VOL. 1 ISSUE 3 â–¶ AUG. 28-SEP. 10
FOOTBALL
2018 GRIDIRON STORIES FROM THE PEEWEES TO THE PROS
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Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
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CONTENTS NEWS
MUSIC
The Football Issue
▶ Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
▶ Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
▶ CD Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Charlie@pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Youth Football . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
▶ Music listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Associate Publisher: Bethany Ruhe
▶ High School football . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Bethany@pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Pitt Panthers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
EDITORIAL
▶ The Steelers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Vol. I Iss. III Aug. 2018 Publisher/Editor: Charlie Deitch
Editor-at-Large: Kim Lyons, Kim@pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Predictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Music Editor: Margaret Welsh, Margaret@
▶ On Head Injuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
pittsburghcurrent.com Special Projects Editor: Rebecca Addison, Rebecca@ pittsburghcurrent.com Visuals Editor: Jake Mysliwczyk Staff Writer, Arts: Amanda Reed, Amanda@ pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Garfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
▶ Rob Rogers’ cartoon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Wysocki, opinions@pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
info@pittsburghcurrent.com Social Media Manager: Thria Devlin, Thria@
▶ Day Drinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
▶ Rick Claypool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Columnists: Aryanna Berringer, Sue Kerr, Mike
Corey Carrington, Ted Hoover, Mike Watt, Ian Thomas,
▶ Food feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
NEIGHBORHOODS
ARTS
Contributing Writers: Jody DiPerna, Mike Shanley,
▶ This Tastes Funny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
OPINION
Staff Writer, News and Food: Haley Frederick, Haley@ pittsburghcurrent.com
FOOD
▶ Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 ▶ Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 ▶ Arts listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
pittsburghcurrent.com Listings Clerk: Brooklyn Magill, listings@ pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Garfield interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
EXTRA ▶ Crossword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 ▶ News of the Weird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 ▶ Savage Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Front Page Photo of James Conner by Charlie Deitch. Back Page photo of the Westinghouse Bulldogs by Jake Msliwczyk
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THE FINE PRINT The contents of the Pittsburgh Current are © 2018 by Pittsburgh Current, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this publication shall be duplicated or reprinted without the express-written consent of Pittsburgh Current LLC. The Pittsburgh Current is published twice monthly beginning August 2018. The opinions contained in columns and letters to the editors represent the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Pittsburgh Current ownership, management and staff. The Pittsburgh Current is an independently owned and operated print and online media company produced in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood, 1665 Broadway Ave., Pittsburgh, PA., 15216. 412-204-7248.
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Email us or don’t: info@pittsburghcurrent.com.
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F O O T B A L L
MORE THAN JUST A GAME 6 | AUG. 28, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
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The Hill District Rebels are ready for the 2018 season. (Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk)
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Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
THE CURRENT 2018 FOOTBALL ISSUE
By Pittsburgh Current Staff info@pghcurrent.com
Even though this is a brand new paper, we’re not so new that we didn’t know that we had to do a football issue. And while most of the focus this time of year is on INTRO the Steelers, Western Pennsylvania football traditions run deep. So the Pittsburgh Current wanted to bring you stories from all levels of the game. Corey Carrington looks at the importance of youth football in black communities. From there, Jody DiPerna goes to Westinghouse High School to
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check in with coach Monte Robinson who for the past three seasons has been teaching his players about more than just football. Once the “Cradle of Quarterbacks,” Alan Saunders explains how Western Pennsylvania has become a hotbed for churning out defensive talent and no team is benefitting more than the University of Pittsburgh. On the Steelers front, Saunders looks at expectations for Western Pa.’s James Conner as he enters his second season with the black-and-gold. Then, Mike Wysocki give his predictions for the Steelers season and DiPerna examines the impact of the NFL’s new tackling rule.
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Pittsburgh youth football players play during a game last week. (Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk)
LEGACY LEAGUE
Youth football is more than just a game in Pittsburgh’s black communities By Corey Carrington PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER info@pittsburghcurrent.com
It’s Sunday morning at Kennard Field in the Hill District and hundreds of people have shown up for a day’s worth of youth football games between the Hill District Rebels and the Swissvale-Braddock Wolverines. This YOUTH crowd’s a lot bigger than some high school teams draw and for the spect surrounding the field, it’s the most important game they’ll watch this season. 8 | AUG. 28, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
In a region where there are thousands of football tales to tell, no story is more complex than how important peewee football is in black communities. Most likely everyone here is a Steelers fan, but this game is so much more important to them. This isn’t just a football game, it’s a source of community pride that has been around for decades. It’s not a league, it’s a legacy. Like most legacies, there have been good times and bad. On any given Sunday, for example, if you wanted to get into this game, you had to pass through a thorough security checkpoint. It’s like that at fields throughout this league. Over the years there have been acts of violence at fields across this league. In 2012, for example, a woman who came to watch her grandson play a game in East Liberty was killed after being shot in the stomach and the shoulder. In 2010, then Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper threatened to shut down league games following a spate of violence. But the league survived that period and the games are just as important as they ever were. But why? Why
does a game played by children mean so much to a community, a neighborhood. That’s part of the answer. Pittsburgh is a city of neighborhoods. With 90 different communities, each neighborhood has its own distinct characteristics, personalities, and institutions. Those institutions range from churches to rec centers or even bars. But in black communities like Garfield, the Hill District, Homewood, East Liberty and the North Side there are deeply rooted traditions that playing sports is a s rite of passage for young black boys growing into men. It’s also about forming bonds in your neighborhood. That’s why 31-year-old Terrelle Maxshure joined the Garfield Gator so many years ago. “My friends played and I was the youngest of my friends at the the time,” he recalls. “They were a year older than me and I remember seeing them come home from practice with all this equipment”, Maxshure says. “You know you’re a boy, you wanna hang out with your friends, you wanna just wanna fit in and do what your
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018 friends are doing. “One of my proudest moments was when I was named Championship Game MVP against Kingsley in 1997.” Most of Maxshure’s memories recall big games and big rivalries. And while these are football rivalries, the undertones of the streets are hard to ignore sometimes. There are a lot of positives that come out of programs like these. Young men learn discipline, confidence and a desire to do great things. Instead of falling into some the traps and vices that exist in these neighborhoods, they learned how to be community leaders and mentors in the future. But, it is also difficult to disregard the realities of black neighborhoods. Some young black men become attracted to the street life -- drug dealing, gang banging, and robbery. Eugene Spence, 28, of Northview Heights ad dreams of taking his career to a higher level. Spence stopped playing football in high school when he realized his grades were so bad that he was never going to get to play college ball. He turned to the streets and spent three years in prison for selling heroin after a 2014 conviction. He’s out now and is trying to be a good father to his three boys, all of whom play peewee football. “I’m just being a good father to them and a role model to them,” Spence says. “Money can’t do that, so I just make sure I put myself in a great position so I never leave them again.” The stereotype that black fathers are absent is a constant reminder that there needs to be more black men in our community who are willing to give back. Men like cousins, Anthony “Tone” Walls and Derrick “DC” Clancy, are graduates of Slippery Rock University and both give back to their respective communities of the Hill District and Garfield through coaching and mentorship. Clancy, a coach for the Hill District Rebels, says the team is a source of pride for the neighborhood, competing in a wide range of sports year round. Walking into the game,, songs like “Walkin Bomb,” “Elm Street” and “Ayo” boomed over the sound system. There were vendors, families cooking barbecue, and people enjoying the warmth of
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the summer while wearing their Sunday best and then some. Rainbow Guiseppe sneakers, gold chains, diamond earrings, stylish hairdos, and designer outfits were just some of the standout accessories at this game. “You know we try to bring that cookout vibe to our games that’s why we have a DJ,” Clancy says. “We don’t have to, but it’s for the people. We like to entertain.” » A few days later, at Garfield Gators practice, Walls is getting his team ready for their next game. Despite being from the Hill, Walls decided to play for the Gators when he was young because his father coached there. Now he’s coaching and mentoring young boys in the same way. Walls is here because he worries about today’s youth. “They can’t take constructive criticism, there are some kids who I don’t even want to say anything to them because of their attitudes,” Walls says. “I try to talk to them and got kids like, ‘Oh my God why is he on my dick’ and Im like, “I’m trying to make you a better football player. I’m trying to make you a better young man. They don’t see it that way.” Walls blames absentee fathers for the decline of young black boys interested in playing pee wee football and sports in general. “No disrespect, but the boys nowadays are way too emotional … and it’s frustrating.” Watching the Gators practice, it’s easy to see why they’ve won multiple championships. These coaches are teaching discipline and toughness. Walls shows me the steep hill the team runs up and down, stopping for jumping jacks at the top and bottom. The littlest kids were doing pushups and bigger kids were suiting up for drills. “People are too selfish nowadays. They’re not coming back, not giving back like they’re supposed to,” Walls says. “There ain’t enough people my age doing that, coming back, and giving back.” Walls may be right, but the ones who are coming back are making a difference. PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUG. 28, 2018 | 9
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Monte Robinson.
(Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk)
Westinghouse coach teaches more than football By Jody DiPerna PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER “For us, coaching for Westinghouse and coaching for Homewood, this side of town, you’re not just a coach anyway. We don’t get the luxury to come down here and just blow our whistles,” Monte Robinson laughed. As he prepared H.S. the team for a non-conference game the following day, the charismatic head football coach of the Westinghouse Bulldogs took some time to talk
to Pittsburgh Current on the sidelines of the humid, buggy practice field down the hill from the classical revival-style high school. Game-planning and strategy may be what draws other men to coaching, but not Robinson. He loves the really personal aspect. “You’re like a social worker and counselor by default. This is not the program where you’re just going to come down here and coach technique. That’s not happening down here, if you’re looking for that,” he said. Coach Te, as his players call him, fully understands the pivotal part coaches can play in the lives of young people.
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Hired on as an assistant in 2006, Robinson became the head coach in 2008. He always talked to his kids about anything and everything that might be on their minds. His formula is simply that if you help the kids with academics, with their relationships and with wellness, the on the field stuff will take care of itself. In 2016 he introduced the ‘Coaching Boys into Men’ program to his football team. CBIM is a nationwide, in-depth curriculum for coaching young athletes. It was developed in 2005 by Futures Without Violence, a San Francisco area group, with the input of hundreds of athletes and coaches.
The program helps coaches mentor their students and talk with them about insulting behavior, sexual consent, respect for women and girls, social media behavior, domestic violence and personal responsibility. Westinghouse Football is the first of the Pittsburgh Public Schools athletic programs to sign on with the CBIM curriculum and Robinson is a believer in its effect. He has talked to the coaches at both Alderdice and USO (University Prep/Sci-Tech/Obama Academy, which is sometimes referred to as U-Prep) and is hopeful they will adopt the model as well.
F O O T B A L L Robinson grew up here himself. He is a product of Westinghouse and Homewood. He and his twin brother, Ramon Robinson helped the team to win backto-back city championships in 1992 and 1993. Ramon quarterbacked those teams and is now the offensive coordinator for the Bulldogs. Even before adopting the CBIM program, Robinson didn’t shy away from fostering open conversations with his kids. He had small gatherings of coaches and players that he called ‘Men of the House’ meetings where they “... just talked about issues dealing with black males in the community -- kicking stuff around. We talked about drugs, sex, violence, race. It was just an open discussion.” Some of those experiences are specific to Westinghouse. The student body is nearly 100 percent African-American and 81 percent of the students come from economically challenged homes, per the data provided by Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Many coaches may not want to tackle discussions of sexual violence, but it is impossible to ignore the frequent stories of sexual abuse and violence committed by athletes at all levels. Few stories drew as much attention as the Steubenville rape case in 2012 and the assault committed by Stanford swimmer, Brock Turner in 2015. Turner’s victim, ‘Emily Doe’ read a stunning victim impact statement at trial that has been read more than 11 million times, according to USA Today. And the national media swarmed to Steubenville after a 16-year-old girl was raped by two football players at a party. What the stories share is that both victims were unconscious or incapacitated when they were assaulted. The cases spurred long-overdue discussions on both college and high school campuses about sexual assault and what constitutes consent. Robinson is a licensed counselor (he has a private practice at the Nuin Center
P R E V I E W in Highland Park) and he understands that discussions about sexuality, consent and violence are uncomfortable, troublesome waters for many coaches. The beauty of the CBIM program is that it provides an opening. It gives coaches a place to start discussions with their players. “The cards do a good job with tying it together. There are lessons from the field and they bring it full circle around character development and domestic violence prevention. Coaches have a template to go off.” Seventeen-year-old Willie Knight, a Westinghouse senior from Lincoln says that he feels like it’s helped him to mature. It’s not that kids don’t think about these things, but they don’t really have a safe forum to ask questions, express themselves and be exposed to different ways of thinking. “It was brand new because I’ve never had experience talking about anything like that. But it was good. It was awkward at first, but I got used to it,” Knight said towards the end of
practice. What if somebody had stopped those players in Steubenville? What if, at some point in high school or college, a coach or teammate had talked to Brock Turner about consent? And what if those discussions were held in a setting and context that allowed for real growth? This is precisely the value of CBIM, according to Robinson. “They have to learn to talk to each other with respect. We start there. When something goes wrong on the field -- how do you respond to that? Do you go and cuss out your teammate? Do you belittle him? Or how could you handle that differently? Then how does that transfer into the building? When you’re talking to one of your female classmates and it’s not going so well. How does that work? What do you say? Learn how to walk away. And learn how to, if you see one of your teammates out of line and being disrespectful, learn how to check them. We have to learn how to hold each other accountable.”
