, or buy cheeses, meats and accoutrements such as crackers, mustard and pickles to make their own at home. “I view it like the craft-beer movement 10 or 15 years ago. That’s how domestic cheese is going,” says owner Alix Hoylman. “A lot of these creameries are really young and new, and they’re doing really exciting things. My goal for the whole business is to introduce people to new cheeses they’ve never had before.” Current varieties on offer include St. Malachi, a firm cheese from the Farm at Doe Run, in Coatesville, Pa.; it is made from raw cow’s milk and offers caramel and butterscotch notes. Another Pennsylvania variety, Tuffet, from Green Dirt Farm, in Weston, is a pasteurized sheep’s milk cheese with herbal notes. “A lot of it has to do with seasonality, but I’m always looking for ways to incorporate new cheeses,” says Hoylman. “The last brand-new creamery I brought in came from a trip to Kansas City. They specialize in sheep’s-milk cheese, which is always something I’m looking for because it’s a more complex cheese.” Hoylman also currently does beerand-cheese-pairing classes at breweries around the city, and soon she’ll be hosting wine-and-cheese classes at Wheel and Wedge’s new location. RADDISON@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

3339 Penn Ave., Lawrenceville. www.wheelandwedge.com

the

FEED

Get those herbs planted! Basil, oregano, rosemary, y, chives, dill, sage, tarragon, gon, parsley, mint, etc. These days, seedlings are widely available il bl — from farmers markets to nurseries and even big-box retailers. Do a patch in the yard, set up a planter on the porch, or even do a few small pots indoors by a window. Easy to cultivate, delicious to eat.

{CP PHOTO BY VANESSA SONG}

Bandeja Paisa: Steak, Colombian chorizo, fried pork belly, plantains, avocado, egg, red beans, rice and grilled arepa

SOUTH AMERICAN STYLE {BY ANGELIQUE BAMBERG + JASON ROTH}

ITTSBURGH MAY not presently have a particularly rich Latin culture, but that doesn’t mean it’s a desert of Central and South American cuisine. Quite aside from numerous Mexican restaurants all along the spectrum from farcical to fantastic, we have dined out on delicacies from El Salvador, Peru, Argentina and Brazil, all within a short jaunt. But there’s deﬁnitely room for more in this delicious niche, so we were excited by the opening of a Colombian restaurant on lively East Carson Street, where established and new concepts mix. The Colombian Spot began as a stall at the late, lamented Pittsburgh Public Market and graduated to sit-down service in its very own storefront. The space of the former 1889 Cafe has been stripped of its ’90s decor and made over as a simple, open dining room decorated with native crafts. A large

chalkboard wall was put to good use, displaying artistically rendered descriptions of Colombia’s national food (arepas) and drink (guarapo, sugar-cane juice ﬂavored with fruits and spices). The TV broadcast a Spanish sports feed, the music was tropical, and the feeling was festive and beachy.

THE COLOMBIAN SPOT 2019 E. Carson St., South Side. 412-381-9000 HOURS: Tue.-Thu. 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers $2-7; salads and arepas $7-11; entrees $6-16 LIQUOR: BYOB

CP APPROVED The menu was approachable with a few starters and salads, a few entrees, and an array of arepas. Arepas are a relative

of gorditas, the Mexican corn cakes that are split open like miniature pitas. The Colombian Spot makes its arepas in house from scratch, down to grinding its own hominy. The result was, in a word, spectacular. The cake was tender, something like polenta, but grilled to create edges as crisp as a griddled tortilla. The menu offers a dozen varieties of stuffed arepas, ranging from humble bean and cheese to Mexican (ﬁlled with pork, guacamole, cheese and jalapeños) and Steel City (pork, cheese and — of course — fries). We sampled the simplest, cheese, and a meatier option, ropa vieja. The latter is classically a Cuban dish featuring shredded beef with, among other things, olives, but this version used green peppers in a tomato sauce that was reminiscent of a sloppy joe. The meat was tender and ﬂavorful, CONTINUES ON PG. 34

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412-252-2877 Check us out @ frontporchgrille.com

INF O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

[PERSONAL CHEF]

COOL WHIP FOR SWEET-TOOTH CRAVINGS {BY KELLY ANDREWS, GREENFIELD}

Note: not ice cream :( {PHOTO COURTESY OF KELLY ANDREWS}

Destination

the sauce faintly piquant, and maduros — sweet fried plantains — added a distinctly tropical dimension to both flavor and texture. The arepa de queso used melty mozzarella in combination with crumbled queso fresco, which was tender but not gooey, resulting in a pleasing variety of texture and a creamy-salty flavor that enriched the plain corncake. We also tried two empanadas, chicken and vegetarian. While some Latin American countries make these savory turnovers with flaky crusts, those at Colombian Spot were formed from a cornmeal dough, with a texture like the bottom crust of good cornbread. The fillings were excellent, as well. Potatoes and tomatoes added starchy bulk and bright astringency to tender shredded chicken, while spinach, black beans and rice made for a substantial, satisfying vegetarian treat. Maduros’ siblings are tostones, nonsweet plantain smashed flat and fried. Sometimes this results in something hearty, but Colombian Spot’s were thin, almost chip-like. They provided a wonderful layer for pernil, roasted pork shoulder, shredded and served atop a bed of black beans. We could have eaten this all night, especially drizzled with delicious, housemade, vinegary hot sauce. Instead, we left room for bandeja paisa and a Colombian hamburger. The menu calls the former “the most popular Colombian dish,” and it’s no wonder why: It combines shredded beef, chorizo, fried pork belly and red beans, served atop white rice and topped with maduros, avocado and a fried egg. Unannounced, we were served a thin steak instead of shredded beef, which Jason found bold but Angelique thought overdone. But it was OK, because everything else was so good. The big red beans were creamy in texture and bold in flavor. The thick slice of pork belly was deep-fried and tough, but once cut into bits and stirred into the rice, it added a pleasing burst of umami. The chorizo was an intriguing cross between the tenderness of good kielbasa and the mild paprika spice of Spanish chorizo. Meanwhile, the Colombian burger was topped with lettuce, tomato and onions plus ham, bacon, ketchup, mayo, mustard, pineapple sauce and blackberry sauce. It was both absurd and delicious, the panoply of toppings and sauces taking the all-beef patty to places American gourmet-burger chefs haven’t dared to tread. It was also enormous; you may wish to try its junior partner, the Colombian hot dog, which swaps the bacon and ham for queso fresco. The Colombian Spot goes beyond novelty, offering variety, quality and a dining experience that made us want to go back, and soon.

