On Sunday, we ran our first year-in-review post on The Orbit’s greatest hits for 2015. They’re not all blockbusters, though. In fact, the gap between rich and poor turned out to be pretty huge with the hot dogs outpacing the small fries by a good thirty or forty times.

Looking over the list, we think there are a lot of really good stories that ended up in this statistical gutter. So the Orbit staff took a gander at the underperforming members of the team and made some choice selections to give a handful of these bottom feeders one more chance to exhibit themselves. These may have all tanked at the box office, but they’re Oscar contenders in this blogger’s mind. They’re presented here in chronological order by publish date.

H.W. 46 FT. 3-18-1936 (Jan. 31)

Our very first blog post–and what a good one to kick off with! The story of stumbling across a strange painted rune reading H.W. 46 FT. 3-18-1936 wrapped around the sharp corner of big former factory building in Manchester. The consideration of what that awkward code might mean and the hand-to-forehead revelation of what it actually signifies is what this blog is all about. Check this one out, or prepare to get washed away when the next big one comes.

The Over-the-Wall Club (April 12)

There were a number of “stories” this year that were really just excuses to package up like-minded photographs we enjoyed and crack wise in one way or another. Among these was a fun one on how great snow and trains look together, a bunch of things that ended up (on purpose or otherwise) with the colors of the Italian flag, and a first visit to the great Forest Hills landmark ex-atom smasher.

In The Over-the-Wall Club, we introduced a very Orbit theme of what’s on the other side? A low-brow and low-clearance street-level pondering of both grass-is-greener pedestrian curiosity and the invention of mysteries of the everyday. Get out of the car, bring your coffee mug, and let’s get together over-the-wall.

A Visit with Jimmy The Greek (April 19)

If you can’t use your blog as an excuse to visit the mausoleum of a disgraced sports betting guru/TV football prognosticator like Jimmy “The Greek”, well, you’re doing it wrong. This Orbit day trip took us out into bright spring sunshine, over the state line, (technically two state lines) and led to a bonus Russian Orthodox onion dome church visit for a story that ended up running the following week.

Get to the Point (April 22)

Ben Blanchard introduces our readers (at least, a few of them) to the quasi-sport/weird hobby of “highpointing” through an Orbit-organized bicycle-based trip from Pittsburgh’s lowest to highest points (we’re talking altitude here–we never made it to see Fungus at Thirsty’s). Along the way we get some nice vistas of the river, trails, Riverview Park, and, of course, the highest point in the city of Pittsburgh, just past Observatory Hill. Then we went for beers at a bar called Rumerz.

Post No Bills (Sept. 6)

The best stories are ones that take a left turn. This post started as a little musing about college kids in Oakland repeating what’s by now a common benign prank you can see all over the place and turned into a fun little exercise suggesting, asking–hell: begging–for a new generation to take it up a notch and do a Pittsburgh version. [Comedy 101, dudes: it’s yes, and…] [You really couldn’t think of our mayor Bill Peduto?] As far as we know, no one has taken The Orbit up on this recommendation, but then it wouldn’t have made the sleepers list if anybody had read it!

Poli-Science: A Double Ghost Exposed in Squirrel Hill! (Oct. 7)

A perfect Orbit story, gift-wrapped in a re-seeded vacant lot and majorly-weathered ghost sign at the site of the longtime Squirrel Hill institution Poli’s. It had everything: a tragedy, a ghost building, a ghost sign, an obit we wen’t qualified to author, and one awkward vestigial pedestal with no clear future, but many possible uses and outcomes. If it’s not obvious, this blogger really liked this story, even if our readers didn’t hep to it the first time around.

Allegheny Cemetery: Halloween Graves (Oct. 18)

We spent a great deal of October cruising Pittsburgh’s glorious cemeteries and ran a bunch of different stories on our adventures. This one on the weird, redundant, and debatably in-bad-taste phenomenon of decorating grave plots for Halloween that happens every year at Allegheny Cemetery was a lot of fun to report and write. Apparently not so much fun to read.

The D.I.Y Graves of Highwood Cemetery, parts 1 & 2 (Oct. 30, Nov. 1)

Another story from “Cemetober” that had so much to talk about we broke it into two parts. Hell: we even pitched this one to one of the many local alternative weeklies (ahem), but those bastards couldn’t even write this blogger back! Phooey!

Anyway, this pair of posts on the deeply-affecting, minimal, highly-personalized homemade grave markers found deep in the back of Highwood Cemetery on the North Side raised all kinds of interesting ideas. The expectation of “permanence” in a grave, the marker’s relationship to the living, and the seemingly inverse correlation between amount of money spent on the headstone vs. recency of visitation among them. If you’re going to check out any one story on this list, consider making it this one.

Mystery of the Tip Top Chop Shop (Nov. 25)

Talk about a blog-based roller-coaster ride! The tantalizing tale of a (pre-suburbia) Monroeville hilltop hillbilly underworld chop shop, its post-incarceration deep woods junkyard, and the inevitable nature-without-man image of trees growing through Studebakers was as in-Orbit as they get. Unfortunately, by the time Moskal & Son led us back to their old haunt, the place had been scrubbed clean…almost. But then it still turned into a fun story! … and then nobody read it. Sigh.

Step Beat: When Tullymet Sylvan (Dec. 9)

Now, in part 1 of this year-in-review we talked about how much people like the city steps stories, but then we ran this really nice one on the neglected Tullymet Street steps and nobody gave a tinker’s dam! There’s just one explanation for that: step snobbery! Yeah, you heard me–if they’re the longest steps or you’ve got Romeo o Romeo calling from the landing, sure. But you try to talk anyone into hiking Hazelwood and you’ll get the same pass our readers gave this story. Freakin’ step snobs.

