Country They’ve Gone
Local DJs, line dancers, and live musicians are re-radicalizing what has become a predominantly white, politically red genre
BY: AMANDA WALTZ
CP PHOTO: JARED WICKERHAM
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ZILLOW
CP PHOTO: DAVID S. ROTENSTEIN
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
THE YIMBYS ARE HERE
While the group’s more-is-more approach may have upsides, some see YIMBY tactics as divisive and self-righteous
BY: DAVID S. ROTENSTEIN // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
Pittsburgh needs more housing: that’s the conclusion of the 2022 Pittsburgh Housing Needs Assessment. But exactly how to produce that housing is now at the heart of a battle pitting a group calling themselves YIMBYs against other local housing activists.
YIMBY stands for “yes in my backyard,” and it’s an approach to solving urban housing shortages by increasing density, scrapping singlefamily zoning, and building as much housing as possible — regardless of its affordability — everywhere.
CP PHOTO: DAVID S. ROTENSTEIN
Jack Billings (front) waits to speak during the Jan. 28 Pittsburgh Planning Commission inclusionary zoning hearing.
The YIMBY movement began in California about a decade ago and rapidly spread across the country. It arrived in Pittsburgh in 2017, and in 2022, locals founded Pro-Housing Pittsburgh. Since then, YIMBYs have infiltrated local social media debates over affordable housing, and they have become vocal advocates in City Planning Commission, Historic Review Commission, and City Council hearings.
YIMBYs preach what some housing experts describe as “supply-side urbanism.” It’s based on the premise that building more marketrate housing yields lower rents.
Erin McElroy and Andrew Szeto, writing in Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance , describe YIMBYs as pursuing what they see as an “all housing matters” model that asserts “luxury and market rate development are as important as the construction of housing for poor and low-income tenants.”
Eliot Tretter, a University of Calgary geography professor, studies YIMBYs. He described the movement in a Zoom interview as an alignment of new urbanists, planners, and ecologically-minded would-be homeowners.
“To me, it is a way of thinking of the housing problem as a problem of supply and demand,” Tretter tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “They’re often very ecologically minded, [and] they’re very frustrated and concerned over the lack of certain kinds of housing and housing choices and the availability of housing in certain neighborhoods, particularly in neighborhoods that are deemed very desirable.”
The YIMBY logic is flawed, Tretter explains, because it excludes lots of external factors from their arguments about local housing markets.
“I don’t think that one can really make very strong causal claims
about the relationship between the production of housing and issues associated with land value or rent,” Tretter says. “We really don’t know. I think, fundamentally, there is some evidence that says that making more housing can do this, but there’s a lot of evidence that says making more housing doesn’t do this.”
BAY AREA BONA FIDES
YIMBYs first emerged in San Francisco in response to a shortage of housing for the city’s growing tech workforce. Around 2014, the Bay Area Renters Federation (BARF) became the nation’s first YIMBY organization, though a pro-development group calling itself YIMBY Stockholm was founded in Sweden in 2007. The YIMBY acronym originated in a 1988 New York Times article on responses to NIMBYism (not in my back yard). It originally stood for “yes in many backyards.”
NIMBYism — organized opposition to a wide array of developments,
from toxic waste sites to high voltage transmission lines, cellphone and broadcast towers, and new housing — has been a fixture in local politics nationally since the 19 th century. NIMBYs got their name after a 1970 New York Times article described opponents to large new construction projects in the New York City area as “backyard obstructionists.”
hundreds of local zoning decisions on specific projects and on proposed amendments to the zoning code,” architect and attorney Sarah Bronin wrote in her 2024 book, Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World Since appearing about 11 years ago, YIMBYs have created a nationwide organization, YIMBY Action, and they hold annual conferences called “Yimbytown.”
“EVERYBODY AT THE COMMUNITY MEETING CAME OUT AND SAID, ‘WE DON’T WANT MORE HOUSING IN OUR AREA.’”
In Pittsburgh, early NIMBY movements included opposition to a fertilizer plant on Herr’s Island in the 1880s and wealthy Highland Park homeowners who defeated a proposal to build the Civic Arena in that neighborhood (it was eventually built in the Lower Hill District).
“The NIMBY-YIMBY debate is a national one, but it plays out in
Most Americans are never farther away than a mouse click or social media post from YIMBY influencers.
David Vatz is a software sales professional who founded Pro-Housing Pittsburgh in 2022. “I was following the YIMBY movement in California from afar here,” Vatz tells City Paper . A former Pittsburgher living there kept Vatz apprised of new
CP PHOTO: DAVID S. ROTENSTEIN
Uptown construction site in 2021 where someone changed a contractor’s sign to read, “Are You Sick of Condos?”
in Pro-Housing Pittsburgh’s work. Dietrick’s critique turned on the group’s failure to consider external factors other than Pittsburgh’s existing IZ districts in Lawrenceville, Oakland, and Polish Hill.