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Western Pa. prospects are getting more defensive By Alan Saunders PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER There was a time that Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania was known as the Cradle of Quarterbacks because of all of the talented collegiate and professional quarterbacks that came out of local high schools. But as the third decade of the 21st century nears, it might be time to find a more appropriate nickname for the alumni of the WPIAL. After all, these days, Pittsburgh PITT is much more synonymous with defense. According to the Professional Football Researchers Association, the first openly professional football player was quarterback John Brallier of the Latrobe Athletic Association. From there, the tradition continued for several decades. There was Connellsville grad Johnny Lujack, Youngwood native George Blanda, Beaver Falls native Joe Namath. Namath, Joe Montana, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. But, by the early 1990s, it was obvious that things were changing. With football’s popularity across the country, talented athletes from all over became high-level collegiate and NFL quarterbacks. Longtime Pittsburgh Press editor Roy McHugh wrote for the New York Times in 1991 that “no longer is western Pennsylvania football superior or even equal to the football in several warm-weather states or in certain other parts of the north.” It’s not that Western Pennsylvania has been replaced as the Cradle of Quarterbacks, it’s that one of the most challenging athletic positions in all of professional sports is being filled by the very best athletes from all across the country. But that doesn’t mean that the region is lacking in contributions at the game’s highest levels.
Pitt players practice during training camp. (Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk)
The majority of the recent contributors have come from less glamorous positions. Of the 22 local players that suited up in the NFL in 2017, 13 played on the defensive side of the ball, another four played offensive line and two, including the Steelers’ Jesse James, were tight ends. None played quarterback, not even former Jeannette passer Terrell Pryor, who after spending three years trying to stick at quarterback , has finally become an NFL regular as a wide receiver. It follows that the same traits that made Western Pennsylvania the original football hotspot should help the region
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become a producer of players with physical, blue-collar mindsets that want to play tackle, linebacker or cornerback. The absolute best of the region’s contributions over the last decade includes likely future Hall of Famers Darrelle Revis (Aliquippa) and Aaron Donald (Penn Hills), both on the defensive side of the ball. As the next generation of football players took to the region’s backyards, there is just as much talk about who would be the next Revis as there was about being the next Dan Marino. At Aliquippa, where Revis followed Ty Law to the NFL at
corner, Drayvon Henry-Askew has started 39 games over the last three seasons as a defensive back at West Virginia. He’ll be joined there this fall by another safety, Kwantel Raines, the top-rated Aliquippa alum in 2018. The Quips’ top prospect for 2019 is another defensive back, corner M.J. Devonshire. Most of the top players in high school play on both sides of the ball, but the physical nature of defense is a draw for many. “I’m a defensive guy,” Raines said back while he was still deciding his collegiate future. “I like to be the one hitting instead of being hit.”
There might not be a better place to watch that play out in 2018 than with the Pitt Panthers. Pitt has historically built its teams on local recruiting, from Marino and Tony Dorsett (Hopewell) in the 1970s to Curtis Martin (Allderdice) and Sean Gilbert (Aliquippa) in the 1990s and down through Revis and Donald. That’s no different this season, and the way the team has been built has been molded by the way the talent of the region has developed. Starting quarterback Kenny Pickett is from New Jersey, as is freshman third-stringer Nick Patti, while backup Ricky Town hails from Ventura, California. But on defense, it’s essentially a WPIAL all-star team. Defensive end Rashad Weaver (Central Catholic) is expected to start and his high school teammate Rashad Wheeler will be in the rotation at defensive tackle. All three starting linebackers are WPIAL alums, with Quintin Wirginis (Fox Chapel) flanked by a pair of North Allegheny grads in Elijah Zeise and Seun Idowu. In the secondary, it’s more of the same. Dane Jackson, who played
football at Quaker Valley while attending Cornell, will start at one corner spot. Paris Ford (Steel Valley), Damar Hamlin (Central Catholic) and Dennis Briggs (Shady Side Academy) could very well hold down the other three positions. “We all grew up together, so it’s fun,� Ford said. “It’s all familiar faces. We all like practicing with each other.� Jackson, who played quarterback at Quaker Valley, has bought into the idea that Western Pennsylvania is now a place that’s more well known for defense than it is for quarterbacks. “There’s a lot of tough, physical guys that come out of Western Pa.,� he said. “Maybe they played offense in high school, but, you know, I like saying the dogs are on defense. Everybody wants to play defense. Everybody’s aggressive, they want to compete.� It seems, then, that the region’s football talent production has grown up a bit. No longer the Cradle of Quarterbacks, but something else. The Den of Defenders, perhaps, or the Home Turf of Tacklers? Regardless of the nickname, Pittsburgh’s place in football remains secure.
SUBOXONE / VIVITROL
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James Conner continues to beat the odds in the NFL By Alan Saunders PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER It wasn’t until the third week of the 2018 preseason that James Conner and the Pittsburgh Steelers came out of the tunnel and played in front of their hometown fans at Heinz Field. PRO Conner, the Steelers’ second-year running back and the current starter while All-Pro Le’Veon Bell skips training camp, is plenty familiar with the venue. After all, it’s the site of some of his most emotional moments as a player, when he returned to the University of Pittsburgh in 2016 after overcoming a cancer diagnosis to return triumphantly to the football field. Most are familiar with Conner’s story. After he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in November of 2015, Conner made a stunning recovery, going through chemotherapy in the morning before spring practice, which he took part in with a port still inserted in his chest and while wearing a surgical mask to protect his weakened immune system. Conner not only returned to the field, he rushed for more than 1,000 yards to finish second in Pitt history in rushing yards and touchdowns, behind only Tony Dorsett, He helped the Panthers beat arch-rival Penn State in the resumption of the historic rivalry and ended up being drafted by the Steelers, the team he’d grown up rooting for as a boy in Erie, Pennsylvania. Despite the fact that his cancer has been in remission for two years, that sense of motivation hasn’t left Conner. For him, the feel-good story of the local player who defeated cancer, rose to collegiate prominence and was selected by his
James Conner(Current Photo by Jake Msliwczyk)
boyhood team to play in the NFL is a play that has yet to approach its final act. Just getting to the NFL is only part of the goal and Conner has spent this season’s training camp as the team’s top back in Bell’s absence. And while he acknowledges it’s a temporary assignment, he’s hoping he’s done enough to show that he’s ready for a greater role. “Obviously, Le’Veon is going to start, but if anything were to happen or I’m needed to jump into a role, I’ll be ready for it,” Conner said, leading up to the Titans game. While Conner’s status as a feel-good story is largely acknowledged, many have cast doubt over his potential as a future NFL starter. His lack of high-end foot speed and a pair of surgically repaired knee ligaments are often cited as the reasons Conner might not ever advance beyond being Bell’s top backup. After beating cancer, Conner finally got to the NFL’s doorstep, and even before being selected by the Steelers, he was already aware that what he’d been through
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had shaped him in a way that was atypical, even for a professional-bound athlete. “I’ve been overcoming odds my whole life,” Conner said at the combine before the 2016 NFL Draft. “My mental toughness and my physical toughness, I feel, are second to none. I’ve just been through so much and I feel, I’m more determined. … I’m willing to make sacrifices and do what it takes. I’ve showed that.” After securing the role of Bell’s backup as a rookie in training camp, Conner performed well in sparse duty, averaging 4.5 yards per carry — half a yard better than Bell. But Conner left the Steelers’ Week 15 with a knee injury that would require surgery, this time on his left knee. It was yet another pitfall in Conner’s journey, one that ended up affecting the Steelers entire offseason. While the team negotiated with Bell on a new contract — and ultimately failing to reach a deal — they had to do so without knowing exactly what they had in
line behind him. “Unfortunately, once [Conner] got himself healthy and caught up physically, he did some good things and then he had the knee injury,” Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert said at the beginning of training camp. “So, we don’t know. James has to prove that he can be available and be productive for 16 games.” So again, Conner has tapped into his otherworldly reserve of determination in order to prove that not only does he belong in the NFL, that he can be an every-down back, as well. “I’m still in the process of growing,” he said “I don’t know if I’ve gotten better yet. I still haven’t done anything on the field, so I guess we’ll see if I got better as the season comes around.” Where the future takes Conner is far from set in stone. The Steelers will most likely not place a franchise tag on Bell for the 2019 season, meaning that as of right now, there could be a future opportunity for Conner. The big picture is certainly still bright. “He’s one of those second-year guys that you have a natural expectation to see an improvement,” Tomlin said. “We’ve been around the track for a lap. He understand what’s going on in terms of the environment of professional football. He should utilize that experience and knowledge to produce a better, more consistent performance.” As for Conner, he has “tunnel vision” when it comes to how his future will unfold. His history of setbacks has taught him not to take anything for granted. But his history of overcoming them has taught him the way to proceed regardless. “I just felt like I showed that I was conditioned and able to play,” Conner said of his performance in this year’s training camp. “I’m still in the process of showing it, each and every day.”
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Predictions for the 2018 Steelers season By Mike Wysocki PITTSBURGH CURRENT COLUMNIST info@pittsburghcurrent.com Last season, the Steelers were on their way to face the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game, but got Blake Bortled on the way. The upstart Jacksonville Jaguars unceremoniously ended the 2017 campaign, which set off a chain reaction of finger pointing across Steelers Nation. All the usual suspects got the finger, including Mike Tomlin, Todd Haley and the entire secondary. Haley wound up being the scapegoat and was banished to the nether regions of Northeast Ohio. In the offseason we learned the Steelers organization sure knows how to draft wide receivers, if only that expertise extended to evaluating talent on the other side of the ball. The 2018 season will see lots of offense, so expect lots of shoot-outs, donnybrooks, and even a couple barn burners.
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Week One. After going a combined 1-31 the past two seasons, the Cleveland Browns kick off the season with an impressive drive all the way to the Pittsburgh 43-yard-line. Unfortunately for them, they are already down 14-0 when it happens. Antonio Brown’s 68-yard touchdown and Cleveland fumbling the ensuing kickoff puts Browns fans back into the usual state of loserdom. The Browns then get the Lebron-less city excited by narrowing the score to 14-10 at halftime. Then, reality sets in and the Steelers cruise to a 41-10 win. Cleveland sports radio fans inundate the airwaves with calls for the firing of new offensive coordinator Todd Haley. Week Two. Black-and-Gold fans get their first home tailgate since January as the Kansas City Chiefs bring their boring style
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
of football to town. ”Pittsburgh’s going to the Super Bowl” is already being sung in the stands as they dominate the Chiefs, 35-13. Week Three. The Steelers make their only Monday Night Football appearance of the season in Tampa. Le’Veon Bell and James Connor both rush for 100 yards each as the Steelers show off a little in front of a national television audience. Steelers remain undefeated with a 26-21 win over the Bucs. Week Four. Hatred is at a fever pitch as the Baltimore Ravens roll into town with new starting quarterback, Lamar Jackson. Jackson is crushed on a two-man sack by T.J. Watt and Cameron Heyward early in the game, bringing old Joe Flacco comes back onto the field. The wily veteran makes it close as it is every year, but the Steelers
prevail with a 20-19 win. Week Five. Legendary losers, the Atlanta Falcons, are one of those teams that can match the Steelers’ offensive firepower. The most fun game to watch of the season sees 900 yards of total offense. A late Matt Ryan to Julio Jones touchdown is the difference as the Falcons win 44-42. Let the fans’ persecution of the secondary begin! Week Six. Coming off their first loss of the year, the team travels to scenic Cincinnati, Ohio. The ’Natti serves up weird chili on a bed of spaghetti, unfortunately several Steeler offensive linemen get sick from eating the Queen City delicacy. Even with some mild food poisoning, the Steelers dismantle the Bengals, 38-6. CONTINUED
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F O O T B A L L CONTINUED FROM 15 Week Seven.The Cleveland Browns are coming in hot with their first victory in two years over Tampa. Underwear model and new starting quarterback Baker Mayfield has taken over the team and the city as Cleveland feels an odd sense of pride for the six days between games. That feeling quickly vanishes like so many other Cleveland dreams when JuJu Smith-Schuster hauls in three touchdowns in a 41-17 laugher. Week Eight. The overconfident Steelers go into Charm City and end up losing a close one to the Ravens. The team just never gets it going as fumbles by Rothliesberger and Bell are turned into touchdowns by Baltimore. Ravens 17, Steelers 13. Halfway through, the Steelers are 6-2. Week Nine. Mike Tomlin regroups his squad for the only Thursday Night Football appearance. His team takes out their frustrations from last week on the Carolina Panthers and beat them, 31-23. The Steelers now have ten days to rest before heading to the white trash Valhalla of Jacksonville, Florida. Week Ten. Revenge is what drives the Steelers to a 31-28 win over the Jags. Chris Boswell hits a late field goal to add to his already impressive list of game-winning kicks. The Pittsburgh victory is overshadowed by tweets from the President. Two Jacksonville players remained in the locker room during the National Anthem. Probably just locker room talk, but the Gold Star Family denigrating, Vietnam veteran P.O.W. belittling POTUS who has not had one member of his family ever fight for the country, tweets that the two Jaguars should be fired. Apparently, THEY were disrespecting the military. Week 11. The Steelers make it to a dominating 9-2 record as both the Browns and Bengals are mathematically eliminated from contention. The 27-17 victory in Denver practically ensures that the final four teams in the AFC will be the Steelers, Patriots, and two surprise teams, just like it is every single year.