Remember as a kid when your grandma used to top a bowl of cherry Jell-O with Cool Whip and it was considered a treat? These days, I use the trademarked, artificial whipped topping in dishes that once held underrated vanilla ice cream. I’m working on self-acceptance, using the mantra “My body doesn’t determine my selfworth,” and trying to convince myself that self-love is possible as a plussized lady, yadda yadda. But I also realize I can’t eat whatever shitty food I want, not exercise and expect to recognize myself in literally any photo taken of me in the last year or so. So while there is a growing number of commercials, social-media hashtags, and conversations that throw around the term “beach body,” for someone who is overweight, can’t swim and is as pale as a pile of snow, the beach has never been my scene. Nor do I intend to spend my days worrying about whether my body is the appropriate size to stuff into a two-piece, high-waisted bathing suit. I’ll let my thighs jiggle while walking in the hot sand whenever I feel like it. All of this to say, go to the beach if you like being wet for longer than 10 minutes, or the average showering time, if that’s your thing. Also, try this simple snack whenever you’ve really got a sweet-tooth craving and are trying to cut back on desserts, but just aren’t there yet. INGREDIENTS • 2 large spoonfuls of Cool Whip, which, if kept frozen, will have a consistency similar to ice cream, but it’s not ice cream, so don’t get your hopes up • handful of fresh, sliced strawberries • handful of almonds • generous topping of chocolate morsels INSTRUCTIONS Throw it all in a bowl. Savor every bite. Rub your belly in appreciation for all of its hard work. Repeat “My body doesn’t determine my self-worth” as needed. INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

Kelly Andrews is a poet who plans to stick around Pittsburgh indefinitely. You can find more sad, healthy (and funny) meals on her blog sadhealthymeals.wordpress.com. WE WANT YOUR PERSONAL RECIPES AND THE STORIES BEHIND THEM. EMAIL THEM TO CELINE@PGHCITYPAPER.COM.

Sushi Kim

MEXICAN RESTAURANT & BAR

OAXACAN CUISINE

Korean BBQ Buffet

FRIDAY, MAY 26TH LIVE MUSIC

HAPPY HOUR

Wednesday - Friday 5PM-7PM Free Hot Appetizers!

FRIDAYS-SUNDAY 4-9PM • CHICKEN/ BEEF BULGOGI • PORK, BEEF SHORT RIB • SEAFOOD, VEGETABLES

COOKED AT YOUR OWN TABLE

EAT ME... NOW. HAPPY

{PHOTO COURTESY OF CATHERINE CANNON} N}

Elisabetta Nonino speaking at Grapperiaa

[ON THE ROCKS]

DISTILLING TRADITION

HOUR

Women-run grappa business visits Pittsburgh {BY CELINE ROBERTS} “MY MAMA was a pioneer of being a wom-

an in a field of men. Could you imagine in the ’70s, she was the one that opened the field, not only [for] distillers but also wine producers?” says Elisabetta Nonino with obvious pride. Invited to speak at Grapperia in early May by the Pittsburgh Chapter of the U.S. Bartenders Guild, Nonino is one of three Italian sisters (along with Cristina and Antonella Nonino) who run the Nonino grappa distillery, in the Friuli region of northeast Italy. The family has been producing some of Italy’s finest grappa since 1897. The company began as a movable still on wheels. When Elisabetta’s parents, Benito and Giannola Nonino, took over the distillery in the early 1960s, the Italian government was starting to tighten regulations on grappa distillation, requiring a government seal and standard labeling. Grappa is made from pomace, the pulp of grape seeds, stems and skins left over from winemaking. At the time, it was often looked upon as swill, and the new regulations were met to combat this. These changes pushed the young couple to innovate. In 1967, they produced an aquavitae from a single varietal of grapes, followed six years later by a single-varietal grappa, Picolit. Because grappa had traditionally been seen as just a convenient byproduct of wine-making, vintners didn’t take the time to separate the leftover pomace from their harvests. It was labor-inten-

sive and slowed their work, but it avoided grappa that was a murky mixture of different flavors. In pursuit of a single-varietal grappa, Elisabetta Nonino says her mother appealed to the winemakers’ wives. “To produce the first grappa monovitigno [grappa made from a single grape varietal], Picolit, she had to fight a lot. She can only achieve this result with the help of other [women] in the wineries,” says Nonino, explaining that her mother had offered to pay extra for pomace that was divided by type of grape. Often, the wives offered to take on the task themselves in order to earn the extra cash. Soon, Giannola had enough women working for her that Picolit could be born. All the while, Giannola and Benito were raising their three young daughters in the business. Benito taught them distilling, and Giannola took them along on business trips to promote the brand. “Until three years ago, my mom had a license to drive the trucks. We always were raised in a family where we never had a difference between male and female,” says Nonino. Today, the three daughters are preparing to train the next generation of Noninos to take on the family business. “My niece Francesca, she is 26 and she is starting to join us in the company,” says Nonino, beaming. The company continues to innovate, producing single-varietal grappas from moscato, chardonnay and merlot, as well as riservas (aged grappa) and amaro.

“SHE CAN ONLY ACHIEVE THIS RESULT WITH THE HELP OF OTHER WOMEN IN THE WINERIES.”

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BOOZE BATTLES

TAJ MAHAL

{BY CELINE ROBERTS}

Each week, we order the same cocktail at two different bars for a friendly head-to-head battle. Go to the bars, taste both drinks and tell us what you like about each by tagging @pghcitypaper on Twitter or Instagram and use #CPBoozeBattles. If you want to be a part of Booze Battles, send an email to food-and-beverage writer Celine Roberts, at celine@pghcitypaper.com.