“The authors don’t talk about interest rates and how that affects development and housing,” Dietrick said. “The authors don’t talk about available land and available
properties. You can’t build new housing if you don’t have the lots.”
Dietrick also slammed the group’s failure to discuss the role that interest rates played in housing production. “Remember, interest rates skyrocketed. Developers pay money, right? They get short term loans and all that. Interest rates affect development. There’s nothing about interest rates in this paper,” Dietrick explains.
University of Pittsburgh regional economist Chris Briem also blasted the Pro-Housing Pittsburgh report. “There really is not sufficient data yet to attempt the analysis at the core of the paper. That would be true in any circumstance, but the timeframe we are talking about includes a lot of events that have significantly impacted development locally and nationally,” Briem says.
Briem singled out COVID and interest rates as the leading factors inhibiting housing production in Lawrenceville. “Each of those external factors clouds any causal analysis of the impact that IZ has in the neighborhood.”
Beyond the IZ analysis, Briem finds fault with the basic YIMBY premise that boosting housing production automatically leads to making more affordable housing available.
“The argument that more construction, higher density will make homes, housing more affordable is certainly probably true at some level of geography,” Briem says. But “there’s no reason to necessarily believe that is going to be the case for a particular neighborhood or even a group of neighborhoods. Pittsburgh is particularly challenged in this way in that there’s lots of examples in history of groups of folks who’ve been displaced from one neighborhood into others because of the lack of available housing.”
STYLE VS. SUBSTANCE
Pro-Housing Pittsburgh’s leadership doesn’t put much stock in Briem and Dietrick’s criticism. Vatz had never heard of Dietrick, and he dismissed Briem’s comments. “I’ve looked into Chris’ body of research, and there isn’t much. Chris has not published much in the way of research at all that I’ve seen,” Vatz says.
One of the criticisms of the ProHousing Pittsburgh IZ study is that it wasn’t peer reviewed or otherwise scrutinized by experts before its release. Billings and Vatz didn’t respond to requests for the names of academics and other experts who reviewed the initial report released in December or a revision released in January.
In the short time that they’ve been active, Pittsburgh’s YIMBYs have alienated a wide swath of the city’s housing advocacy communities, including some of the groups that convene the Pittsburgh Housing Justice Table.
Longtime housing advocate Randall Taylor says that some of ProHousing Pittsburgh’s members had attended Housing Justice Table meetings: “There was some discomfort when they appeared,” Taylor tells CP. City Councilor Barb Warwick wanted to work with Pro-Housing Pittsburgh when it first appeared — their goals for tackling Pittsburgh’s housing crisis appeared to align
THE YIMBYS ARE HERE, CONTINUES ON PG. 8
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
Thomas Yargo attends a Historic Review Commsision meeting regarding Donny's Place on March 5, 2025.
with hers. “It’s been sort of a complicated relationship. I can start out by saying that their approach [is] sort of disparaging community members and disparaging the public process,” Warwick tells CP “They have a very much sort of ‘my way or the highway’ attitude.”
It’s a formula that Warwick believes won’t work in a city like Pittsburgh. “This movement [is] grounded in insulting the people that you are working against as opposed to trying to work with them,” she says.
Warwick also has trouble with Pro-Housing Pittsburgh’s attempts to sway public opinion with unvetted reports like the IZ study. “Their whole lobbying effort is just throwing documents at you and throwing research and saying that it backs up everything that they say,” Warwick says. “They love a chart.”
The IZ study’s faults spurred the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group to release its own report ahead of the January Planning Commission hearing. Its authors included Lawrenceville United executive director Dave Breingan and PCRG research analyst Druta Bhatt.
“The PCRG report is extremely misleading in the way it presents IZ as being a success, and includes many factual errors,” Vatz wrote in an email responding to questions after its release.
The Pro-Housing response to competing views or to opinions that don’t mesh with their own reflects a larger trend in the YIMBY movement. Tretter finds problematic approaches like Pro-Housing Pittsburgh’s that state their findings to be conclusive and dismissive of contradictory research.
“If you’re in the realm where people are accusing the other side, like where you’re not even talking in the same universe, it’s very hard to have a conversation,” Tretter says. “My sense is that what you see in housing studies is that the research
is incredibly inconclusive.”
Vatz and Billings responded to questions about academic research that contradicts YIMBYism’s (supplyside) urbanism by saying that they did not recognize scholars named in interviews with them.