P R E V I E W Week 12. The Los Angeles Chargers pay a visit to Heinz Field as the calendar turns to December. The Chargers look to be one of the aforementioned surprise teams in the conference. They come to town with an 8-3 record and leave with an 8-4 mark after a 37-34 Steelers win. The Steelers are 10-2 and looking unstoppable. Week 13. Raiders wide receiver Martavis Bryant is off the wacky weed. He’s one of the few Raiders having a good season. He torches the secondary for two touchdowns but it’s not enough as the soon to be Las Vegas Raiders drop another, this time 27-14. Week 14. It happens again. The bane of the Steelers existence is the New England Patriots. A 28-27 win on a controversial call puts the Pats in the drivers seat for home field advantage. The constant torment of losing to Brady is extended, but on the plus side, the Steelers are 11-3. Week 15. The team gets their focus back in a 35-33 win over Drew Brees and the Saints. Two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks put on a display as the Steelers leave the Big Easy at 12-3. Week 16. The Steelers rest their regulars and are still good enough to beat the Bengals, 31-20. Mason Rudolph throws two touchdowns and the Bengals go home and prepare to make a bad draft pick in 2019. Playoffs. The Steelers set team records in yardage, points, and touchdowns in 2018. But the playoffs are different. The hard truth is that since the beginning of the 2011 season the Steelers have won only three playoff games, that’s less than Colin Kaepernick has won since 2011 and he hasn’t played in three years. Defense wins championships and the Steelers don’t have it. The L.A. Chargers come to town and pull an upset 26-21. The only solace is that the Patriots are knocked out also by the Jags. A great season of 13-3 will still be considered unsuccessful, the off season focus turns to defense. Fans complain about Tomlin for a week and then turn their focus to the Penguins.
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
ANALYSIS
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New NFL tackle rule is good for game now By Jody DiPerna CONTRIBUTING WRITER info@pghcurrent.com At every snap of a football game, two waves of humans raise up and collide violently. At the same time, football, and the NFL specifically, is at war with itself, trying to find a way to make the game safe for human engagement. But really, can it be? Lined up on one side are some fans, players, coaches and even the president, all of whom believe that unless players are routinely getting jacked up, the game is no good. Recently, Larry Fedora, head football. On the campaign trail in Reno, Nevada in 2016, Donald Trump complained that, “Now they tackle. ‘Oh, head on collision, 15 yards.’ The whole game is all screwed up. … But football has become soft like like our country has become soft.” On the other side of this line is science and research. Evidence about the damage football does to the brain continues to mount and is impossible to ignore. The dangers of repetitive brain trauma are understood more and more based on the research done by scientists like Dr. Ann McKee and Dr. Bennet Omalu. Even with a helmet, pounding your head into another large person is actually bad for your brain. To stem the tide, there is a new tackling rule this season in the NFL. The rule states that it is a ‘foul if a player lowers his head to initiate contact with his helmet against an opponent. Contact does not have to be to an opponent’s head or neck area -- lowering the head and initiating contact to an opponent’s torso, hips and lower body is also a foul.’ And, like the college game, a player can be ejected for a flagrant foul. Indianapolis defensive back Shamarko Thomas was ejected from a pre-season game. When James Harrison knocked out two Cleveland Browns on the same day in the fall of 2010, the NFL rushed to implement new tackling rules. Basically, targeting another player’s head became
a penalty. But targeting can be hard to adjudicate. Was that safety aiming at the receiver’s head? One thing the new rule does well is that it doesn’t matter where a player is ‘aiming’ his helmet. That he is aiming his helmet at all, using the crown of the helmet as a weapon, is the transgression. This benefits both players involved in any given collision -- the target and the targeter. Using the helmet, launching like a missile, is what we’re talking about here. The NFL, no doubt, will screw this up. This is a league that metes out punishments in tsunamis of caprice. Four-game suspension for deflated footballs; no games for filming another team’s practice; five games for receiving gifts while in college; none for clocking one’s fiancee in an elevator. But for a moment, let’s ignore the messenger and focus on the message. In 2002, when Dr. Bennet Omalu decided to take a closer look at Mike Webster’s brain, the brain injury crisis moved from being a tragic story about a local football legend and landed with a thud on the NFL’s doorstep. Webster is Patient Zero as far as the concussion crisis is concerned. As anybody who saw him play will tell you, the damage to Iron Mike’s brain was done in equal measure by receiving blows to his head, as well as initiating contact with his head. Regardless of how you feel about the NFL, the officials and whether or not the game is going soft, the new rule may force players to wrap up, rather than try to blow up. If you don’t want to be flagged, you cannot duck your head. And if you don’t duck your head, you may actually tackle and bring opponents to the turf. The Steelers poor tackling technique has been a problem for a couple of years, but was on full display in their playoff loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars last year. Maybe if guys are looking to simply make a tackle, rather than deliver a seismic hit, the game and the Steelers, will actually be better, not worse.
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Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018 OPINION
Zero Tolerance Foundation Anti-immigration group’s influence felt in museum exhibit. By Rick Claypool FOR THE PITTSBURGH CURRENT info@pittsburghcurrent.com Corporate polluters have been dumping carbon and all manner of toxins into our air for more than a century. Today, we face the existential crisis of the catastrophic climate change that fossil fuel corporations, and the dirty industries they power, caused. The causes and solutions to this crisis are quite clear. So, during a recent visit, I was surprised to see the Carnegie Museum of Natural History muddying the waters by blaming overpopulation for the problem. The Colcom Foundation -- a foundation with a history of funding environmental causes here in Pittsburgh and giving millions to far right anti-immigration groups with ties to the Trump administration -- is a top funder of the museum’s “We Are Nature” exhibit. In the exhibit, two line graphs superimposed on top of each other and showing almost identical trends take up a large wall. One shows projected carbon dioxide emissions, which increase rapidly up to a spike in 2030, where the graph ends. The other shows projected world population growth, which also increases to a spike in 2030. The most important piece of information that the natu-
ral history museum seems to be conveying here is that the reason carbon dioxide is increasing -- and, by extension, the reason climate change is occurring -- is because the world’s population is going up. Which is a strange thing to suggest, considering climate change research demonstrates that the wealthiest countries in the world -- and the multinational corporations they spawn -- bear the balance of the blame. . If we choose -- meaning, without the political obstruction of polluting industries -- energy from wind turbines, solar power, and advanced hydroelectric facilities could power our society without significant carbon emissions or destructive mining. In other words, from a carbon emissions perspective, population is not the problem, and it is not the places where overpopulation is presented as a problem who are most responsible, it is us, here, in the United States. So why are hundreds of square feet in the museum devoted to raising alarms about overpopulation and connecting the concern with climate change? A panel in the nearby Population Impact exhibit -which is also Colcom-funded -- provides a clue. It reads: “U.S. Census Bureau data show that immigrants and their descendants account for 75 percent of this country’s
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population growth since 1990.” Founded by Mellon heiress Cordelia Scaife May, the Colcom foundation in 2015 held nearly half a billion dollars worth of assets. To be sure, the foundation supports valuable environmental work here in Pittsburgh. According to Colcom’s 2015 tax filings, among the local groups received more than $1 million in funding. But the foundation reserves its most generous giving for anti-immigration groups including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR): $7.5 million In a 2015 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Southern Poverty Law Center (which designates both the Center for Immigration Studies and FAIR as hate groups) said of the foundation, “If Colcom didn’t exist, it’s questionable this [anti-immigration] movement
would exist.” To say that the money has had a significant impact on politics and policy would be an understatement. The groups mobilized against immigration reform proposals from Presidents Bush and Obama, helping to defeat both. President Trump has cited CIS research in anti-immigrant political ads and speeches. In Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, a former CIS analyst is now a high-ranking staffer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and FAIR’s former executive director now works for Customs and Border Protection. Which lead me to wonder: knowing what we know about the horrors this administration already has unleashed, how much of this kind of anti-immigrant and overpopulation alarmism is Pittsburgh willing to tolerate? Knowing how the Colcom
Foundation spends so much of its money, what does it’s money buy here and how comfortable are we with our indebtedness to it? And if we’re not comfortable at all -- if we’re furious about how anti-immigration ideology is tearing our country apart -- what are we to do? These questions don’t come with easy answers. Pittsburgh presents itself as a progressive town. It’s not as progressive as it often pretends to be. And if we’re willing to let our most beloved educational and environmental institutions be co-opted by a funder like Colcom, I have to wonder: will we ever be? Rick Claypool is an advocacy researcher based in Pittsburgh, who works for Public Citizen (citizen.org). Contact: @RickClaypool or email: info@ pittsburghcurrent.com.
Enquiring Binds
OPINION
By Charlie Deitch PITTSBURGH CURRENT EDITOR Finally, after two years of screaming about the fake media and their ignorance in denying his own alternative facts, I understand why Donald Trump hates the news media. The National Enquirer was the standard bearer that he compared all legitimate news outlets to. To Trump, “legitimate media” is one that apparently is run by a former accountant with no clue what journalistic integrity is. That person should also be a personal friend of Trump’s and be willing to swap personal favors as easily as a kindergarten class swaps pink eye. In case you missed this week’s news, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen pled guilty and was convicted on campaign-finance charges related to payments to women that claimed to have affairs with Trump. One, as we all know, was adult-film star Stormy Daniels. The other was former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal. McDougal was silenced because she sold her story to the National Enquirer and the tabloid killed the story (the procedure is called “catch-and-kill”). And that’s where the story gets interesting to me. David Pecker, the CEO of the Enquirer’s parent company, had a history of collecting all types of stories about our president over the years. Enough stories to fill a safe, according to a report last week from the Associated Press. Following Cohen’s guilty plea, it was reported that Pecker had been given immunity to speak to prosecutors about any hand that the Enquirer had in catching and killing stories for Trump. Trump’s relationship with the Enquirer shows why he has no respect for legitimate media sources. In his world,
he can buy and manipulate whatever he wants. In this case it was a media company and its CEO, who happened to be a businessman and not a journalist. When he became President, Trump found himself as one the most powerful figures in the world. If he could manipulate a media company as a billionaire, doing it as a billionaire president would be easy. It was an ego trip, one he’s been on for a long time. He thought he could bully The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, just like he did the Enquirer. And when he couldn’t, he went on the offensive yelling about fake news and doubling down on the lies, half-truths and alternative facts. That ego trip is going to be his downfall. The best part of this whole saga to me? The deal he made with Pecker. He wanted to control the media so he made a deal with a corporate suit with no idea what journalistic ethics are. Pecker couldn’t roll over on Trump fast enough. The irony is, if David Pecker was an actual journalist with integrity, he would have gone to jail to protect his source.
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Current, Aug. 2018 ARTSPittsburgh & ENTERTAINMENT
Mechanical Drawing Pittsburgh comics artist Tom Scioli debuts his new ‘Go-Bots’ series in October
« An exclusive look at a neverbefore seen page from Tom Scioli’s Go-Bots comic. (Courtesy of the artist)
By Ian Thomas PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER info@pghcitypaper.com Tom Scioli, the Pittsburgh-based comic book creator, can’t seem to get enough of robots from the 1980s. Even after spending in excess of two years putting together his genre-bending, often unsettling exercise in graphic psychedelia, Transformers vs. G.I. Joe, he found he had more to say on the subject. Beginning this fall, he’ll explore the other transforming robot property from the eighties: Go-Bots. Why Go-Bots? The toy line was smaller than Transformers. The cartoon, produced by Hanna-Barbera, wasn’t quite as good. “My brain just kept coming back to Go-Bots. I’m not sure why. It just had this fascination for me. It stuck with me. I kept getting these story ideas for Go-Bots,” Scioli says in an interview with the Pittsburgh Current. He pitched his idea to IDW Publishing -- which published Transformers vs. G.I. Joe and has also published comics based on other properties made famous in the 80s, like Jem, My Little Pony, Ghostbusters, and Back to the Future -but didn’t hold out much hope, expecting to be late to the party. Reboots of well-known properties are de rigueur as recognizability can often provide a good return on investment in a fickle market. Scioli was delighted to learn that IDW had no plans for Go-Bots. More
than that, he realized that he’d stumbled upon a rarity in property-based comics: a clean slate on which to write his world, as the world of Go-Bots has been largely
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untouched over the years. As far as the second-string status of Go-Bots, he sees that as a positive, too. “It worked out kind of cool. I found
an 80s property that nobody’s done anything with and had no plans of doing anything with and that they’ve really done nothing with since the 80s. I like that idea. I like having something all to myself,” Scioli says. “Working on Transformers vs. G.I. Joe, I had it in my mind that this stuff is really important to a lot of people. I was aiming for a larger audience. I wanted to talk to people who maybe didn’t know anything about Transformers and G.I. Joe, but I did have it in my head that there were lots of people who this was very important to, so I need to pay attention and maybe see what are the things that fans of this material really respond to and try to include those elements. “With Go-Bots, I don’t get that sense at all.” In Transformers vs. G.I. Joe, Scioli was praised by critics for his confident reimagining of two well-known worlds. This confidence was rooted in his exhaustive research of the subject matter, pulling what he liked from the cartoons, comics, and toys that comprised the vast canon. “It makes whatever world you’re going to be talking about that much more real. I feel like to tell a story you need to have a comfort with the world,” Scioli says. In researching his current project, Scioli posted Go-Bots art by the recently deceased Steve Ditko (https://twitter.com/tomscioli/status/1020482766956302336), who is best known as the co-creator of Spider-Man. It was just one example of Scioli’s propensity to highlight the contributions of generations previous, when the work-
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018 for-hire nature of the business meant that influential creators could toil in relative obscurity. Along these lines, Scioli’s ongoing strip, Kirby (http://www.tomscioli.com/?p=277), is a biography of comics legend Jack Kirby, co-creator of, among others, Captain America and the Fantastic Four and arguably one of the most visionary minds to grace the medium. Kirby merges Scioli’s penchant for research-based storytelling and his proclivity for touting the work of Jack Kirby, whom Scioli has studied closely (and drawn from extensively) since the beginning of his career. In examining Kirby’s life, Scioli sees qualities that are imminently relatable and ambitions to which he aspires in his own career. Eventually, the Kirby strips will be collected and published in book form. “You could honestly say I’m obsessed with the work of Jack Kirby. It’s something that’s very personal to me it’s one of my personal obsessions, but I think it’s universal. Even just the portion of the story that I’ve told so far, it really speaks to people,” he says. “It’s got that aspect of somebody coming from humble circumstances and making good.”