INDIAN RESTAURANT

Serving North Indian, South Indian and other authentic regional Indian Cuisine

THE DRINK: FLOWERS AND TEQUILA

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Tajj Mahal is owned and operated p by chef/owner h Usha Sethi since 1996. 1996

Spork

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5430 Penn Ave., Friendship

4606 Penn Ave., Bloomfield

DRINK: Soiree INGREDIENTS: Tequila, Meyer lemon, egg white, sage OUR TAKE: Sage perfume and creamy egg white make this floral, refreshing cocktail perfect for the hot weather. Lemon makes an appearance without lending too much acidity to the drink, and the tequila finishes sweet and smooth.

7795 McKnight Rd • 412-364-1760 • tajmahalinc.com

DRINK: Tequila, wildflower, citrus INGREDIENTS: Tequila, wildflower, citrus OUR TAKE: Juicy and fresh, the honey notes in this drink are reminiscent of orange blossom and honeysuckle. It’s like a stroll through a field of wildflowers ... for your palate. Tequila helps balance the sweeter flavors with bright and herbal agave.

This week on Sound Bite: Chef Rafael Vencio, of Aubergine Bistro, reflects on his 18-month tenure at Smallman Galley. www.pghcitypaper.com

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One Bordeaux, One Scotch, One Beer Chateau D’Esclans Whispering Angel Rosé 2016 $21.99/750ml This wine is the one that made me into an unrepentant fan of rosé. Crisp, with grapefruit notes and light minerality, this blushy pink wine is dry enough to drink with dinner, or to enjoy as a nice after-work aperitif. I plan to drink it just as much this summer as I did last. RECOMMENDED BY CELINE ROBERTS

pghcitypaper Chateau D’Esclans Whispering Angel rosé is available at Fine Wines & Good Spirits stores.

@downtownburgher

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

THE FILM OWES A LOT TO THE INHERENT LIKABILITY OF THE FOUR LEAD ACTORS

SEALED WITH A KISS {BY AL HOFF} “If I went outside, I’d die.” That’s the bummer that sets up Everything, Everything, Stella Meghie’s teen romance, adapted from Nicola Yoon’s young-adult novel. Eighteen-year-old Maddy (Amandla Stenberg) hasn’t been outside her hermetically sealed home for 17 years; she has Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), and is mortally vulnerable to everyday pathogens. The only people she sees are her doctor mom (Anika Noni Rose) and a daily nurse.

Girl behind the glass: Maddy (Amandla Stenberg)

Despite growing up in a box, Maddy seems grounded and socially normal. (She also seems vigorously healthy.) She keeps herself busy reading, writing micro-reviews of books, taking architecture classes online and building scale models of neat places she can never visit, like a vintage-style diner. She adds a tiny plastic astronaut to her models, noting that like her, he is stranded in space. Then — what luck! — a cute boy moves in next door; conveniently, their bedroom windows face each other and soon they are waving, pantomiming, texting. Also, conveniently, Olly (Nick Robinson) is one of those only-in-themovies teen-age boys: floppy hair, sweet and sensitive, prone to poetical statements, a perfectly well-behaved “rebel” (one of his things is wearing all black). Despite warnings, Maddy falls for Olly, and vice versa, and romance blooms. I appreciate Meghie doing some visually fun stuff to enliven their text conversations; for instance, the teens wind up talking in a full-scale version of Maddy’s diner, and even the astronaut stops by. It’s all pretty goony chitchat, but that’s to be expected. As is the inevitable: Newly awakened to life and all its risky pleasures, Maddy decides go outside. To wit: It is better to have loved, gone outside and died, than to have stayed inside, lived and watched Moonstruck again. Naturally, this in-thewild sequence is beyond unbelievable, but it has pretty people, pretty clothes and pretty scenery. Just let it roll over you like the artificial breeze it is, because this film’s final act is some grade-A what-the-hell?! I can’t talk about it here, but let’s just say it’s a bit of a head-swivel, and it doesn’t quite play well with the winsome, virtually content-free teen rom-com that precedes it. But, like a serious illness, there it is — and viewers are just gonna have to deal with it.

At home, and miserable: Debra Winger and Tracy Letts

MODERN LOVE {BY AL HOFF}

HE LONGTIME marriage of Michael

(Tracy Letts) and Mary (Debra Winger) has grown stale. But as we soon learn in The Lovers, a dramedy written and directed by indie filmmaker Azazel Jacobs (Momma’s Man), each is already involved in an extramarital affair. And conveniently, both Mary and Michael are always having “terrible days at the office” and “having to work late.” In actuality, they’re spending more time at lunch hour canoodling than getting any business done. And those outside relationships aren’t exactly going swimmingly — Michael’s lover, Lucy (Melora Walters), and Mary’s other man, Robert (Aidan Gillen), are both angry at these respective spouses’ broken promises that they will finally leave the marriage. Viewers get about 30 minutes of this — an amble through the assorted passiveaggressive (and just plain aggressive) dramas of these relationships — before the story’s jolt: No sooner do Michael and Mary make the very final commitment to their lovers that they’ll leave their spouses, than

the spark suddenly re-ignites in the ashes of their marriage. (It suggests that what is desirable is the thrill of the forbidden, which doesn’t bode well for a long-term relationship, whomever they choose.) Now they are effectively cheating on the people they were cheating with.

THE LOVERS DIRECTED BY: Azazel Jacobs STARRING: Tracy Letts, Debra Winger, Aidan Gillen and Melora Walters Manor

This all would likely work better as an exaggerated screwball comedy (think of the similarly themed 1937 classic The Awful Truth), or as a more thoughtful and probing dramedy. The Lovers attempts to split the difference, but there is enough realistic drama (people feeling hurt, lies, betrayals) that it’s awkward to cheer for any of these folks. At least all four of them are knowingly both in affairs and being cheated on, if that makes it OK. There’s a lot of squabbling, but I’d have

appreciated some more background about Mary and Michael’s relationship. It’s particularly jarring when their college-age son Joel (Tyler Ross) shows up for a visit, already in full pique about the parents he can’t stand. Um … Our protagonists inhabit bland uppermiddle-class suburban spaces — home interiors that look like real-estate stagings, cubicled offices, generic bars and parking lots — and there is a larger sense of privileged ennui. (All of them are operating out of concern for themselves; Lucy at least teaches ballet to children, but Robert appears to be a writer of some insufferable self-regard.) This seemed another aspect of the film that could have been more barbed. I wondered whether these folks just needed a good vigorous shaking: Life is out there, people — just get on with it! But The Lovers never really wraps up with any notable point. The ending is cute, though it’s hard to say exactly what it resolves. The film’s best asset is the inherent likability of the four lead actors, who give us just enough reason to keep watching.