Vatz compared researchers who have produced studies critical of YIMBYism to climate change denial.
“It’s kind of like climate change, where the vast majority of empirical research supports that building more housing creates more housing affordability broadly,” Vatz said in December after a public meeting about the nomination of Donny’s Place as a city historic site. “And there might be some very limited study that contradicts that, but the vast majority of it does show what we are saying.”
WAR OF WORDS
YIMBYs across the country have mobilized via social media. They use X, formerly known as Twitter, and other platforms to spread their
message and to battle people they consider to be NIMBYs. A 2022 Tufts University thesis examined YIMBY discourse on Twitter. Its author found YIMBY adherents aggressively sought to control discourse through marginalizing counternarratives.
In Pittsburgh, online trolling and sharp exchanges among local YIMBYs and others have spilled into hearing rooms and beyond.
Pro-Housing Pittsburgh members traded barbs with housing justice activists in the January Planning Commission hearing.
Pro-Housing Pittsburgh members testified that people opposed to Charland’s IZ bill were paid activists. “I wish,” says Tanisha Long after the hearing where she testified against Charland’s bill. “That would absolutely improve my finances.”
Long has gotten into multiple online scraps with Pro-Housing Pittsburgh members, especially Membership Committee Chairperson Amy Zaiss. “I’ve told her on multiple occasions that she is unwelcome on my page, and she will continue to argue, continue to nitpick,” Long explains.
After the Planning Commission hearing, 1Hood Power’s Nichole Remmert, who lives in her late parents’ Moon Township home, called the police to report that Zaiss had doxed her. “She decided to go online and post the property tax records of the house that I live in,” Remmert says after Zaiss posted the tax records on X.
Remmert shared screenshots from Zaiss’s posts that show Zaiss posted screenshots from Allegheny County tax records showing Remmert’s complete address in a post that read, “Lmao pay your taxes hunny and leave me alone.”
“Most people aren’t paid activists any more than David [Vatz] is a paid activist,” Long tells CP. “I work for the Abolitionist Law Center. This is not actually one of our big issue areas. It’s not something that we have litigation over. But we do respond to issues in the community as individuals.”
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
Attorney Jon Kamin attends a Historic Review Commsision meeting regarding Donny's Place on March 5 2025.
Zaiss subsequently deleted her Twitter/X account and has not responded to requests for comment on the incident. Likewise, Billings and Vatz did not respond to requests for comments on the incident.
CAN YIMBYS SOLVE PITTSBURGH’S HOUSING CRISIS?
Though their methods, constituencies, and data are widely divided, Pittsburgh’s YIMBYs and housing justice movements say that they have common goals: solving the city’s housing crisis. Some cities, like Minneapolis, have ended single-family zoning to increase housing production. There, it increased property values and density.
Janne Flisrand, co-founder of a Minneapolis YIMBY organization, Neighbors for More Neighbors, told a Senate subcommittee in 2023 that three factors aligned in her city to change public policy and the law: expanding public participation in
oning decisions, city staff with the capacity to expand participation and elected leaders willing to adopt and implement changes.
Montgomery County, Md., where the nation s first IZ law went into effect in , has expanded IZ and is now pursuing what it calls an “attainable housing” strategy. In it, the county wants to open up singlefamily-zoned areas to allow more housing types.
Pro-Housing Pittsburgh seems to be following a playbook printed in Silicon Valley, with revisions made in communities around the United States and Canada. Many of the clashes between Pro-Housing Pittsburgh and other groups have been hashed out in other cities, resulting in fractious debates and posturing. The YIMBY movement’s primary goal, from Washington, . . to acramento, is to in uence public policy through antagonistic discourse, wrote McElroy and Szeto. ow effective those methods will be in Pittsburgh is an open question. •
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
Commissioner James Hill attends a Historic Review Commsision meeting regarding Donny's Place on March 5, 2025.
THEY’VE GONE COUNTRY
Local DJs, line dancers, and live musicians are re-radicalizing what has become a predominantly white, politically red genre
BY: AMANDA WALTZ // AWALTZ@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
On a chill Friday night in March, Bottlerocket Social Hall becomes a honky-tonk. Past the retro, U-shaped bar, patrons dressed in variations of country western attire — some are all duded up, others don a simple cowboy hat or boots — awkwardly follow an instructor teaching the steps to an ultimate line dancing classic, the 1991 hit “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” by Brooks and Dunn. This is ’90s country night, after all.
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
Shane Donovan practices a dance move at Belvedere's Ultra-Dive on Mar. 26, 2025.