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“I found an 80s property that nobody’s done anything with and had no plans of doing anything with and that they’ve really done nothing with since the 80s. I like that idea.” Tom Scioli Pittsburgh comic artist
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THE FUTURE IS FEMALE
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
City Theatre trail-blazes in Season Opener with Lauren Gunderson’s ‘The Revolutionists’ The Revolutionists acts as a both a homecoming and celebration of women in Pittsburgh theater. Amanda Reed PC STAFF WRITER amanda@pittsburghcurrent.com
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In today’s cultural zeitgeist, films like “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians” are redefining representation in the entertainment industry, presenting images of strong role models with diverse creative teams instead of perpetuating hurtful stereotypes among a sea of white people. In local theater, City Theatre accomplishes just that with the Pittsburgh premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s 2018 play The Revolutionists, featuring a diverse, all-female creative team. “It was the first time I remember being in a room and I went to say something and I kind of checked who was in the room and I went, ‘oh my gosh, we’re all women. Like really creative, powerful women creating theater,’” says director Jade King Carroll. “I’m going to be 38 and I’ve done over 50 plays and this is my first time working in an all-female room.” The Revolutionists is a comedy following four women during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror: Playwright Olympe De Gouge (Daina Michelle Griffith, last seen in “The Last Match” at City Theatre), assassin Charlotte
Corday (Moira Quigley), and former queen Marie Antoinette (Drew Leigh Williams), and Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle (Shamika Cotton, recently seen in “Citizen’s Market” last year). The play explores women’s history and how it gets rewritten — sometimes by those who leave the most important people out of it. “We used a phrase for the entire season that says, “your world, our stage,” and that’s really what it is: How can you look at your life and the world you’re living in and see it reflected onstage and find something new in it?” says dramaturg and City Theatre Director of New Play Development Clare Drobot. “This play specifically is about how can your voice be heard, how can we write and rewrite history, and whose voice is left out of that, and I think there’s a real universality to that.” But, according to King Carroll, don’t expect to hear what you think you already know about. “You kind of see the scope of them, not just the silhouette of what’s expected,” she says. And, according Drobot, don’t expect historical accuracy. “It’s about sensation and thought-provoking and reinvestigation of history,” she says. The five Dropboxes-worth of research used when staging the play, however, suggests otherwise. The creative team looked at historical documents and images to installation art in Berlin to create the show’s mood. “It’s all about entrances and exits, but there’s only one that happens through a door,” says King Carroll,
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holding back to not give too much away. Although the plays tackles a historical event, according to King Carroll, it remains topical thanks to modern parallels and anachronisms, like pairing period clothes to modern streetwear. “Not to get too political, but a lot of people in our field feel like it’s time for a bit of a revolution, so it’s nice to be working on a play that has the language of today, the history of yesteryear and an international scope of what it is to use your voice to create change,” King Carroll says. The voice in The Revolutionists, according to King Carroll, functions the same as “Nanette,” Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 Neflix comedy special. “I think one of the great things about comedy and comedians is we can see the dark in a digestible way that kind of opens us up to then walk away and go, ‘OK, that was that was about, but I was laughing and I was so present,’” King Carroll says. Along with creating — and recreating — history, The Revolutionists acts as a both a homecoming and celebration of women in Pittsburgh theater. The production marks King Carroll’s return to the City Theatre stage after directing Dominique Morrisseau's “Sunset Baby” in 2015. All of the actresses are either Pittsburgh-based or have worked previously with City Theatre. Almost all the members of the creative team are also Previews begin active in Pittsburgh’s theater scene: Anne Mundell, scenic deSept. 8-Sept. 13. signer, and Susan Tsu, costume designer, are faculty members Opens Sept. 14, runs in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama, and Nicole Pearce has previously coordinated the lighting design in City through Sept. 30. Theatre productions. Fan Zhang, sound designer, is the only 1300 Bingham St., newcomer to the creative team. Southside. $35. See “It’s a conversation between Pittsburgh-based artists and City Theatre website nationally-based artists and we all get to strengthen each other and bring new ideas to the table,” Drobot says. for times. www. As part of the theater’s City Connects program, the thecitytheatre.org ater will partner with Strong Women, Strong Girls by highlighting the organizations work in the Pittsburgh community to help highlight the play’s theme of female leadership. According to King Carroll and Drobot, this combination of community engagement and artistry is the essence of what regional theater is. “It’s something that City’s just conscious of in all of our work: ‘How are we as a theater being a good neighbor?’” Drobot says. King Carroll says it’s good to be back City Theatre, lifting women’s stories and making an impact in the Pittsburgh theater community. “There’s a lot of different nationalities, people from all over the world, outside of America, and I don’t feel, as an African American, mixed raced woman, marginalized in that room. In fact, I haven’t thought about it. And that’s exciting and refreshing, because we’re telling our stories, we’re reinvestigating it, and we’re doing it. It’s not somebody commenting on it. It’s us doing it,” she says.
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
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EVENT INFO
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Leaping Forward Former ‘Friends of the Hollywood’ want to bring back specialty cinema with Jump Cut By Mike Watt PITTSBURGH CURRENT FILM WRITER info@pittsburghcurrent.com Jump Cut Theater started like this: In February, The Friends of the Hollywood, including President Susan Mazur, Vice President Jonathan DeBor, Treasurer Sandy Stuhlfire, programmer Joseph Morrison, and board member Rich Dalzotto, as well as everyone else who had donated their time to the theater, held a public meeting at The Hollywood Theater in Dormont. They announced that the building INFO had been bought Read the full out from under version of this the organization story online at that had worked to keep the lights www.pittsburgh on since 2011, current.com scuttling The Friends’ long term plan to purchase the building themselves. Of course, The Hollywood Theater didn’t go anywhere physically, it’s still there, but is now presenting films that you could see at any cineplex. But The Friends of the Hollywood already had programming scheduled. “The Mads” — Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff, from Mystery Science Theater 3000 — were returning to Pittsburgh with their special live riffing of terrible movies; tickets had already been sold for the highly anticipated Everything is Terrible video extravaganza. People were on their way to a
Mike Dalzotti serves up ice cream at the Flying Squirrel in Carnegie (Current Photo by Amy Lynn Best)
theater that was no longer involved in these events. To make matters worse, the new owners of The Hollywood Theater immediately filed a lawsuit against The Friends, to prevent them from using “The Hollywood Theater” in any promotional material. Which certainly makes sense from a business perspective. Mazur didn’t wish to discuss the lawsuit. “It’s all a matter of public record,” she says. In addition to the scramble to find new venues, the organization had to find a new name. “We very quickly and legally had to rebrand,” says Mazur. “We did a press release and changed all of our social media, announced the name change to ‘Jump Cut’ back in April. “The bottom line was we had a very loyal audience and we did not want to lose them. We wanted to still bring the programming people loved. Our primary goal was to get everything booked that we could.” “We rescheduled Everything is Terrible at the Carnegie Stage. It turned
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out to be a really fun event. We still wanted to do our ‘Breakfast-and-aMovie’ series, but The [Hollywood’s new owners] announced they were going to do their own ‘Breakfast-anda-Movie’, so we rebranded as ‘The Original Breakfast-and-a-Movie.’ We sold out the Parkway Theater in McKees Rocks. Then we did one in the Library’s Carnegie Hall in Carnegie. There was no way we could have sold out that huge room, but we had a large following.” Mazur sighs as she relives the hectic past few months. “We just had to call around and find partners. ‘Where can we go?’ One of our first thoughts was the Carnegie Main Street.” Enter The Flying Squirrel. Melanie Luke opened the little haven for hard-packed ice cream and board games back in 2015, as a destination spot for families seeking an oasis “away from screens.” The economy is unkind to non-screen-based thinking, apparently, and Luke faced the terrible decision to close down the retail side of the shop this past May, going the
ARTS
way of many Carnegie-based businesses over the past year. But Luke, as it turned out, was also a “Friend.” “I used to just come down to the store and talk,” says Mazur. “She told me how she was going to have to close her store and I told her about the ‘kerfuffle’ we were going through with the theater. So she mentioned she was looking for tenants in her building— and I said, ‘Wait, you own the building? Why don’t we put a theater in there?’” Rich Dalzotto, Sandy Stuhlfire, and Michelle Linhart, ran the Horror Realm convention in the South Hills until they were forced to fold last year. . Rich is a financial consultant and co-owner of South Hills Financial Group. He’s volunteering his time at The Flying Squirrel to sling ice cream and Jump Cut merchandise to help defray future costs. Most of The Friends are doing so. The Mads may have wound up at The Regent Square and the big Purple Rain party at the Spirit in Lawrenceville, but all eyes are on a permanent home. The idea is to take the retail side of The Flying Squirrel and turn it into a 45-seat theater. Dalzotto says the plan is to have the theater operational by year’s end. The crew must present its idea at a public hearing in Carnegie and make secure all the necessary funding is in place to start construction, which could mean a fundraiser or two. “I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we’re giving up on the type of programming we’ve done for years,” Dalzotto says. “This is just a hiatus. We’re still doing cool things like the ‘Alternative Content’ screenings on 16mm. I don’t want people to look at the Facebook page and think, ‘Oh, they’re skipping to ice cream. This is the end! Gonna unsubscribe!’ “We are regrouping and we have a solid base growing here. There will be a movie theater here.”
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
The Dog Pound NUN WITH A GUN By Jimmy Cvetic dogpound@pittsburghcurrent.com
I have pondered these thoughts for a long time … very long time and I’ve tried deep in my soul to deliberate a fundamental truth, and understand the Second Amendment the Right to Bear Arms. And why Bart punched a nun in the belly? It has kept me awake in the wee hours of the morning staring at the dark ceiling. I keep thinking and trying to understand we all have the right to defend ourselves and if someone comes into my home I have the right to blast them and Hold these truths to be self evident Life and Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness ... and if the Russkies invade we can pop them out of their shoes, not to mention any space invaders that come to our country and want to capture our plump citizens and make puppy chow out of them. And did I mention Zombies? Imagine asking a zombie, “Do you feel lucky punk?” And I know longer question the razor edge of justice and mercy. And how many times in my life I’ve asked for mercy like the song Marvin Gaye sang before his father Shot him into the next world, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM ♫Mercy...Mercy...Me...things ain’t what they use to be … Arm the teachers? A nun with a gun … thinking … a nun with a gun …
Illustration by Rick Bach
a Dominican Sister of Mercy or a Little Sister of the Poor packing. Thinking back to Sister Brendan and if she was armed with a gun … I would not be sitting here pondering the Second Amendment… That nun didn’t need a gun she had eyes in the back of her head and she could spin around like a top or a superhero or like a ninja and with a piece of chalk with Annie
Oakley accuracy could shoot you right in the middle of your head. And she was tuff rosary bead tuff ram tuff lathered quick and lathered tuff and knew when she was pushed enough and when enough was enough and that’s all she could stand she would street fight. I already told you about Tom Bailey
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in another poem. I saw her take her nun boots to Tommy and lift him up off the ground by his ear. Seen her bounce many a head off blackboards and stretch many a sinful boy to amazing grace. Especially those boys that would be staring too long with lechery and immoral thoughts smiling at a little girls patent leather shoes. I believe in my heart of hearts that if Sister Brendan had been armed with .44 magnum Tommy Bailey would be doornail dead, and would have been carried by six of his peers. But when I think about it more … it just makes sense, a nun with a gun … she could conceal a .44 under her penguin outfit and nobody would know she was packing. And the more I think about it I’d bet it would help secure our fundamental principles, except for mixing the church with the state. Now I’m going to be up the rest of the night pondering … In God We Trust … and someone prying the gun from Sister Brendan’s cold dead hand. And tell you the truth I still don’t know why Bart belly punched a nun.