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NEW BAYWATCH. Seth Gordon directs this comic reboot of the popular TV show about lifeguards. Here, two hunks of life-saving beef — Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron — take in the sun, watch the waves and solve a crime. Starts Thu., May 25 CHASING TRANE. John Scheinfeld directs this new documentary profiling influential jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, who died in 1967 at age 40. Among those interviewed: Sonny Rollins, Wynton Marsalis and Bill Clinton. (For more info, see music story on page 16.) Starts Fri., May 26. Hollywood CHUCK. New Jersey heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner was reputedly the inspiration for Rocky Balboa; he even went 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali. His life story is told here in this dramatization from Philippe Falardeau; Liev Schreiber plays the “Bayonne Bleeder.” Starts Fri., May 26. Harris

What have you always wanted to know about Pittsburgh?

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DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE. Jon Nguyen’s new documentary looks at the formative years of artist and filmmaker David Lynch, and traces his relationship with art. As expected from the noted enigmatic artist, Lynch doesn’t necessarily provide any simple answers. Starts Fri., May 26. Row House Cinema I CALLED HIM MORGAN. This new documentary from Kasper Collin profiles jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan, and his relationship with his wife, Helen Morgan, who fatally shot him in 1972. (For more info, see music story on page 16.) Starts Fri., May 26. Hollywood PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES. Ahoy! Prancing pirate Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is afloat again, searching for the Trident of Poseidon, which will ward off the watery ghosts pursuing him. Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg direct. In 3-D, in select theaters. Starts Fri., May 26 THE WEDDING PLAN. After her fiancé changes his mind, Orthodox bride-to-be Michal refuses to cancel the wedding, sure that God will provide another groom. Rama Burshtein directs this Israeli comedy. In Hebrew, with subtitles. Starts Fri., May 26. Manor

REPERTORY SUPERMAN III. The Man of Steel turns bad when he gets poisoned by synthetic kryptonite. Richard Lester directs this 1983 action comedy starring Christopher Reeves and Richard Pryor. 7:30 p.m. Wed., May 24. AMC Loews Waterfront. $5 RESERVOIR DOGS. Quentin Tarantino’s stylish 1992 debut charts the failure of a heist in nonlinear fashion, while riffing on dozens of earlier crime thrillers and their conventions. May 24-25. Row House Cinema

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PULP FICTION. Quentin Tarantino’s nonlinear, darkly comic 1994 celebration of crime, coincidence and fast-food hamburgers has many noted players, quotable lines and memorable scenes. Often imitated, Pulp Fiction still holds its own against the scores of pale pretenders that followed. May 24-25. Row House Cinema KILL BILL, VOL. 1. Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 film

The Wedding Plan is Charlie’s Angels Gone Bad crossed with a Japanese samurai movie, a spaghetti Western and a Hong Kong martial-arts throwdown. The Bride (Uma Thurman) is out for bloody, fastest-sword-in-the-West (and East) revenge against her would-be murderers. May 24-25. Row House Cinema KILL BILL, VOL. 2. Quentin Tarantino’s 2004 film karate-kicks right in where Vol. 1 left off: The avenging bride and professional killer (Uma Thurman) continues down her list of targets. It’s shot with Tarantino’s typical verve, so expect stylized riffs on pop culture, quoting from neo-spaghetti Westerns and kung-fu films. May 24-25. Row House Cinema 5-25-77. This coming-of-age story from Pat Johnson (and based on his own life) depicts a film geek growing up in rural Illinois in the 1970s. Among other lifechanging experiences, he falls in love and, on May 25, 1977, there comes a certain sci-fi adventure film that takes place in a galaxy far, far away … 7:30 p.m. Thu., May 25. Hollywood BLUE VELVET. The pretty little town of Lumberton; Bobby Vinton crooning; and a severed ear lying on the lawn. David Lynch’s melodramatic 1986 thriller probed beneath the veneer of charming Americana to reveal a dark, sexually violent underbelly that both repulses and attracts (themes Lynch would revisit in 1989 on TV’s Twin Peaks). Blue Velvet is gorgeously shot, twisted, hallucinatory and, given Lynch’s occasionally maddening style, highly watchable. Kyle MacLachlan is our wide-eyed guide; the film also stars Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, Dean Jones and, indelibly, the late Dennis Hopper, as the sadistic, drug-fueled Frank Booth. May 26-June 1. Row House Cinema (AH) TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME. David Lynch directs this 1992 film, a prequel to the events of his Twin Peaks TV show. The film recounts the final seven days of Laura Palmer, whose death kicked off the TV series. May 26-June 1. Row House Cinema AN AMERICAN IN PARIS. Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron star in Vincente Minnelli’s Technicolor musical comedy about an American painter who attracts the attention of an heiress. Singing, dancing and romance abound! The 1951 film concludes this month’s Sundaynight series of film set in Paris. 7:30 p.m. Wed., May 31. AMC Loews Waterfront. $

HISTORY LESSONS

I’VE BECOME A PRETTY SOLID BANDWAGON FAN AND, I THINK, I’M AT THE TOP OF MY GAME

This week in Pittsburgh Sports History {BY CHARLIE DEITCH} A look back at events that you’ve either forgotten about or never heard of in the first place. MAY 28, 1956 Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Dale Long sets a major-league record for the most home runs in consecutive games when he launches his eighth in as many games in front of 31,000 fans at Forbes Field. The crowd’s cheers were so raucous that Long came out of the dugout for one of baseball’s first curtain calls. MAY 28, 2004 Pirates outfielder Rob Mackowiak celebrates the birth of his first child before going out to play a doubleheader at PNC Park against the Chicago Cubs. In the first game, Mackowiak hits a ninth-inning walk-off grand slam for the win. In the second, he hits a two-run homer that was the 500th dinger in PNC Park history. MAY 29, 1895 The Schenley Park Casino opens its doors. The multi-use arena is believed to have had the first artificial ice surface in North America. It was also home to the semi-pro Pittsburgh Keystones ice-hockey squad. {CP PHOTO BY JORDAN MILLER}

Fans outside PPG Paints Arena during a recent Penguins Playoff game

MAY 30, 1925 The Pirates crank eight doubles, a then MLB record, against St. Louis at Forbes Field.