“I GUESS I GOT BITTEN BY THE BUG, WHERE IT’S LIKE, I WANT TO LEARN THIS, AND I WANT TO DO WHAT THEY’RE DOING.”
other places where you would go to enjoy country music, like country bars or whatever, members of the LGBTQ-plus community may not feel comfortable in many of those spaces. And the fact that we can have a space to replay country music and actually enjoy and seek unusual, interesting artists as well as some mainstream artists is, I think, something that’s really special, too.”
After nearly six years in operation, Ho estimates that 412 Step attracts around 130 dancers a week. Darling says seeing the different types of people come together at 412 Step events has provided a sense of “hope and inspiration.”
“We also do partner dancing, which requires a certain amount of trust and faith in the community, that it’s a place where you can belong and interact with people on that level,” she says. “Everyone dances with everyone, like a 22-year-old gay
man with a 60-year-old lesbian. And that’s a really sweet thing, too, that everyone can be so respectful and connect with each other through those differences.
Beyond Belverdere’s, 412 Step has also engaged crowds at OpenStreets and Pride events, among others.
Similar to 412 Step, Desert Hearts wears its queer heart on its sleeve. The party’s Instagram account describes it as a “queer country night,” with sets showcasing women artists like Shania Twain, Reba McEntire, and olly Parton. It s Parton specifically that fellow Desert Hearts organizer Gillian Woof, aka DJ Opal, sees as a unifying force, citing how she appeals to fans from all walks of life.
If Parton is the unifying force, however, the late Toby Keith, whose ultra-patriotic, early-2000s anthems spoke to the worst impulses of American citizens after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, was the divider.
“Honestly, I would love to do a night that is just country pre-9/11,” Woof tells CP
Darling, Woof, and third member DJ Desert Rat work to honor the working-class roots of country music by participating in fundraising efforts for striking workers, emphasizing how the effort re ects an original focus of early country music. They have also used their skills to aid the people of East Palestine, Ohio following the Norfolk Southern train disaster.
The return to the genre’s roots contrasts with the ongoing identity crisis affecting mainstream country music. The industry has long since ditched its distinct instrumentation and vivid storytelling for a watereddown pop hybrid style designed for a wider audience. What was once the music of the downtrodden, with songs that took strong anti-establishment stances and addressed the struggles of women and those living
in poverty, now leans into a crassly conservative caricature defined by beer, guns, big trucks, “Christian” values, and antisocial behavior disguised as rebellion.
Mainstream country fans have, on a local level, done little to dispel this notorious reputation, as Pittsburgh on multiple occasions had to brace itself for the piles of garbage, porta potty fights, and drunken havoc at Kenny Chesney and Morgan Wallen concertgoers. Pittsburgh musician Jon Bindley sees his band, Bindley Hardware Co., as drawing from the golden age of country with a more traditional sound and swagger. An online description defines them as a “rust belt mericana band in uenced by classic country, folk, and modern alt-country.
Bindley understands how aspects of country music culture have alienated some people over the decades,
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
Members practice moves during a 412 Step line dancing night at Belvedere's Ultra-Dive on Mar. 26, 2025.
describing how the band’s oldest member, pedal steel guitar player Pete Freeman, performed during the rough and rowdy days of the original honky tonk bars.
“He talks about playing places where they used to have cages in front of the stage because people would be throwing beer bottles,” he says.
Bindley, a Pittsburgh native who returned to his hometown after living in Nashville, Tenn. from 2011 to 2014, believes the growing local interest in country music comes with the city’s “vibrant music and arts scenes coming up in general.”
“I think that rising tide means more of everything, and, fortunately, it means an appetite for more country, too,” says Bindley.
He agrees that earlier country music was more diverse and progressive, pointing out that DeFord Bailey, a Black harmonica player, was one of the first members of the Grand Ole Opry.
Bindley says he launched the Bindley Hardware Honky Tonk events in 2018 because he “wanted to create something that was unpretentious and something where dancing was the big focus, and has the feel of a community.” Still, the vibes have to be right, which is why he eschews playing at bigger, flashier venues for “kind of a shitty hall.”
“Anything too nice won’t quite work because it has to have that authenticity to it,” he says.
His efforts, like those of 412 Step and Desert Hearts, serve to create a welcoming alternative to a climate where he says mainstream country music has been used to push a jingoistic agenda of “fear and hate mongering,” adding “Dolly Parton ain’t about that shit.”
“The real, authentic, transcendent thing about music is that it, when done right, is for everybody,” he says. •
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
Ken Ho teaches during a 412 Step line dancing night at Belvedere's Ultra-Dive on Mar. 26, 2025.