Editor’s note: The Dog Pound is a new poetry page curated by poet/renaissance man/former narcotics officer Jimmy Cvetic. The column looks to highlight poets, here and on our online Dog Pound. To submit a poem, send an email with contact information to info@ pittsburghcurrent.com
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30 Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018 ARTS
THE CAN’T MISS
By Amanda Reed PITTSBURGH CURRENT ARTS WRITER
Wednesday, Aug. 29
Need a Kevin Bacon fix tonight? Catch a special screening of “Footloose” at AMC Waterfront 22 as part of its Classic Movie Nights. The 1984 film follows Ren (Bacon), a city teen who moves to a small town that has banned dancing and rock music thanks to the efforts of a local minister (John Lithgow). Ren decides to challenge the ordinance and save the town from another danceless day. 7:30 p.m. 300 West Waterfront Dr., West Homestead. $5 ($7 VIP). 412- 462-6550 or tinyurl. com/loosefeet
Friday, Aug. 31
Learn about the Cultural District’s past with Taking Liberty, Pittsburgh’s Red Light District Tour today, presented by UniversalWit. Liberty Avenue is home to many of the city’s cultural offerings, but that wasn’t always in the case. In the 1970s, the street was known as Pittsburgh’s red light district. Experience history firsthand with this one-mile walking tour. 8 p.m. Through Sept. 2. 24 Market St., Downtown. $20. tinyurl.com/redlightpast
Saturday, Sept. 1
Take an afternoon stroll through the Homewood Cemetery today as part of Audacious Pioneers; The Ladies of Section 14. The walking tour centers on women who were laid to rest here, like a world famous opera singer, a Pittsburgh socialite who might have changed the succession of England’s Royal Family and a palm-reading countess from Coshocton, Ohio. If you get rained out, don’t fret — you can take the tour Wednesdays and Saturdays until Nov. 3. 1
The Screaming Orphans.
p.m. or by appointment. 1599 South Dallas Ave., Homewood. $10. 412421-822 or tinyurl.com/spookyladies
Monday, Sept. 3
Wind down the end of summer with drive and a little time traveling via the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival. The event turns 2018 into an illusion of a 16th century festival day. You’ll see jousters, jugglers and fair maidens at the event. Don’t miss sword dueling, live music, and themed weekends. 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Through Sept. 23. 112 Renaissance Lane, West Newton. $22 ($11 for children 5-12) 724-872-1670 or www.pittsburghrenfest.com
Friday, Sept. 7
The Pittsburgh Irish Festival returns today for its 28th year. Activities include ancient Celtic axe throwing and performances by Irish and folk bands like Gaelic Storm, Screaming Orphans, the Willis Clan
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and Doolin. Taste cultural beverages from Ireland or enjoy local brews from Rivertowne Brewing. There’s even fun for the kids with a designated children’s area. 4 p.m. Through Sept. 9. 1000 Sandcastle Dr., West Homestead. $12 advance/$15 at gate ($35 for weekend pass; $10 for students, seniors and military/public safety with ID). 412-422-1113 or www.pghirishfest.org
Monday Sept. 10
Catch Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 cinematic masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey” remastered in 4K today at the Rangos Giant Cinema at the Carnegie Science Center. The film, which won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, includes a voyage to Jupiter, a sentient computer, a black monolith, and plenty of opportunities to ponder the meaning of life. 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Through Sept. 12. One Allegheny Ave., North Shore. $9.95. 412-237-3400 or www. carnegiesciencecenter.org
EVENT LISTINGS THEATER Aug. 30-Sept. 1: August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned, a one-man show starring Wali Jamal. New Hazlett Theater. 8 p.m. each night with an additional 3 p.m. matinee on Sept. 1. Through Sept. 9: Disney’s Aladdin. PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh, Benedum Center. Sept. 14 through Oct. 28: Chatterton. A new play adapted from Sir Peter Ackroyd’s award-winning book. Quantum Theater. 8 p.m. Aug. 30-Sept. 8: Pittsburgh New Works Festival, Program A. In its 28th year, the festival will run through the end of September. Look for additional coverage online at www.pittsburghcurrent.com. Carnegie Stage, times vary, www. pittsburghnewworks.org. March 8-17, 2019: Prime Stage Theater presents: In the Time of the Butterflies. A play by Caridad Svich based on the novel by Julia Alvarez. March 8-17, 2019. 8 p.m. New Hazlett Theater. Primestage.com VISUAL ARTS Through Aug. 31: Western Penitentiary on the North Side is a historical landmark that was built in 1882. Not that all that history was necessarily good. The original prison built in 1842 was so heinous that even Charles Dickens was appalled by it. Eerily breathtaking photos of the abandoned site are on display at the Abandoned Pittsburgh Art Gallery in Carnegie. COMEDY Aug. 31: Race to the Coffin Comedy
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018ARTS 31 presents, Comedy Roulette: Comedy with a Catch. A monthly standup show that features a different theme every month, from fictional character roasts to drunk comedy. This month features headliner Geoff Tate. 10 p.m., Club Cafe. Oct. 13: Maria Bamford. 7 p.m., Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall. $30-39.75. Oct. 17: Late Night Tailgate. A topical and unpredictable live comedy and spirited sports discussion show. Headlined by an all-pro roster of hilarious comedians, athletes, and pop culture experts. Byham Theater. 7:30 p.m. Tickets starting at $30. Nov. 5: Capitol Steps. Byham Theater. 7:30 p.m. Tickets starting at $35. Nov. 10. Promenade in the Pavilion. Whether it be the extraordinary company, unforgettable entertainment, or the decadent strolling culinary experience, this stunning event will be unlike any other in Pittsburgh. 6 p.m. Tickets starting at $95. Nov. 16-17: Billy Gardell. Emmy nominated actor and comedian Billy Gardell starred in the CBS Hit television series, Mike and Molly as Officer Mike Biggs from 2010-2016. Benedum Center. Tickets starting at $44.25. EXHIBIT Through Sept. 3: We Are Nature: Living in Anthropocene. Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Through Sept. 3: Butterfly Forest. Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden. Ongoing: Tropical Forest. Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden. DANCE Fridays until Aug. 24: Salsa Fridays. Greer Cabaret Theater, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Dancing
Pittsburgh Musical Theater. LITERARY
Comedian Billy Gardell will be at the Benedum Center Nov. 16-17.
from 10:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Late Night Happy Hour 9-11 p.m. $5 at the door. Oct. 26 through Oct. 28. Ayikodans Cri Des Nago. August Wilson Center. Tickets starting at $20. Nov. 2-3: Espaece, A piece by Aurelien Bory. Along with his Compagnie 111, Aurelien Bory has gained a reputation as a poet of space and a wizard of staging--an artist capable of blending elements of dance, music, magic, and circus in his visual theater. August Wilson Center. $35. Nov. 3: Yabin Wang Dance. China’s Superstar. Byham Theater. 8 p.m. Tickets start at $10.
Ongoing: Poetry and Pints, open mic and reading circle. Every Second Thursday at East End Brewing Tap Room, Strip District. Sept. 2: Hell’s Lid Reading Series. Full Pint Wild Side. 2 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com Sept. 4: Launch Party for The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King. 7 p.m. Heinz History Center Oct. 13: Truly Funny: Humor Writing with New Yorker Contributor Shannon Reed. Learn the fundamentals of writing and how they can be applied to nonfiction writing. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. 5119 Coral St., Bloomfield. Sept. 11: Steel City Slam. Bi-monthly poetry open mic and slam competition at the Full Pint Wild Side Pub in upper Lawrenceville. 7:45 p.m.
Nov. 2-10: Hans Christian, You must Be An Angel. Your fairytale favorites come together for a dinner like no other in this spectacular immersive theater experience. Trust Arts Education Center. $24. Nov. 9-10: Aga-Boom. Jump headfirst into a chain reaction of absolute silliness and a blizzard of laughter with three former stars of the Moscow Circus. Byham Theater. $12. Nov. 18: Double Dare Live! The messiest game show is coming to your town and will bring all the action and excitement of Nickelodeon’s hugely popular TV show to the stage. Benedum Center. 3 p.m. Tickets starting at $30.25. Nov. 20: Peppa Pig Live! Peppa Pig Live is back with an action-packed live show featuring your favorite characters as life size puppets. Byham Theater. 6 p.m. Nov. 23-Nov. 24: Junie B. Jones in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells. Byham Theater. Tickets starting at $20. OTHER
FOR KIDS Sept. 20: iLuminate. An entertainment-technology company that combines state-of-the-art technology with electrifying entertainers who perform in the dark. 7:30 p.m. Byham Theater. $35
Oct. 7: Pittsburgh Society of Artists Fall New Member Screening. Applicants must submit three original works that are exclusively created by the applicant and made within the last two years. Wilkins School Community Center. 12:30 p.m.
AUDITIONS Aug. 27-28: Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Non equity 18+. By appointment only, email Gemma at gemma@pittsburghmusicals.com. PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUG. 28, 2018 | 31
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Experienced Newbies Four seasoned Pittsburgh musicians come together for something brand new By Margaret Welsh PITTSBURGH CURRENT MUSIC EDITOR margaret@pittsburghcurrent.com There comes a time in any successful band’s career – if they’ve been around long enough – where the members start to see things a different way. Priorities shift. Gone is the optimism of youthful triumphs and unexpected momentum. Tensions run higher and conflict runs colder. Instead of showing up together to the gig in a tour van, everyone flies in from their separate European villas. None of this is true of Chantillion (yet) but it’s that kind of world-weary, aging-rocker aesthetic that frontman Jackson O’Connell-Barlow had in mind when shooting the art for the band’s latest three-song EP, For Those About to Rock, We Will Sue You. In the photo, the four members – including drummer Gregg Weber, bassist Justin Pelissero and “lead synthesizer” Amos Levy – sit at the end of a conference table, surrounded by various rich guy paraphernalia and looking somber and ready to do business. “I wanted it to look like a seasoned band who had made their money and their best songs were behind them,” O’Connell-Barlow explains. “They’re now getting more into lawyer-based revenge and they all hate each other, they’re on their second or third spouse, their waning libido is picking up in other, much creeper manifestations.” Chantillion is only a couple years old, and its detailed, robust synth-rock is a long way from jaded gimmick-
Chantillion (Photo: Andy Johanson)
ry, but its members have collectively accrued decades of experience hustling in and outside of the Pittsburgh music scene. O’Connell-Barlow (Grand Buffet, Mrs. Paintbrush) and Weber (Cyrus Gold, Glow in the Dark) were long-time acquaintances, having seen each other perform with various acts for years. Weber suggested that maybe they work on some music together (“I was very interested,” O’Connell-Barlow recalls. “He’s a really sizzlin’ drummer). Pelissero (Cyrus Gold, Miracle Worker) came on as a kind of counterpart to Weber (“I guess we are the rock ‘n’ roll, noisy boys of the group,” Weber says via email). O’Connell-Barlow brought in Levy (a.k.a DJ Thermos) as, he says, “someone who was more from my
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world, with the hip hop and electronic and sample-based background.” For Those About to Rock We Will Sue You opens with “ARBUSS,” a spacious, proggy, stadium epic punctuated by catchy synth runs and anchored by O’Connell-Barlow’s highly refined stream-of-conscious-ish lyrics, a style he’s polished over many years of hiphop freestyling and conversational riffing. “OCEANIA” is a little spooky and a little sleazy, perfect for busting out some interpretive dance in your bedroom. Closing instrumental “VEXTER” makes some room for spacey cinematic soundscapes and triumphant electro-peaks. “At no point in time was I interested in being rockish,” O’Connell-Barlow says of the band’s sound. “That was the
one stipulation, there was to be no sixstring guitar or lead guitar, just to avoid any type of blues scale stuff.” He mentions Simple Minds as a major influence – “I look at [Chantillion] as post-punk in its instrumentation,” he says – but he draws inspiration from all over the 1970s and early ’80s. Weber notes, “We were all, ‘Duran Duran, Gary Newman, Simple Minds, Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Killing Joke, Van Halen,’ but I’m not sure we align with any of those folks.” It is safe to say that Chantillion is filling a space in the Pittsburgh music scene that, perhaps, no one even knew was missing. And it certainly gives its CONTINUED