THE BANDWAGON JUMPER’S

MAY 30, 1964 Roberto Clemente makes Dodger Stadium look tiny when he blasts a 500-foot home run that hits the centerfield lights. MAY 31, 2007 Sidney Crosby is named captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins at age 19, becoming the youngest NHL player to hold that honor. JUNE 1, 1992 The Penguins finish off the Chicago Blackhawks to win their second straight Stanley Cup. JUNE 3, 1937 Negro Leagues star Josh Gibson, of the Homestead Grays, may have hit a 580-foot home run out of Yankee Stadium. The homer has become a bit of lore over the years, but because records weren’t well kept, the exact truth isn’t known. However, reports from that time document the titanic blast, and some claim it flew more than 500 feet, which would be a record.

GUIDE TO HOCKEY {BY CHARLIE DEITCH}

’VE NEVER BEEN much of a fan of professional hockey, although I do watch playoff hockey a bit. This year, for some reason, I find myself more interested than usual. I think the turning point was finding myself in really good seats at PPG Paints Arena the night the Penguins clinched the first-round series over Columbus. I was told that hockey was best experienced live, and I definitely think that’s true. I didn’t believe it at first because while I had been to a Pens game before, I spent the first period and part of the second in the Mellon Arena bathroom after some questionable Italian food.

The problem is, I hate bandwagon fans. As a long-suffering Pirates fan, it bugged me in 2013 when everyone became a fan of the Buccos. While I’ve always been a baseball fan, from birth to about age 20, I followed the Los Angeles Dodgers. But I always liked the Pirates and went to games all the time and slowly became a fan. I actually jumped on the Pirates bandwagon in 1992. I’ve been loyal since then and certainly paid the price of fandom over the past 25 years. I root for all Pittsburgh teams, even when I’m not the biggest fan of the sport. So every year around playoff time, I become one of those annoying bandwagon-

jumpers whom I despise so much. But by this point, I’ve become a pretty solid bandwagon fan and, I think, I’m at the top of my game. So, to my fellow hitchhikers, here are a few tips to get through the remainder of the postseason with some degree of authenticity and dignity.

Know the Personnel You can’t fake being a team’s No. 1 fan if the only names you know are Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury (nicknamed The Kid, Geno and Flower, respectively). A few other guys to know are Nick Bonino, Jake Guentzel, Carl Hagelin, Chris Kunitz and Tom

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{CP PHOTO BY LUKE THOR TRAVIS}

Sidney Crosby with the Stanley Cup during last year’s victory parade

THANK YOU! For making Pittsburgh Burger Week great!

AUGUST HENRY’S • BENJAMIN’S BURGER BAR BLOCK 292 • BRGR • BURGATORY BURGH’ERS • CAIN’S SALOON THE COMMONER • DOROTHY 6 BLAST FURNACE CAFE • EASE: MODERN COMFORT CUISINE • THE FOUNDRY TABLE & TAP HARD ROCK CAFE • HONEST JOHN’S MODERN CAFE • OVER THE BAR BICYCLE CAFE PIG IRON PUBLIC HOUSE • PITTSBURGH STEAK COMPANY • SHARP EDGE • SOCIAL • STACK’D STATION • SUNNY JIM’S and TESSARO’S

Kuhnhackl. I like to talk a lot about Kuhnhackl because people are so impressed that you can pronounce his name (coon-hack-el) that they won’t notice that you’re wearing a Steelers jersey. Also, remember that the coach’s name is Mike Sullivan. Once for an entire evening I referred to him as Kevin Sullivan, a legendary NWA wrestler who had a Satanist gimmick for awhile.

Google up things like, “Best Pittsburgh Penguins” plays, hits and moments. Find a couple, learn about them and tell those stories while insisting that you were there the night it happened. Be careful that you pick a moment, however, that actually happened in your lifetime, unlike the 25-year-olds who claim they saw the Immaculate Reception.

Cheer Correctly I can spout baseball jargon all day, but hockey is tough for me. I try to throw around a lot of “kids,” “sons” and “babies.” As in, “There you go, Crosby, have a day, kid,” or “What now, Ovechkin? Sit down, son!” I learned the hard way not to go my own path. I once brought a loud room to complete silence when, at the start of a game, I yelled, “All right, boys, let’s ice it up!” Regardless of how much sense it makes, apparently that’s not a thing. Also, don’t overreact to a hit that you think is too hard. These mean bastards knock the snot out of each other and there’s never a penalty. If you say “OOOOOHHHHH!!!!” to a weak hit, you can lose all credibility.

{CP PHOTO BY JORDAN MILLER}

Pittsburgh Penguins fans outside PPG Paints Arena

Learn a Little History

Stay Awake

It’s important to know a few things about the sport in order to “prove” that you’ve been a diehard fan for years so people won’t get pissed when you leave work early to go to the championship parade. To date, the Penguins have won four Stanley Cups, the most recent being last year (for god’s sake, make sure you know that). The easiest way is to

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it can be difﬁcult, especially on a Friday night after a long week of work. I once fell asleep during a Game 7 party and was awoken only by that horn-deal they blow for goals. In this event, upon waking, immediately let out a “whoot” or a “huzzah” followed by, “Go ahead, Crosby, have yourself a day, kid.” C D E I T C H @ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

05.24/05.31.2017

[THE CHEAP SEATS]

REPORT CARD DAY

more looks, as the staff at the Indianapolis Triple A club doesn’t have anybody ready. Williams and Hudson have been getting shelled in clean-up work and with Taillon out, Williams is the new fifth starter. Jordy Mercer and Gift Ngoepe have almost identical stats and both are hovering slightly above the Mendoza Line.

{BY MIKE WYSOCKI} AS ANYONE who’s ever been a student

knows, report cards are issued quarterly. As the Pirates pass the 40-game mark, it’s time to issue their first grades of the year. This is not the type of report that Mom will be sticking up on the refrigerator with an OBX magnet. This class has had its share of problems so far. Jung Ho Kang is facing a possible expulsion, while Starling Marte has an 80-day suspension. Jameson Taillon looked great until his recent testicular-cancer diagnosis (he’s had surgery and has already returned to light workouts). The good news is that no one is running away with the division like the smug Chicago Cubs did last season. The Pirates did welcome some new foreign students to the class. Donyda Neverauskas became the first MLB player to hail from Lithuania, and Gift Ngoepe was the first big-leaguer born on the continent of Africa. Neverauskas quickly became the first Lithuanian to be demoted to Triple A after pitching just two innings. Ngoepe started off hot, but has cooled as he adjusts to Pittsburgh and 100mph fastballs.