FEELING YOUNG AGAIN
BY:
CP PHOTO: JARED WICKERHAM Damon Young poses inside Arnold’s Tea on the North Side.
n any given day, Damon Young can be spotted around the Pittsburgh writing at Margaux in East Liberty or the Monterey Pub on the North Side. Over tea and cocktails, he’s been working on a brand new endeavor.
Young has been gearing up for the release of his latest book, That’s How They Get You, announced this past January. This new collection promises to challenge and entertain readers with his signature voice, this time alongside curated essays from some of his favorite collaborators.
“The one animating, recurring theme I can think of is shame,” Young says. “Finding ways to circumvent and subvert shame.”
“Be prepared to laugh out loud, to be entertained, to be challenged, and to be haunted in a way,” Young says. “And when people read this, I want them to think, ‘Why was this chapter chosen? What does this say about humor?’”
Young’s work, known for its sharp wit and fearless honesty, has been featured in The New York Times , The Atlantic , GQ and The Washington Post . His deeply personal and funny memoir What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker examines the absurdities, anxieties, and contradictions of being a Black man in America. Young has been recognized with numerous accolades including the Thurber prize for American humor.
“I WANTED TO CREATE SOMETHING THAT, IN 250 PAGES, TOUCHES ON ALL OF THE DIFFERENT WAYS BLACK PEOPLE CAN BE FUNNY. ”
For all of the humor in Young’s work, he insists that comedy isn’t something he actively tries to achieve.
“It’s the way that I see the world,” Young says. “When I write, I try to ma e sense of what s happening, and also figure out the best way to articulate what’s happening in a way that’s readable, in a way that’s rigorous, in a way that’s honest, and in a way that’s entertaining. The humor isn’t something that I insert.”
For That’s How They Get You, Young says he selected contributors to his new book by turning to his mental Rolodex, and, laughing, admits that he trawled his Instagram connections to find fellow writers he thin s are funny.
There are 24 contributors in total, a number that Young reached after a year and a half of vetting; he has met and developed a personal relationship with all but two of them.
Young says some were obvious choices to him, such as Kiese Laymon, Deesha Philyaw, Brian Broome, Panama Jackson and Sai Grundy, who are friends of his he knows can turn out something hilarious and would be game to contribute to a body of work like this.
Young himself has two essays in the collection, but the book’s broader theme is what ties everything together.
For those familiar with Young’s writing, this blend of humor and introspection is nothing new. Doralee Brooks, City of Asylum’s 2022-2024 Poet Laureate of Allegheny County and professor emerita at the Community College of Allegheny County in Developmental Studies, admires Young’s writing for its raw quality.
“As an older person and as a woman, it’s so interesting for me to be able to experience his thinking, his life, his experience as a man and as a younger person,” Brooks says.
“I kept thinking, as I read his work, of this quote from the great poet Audre Lord: ‘In a world full of turmoil, remember that joy is an act of resistance,’” Brooks says.
“Through joy, you counter and contrast oppressive structures. I really think that’s his method.”
“There’s just this honesty and willingness to confront in his work that I really appreciate,” Brooks says. “He is so precise, so detailed and so sensory in his language. He moves from an elevated diction to a colloquial diction right in the same piece. It gives his work this attractiveness and honestly, it’s just laugh-out-loud funny.”
Morgan Moody, producer of Young’s podcast Stuck with Damon Young , which aired on Spotify from 20222023, initially met Young at an event at the Children’s Museum. Moody and Young had similar childhoods in Pittsburgh, both attending the same grade school, St. Bart’s in Penn Hills.
Moody says that podcast Stuck With Damon Young was really a place for Young to have conversation with guests about all of the topics Black men don’t have the space to talk about.
“Damon is very naturally funny,” Moody says.
“I think any moment where he can organically be himself, it’s pretty funny. If he’s comfortable, you can really watch him be the humor award winning writer that he is.”
That humor is evenly mixed with an un inching loo at serious topics. In hat Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, Young confronts white supremacy, racism, police brutality, and the gentrification of ast Liberty. By extension, Young and his wife are actively navigating how to best reveal these truths to their children.
He says that educating and arming his children for the world they live in is about more than just conversation, though — it’s about an energy that is created within their home.
“They overhear us talking, they see our interactions and the people we engage with,” Young says. “For me, it wasn’t so much what my parents taught me specifically, it was just me witnessing. Almost like this osmosis effect. I m hoping that we ve created a space in our home that’s conducive for that same sort of exchange.”
“I want them to be happy, and I want them to be free,” Young says. “I want them to know that — as long as they aren’t harming themselves or anyone else — that I will support whatever it is they want to do and whoever it is they want to be.”
For Pittsburgh readers, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker feels especially vivid. The changing streets of ast iberty, the an ieties of navigating predominantly white spaces (of which Pittsburgh has a plethora), and the everpresent humor Young held as a compass to survive it all, make Pittsburgh a character in its own right.