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34 Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018 MUSIC CONTINUED FROM 32 talented members a little extra room to explore. “Chantillion allows us all to do something we haven’t done before,” says Weber. “I dig the visceral work of being in a band. Writing, composing and practicing new music with cool people. Recording and playing shows is cool, but the dirty work is where it’s at.” For O’Connell-Barlow, fronting an actual band is a major shift from performing alone as Mrs. Paintbrush, or as a duo with Grand Buffet, and he still feels like he’s working out the kinks. With only a few shows under its belt, Chantillion is still figuring out how to fully hit its stride as a live experience. Since O’Connell-Barlow says that singing while working an iPad and synth trigger is the most multitasking he’s ever had to do on stage, “it’s been a lot more meat-and-potatoes with me… I haven’t turned into the prima donna frontman that I became with Grand Buffet, where … that’s my little kid mirror where I can do whatever I feel.” But don’t worry, it won’t take him long to get there. After all, he’s a professional. “I think Jackson is a supreme front person,” Weber says. “He’s constantly on fire. At 1 a.m., after practicing full blast for three hours in a humid, sweaty warehouse, he’s doing push-ups and David Lee Roth kicks in between verses. … I’ve never heard him howl and wail, or linger into Peter Murphy territory before Chantillion, but I love that he does.” There’s clearly a great deal of mutual admiration among the Chantillion members – O’Connell-Barlow describes Weber as Hulk-like in his playing but the GREY hulk, which still has Bruce Banner’s intelligence. Weber calls Levy (a.k.a “Slaymos”) the “brainy younger brother of the group,” and praises his longtime collaborator Pelissero for his tasty, often unexpected basslines. O’Connell-Barlow promises that Chantillion’s best material is yet to be released, and may take the form of additional three-song singles, given shortened audience attention spans. Touring will happen somewhere down the line. “We’re kind of homebound and doing weekend warrior tours until we get that Blockbuster Video or RC Cola sponsorship,” he deadpans. Mostly he’s focused on trying to make a really good music video, something that can be used as a calling card for future national promotion (and if there are any great videographers out there reading this, he says, hit him up. Chantillion doesn’t let anyone work for free.) As far as future goals, Weber says, “I think I can speak for all four horsemen when I say that the focus is always to write killer music and have fun. “Hold on to your younger, seething self. I’ve been playing in bands for almost 30 years and that’s one of the only motives that’s really stuck with me,” he adds. “Big middle finger (with the thumb stiffly out) to playing golf, keeping up with TV shows, and sports statistics.” 34 | AUG. 28, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
Lighter Touch London-born, Georgia-based garage rocker Holly Golightly does a lot with a little By Mike Shanley PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER Holly Golightly’s music takes inspiration from country blues, folk and early rock and roll. “I have to say, I don’t know anything about music after about 1962,” she admits. Her songs are often built around a tried-and-true pattern of three chords, but sometimes even that’s too many. It’s right there on the cover of In Blood -- a collaboration with like-minded guitarist Billy Childish -- which below the HOLLY GOLIGHTLY & THE title reads: “One Chord, One Song, BROKEOFFS with DEMOS One Sound.” Even when she’s limited to one riff, Golightly knows how PAPADIMAS. 7 p.m., to make it count, wringing plenty Monday., Sept. 10. Get of energy and momentum out of a Hip Recordings, 1800 primitive structure. Columbus Avenue, North She first made a name for herself in London during the ’90s as a memSide. $13-$15. All ages. ber of Thee Headcoatees, an all-fe412-231-4766 or www. male counterpart to Thee Headcoats, gethip.com. Childish’s raw garage-rock band. Since then, Golightly has released several albums on her own and even sang on the White Stripes’ song “It’s True that We Love One Another.” Her current project, Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs, is actually a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Lawyer Dave (né Dave Drake). The couple lives on a farm just outside of Athens, Georgia, where they record their own music, when Golightly (her actual name) isn’t tending to her horses or working at her unusual day job (more on that later). Growing up in London, Golightly had taken guitar lessons but abandoned it early on. “I was learning stupid folk songs (other than Buzzcocks songs), and wanted to play really fast,” she says. “It was an acoustic guitar and I thought, ‘I don’t want to play guitar if that’s what it sounds like.’ It wasn’t electric and it wasn’t punk rock. So I lost interest.” A few years later, a friend gave her a four-track recorder to settle a debt. She was dating Bruce Brand of Thee Headcoats at the time, and thought he might have some use for the equipment. But Golightly found herself motivated by the new toy. “I never read the manual. Just turned it on, picked up one of the guitars in the house and started recording. I really didn’t try very hard,” she says, with a laugh. Before long, she was introduced to the members of the Delmonas, which became
INFO
Thee Headcoatees when she joined them. While her abundant catalog could be considered as part of a bigger garage rock sound, Golightly says rock music never landed on her radar. Like many working class London kids, she grew up hearing soul and reggae music, which left a bigger impression on her. “I primarily just listen to old blues and soul stuff. Given a preference that’s what I choose. And Dave comes from a completely different place. He’s like a skate kid from Texas,” she explains. “We come from opposite poles, really. This is the thing that we can do together. It’s our common ground.” Clippety Clop, their newest album, contains 12 songs all related to horses. Along with pre-rock classics like Frankie Laine’s “Mule Train,” they also cover equine-themed tunes by modern acts like Red Red Meat and the Bad Livers. Both play guitar and Dave keeps the beat on a drum kit that he plays with his feet while strumming. Golightly has been rather prolific over the years, but she remains modest about her output. “I’ve never ever said I’m a musician, on any application form or any form at all,” she says. Music “is your outlet. That’s what it was designed to do in the first place. Somebody had to work, and play guitar on the porch at night. That’s what they did to stop themselves from going nuts. And I completely identify with that. It’s like the extreme contrast to what I do the rest of the time.” What she does the rest of the time does indeed offer quite the contrast. Golightly might be known to the world for her music, but in Athens-Clarke County, she’s the person to call when you’re in trouble with the law. “I’m a bondsman,” says Golightly. who has to stop our interview to do business. While it sounds like scary work, she thinks otherwise. “A bondsman is like a guardian angel, really. I get them out of jail as well as put them back in. So they keep on the good side of me.”
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MUSICPittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
NEW RELEASES
By Margaret Welsh margaret@pittsburghcurrent.com
CHILLER CHILLER EP
Self-released chillerpgh.bandcamp.com
Many would argue with the assessment of Pittsburgh as “most livable” anything, but the city’s remarkably high concentration of great punk and hardcore bands certainly makes it more livable. Following up last year’s highly enjoyable II cassette, Chiller’s new whirlwind of a 7-inch provides further evidence that this band should not be slept on. Where II offered a slightly wider range of style and a little bit more oxygen by way of slow, heavy breakdowns, there’s a sense here that Chiller is trying to pack as many fiery riffs into the limited space of the medium as possible. But with the shortest track, “Excavator,” clocking in at 41 seconds, even if you can’t catch your breath you’re in no danger of passing out. It’s a less melodic, more urgent venture than the last release, but the hooks are there, and the surprisingly esoteric lyrics indulge both personal rage and larger apocalyptic warning.
Go Go Gidget Betty With The Good Hair
Self-released gogogidget.bandcamp.com
Summer’s almost over but there’s still time to drive around with the top down (or, at least, the windows open) listening to the beachy sounds of Go Go Gidget. In the true tradition A-side/B-side singles, “Betty With the Good Hair” kicks the release off with a burst of wild and wooly energy while “Real Breakup” slows it down, subverting the love-sick girl-group formula into an anti-love song. “Never held your hand/But you were my emergency contact/we were not in love … Why can’t I get the dignity of … a real breakup?” It’s a song you could almost slowdance too, if you weren’t really just trying to dance a little further away. The band describes its sound as Riot Srrrf, and – while Go Go Gidget may not be breaking new ground – the four-piece remains refreshingly unsweet while touching on the hallmarks of both genres. ▶ GO GO GIDGET with MOBINA GALORE, THE EARLY 30s, TV2000. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 11. The Mr. Roboto Project, 5106 Penn Ave., Friendship. $8. All ages. www.therobotoproject.com 36 | AUG. 28, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
MUSIC TRACKS
A SAMPLING OF UPCOMING CONCERTS IN AND AROUND PITTSBURGH By Pittsburgh Current Staff listings@pittsburghcurrent.com
DANCE There are a few good reasons to swing by Spirit on Friday, Aug. 31. Downstairs, in the Lodge, DJ SMI hosts the AFROHEAD dance party alongside special guest Pandemic Pete. Expect a seriously bangin’ mix of Afrobeat, Afrofuture, Afrohouse and more from these two aficionados starting at 9:30 p.m. Upstairs, Pittsburgh’s own electro-dancefunk outfit Beauty Slap hosts Keep Pittsburgh Funky Vol. III. Joining Beauty Slap for this all-local booty-shaking bill is groove-heavy brass band Run the Meat and DJ/producer Swav Pav. That lineup starts at 10:15 p.m., so get hydrated, wear comfortable shoes, and maybe spend some time on both dance floors. Margaret Welsh. 242 51st St., Lawrenceville. AFROHEAD is $5 before 11 p.m., $8 after. Keep Pittsburgh Funky is $15. www.spiritpgh. com
GARAGE ROCK Really, Shonen Knife needs no introduction – the band has been making garage-y power-punk for longer than many of its fans have been alive. Lineups have changed since 1981 (singer- guitarist Naoko Yamano is the constant), but the Osaka, Japan -born outfit has remained constant in its offering of hip-shaking, head-bopping surf tunes and open-hearted live performances. If you’ve never seen Shonen Knife, you’ll have a chance Tuesday, Sept. 4 when the band comes to Spirit. Grunge rockers Murder for Girls, open the show, along with enigmatic retro indie-pop group Garter Shake. Margaret Welsh. 8 p.m. 242 51st. St., Lawrenceville. $16-20. www.spiritpgh.com.
BLACK METAL Wiegedood is the Dutch term for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (it translates, more poetically I suppose, to “death in the cradle”) which should give you at least a vague idea of the bleakness inherent in this Belgian black metal project. The three piece – which includes members of Oathbreaker and Amenra – released the De Doden
Hebben Het Goed III this year. It, like the previous two releases, is a grim meditation on loss, but there’s undeniable warmth and catharsis under the dark atmospheric hiss and vicious riffs. In other words, not the worst soundtrack for when you’re sitting around contemplating the mysteries of life and death. The trio appears Thursday, Sept. 6 at the Mr. Roboto Project along with Veiled and Urns. Margaret Welsh. 8 p.m. 5106 Penn Ave., Friendship. $10. All ages. www.facebook.com/winterforgepgh
OUTLAW COUNTRY You don’t need me to tell you why you should go see Willie Nelson and Van Morrison on Friday, Sept. 7. That these two legends are headlining is reason enough to buy a ticket to the Outlaw Music Festival tour, which comes to the KeyBank Pavilion Friday, Sept. 7. But the bill also includes Brandi Carlile, Lukas Nelson + Promise of the Real, Partical Kid, and Sturgill Simpson, whose warm Waylon Jennings baritone and almost psychedelic approach make him a not-to-be-missed act. Margaret Welsh. 2:30 p.m. 665 Route 18, Burgettstown. $38-850. www.keybankpav.com
GUITAR ROCK Listening to Lithium Zion -- Deaf Wish’s latest collection of grimey, grisly guitar rock – comparisons to Sonic Youth come easy. Part of that is technical structure but the Melbourne-based band captures something more complex and vital about the SY sound, combining detached cool with earnest urgency, punk simplicity with jam-y density. On “FFS,” singer/guitarist Sarah Hardiman hurls gravely vocals over urgent riffs that threaten to fall apart any moment; later the band struts through “The Rat is Back,” a messily melodic track that plays light against dark. That said, Lithum Zion is no nostalgia trip: Deaf Wish’s take on the entire punk canon (it’s all kinda there!) feels at once comfortably familiar and energetically new. Hear for yourself when the band plays The Shop with TRVSS and Sub Pop labelmates The Gotobeds. Margaret Welsh. 8 p.m., Tue., Sept. 11. 3520 Charlotte St., Lawrenceville. $10.
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
Pittsburgh Festival of New Music 2018
37
September 2018 · at the Pittsburgh Opera, with events at Aftershock Theater and throughout the city
pghnewmuSic.cOm
aliamuSicapittSburgh.Org
FEATHERMUCKER voice · guitar · laptop
The Dream Songs Project (MN) and Kamraton (Pgh)
S U R R O U N D Six harps around the audience
Music by Moore, Aperghis, Kaminksy, and McMasters
Plus performances by Jan Williams, Marilyn Shrude, and more.
S aturday 9/8 · 7:30 pm · a fterShOck t heater
S unday 9/9 · 2:30/3:30 pm · p ittSburgh O pera
Contemporary pop duo NIMIKRY (Italy)
Eight songs for a Mad King
Plus Ben Opie, Pittsburgh Saxophone Quartet, Kassia Ensemble, Wolftrap, Kuo/Bernabo, John Ivory, and more
With Paul Pinto and Tenth Intervention (NYC). Plus Christiane Dolores, Alia Musica Pittsburgh, and more.
S aturday 9/15 · 3:30/8 pm · p ittSburgh O pera
t hurSday 9/20 · 7:30 pm · p ittSburgh O pera
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUG. 28, 2018 | 37
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Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018 MUSIC
Music Listings HIP HOP
Sept. 7 Full Pint Wild Side: BB Guns & My Favorite Color. Live alternative hip hop. 9 p.m.
Sept. 22
Full Pint Wild Side: Words & Sounds Vol. 2. Live band hip hop showcase featuring My Favorite Color, Treble, Livefromthecity, and Isaiah Small. 9 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com
Shonen Knife
SINGER/SONGWRITER:
Sept. 15 Full Pint Wild Side: Max Redding w/ Sadie’s Song & Eric Lutz. Singer/ Songwriter showcase. 8 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com
Sept. 21
Full Pint Wild Side: Soccershoe. Acoustic Duo playing covers and originals. 9 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com
Sept. 29
Full Pint Wild Side: William Gomez. 8 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com ROCK/POP:
Aug. 28 KeyBank Pavilion: Godsmack, Shinedown, Red Sun Rising. 7 p.m. livenation.com. The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls: Jonah Matranga, The Pauses. 8 p.m. mrsmalls.com. The Smiling Moose: Rookie Of The Year. 7 p.m. smiling-moose.com.
Aug. 29 Jergels Rhythm Grille: The Dead Daisies, Hookers And Blow. 7 p.m. jergels.com.
Aug. 30 KeyBank Pavilion: Counting Crows,
Willie Nelson
Live. 6:30 p.m. livenation.com. Rex Theater: Steve’n’Seagulls. 8 p.m. rextheater.com.
Aug. 31 Club Cafe: Sawyer Fredericks, JD Eicher. 6:30 p.m. clubcafelive.com. The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls: Buried Above Ground. 6:30 p.m. mrsmalls. com. The Oaks Theater: Terry Bozzio. 8 p.m. theoakstheater.com.