High Honor Roll (Grade A) Gerrit Cole gets less support than a single mother who married a deadbeat dad. Cole is still the ace of the staff as he does what an ace does — end losing streaks and start winning ones. Ivan Nova has been simply outstanding. While Cole gets the least amount of run support in the majors, Nova gets the third least. Nova has walked only seven batters in his 119 innings as a Bucco (dating to last year). At one point this season, he had more complete games than walks. Half the bullpen gets an A. Tony Watson is getting hit, but still remains an elite arm. Felipe Rivero has fans checking the radar gun and hitters shaking their head at his WHIP (walks plus hits per innning) of 0.77. Juan Nicasio and Wade LeBlanc get good marks as well. The bullpen has been the strength of the team. Adam Frazier is the only offensive player on this list. Despite a stint on the disabled list, the forced-into-astarting-job Frazier has responded by being the only Pirate hitting over .300.

Are you even applying yourself? (Grade F)

{CP PHOTO BY CHARLIE DEITCH}

A for effort: Adam Frazier

errors kept J-Hay off the A list. Josh Bell gets a B despite an average average (.248), but he leads the team in home runs and seems to be developing into a power hitter. The Pirates have used more than 50 players at first base since 2004, so maybe it’s time they settle down with a steady player. David Freese has been a blessing at third base. Freese (when not injured) has provided a professional bat in the lineup that the team desperately needs. Johnny Barbato sneaks onto the list with a respectable ERA of 3.00. That’s 11 players who get pretty good marks, which leaves us with the ones who have room for improvement.

lowered his ERA and is showing signs of improving. Kuhl is just having a bad year so far. He got knocked around brutally by the Cubs and took a line drive off his kneecap in the next game. Kuhl, who finally had a strong outing May 21 against Philadelphia, and Glasnow will get some

If you ever wondered what you might look like trying to play outfield in the majors, just watch John Jaso in right. To his credit, he’s doing what is asked of him to help a team with less depth than a Toby Keith lyric. A .165 batting average is tough to put a positive spin on. But here’s one: He’s hitting better than Phil Gosselin (.136) and Alen Hanson (.138), who also obviously receive failing grades. The bench of last year (Freese, Sean Rodriguez and Matt Joyce) has been replaced by Hanson, Ngoepe and Gosselin.

Team Grade Overall the Pittsburgh Pirates get a C, but if they can hang within five or six games of the division leaders until the All-Star break, there’s still time to turn it around. I N F O@ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM

Not living up to your potential (Grade C) Andrew McCutchen and Francisco Cervelli know they can do better than average. And to be honest, these two are getting Cs thanks only to the extra credit they get for not causing problems, and for the potential they have to be great. Both seem to be breaking out of their seven-week slumps. Gregory Polanco gets a C- due to his dearth of power and RBI. He’s currently on the disabled list. Jose Osuna got a chance to get some at-bats but has around the same numbers as everyone else in this group.

Just doing enough to get by (Grade D)

Honor Roll (Grade B)

Josh Harrison barely slipped to a B student and remains the team’s most consis- Pitchers Tyler Glasnow, Trevor Williams, tent everyday player. A few base-running Chad Kuhl and Daniel Hudson all have blunders and some ill-advised throwing ERAs over 6.00. Glasnow has actually MI K E W YS O C KI IS A STA NDUP CO MED I AN. FO LLO W HI M O N TWI TTER: @I T SMIK E WYSO C K I

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Smokers Wanted The University of Pittsburgh’s Alcohol and Smoking Research Laboratory is seeking participants for a three-part research project. To participate, you must: • Currently smoke cigarettes • Be 18-55 years old, in good health, and speak ﬂuent English • Be willing to ﬁll out questionnaires, and to not smoke before two sessions.

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THE BOARD OF PUBLIC EDUCATION OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PITTSBURGH Sealed bids will be received in the Office Of The Chief Operations Officer, Room 251, Administration Building, 341 South Bellefield Avenue until 11:00 A.M. prevailing time JUNE 13, 2017 and will be opened at the same hour for the purchase of the following equipment.

CALCULATORS General Information regarding bids may be obtained at the Office of the Purchasing Agent, Service Center, 1305 Muriel Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15203. The bid documents are available on the School District’s Purchasing web site at: http://www.pghboe.net/pps/site/default.asp Click on Bid Opportunities under Quick Links. The Board of Public Education reserves the right to reject any and all bids, or select a single item from any bid. Leon Webb Purchasing Agent We are an equal rights and opportunity school district. Parent Hotline: 412-622-7920 www.pps.k12.pa.us PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

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ACROSS 1. ___ John’s 5. Swashbuckler’s drink 9. Quick shots 13. Country superstar Jackson 14. Herded cattle 15. Diez less dos 16. Attended 17. Whiteboard stand 18. Sign of use 19. What happens when a line drive goes up the middle? 22. Its last champ was the Lake Erie Monsters: Abbr. 24. Night before 25. Puts a spell on 26. Put two guys on Elgin? 31. Seated yoga pose 32. Glimmer of hope 33. Pulls the plug 37. Charging station juice: Abbr. 38. Josh of Queens Of The Stone Age 40. Butcher’s stock 41. Game played on a map 42. “That’s what ___” 43. Must 44. Artist with a light touch? 48. Sprung from the can 51. Not getting out of bed, perhaps

52. React to a rom-com, say 53. Soho stories that are read with feeling? 58. Zipcar selection 59. Next to 60. Fiery gemstone 63. Wallow in, as in a funk 64. Deep pink shade 65. Christian in Hollywood 66. “Show Boat” composer 67. Females in wool coats 68. ___ Accords

DOWN 1. Pekingese dog? 2. Schwarzbier alternative 3. Wind instruments named for a Greek god 4. Against 5. 2nd best 6. Thorny flower 7. High, as a guess 8. Some toothpastes 9. Pop song character who’s “as blind as he can be” 10. Scaler’s tool 11. Terrible twos, e.g. 12. Tender spots 14. Dig deeply (into) 20. Marine predators