“Pittsburgh is uniquely white,” Young says. “That has affected how I thin about race, how I think about culture, how I think about identity, how I think about place, and what does that mean in terms of creating a character when the character is a setting where you may feel othered consistently, and you re trying to find safety, freedom, and joy within this space that at times is antagonistic to all of those things.”
Young grapples with Pittsburgh’s changing cultural landscape in his memoir, particularly the effects of gentrification on Blac communities in
PHOTO: GARRETT YURISKO Damon Young
PHOTO: COURTESY OF ECCO / HARPERCOLLINS Damon Young's latest book, That's How They Get You
In February, Young attended “Lifting Liberty,” an exhibition by multimedia artist Njaimeh Njie at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater exploring the legacy of Black cultural spaces in East Liberty.
“The process — emotional, intellectual, spiritual — of thinking about and feeling about the ‘new’ East Liberty is a living and breathing and shape-shifting organism,” Young says. “[Njie] said something that night that has continued to stick inside of me. To paraphrase, it’s that we are living archives with duties to remember, repeat, to relay what we know with radical honesty.”
Riley Kirk, a journalist from Regent Square, worked the event the same day she finished Young’s memoir. After picking it up in a second-hand bookstore, Kirk, against her better judgment, spent her week’s gas money on it. She was captivated
such as the North Versailles Walmart.
“I think what I like about his work is the conversational tone,” Kirk says. “I’ll be going into That’s How They Get You with no expectations. It seems like a totally different entity than his debut.”
“What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker is a great read for anyone who lives in Pittsburgh,” Nat Moss, general manager of Riverstone Books, says. “He captures such a unique perspective in his work. Pittsburgh is a historically tough town for Black people and he captures the complexities of that really well.”
Moss says Young’s memoir is a book she always makes sure is available at Riverstone.
The steady demand for What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker speaks to Young’s ability to connect with readers through his humor and how much of himself he puts
bringing in a chorus of voices to expand on the complexities of Black humor.
“What I wanted to do was create something that, in 250 pages, touches on all of the different ways Black people can be funny and introduce humor into our work,” Young says. “I write about shame; I have a friend Hillary Crosley Coker who writes about a miscarriage, and others have written about these deeply, deeply sober topics, but have found the humor in them.”
“As I say in the intro, what makes Black humor Black isn’t necessarily a Black person making a joke or making a joke about a ‘Black’ subject; it’s humor that goes places that only we are able to go,” Young says. “These are essays that could have only been written by Black Americans.”
That’s How They Get You will be on shelves June 3. •
CP PHOTO: JARED WICKERHAM Damon Young
“IT’S A PRETTY BIG DEAL THAT WE’RE ABLE TO BRING MANUFACTURING BACK TO STEEL CITY.”
Maybe, in recent years, you’ve noticed that more and more of your friends own record players. ollowing a fall off in the CD and Napster eras of the 1980s and ’90s, the early 2000s saw record collecting as mostly an affected, hipster pursuit. Fast forward 20 years or so, and now fans of such mainstream megastars as Taylor Swift are bumpin’ their favorite tracks via groove and needle. It’s not just you — vinyl is back in.
But vinyl s years of being off trend changed the landscape of the industry. Worldwide, pressing plants of all sorts have shuttered. Even as records reclaimed the No. 1 slot in physical media sales in music in 2022, generating $1.2 billion in revenue and outselling CDs by 8 million units, actually getting records made largely remains an expensive process, with long lead times. nd eff Betten, co founder of Pittsburgh’s Hellbender Vinyl and, according to his LinkedIn profile, “ ayor of the Pittsburgh usic cene, has been watching the action all along.
Betten has been running record labels for almost 15 years and watched the progression of lead times on record pressings get longer and longer. “I had a front row seat to, ‘Oh, you know, it’ll only take a couple weeks to get some vinyl made, and it’s not that e pensive, it s not a big deal, he tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “Then, as time went by, I saw the entire progression of, ‘Now it takes six weeks; now it takes eight weeks; now it takes si months now it ta es a year
VINYL BENDER
BY: PONY BAILEY // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
A few years back, Pittsburgh’s music mayor got a call from Pittsburgh s, real mayor. “The ayor [Bill] Peduto administration challenged me one day to think real big, think blue sky [about the Pittsburgh music scene]. That was the point where I said, ‘Let’s try to make a vinyl plant here
From there, he teamed up with co owner att owling, whose band, i ra, had been on a label run by Betten. “I new a lot of people in my network who wanted vinyl and didn’t
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
Je Betten shows o a custom orange record.
know where to get it,” Dowling says. “So I called up Jeff and asked, ‘Did you ever start that plant?’ And he was like, ‘I got some pieces together.’