Sept. 1 Full Pint Wild Side: Vertigo-Go. Live instrumental Surf Rock. 9 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com. KeyBank Pavilion: Pentatonix. 8 p.m. livenation.com. The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls: Monolord. 10 p.m. mrsmalls.com.
Sept. 3 Stage AE: Stone Sour, From Ashes To New. 8 p.m. promowestlive.com.
Sept. 4 Spirit: Saintseneca. 9:30 p.m. spiritpgh.com. Sept. 5: Hard Rock Cafe: The Pietasters, Inco Fido. 8 p.m. hardrock.com. Jergels Rhythm Grille: Glenn Hughes. 8 p.m. jergels.com. PPG Paints Arena: Fall Out Boy, Machine Gun Kelly. 7 p.m. ppgpaintsarena.com. The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls: Oliver Hazard. 8 p.m. mrsmalls.com.
Sept. 28 Full Pint Wild Side: Adam Fitz & Friends. Live acoustic Rock. 8 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com.
Sept. 2 Jergels Rhythm Grille: Great White. 8 p.m. jergels.com. The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls: Flow Tribe. 9 p.m. mrsmalls.com.
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BLUES
Sept. 5 Club Cafe: Roomful Of Blues. 8 p.m.
clubcafelive.com. Sept. 8: Full Pint Wild Side: River City Blues Band. Live traditional blues. 9 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com.
Sept. 14
Full Pint Wild Side: Dan Stonerook w/ Dennis Malley. Acoustic blues. 9 p.m. fullpintbrewing.com. JAZZ
Sept. 29 Elks Lodge #339: The Red Beans & Rice Combo CD Release Party. Join the Combo in the fabulous Allegheny Room for an evening of music and surprises, and pick up a CD for some Red Beans & Rice to go. Doors open at 7 p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. showclix.com/event/RedBeansCD. EDM
Sept. 2 Rex Theater. Astronauts, Etc. Dance/Electronic. 8 p.m. rextheater. com.
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
This Tastes Funny
39 FOOD & DRINK
Comedian Jason Clark goes to Jerome Bettis Grille 36 By Haley Frederick PITTSBURGH CURRENT FOOD WRITER haley@pittsburghcurrent.com With the football season upon us, it only seemed right to have dinner at at football-themed restaurant. That’s how stand-up comedian Jason Clark and I ended up at Jerome Bettis Grille 36. Located on the North Shore, Grille 36 is a stone's throw away from the field. In case you’re new to Pittsburgh, Bettis played from from 1996 to 2005. Bettis, known as “the Bus,” rushed for more than 1,000 yards in each of his first six seasons with the Steelers and is currently ranked fifth on the NFL’s all-time rushing list. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2015. The restaurant opened in 2007. It’s had a lot more staying power than some other local athletes’ ventures into the culinary scene. When ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown went on the road for only the second time in 23 years, they chose to broadcast out of Grille 36 ahead of the Steelers-Patriots game in December 2017. The last time Clark, who is also director of operations at the Arcade Comedy Theater, visited the Grille a few years ago, he received heartbreaking news: his favorite item, the wedge salad, had been taken off the menu. “I asked ‘why would you take it off the menu?’ and they said, ‘well, it’s not a healthy option,’” Clark remembers. “A restaurant that has a deep-fried cheeseburger on the menu is going to say that their reason for not having something is that it’s unhealthy?” Little did we know at the time, but that theme of disappointment was going to continue. “We should try something alcoholic,” Clark suggests. I go for the Game Day Juice, which to my surprise didn’t involve steroids, just blackberry whiskey, vodka, lemonade, and lemon lime soda. Clark orders Rooney’s Raspberry Truffle Martini. It arrives to the table topped with whipped cream and a chocolate drizzle. Unless Bettis knows something about the late Steelers owner that the rest of us don’t, that addition doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Clark enjoys the drink, though, and it gives him a whipped cream mustache that hearkens back
to the “Got Milk?” days. “Look at me. You’re like, ‘this guy, he’s gonna get a 36 ounce beer,’ and I’m like, ‘hell yeah, I want a chocolate martini.” Then it was time for Kickoff. No, seriously. The appetizers are labeled, “Kickoff.” “Now, I do have a thing that if a restaurant has tater tots, I am relegated to try the tater tots.” But the tots offering at Grille 36, “Totchos” loaded with queso and chilli, were a little too much for Clark. We decided on the Margherita Flatbread instead. So far, so good. The tang of the balsamic reduction really makes the flatbread. But when the server returns to take our orders for the “Main Event,” Grille 36 begins to fumble like their namesake did in the 2005-2006 AFC Championship. I decide to lean in to the Bettis-ness of it all and order the “Bus” Steak Salad. I order the steak medium, but it came out well done. Clark attempts to order the Pan-Fried Chicken. Pass incomplete. The kitchen is apparently out. “That hurts; that’s a tough one,” Clark says. “I didn’t have a [plan] B ready to go.” For his second choice, Clark decides to play it safe with the Fish & Chips. He asks to replace the fries with tater tots, but the plate comes out with fries. When the mistake is corrected, Clark comes out of the deal on top, with two sides for the price of one. Clark says he’s loved comedy for a long time. He remembers being allowed to watch Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show monologue as a kid before bed. But it took him a while to find his way from the audience onto the stage. “It was about the same time as my kids were not wanting to hang out with us anymore,” Clark says. He and his wife had friends in the comedy scene who encouraged him to get involved. Clark did his first five-minute set and was hooked right away. “I’d never felt that rush before, it was incredible to me to make people laugh.” He took improv classes at the Arcade to help build his skills, which led to a year-long stint on one of the Arcade’s house improv teams. Clark says he loved the experience, but he learned that he prefers the “solo sport” of stand-up because he has more control. “What’s great is my wife writing with me,” he
Jason Clark with a Rooney’s Raspberry Truffle Martini. (Current Photo by Haley Frederick)
says. Clark’s preferred stand-up style is storytelling. He loves to work through ideas for his act with his wife, Melissa. She’s supportive of Clark’s comedy, but she’s also ready to tell him when something in his act needs to change. “She’s not the kind of partner that’s like ‘you are the funniest person,’” he says. “There’s many times when my wife is like, ‘uh, that was not good.’” Stand-up led Clark to a lot of other opportunities, including his role as director of operations at the Arcade, the podcast Grown Dad Business, which he co-hosts with Aaron Kleiber, and even a small role on the upcoming CBS show One Dollar, premiering August 30. After the entree, we find ourselves in Overtime — the Grille 36 term for dessert — and ask for the Nutella Cheesecake. Again, they don’t have it. In fact, of the five desserts on the menu the only one available is the Towering Carrot Cake. “C’mon, Jerome!” Clark says. “Is Jerome here? Can we talk to Jerome?” It’s possible that the slim pickings at Grille 36 were because we came the day after Family Fest at Heinz Field. Luckily, Clark and I both enjoy carrot cake, though apparently nobody else does. The gigantic slice comes to the table drowned in whipped cream and haphazardly sprinkled with grated carrot. But what it lacks in looks, it makes up for in delicious cream cheese icing. PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUG. 28, 2018 | 39
40 Pittsburgh FOOD & DRINK Current, Aug. 2018
Dietitian Deanna shares tips on social media for healthy Pittsburgh eating By Haley Frederick PITTSBURGH CURRENT STAFF WRITER haley@pittsburghcurrent.com Deanna Wolfe — or Dietitian Deanna, as her 57,000 Instagram followers know her — is a registered dietitian nutritionist living and eating here in Pittsburgh. People who still think of Pittsburgh as the city that tops all of its salads with French fries may think that someone like Wolfe would go hungry looking for places to eat here, but they would be as wrong about Wolfe as they are about Pittsburgh. “[Dietitians] are not the food police and I think we actually embrace food more than a lot of people realize,” Wolfe says. When it comes to her diet, Wolfe practices an “everything in moderation” philosophy that allows her to try all that the city has to offer, from salads-sans-fries at the island-inspired Kaya in the Strip District to a decadent treat at The Milk Shake Factory. “I focus on eating whole, real foods most of the time, but also enjoy all foods,” Wolfe says. “I don’t ever say ‘pizza is unhealthy’ or ‘a brownie is unhealthy’ because I truly feel that all food can fit into a healthy diet.” After struggling for years to find a diet that made her feel good in both body and mind, she’s found intuitive eating, a method that stresses the importance of listening to what your body wants and respecting your hunger, to be the best fit. Her Instagram posts are often tagged with #FoodFreedom. “Restricting foods, I think, is more stressful for our body than just enjoying them,” Wolfe says. Scrolling through her Instagram posts, you’ll see a lot of what you’d expect to see a dietitian eating—col-
orful salads, acai bowls, and avocados galore. But, Wolfe doesn’t hide her indulgences from her followers. There are photos of doughnuts, French fries, and ice cream on her feed, too. Wolfe thinks that her candor is a big part of the reason that her Dietitian Deanna account has grown so much since she started it in 2013. “I think I have been transparent with my journey and shown people that even though I’m a dietitian, I’m not perfect with my food and fitness journey,” Wolfe says. Her go-to places for food around the city are quick and customizable to keep up with her fast and healthy lifestyle. She loves the salads and bowls at honeygrow — a fast-casual chain from Philadelphia that opened up a location in East Liberty last year. If she’s Downtown, Wolfe likes to grab something from the salad bar at Market Street Grocery in Market Square. Wolfe is from Michigan, but decid-
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ed she wanted to be a dietitian while attending the University of Pittsburgh, where she completed her masters in clinical dietetics and nutrition in 2012. She moved around for a few years, living in Indiana, Texas, and Florida before returning to Pittsburgh almost two years ago. She’s glad to be back. Her time away has given her an appreciation for the local restaurant scene. “Honestly out of everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve felt like Pittsburgh has the best diverse food scene and up-andcoming trends,” she says. “Everyone thinks [Austin] has a great food scene, but nothing has compared to the food that I’ve been able to enjoy in Pittsburgh.” For a great healthy dinner out, Wolfe recommends Gaucho Parrilla in the Strip. Gaucho is well known for its Argentinian fare and long lines, but its methods are actually pretty healthy. The wood-fire grill imparts a lot of smoky flavor into the meats and
seafood without the use of frying. Pair your favorite protein with some vegetables, and you’ve got a tasty meal that’s good for you. But for Wolfe, it doesn’t always have to be about what’s healthiest. She encourages people to go out to eat and order what they’re craving. One meal won’t make or break a diet. “It’s a misconception just to think that dietitians in Pittsburgh are trying to overhaul and make everything healthy here, because I think we should be able to enjoy all foods,” she says. Thinking about her favorite places to eat around the city, Wolfe mentions her love for Smallman Galley and raves about a cinnamon bun she had for brunch at Meat and Potatoes. When she has a sweet tooth, Wolfe loves to snack on a Leona’s Ice Cream Sandwich. Leona’s is a local small-batch ice cream company that churns their own dairy ice cream that is made lactose-free through the use of a natural enzyme. They don’t have a scoop shop as of yet, but they are available in several coffee shops and markets around Pittsburgh. As for groceries, Wolfe recommends checking out the new Heirloom Superfood Market that opened June 24 in the Strip. Heirloom features organic produce, bulk superfoods, and lots of local brands. While Wolfe’s career has certainly benefited from her social media presence, she knows that it has it’s pros and cons. She says that you have to be careful about who you’re following and mindful of how they’re influencing you. “I do see some people that use [social media] to compare themselves or take what other people are saying as the Bible,” she says. “You have to watch what you’re putting in front of your eyes every day.”