21. Comic Margaret 22. Steven of the only good lineup of Guns N’ Roses 23. “Silicon Valley” fictional company with the slogan “Making Good Business Great” 27. Concentrate on work 28. Heavy mail, e.g 29. Potato’s kin 30. Caustic stuff 34. “Non? Non?” 35. Match.com user 36. Plot line 38. Greetings 39. Praise with feet

43. Tour de France hurdle 45. Big fuss 46. Benched player’s spots? 47. Make right 48. Swigger’s container 49. Google Maps line 50. “Door’s open!” 54. We all have one 55. Did poorly 56. Audition spot 57. Gray wolf 61. Laundry brand 62. 2010 Best Supporting Actress {LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS}

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Free Will Astrology

05.24-05.31

{BY ROB BREZSNY}

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Generation Kill is an HBO miniseries based on the experiences of a reporter embedded with American Marines fighting in Iraq. Early on, before the troops have been exposed to any serious combat, they’re overflowing with trash talk. A commanding officer scolds them: “Gentlemen, from now on we’re going to have to earn our stories.” Although you are in a much less volatile situation right now, Gemini, my advice to you is the same: In the coming weeks, you’ll have to earn your stories. You can’t afford to talk big unless you’re geared up to act big, too. You shouldn’t make promises and entertain dares and issue challenges unless you’re fully prepared to be a hero. Now here’s my prophecy: I think you will be a hero.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In your mind’s eye, drift back in time to a turning point in your past that didn’t go the way you’d hoped. But don’t dwell on the disappointment. Instead, change the memory. Visualize yourself then and there, but imagine you’re in possession of all the wisdom you have gathered since then. Next, picture an alternative ending to the old story — a finale in which you manage to pull off a much better result. Bask in this transformed state of mind for five minutes. Repeat the whole exercise at least once a day for the next two weeks. It will generate good medicine that will produce a creative breakthrough no later than mid-June.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): You’re being invited to boost your commitment to life and become a more vivid version of yourself. If you refuse the invitation, it will later return as a challenge. If you avoid that challenge, it will eventually circle back around to you as a demand. So I encourage you to respond now,

while it’s still an invitation. To gather the information you’ll need, ask yourself these questions: What types of self-development are you “saving for later”? Are you harboring any mediocre goals or desires that dampen your lust for life? Do you tone down or hold back your ambitions for fear they would hurt or offend people you care about?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “Dear Dream Doctor: I dreamed that a crowd of people had decided to break through a locked door using a long, thick wooden plank as a battering ram. The only problem was, I was lying on top of the plank, half-asleep. By the time I realized what was up, the agitated crowd was already at work smashing at the door. Luckily for me, it went well. The door got bashed in and I wasn’t hurt. What does my dream mean? — Nervous Virgo.” Dear Virgo: Here’s my interpretation: It’s time to knock down a barrier, but you’re not convinced you’re ready or can do it all by yourself. Luckily, there are forces in your

get your yoga on!

life that are conspiring to help make sure you do it.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): As long as you keep Syria, South Sudan and North Korea off your itinerary, traveling would be food for your soul during the next 28 days. It would also be balm for your primal worries and medicine for your outworn dogmas and an antidote for your comfortable illusions. Do you have the time and money necessary to make a pilgrimage to a place you regard as holy? How about a jaunt to a rousing sanctuary? Or an excursion to an exotic refuge that will shock you in friendly, healing ways? I hope that you will at least read a book about the territory that you may one day call your home away from home.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): By now I’m sure you have tuned in to the rumblings in your deep self. Should you be concerned? Maybe a little, but I think the more reasonable attitude is curiosity. Even though the shaking is getting stronger and louder, it’s also becoming more melodic. The power that’s being unleashed will almost certainly turn out to be far more curative than destructive. The light it emits may at first look murky but will eventually bloom like a thousand moons. Maintain your sweet poise. Keep the graceful faith.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Life is inviting you to decode riddles about togetherness that could boost your emotional intelligence and earn you the right to enjoy lyrical new expressions of intimacy. Will you accept the invitation? Are you willing to transcend your habitual responses for the sake of your growthinducing relationships? Are you interested in developing a greater capacity for collaboration and synergy? Would you be open to making a vulnerable fool of yourself if it helped your important alliances to fulfill their dormant potential? Be brave and empathetic, Sagittarius. Be creative and humble and affectionate.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

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“In youth we feel richer for every new illusion,” wrote author Anne Sophie Swetchine. “In maturer years, for every one we lose.” While that may be generally true, I think that even twentysomething Capricorns are likely to fall into the latter category in the coming weeks. Whatever your age, I foresee you shouting something akin to “Hallelujah!” or “Thank God!” or “Boomshakalaka flashbang!” as you purge disempowering fantasies that have kept you in bondage and naive beliefs that have led you astray.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “There are no green thumbs or black thumbs,”

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wrote horticulturalist Henry Mitchell in a message you were destined to hear at this exact moment. “There are only gardeners and non-gardeners. Gardeners are the ones who get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises. It sounds very well to garden a ‘natural way.’ You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filled laurel hell. Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners.” Happy Defiance Time to you, Aquarius! In the coming weeks, I hope you will express the most determined and disciplined fertility ever!

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I believe it may be the right time to tinker with or repair a foundation; to dig down to the bottom of an old resource and consider transforming it at its roots. Why? After all this time, that foundation or resource needs your fresh attention. It could be lacking a nutrient that has gradually disappeared. Maybe it would flourish better if it got the benefit of the wisdom you have gained since it first became useful for you. Only you have the power to discern the real reasons, Pisces — and they may not be immediately apparent. Be tender and patient and candid as you explore.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Sin” is a puerile concept in my eyes, so I don’t normally use it to discuss grown-up concerns. But if you give me permission to invoke it in a jokey, ironic way, I’ll recommend that you cultivate more surprising, interesting and original sins. In other words, Aries, it’s high time to get bored with your predictable ways of stirring up a ruckus. Ask God or Life to bring you some really evocative mischief that will show you what you’ve been missing and lead you to your next robust learning experience.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Attention, smart shoppers! Here’s a special spring fling offer! For a limited time only, you can get five cutesy oracles for the price of one! And you don’t have to pay a penny unless they all come true! Check ‘em out! Oracle No. 1: Should you wait patiently until all the conditions are absolutely perfect? No! Success comes from loving the mess. Oracle No. 2: Don’t try to stop a sideshow you’re opposed to. Stage a bigger, better show that overwhelms it. Oracle No. 3: Please, master, don’t be a slave to the things you control. Oracle No. 4: Unto your own self be true? Yes! Unto your own hype be true? No! Oracle No. 5: The tortoise will beat the hare as long as the tortoise doesn’t envy or try to emulate the hare. How could you change yourself to get more of the love you want? Testify by going to RealAstrology.com and clicking on “Email Rob.”