“I have a background in start-up and chemical and biological engineering. A lot of vinyl pressing is traditional chemical engineering; we’ve got chillers and boilers and things. So I kind of became obsessed and I said, 'let’s roll.’”
Hellbender started quietly in early 2023, with bootstrapped funds from the owners, as well as some small investors. ”We’ve got a lot of skin in the game,” Dowling says.
During their first year in business, “we didn’t really shout to the high heavens, ‘hey, we’re open!’” Betten says. “We liked to joke that it was almost like the friends-andfamily stage of a restaurant opening that first year. It was almost like a whisper network, where you had to know someone who knows us to even reach out, [and] that worked pretty well because it allowed us to grow at a healthy pace.”
Now, just two years into operations, Hellbender boasts clients such a Guster and Mountain Dew, and is
pressing around 10,000 records a month in their modest, airy space on Lawrenceville’s Butler Street. The space supports what is among the founders’ most meaningful goals — using Hellbender Vinyl as the foun dation on which to build community.
doing this,” says Dowling, “while we started from a practical basis — you know, there need to be more manu facturers, lead times can be crazy, et cetera — we also realize vinyl is really just a currency within a larger network. What we are starting to call that larger network is people doing real stuff.
cians,” Dowling adds. “It means you’re real. You’re not AI. You’re playing shows, you’re actually engaging with the community. The people who appreciate vinyl and want to be a part of that world are people who are doing real things, like visual art, physical art, filmmaking, podcasts, books.”
He tells City Paper that Hellbender plans to host concerts, talks, and art exhibitions in their space.
According to Betten, there is also community-building happening
on a larger scale, in bringing a new manufacturing operation into the heart of Pittsburgh.
“I’m such a booster of the city of Pittsburgh and the region of Western Pa.,” he says. “I definitely see us having a long-term, vibrant impact. It’s a pretty big deal that we’re able to bring manufacturing back to Steel City, at this nexus of the creative economy and technology.“
On the tech front, “Our technology is brand new, and our machinery was custom-built for us,” Betten says. And on the creative front, in addition to the music being pressed in their plant, the folks at Hellbender have taken a striking visual approach to how their records are pressed.
Using a variety of brightly colored pellets (the material melted down and pressed into records), Hellbender has already set themselves apart with splashy splatterdiscs printed on their LiteTone press. Using the early days in business, when order volume was low, to experiment, they developed a process that produces beautiful, sometimes prismatic results. A
recent pressing for the band Fuck Yeah, Dinoaurs! (“They asked us to go wild!”) is a kaleidoscope of psychedout colors, resembling a piece of agate or something else you might find in a gem shop.
With Record Store Day coming up on Sat., April 12, Hellbender is ready to party — the gathering at their Butler Street plant will, of course, be Pittsburgh-centric, with Ex Pilots, Colatura, Ames Harding, The Mirage, and others on-site selling their records. It may just be the perfect occasion to get acquainted with Hellbender and the greater Pittsburgh music community. •
HELLBENDER
VINYL’S RECORD STORE DAY PARTY WITH BUSCRATES AND JACKWORTH GINGER BEER
SAT., APRIL 12, 5:30-10 P.M. 5794 Butler St. Lawrenceville. Donation. eventbrite.com
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON Pam Pilipovich shows off a colorful custom record.
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON Nick Landstrom makes test vinyl at Hellbender Vinyl on April 3, 2025.