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42 Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018 FOOD & DRINK
Searching for Equilibrium By Day Bracey PITTSBURGH CRAFT BEER WRITER info@pittsburghcurrent.com Editor’s Note: Day Bracey is a stand-up comedian and host of the Drinking Partners Podcast on the Epicast Network. He chronicles Pittsburgh’s craft-beer scene for the Pittsburgh Current. Aug. 11, 11 p.m.: I’m largely sober, exhausted and thirsty. More than 1,200 people walked through the Nova Place courtyard and I hugged as many as I could while putting out fires before they spread thanks to a dedicated team of family, friends and volunteers. But, so much work prevented me from drinking a lot of beer. I managed to try three out of the 25 collaborations, and none of the fabled “Equilibrium” that everyone raved about leading up to the event. Aug. 12, 3 p.m.: The black brewers from the fest are meeting up at East End Brewing before they all disappear to their corners of the country. Mike Potter is releasing his collaboration aptly named, “For The Culture,” a brut IPA that drinks like champagne. To top it off, Mike hands me a four-pack of Equilibrium! Maybe there is a god?! We all trade stories, jokes, plans for the future, and snap dozens of pics before heading home. As I leave, I remember I left that four pack on the table outside. I rush back to find it no longer there, reinforcing my lack of faith in a deity, or my assumption that I pissed her off at birth. The jury is out. Aug. 15, 7 p.m.: I’m meeting up with Mike at Burgh’ers to go over Fresh Fest, and try the collaboration with Mars Jackson called, “Corduroy Shorts,” a black IPA. Mars surprises us with a visit and tells us how much he enjoyed the festival, and the relationship he now has
with Neil Glausier, head brewer. It warms my heart as the ale warms my liver. “I’ve got another keg of Equilibrium left, if you want to pour it at your show Saturday,” Mike says to me. He’s clearly playing with my emotions… Or is he? Aug. 17, 8 p.m.: It’s local comedian Tim Ross’s birthday, and he’s celebrating with a couple of drinking-themed comedy shows this weekend, the first of which is at Petrucci Bros in New Brighton. I was here when they first opened up years ago and were going by Four Brothers. Back then, the beer tasted like something a first year brewery would make. This year, it tastes like someone who mastered the system and is pumping out ales fit for a king. Speaking of which, that King Ludwig’s Imperial IPA would make any German nobility proud. I’m assuming. I’m only like .005 percent German on my daughter’s side. Aug. 18, 8 p.m.: Ed Bailey and I are back down at Arcade Comedy Theater for our monthly Night of EPIC Comedy. Mike wasn’t kidding! He has a sixtel of Equilibrium left! I fill up a few growlers of Equilibrium, and head over to the new Burning Bridges comedy club (formerly Hambone’s comedy room) When I get to the door the server tells me, “You can’t bring outside beverages in here, sir.” Aug. 19, 3 p.m.: Back in the studio for another session of Drinking Partners and I finally pour my first glass of Equilibrium. It’s a sour. Like, heavy sour. Warheads type shit. I’m pretty disappointed; not gonna lie. I was expecting a New England from New England. I can’t drink 12 of these things. Later in the evening, our producer Buzzy and I are talking shop. “Fresh Fest was sick, bro! We left with a keg of some juicy Equilibrium! It was awesome!” God is a spiteful wench…
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NEIGHBORHOODS
Diverse artists are leading the way in Garfield’s revitalization By Rebecca Addison PITTSBURGH CURRENT SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR rebecca@pittsburghcurrent.com Every first friday of the month, thousands of people flock to Penn Avenue in Garfield for Unblurred, an art crawl that showcases the neighborhood business corridor’s galleries and studio spaces. For many in the Pittsburgh community, the monthly event is a tradition of sorts, spanning at least a decade. Unblurred has cemented the Garfield neighborhood’s reputation as an arts and cultural center. And it’s been a constant in a
neighborhood that’s undergone a lot of changes in recent years. “Unblurred is one of the biggest things that happens in the city every month,” says local artist D.S. Kinsel. “It’s like a mini arts festival every month where people know they can invest in local artists and see local artists and practitioners, or just enjoy a time out on a mainstreet with their family.” But Garfield wasn’t always a thriving arts hub. The neighborhood has long been plagued by poverty and crime. As a result, the neighborhood’s business district began to stagnate. A renewed focus on the arts, spurred by the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative
pistella
launched in the late 1990s, helped to jumpstart the thriving business district Garfield has today. And locals say the arts and music community is what’s helping the neighborhood continue to grow. “A variety of different iterations of the business district have existed over the years,” says Kinsel who co-founded BOOM Concepts, one of Garfield’s many art spaces. “Previously it was a lot of repair shops and things of that nature. Then it was a lot of bars. But Garfield now having a real mainstreet is something we’re really thankful for.” Garfield’s arts scene has put the neighborhood on the map. Moving
forward, Kinsel says ensuring that the scene stays diverse is vital. It’s a conundrum familiar to many Pittsburgh neighborhoods experiencing redevelopment: how do you revitalize a neighborhood without leaving out the residents who already live there? Kinsel is part of a growing group of minorities and women who’ve set up shop on Penn Avenue in recent years, and he hopes their presence will ensure diverse residents aren’t displaced as the neighborhood changes. “One of the things we’ve been critical of and continue pushing on is the CONTINUED
distributing
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Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018 NEIGHBORHOODS
IS OPEN!!! PROUD TO SERVE THE GARFIELD COMMUNITY A mural shows what the future of Garfield could look like (Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk)
CONTINUED FROM 43 amount of spaces run by women and run by black and brown folks,” Kinsel says. “The Penn Avenue Arts Initiative has been going on for 10 to 15 years and for awhile there were not any long standing art galleries or organizations run by women or black and brown people. BOOM helped jumpstart that and after BOOM we saw other things popping up.” Kinsel notes Alloy Studios, Level Up Studios, Assemble, and Bunker Projects as arts organizations that are signalling a shift in the neighborhood’s cultural community. And he says the Kelly Strayhorn Theatre, further down Penn Avenue in East Liberty has served as a touchstone for them. But Kinsel also emphasizes that although the Garfield art scene hasn’t traditionally been diverse, the residents and other business owners are. That’s why he says maintaining the current patchwork fabric of the neighborhood is so important. “In the greater landscape, Penn Avenue it has probably been one of the most diverse business corridors in the city. I think that’s really helpful,” Kinsel says. “I don’t know why it took so long for the arts spaces to be organized in showcasing diversity, but some of the
more long standing tenants of the avenue have led the way.” Despite some looming signs of gentrification, Kinsel admits Garfield community organizations have done a great job thus far of protecting the interests of the residents who live there. “Garfield has had a really strong voice in how the community has been developed,” Kinsel says. “There are still some really shitty homes being sold for six figures. There are still a lot of issues coming with these changes and reinvestment. But it’s probably one of the more diverse neighborhoods in the city.” Nina Barbuto of arts and technology space Assemble, likens the neighborhood’s changes to puberty. In particular, she says that although the recent phase of reconstruction along Penn Avenue was ultimately meant to benefit businesses, many suffered. “Assemble has really grown as part of the neighborhood. We, as well as many of the other spaces you see today, survived all of the construction that happened a few years ago,” Barbuto says. “The construction we went through was a difficult time. There’s a lot of businesses that just don’t exist anymore. It felt like we were in a post apocalyptic world, like people just didn’t care anymore.”
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MENU INCLUDES
Pittsburgh Current, Aug. 2018
45 NEIGHBORHOODS
CONTINUED FROM 44 Assemble joined the neighborhood in 2011 and Barbuto moved in two years later. Today, her space offers a number of programs for kids and adults. And Barbuto says her programs are always free to Garfield residents because she wants them to benefit from what’s happening in their community. “When you spend everyday on the avenue, you realize there’s so much opportunity still to bring stuff to this community that we’re apart of,” Barbuto says. “Garfield is special because we kind of live by different rules. It’s much more communal and supportive.” In addition to the investments being made to the neighborhood’s business corridor, Barbuto says she wants to see more investment in Garfield’s housing stock and longtime residents. “The more love and care, without increasing prices, that we can provide to the neighborhood, the better,” Barbuto says. “I’d like to see more investment in helping people to keep the houses they have. We don’t want investment where the objective is for people to make a buck, but investment through caring and love. I know that sounds hippy dippy but when you know you’re in a space that’s cared for, you feel valued.” For their part, venues in the com-
munity say they try to be cognizant of their neighbors. “I think we’re all trying to be mindful of the community and the spaces,” says Indigo Baloch, director of public relations at the Mr. Roboto Project, a DIY music venue. “I think ultimately the neighborhood is also bringing in a lot of fantastic organizations that work within the community and help us remain respectful of the area.” Roboto has called Penn Avenue home since 2011 and Baloch says the monthly Unblurred event is one of the major draws of the neighborhood. “What makes Garfield a great neighborhood for Roboto is the the foot traffic and the community,” Baloch says. “There’s an overwhelming support for the arts on our little strip. We always look forward to sharing our space and love of the arts with our neighbors.” And for now, Baloch says the music venue isn’t worried about the changes the neighborhood is undergoing. They hope to grow with it. “I think that while it’s certainly possible that Roboto could be priced out in the future,” Baloch says, “right now, the neighborhood lends itself to more DIY, artistic organizations.”
“There’s an overwhelming support for the arts on our little strip.”
Children fill backpacks at Assemble (Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk)
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NEWS OF THE WEIRD
by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication IN PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS, on Aug. 17, a friendly game at Southers Marsh Golf Club turned ugly when Derek Harkins, 46, and an unnamed 57-year-old man got into a brawl on the 18th hole. But you gotta hand it to Harkins: The Patriot Ledger reported that he pointedly ended the fight by biting off the other man's finger up to the knuckle, according to Plymouth Police Chief Michael Botieri. The victim, from Marshfield, was taken to the hospital, but his finger could not be reattached. Harkins was arrested at the scene and charged with assault and battery, mayhem and disturbing the peace. DEBBIE L. MCCULLEY, 57, OF SALEM, VIRGINIA, has been banned from all future Floyd County High School sporting events but, on the bright side, her indecent exposure case may eventually be dropped, following an incident area lawyers are calling "moon over Floyd." McCulley's husband, Mark, is the JV softball coach for Glenvar High School, and the charges resulted from Debbie's unusual reaction to her husband's team's loss to Floyd County in May. She "stood on or close to the pitcher's mound and pulled down her pants with her right hand to expose her right butt cheek," according to Floyd County Sheriff 's Deputy G.H. Scott. But Debbie told the officer that her husband had confronted the opposing coach after the game, and she was afraid he would be "attacked," so she was trying to divert attention from the two men. The Roanoke Times reported that Debbie wrote a letter of apology and will be performing community service. Chris Robinson of the Virginia High School League noted that crowd behavior at games is "probably leaning a little bit in the wrong direction."
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL REPORTED that a 42-year-old British woman saw her eye doctor after experiencing swelling and drooping of her eyelid earlier this year. After performing an MRI, doctors discovered a cyst and performed surgery, during which they found a hard contact lens embedded in the eyelid. It turns out that the patient had suffered a blow to the eye 28 years ago and had assumed the lens fell out. She experienced no symptoms until the recent discomfort. AFTER 16 YEARS, NEIGHBORS OF "EVA N." IN STUROVO, SLOVAKIA, have gotten relief from her particular brand of torment, reported the BBC. From morning until night, the woman had played a four-minute aria from Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata" over and over, with her speakers on full blast. "The whole street is suffering," complained one resident. At first, the music-lover played the music to drown out a neighbor's barking dog, but continued the practice until Aug. 6, when she was arrested for harassment and malicious persecution. If found guilty, she could face between six months and three years in prison. A POTHOLE IN TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, got a new life as a vegetable garden this summer after area residents grew weary of waiting for the city to repair it. The hole, which is several feet deep, had been expanding for months, neighbors said. So they filled it with tomato plants, which are now ripening and getting so tall they require wire cages for support. Now, "It's sort of, like, become the community garden," resident Bryan Link told CBC Radio. Finally, Mayor John Tory has agreed to not only fill the pothole, but to move the tomato plants to a community garden.
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Swinging Right by Dan Savage info@pittsburghcurrent.com My husband and I occasionally go to swingers clubs. I don’t want to inadvertently fuck any Trump supporters, but I hate the idea of bringing up politics and killing everyone’s collective boner. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Occasionally Swinging At the risk of killing your boner forever, OS, the organized swinging scene “leans right,” as pollster Charlie Cook would put it if Charlie Cook polled swingers. Easily half of the couples I met at a big swingers convention I attended in Las Vegas told me they were Republicans. One man — a swinger from Texas — told me he was a “traditional values” type of guy and that’s why he opposed same-sex marriage. Fun fact: His wife was off fucking someone else’s husband while we were chit-chatting in the hotel bar. Good times. I’m a happily married 35-year-old mom. I have a loving and devoted husband. Recently, I started a job to get out of the house more and interact with more people. Well, it turns out my new boss is a real hottie. I have a crush on him and often find myself fantasizing about him. While I know these feelings can be normal, I tend to fixate/obsess. I’m basically looking for advice on how to move past this crush or maybe find a more productive outlet. Newbie Fantasizing Here’s a more productive outlet: Turn out the lights, climb on top of your husband, get him hard, then sink your pussy down on his cock and ride him while you fantasize about your boss. (Perhaps this is better described as a more productive inlet?) Bonus points if you and your husband are both secure enough in your marriage and cognizant enough of reality to regard crushes on others as normal and, so long as they remain crushes, not a threat to your
SAVAGE LOVE
marriage or commitment. Because then you can talk dirty with your husband about your boss — he can even pretend to be your boss — while you ride your husband’s cock. The other night while my wife and I were watching porn and masturbating together, I suggested we masturbate in front of DirtyRoulette. I briefly explained what the site is about. She asked me if that’s what I do — if I get on DR when I masturbate. I replied yes, sometimes —a nd she was so taken aback, she ended our masturbation session to process it. We’re fine now, but do you think this is “cheating”? Dirty Rouletting I don’t think it’s cheating, DR, but you aren’t married to me. In other words, if your wife regards you masturbating with strangers on the internet as cheating, then it’s cheating. There are, of course, some people out there who regard too many things as cheating — fantasizing about others, looking at porn, even non-webcam-or-pornenhanced masturbation. People who think this way usually regard cheating as unforgivable and, consequently, their relationships are doomed to failure. Hey, Dan, you missed an opportunity in your response to Afraid To Bleed. She wrote that she bleeds whenever she has sex, and she was concerned about her partner’s aversion to blood, which you did address. But women should not bleed after vaginal intercourse. There are many reasons why they might — so it needs to be investigated. Please encourage ATB to visit a doctor. Concerned Reader Big oversight on my part, thank you for writing in! On the Lovecast: Finally! A sex-advice/rabbit-care podcast mash-up! savagelovecast.com. Reach out and touch Dan:mail@savagelove.net, @fakedansavage on Twitter, ITMFA.org PITTSBURGH CURRENT | AUG. 28, 2018 | 47
VOL. 1 ISSUE 3 â–¶ AUG. 28-SEP. 10
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2018
GRIDIRON STORIES
FROM THE PEEWEES TO THE PROS
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