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

Savage Love {BY DAN SAVAGE}

I have two female sex partners who want to be breath-play-dominated. I know the practice is dangerous, and I employ the rules of consent and communication a proDom escort friend taught me. But is there a legal release document we could sign that protects consenting adults in the event of an accident or death? RUMINATING ABOUT CONSENSUAL KINKS

Restricting someone’s air intake is always dangerous, RACK, and while we all too often hear about people dying during solo breath play, a.k.a. “autoerotic asphyxiation” (an activity no one should engage in ever), we rarely hear about someone dying during partnered breath play. (I recently discussed partnered breath play with Amp, from Watts the Safeword, a kink-friendly sex-ed YouTube channel. Look up Episode 533 at savagelovecast.com.) That said, RACK, someone can’t consent to being strangled to death by accident. “The lawyers in my office discussed this, and we agree that there is no way to ‘waive’ or ‘consent to’ criminal negligence resulting in substantial bodily harm or death,” said Brad Meryhew, a criminal-defense attorney who practices in Seattle. “I don’t think you’ll find any lawyer who would draft such an agreement. Even if an agreement were executed, it is not going to constitute a complete defense if something goes wrong. There are principles of criminal liability for the consequences of our decisions, as well as public-policy concerns about people engaging in extremely dangerous behaviors, that make it impossible to just walk away if something goes wrong.” Another concern: Signing such a document could make breath play more dangerous, not less. “A person who had such a waiver might be tempted to push the boundaries even further,” said Meryhew. And now the pro-Dom perspective… “As consenting adults, we assume the risks involved in this type of kink,” said Mistress A Elena, a professional Dominant. “But if you harm your partner or they become scared, shamed, shocked or, even worse, gravely injured, it’s the Dom’s problem. At any time, the submissive can change their mind. Some cases have been classified as ‘rape’ or ‘torture’ afterward, even though consent was initially given. It’s our job as Dominants/Tops/Leads to make sure everyone is safe, consenting and capable.”

ment? (Of course.) But the solvable problem is our biggest bias. Some people write in with problems that they’ll need an exorcist, a special prosecutor, a time machine, or some combo of all three to solve. I could fill the column week after week with unsolvable problems, and my answers would all be variations on ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Your letter, GONE, is a good example of the solvable problem — a letter likelier to make it into the column — and, as is often the case, the solution to your problem is right there in your letter. You’re able to “shift [your] mind” back to your partner when you’re about to come, and when you eat her out, your mind doesn’t wander at all. My advice: Make the shift earlier/often and engage in more activities that force you to focus (like eating her out). Problem solved. P.S. A lot of people allow their minds to wander a bit during sex — supplementing the present sensations with memories, fantasies, local baristas, etc. If it keeps you hard/wet/game and isn’t perceptible (if you don’t start mumbling coffee orders), your partner benefits from your wanderings. I’ve been reading your column forever — like “Hey Faggot!” forever — and your response to CLIF (the guy whose wife could no longer orgasm from PIV sex after having a child) is the first time I’ve felt the need to gripe about your advice. My wife was also the “Look, ma, no hands!” type, and it was amazing to be able to look into her eyes as we came together. But after a uterine cyst followed by a hysterectomy, something changed and that came to an end. It was a pretty hard hit for us sexually and emotionally. Toys, oral, etc. had always been on the table, but more as part of being GGG than as the main source of her coming. For a long time, it put her off sex as a source of her own pleasure. Things have gotten much better, but I’d be lying if I said we didn’t occasionally talk wistfully about that time in our relationship. I can empathize with what CLIF is going through. When we went through this, we did research and spoke with doctors wondering the same thing: Is there some way to reclaim that PIV-and-her-orgasms connection. We even thought of writing you, the wise guru of all things sex, but am I glad we didn’t. In response to CLIF asking for some fairly simple advice, you bluntly said that it’s not a problem that she can’t come from PIV sex. You ignored the fact that up until fairly recently, she could. Then you suggest that, because he hasn’t mastered the subtle art of acronyms, he might be a shitty lover whose wife has been faking orgasms for years and is just tired of it. Dick move, Dan.

“IT WAS A PRETTY HARD HIT FOR US SEXUALLY AND EMOTIONALLY.”

I’m a 32-year-old guy, my gal is 34, and we’ve been together for two years. Every time we get it on or she goes down on me (though not when I eat her out), my mind wanders to fantasies involving porno chicks, exes or local baristas. A certain amount of this is normal, but I’m concerned that this now happens every time. When I’m about to come, I shift my mind back to my partner and we have a hot climax, but I feel guilty. Advice? GUILTY OVER NEBULOUS ECSTASY

I’ve been asked what biases advice columnists have. Do we favor questions from women? (No, women are just likelier to ask for advice.) Are we more sympathetic to women? (Most advice columnists are women, so …) Are we likelier to respond to a question that opens with a compli-

A CALLOUS RESPONSE ONLY NEGATES YOUR MOTIVATION

You’re right, ACRONYM, my response to CLIF was too harsh. But as you discovered, there wasn’t a way for you and your wife to reclaim that PIVand-her-orgasms connection. So CLIF would do well to take Dr. Gunter’s advice and embrace how his wife’s body works now and not waste too much time grieving over how her body/PIV orgasms used to work then. On the Lovecast, Nathaniel Frank on the marriageequality movement: savagelovecast.com

SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET AND FIND THE SAVAGE LOVECAST (DAN’S WEEKLY PODCAST) AT SAVAGELOVECAST.COM

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