DRAG • LAWRENCEVILLE
A Night at the Cattybaret with Catty Wampus. 7 p.m. Blue Moon Bar. 5115 Butler St., Lawrenceville. $5. instagram.com/cattywampus
MUSIC • MCKEES ROCKS
Ani DiFranco 7:30 p.m. Doors at 6:30 p.m. Roxian Theatre. 425 Chartiers Ave., McKees Rocks. $305-537. roxiantheatre.com/shows
MUSIC • LAWRENCEVILLE
Chris Cain with Gabe Stillman 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. Thunderbird Music Hall. 4053 Butler St., Lawrenceville. $25. thunderbirdmusichall.com
ART • NORTH SIDE
A new group exhibition will showcase various local artists from the Lavender Estero Studio collective. Head to Kinder Being Cafe in the Government Center for the opening of Lavender Being, featuring work by Fío Avocado, Mary Tremonte, Kibblewood Crafts, Nina Ru ini, and Eriko Hattori. Guests can stick around for Record Store Day festivities, including live music, deals, and more. 4-7 p.m. 715 East St., North Side. Free. instagram.com/kinderbeingcafe
MARKET
• LAWRENCEVILLE
In the Shadows Pop-Up Market. 4-7 p.m. Lolev Beer. 5247 Butler St., Lawrenceville. Free. lolev.beer/events
GAME SHOW • STRIP DISTRICT
Match Gayme: Totally ‘80s Edition. 7:30 p.m. Doors at 6 p.m. City Winery. 1627 Smallman St., Strip District. $25-30. citywinery.com/pittsburgh
PARTY • LAWRENCEVILLE
Spirit X 10th Anniversary Party 8 p.m. Spirit. 242 51st St., Lawrenceville. $30 in advance, $40 at the door. 21 and over. spiritpgh.com
SUN., APRIL 13
CRAFTS • REGENT SQUARE
Spring Dye Weekend. 12-2:30 p.m. and 4-6:30 p.m. Continues on Fri., April 18. Workshop Studios. 321 Pennwood Ave., Regent Square. $68-170. 18 and over. workshoppgh.com/classes
MON., APRIL 14
COMEDY • HOMESTEAD
Are You Garbage: Back on the Block Tour
7 p.m. Doors at 5:30 p.m. Continues through Tue., April 13. Pittsburgh Improv. 166 East Bridge St., Homestead. $35-95. 21 and over. improv.com/pittsburgh
TUE., APRIL 15
MUSIC • DOWNTOWN
Don Aliquo Jr. and Sr. Quintet: Generations in Jazz 5 p.m. Lounge at the Greer Cabaret. 655 Penn Ave., Downtown. Free. trustarts.org
COMEDY • DOWNTOWN
Arcade Academy’s IMPROV 202 presents 202uesday. 7 p.m. Arcade Comedy Theater. 943 Liberty Ave., Downtown. Free. 16 and up. arcadecomedytheater.com/events
WED., APRIL 16
MUSIC • NEW KENSINGTON
Howling Giant with Star Viper and Cactustache 7 p.m. Preserving Underground. 1101 Fifth Ave., New Kensington. $15 in advance, $20 at the door. preservingconcerts.com/shows
MUSIC • ALLENTOWN
Sam Blasucci with Julia Zivic. 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. Bottlerocket Social Hall. 1226 Arlington Ave., Allentown. $21 in advance, $23 at the door. bottlerocketpgh.com
PHOTO: COURTESY OF HIDIVE
Vampire Hunter D at AMC Waterfront 22
SMOKE EM IF YOU GOT EM
ACROSS
1. Dignified women
8. Musician who blows
15. Big name in juices
16. Attacked vociferously
17. Where a cowboy might shop for footwear
18. He rubbed one out in fairy tales
19. Hypothesis asking the question “does one get higher with larger equipment?”
21. Muesli tidbit
22. Prefix with Hegelianism or Confucian
23. An Enemy of the People playwright
25. Botanical bristles
27. E-6 in the U.S. Army: Abbr.
31. Called back in the day
32. Belonging to us
34. With elegance
36. Two places where you might find bags of weed in a smuggler’s den?
39. Relocater, in a way
40. Old brewery fixture
41. Seafood delicacy
42. Certain
policemen: Abbr.
43. Bit of a pencil
45. “___ too good to be true”
47. “Pick one”
48. Houston Dynamo org.
49. Actress Cybill’s smoking apparatus?
57. Stepped on the gas
58. Land measure
61. Faux fat
62. Like a bogey
63. Place for a pilot
64. Menu section
DOWN
1. Unruly crowd
2. Manic activity
3. Double
4. Emu, e.g.
5. Couturier Cassini
6. Govt. labor board
7. “See ya”
8. Beer holder
9. Pleasant rhythm
10. One of three states that uses only longitudinal and latitudinal lines for its borders
11. Beach washer
12. Weed
13. Mix
14. Really stylish
20. Hot shot reporter
21. “I set the rules around here!”
23. Still sleeping, say
24. Koh-i ___ diamond
26. 1974 Donald Sutherland spoof with a dubious spelling
27. Armenia, once: Abbr.
28. Stay on dry land?
29. Deep depressions
30. Preschoolers
33. Four-string instruments
35. World Series mos.
37. Bad dudes in late ‘80s rap
38. Keepsake from the newborn years
44. Highland pattern
46. Caveat ___
49. Los Angeles overhead, maybe
50. “Sup, hombre”
51. Typical party times during the holidays
52. Coin with the Ring of Splendor of the Sun Stone
53. It can help you see games clearly
54. Cork’s land
55. Colonist William
56. Rapper whose X handle is @FINALLEVEL
59. The Pioneer Woman chef Drummond
60. Defib venues, for short
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