See also: The Orbit 2015 Year-in-Review, Part 1: “The Hits.”

Half-way up Rising Main, the longest set of Pittsburgh city steps

Statistics, man. People get a computer and suddenly everybody cares about their numbers. Phooey.

It is the final days of 2015 and ’tis the season for geese-a-laying–not to mention year-end lists-a-making. We decided to finally peek at The Orbit‘s digits and find out what people were checking out (and not checking out) and turn that insight into a little two-part year-in-review on what happened over (most of) the last twelve months.

To talk about actual numbers would be truly pathetic, so we’ll generalize here. In Part 1 we’re looking at the ten most popular Orbit blog posts for 2015, based on WordPress site statistics for individual post-views. We’ll follow-up on Wednesday with staff picks of some of the more, ahem, under-appreciated stories from the year.

1. Step Beat: Rising Main, The Longest Steps (June 14)

People love the steps! That is totally gratifying! Years ago, this urban hiker’s first attempt at blogging was going to be a site entirely devoted to mapping, photographing, and yes, blogging about Pittsburgh’s 750-ish sets of city steps. That fine plan, just like Cop Rock, fizzled all too quickly–and it probably deserved to. The steps are great, but there’s just not enough to go on about for a new story every week.

But at Pittsburgh Orbit we’re able to include some good city step stories without (we hope) having to dredge the river. These seemed to make their way out into Pittsburgh’s bicycle and pedestrian communities and two of them turned up in the top reads of the year, so that suggests the people are with us on this one. The Orbit‘s #1 story for 2015 is about Rising Main Way, the longest set of city steps in Pittsburgh, and one of the longest sets of urban steps in the country.

2. You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yetta: The Mosaic Houses of Spring Hill (June 3)

Every man, woman, and child–not to mention gopher, raccoon, and honey bee–in Spring Hill seems to have dialed-in The Orbit to read this story on the terrific little set of old-school wood frame Victorian houses with custom mosaics embedded in their Yetta Street foundations.

We can only assume that artist Linda Wallen has a lot more friends than this blogger does. It’s her mosaics that decorate the Yetta Street houses–as well as other infrastructure–in Spring Hill. On our (long) list of to-dos is to get back there and find out what she’s up to for next year.

3. Graceland North: The Antignani Estate Sale (Nov. 4)

The true tale of mystery couple Arthur and Alfreda Antignani proved to be a big draw for those, like The Orbit, that first discovered them via the over-the-top posthumous sale of their North Hills estate. The Antignanis lived large–and loud–in a shag-carpeted, gilt, mirrored, leopard printed, tchotchke-bedecked, and go-go mannequin-inhabited Bacchanalian suburban pleasure palace that would have made Elvis blush. Take a last look here.

4. Allegheny Cemetery: The Shark Grave (Feb. 6)

A tip for our fellow bloggers: if you want to up your visitor rate, start posting about something you can legitimately tag with #jaws or #sharkweek. The story of Lester C. “The Shark Grave” Madden’s Jaws-shaped grave marker turned into a feeding frenzy for the “fin freaks” who ate up this story like a great white hopped-up on chum, eyeing a bonfire’s worth of Martha’s Vineyard teenagers. And just like big teeth, they never seem to get enough (and ol’ Quint ain’t around stick ’em this time).

5. Unread: The Record Label Next Door (Sept. 2)

Chris Fischer has been pressing the Record and Play buttons while cassette spools roll and mailing the results out in manilla envelopes for a couple decades now (he started young). Along the way, he’s encouraged, promoted, and influenced a generation of guitar-wielding scratchy folk…like…ish lads and lasses to lay their souls down on magnetic tape and black plastic. We sat down with him and talked about Unread Records’ epic recent Public Coffin release.

6. Step Beat: Romeo & Frazier (May 17)

More city steps! The intersection of Romeo and Frazier Streets in South Oakland features a street lamp, road signs, two sets of city steps, and a whole bunch of trees, vines, and weeds (but no cars). The Orbit opines on the nature of what makes a “street,” the changing utility and value of city steps, and casts some serious aspersions on how much rope may be skipped at a house with Tibetan prayer flags hanging on the front porch.

7. Nun of the Above: Corita Kent at The Warhol (Feb. 26)

Sister Corita Kent, the radical art nun whose big tent quasi-religious messages questioning war and materialism via pop-art product manipulation and screen printing has very little to do with Pittsburgh except that The Andy Warhol Museum hosted an absolutely terrific career-spanning show of her work early in the year. We checked it out on the opening night, raved about it, and (we can only assume) The Warhol’s re-postings ended up sending a lot of people into Orbit.

8. An Orbit Obit: Where the Buffalo Roamed (Dec. 2)

This summer, Jeremy Reymer painted a series of buffalos on the sidewalks around the front and side of his Lawrenceville home. Before we could even run a story about the proud creatures, they were gone with the power-washing force of the city’s Graffiti Busters unit. This Orbit obit laments the loss of this fine collection of street art and muses about why the neighbors would have been offended enough to call it in, as well as the not so simple philosophical question what is graffiti?

9. A Wooden Street! (Aug. 30)

That’s pretty much what this one is about: the very rare sight of a street made entirely of wooden blocks (plus us winging about having been scooped by local public radio). It’s the last wooden street in Pittsburgh and one of the last handful in the United States. Roslyn Place is also right off Ellsworth Ave. in Shadyside. So, if you’re like this blogger, you’ve probably been within feet of it (or, at least, driven past it) many times without ever knowing it was there or stopping to check it out. Here’s another chance to make that right.

10. A Tiny Castle in the Strip District (May 22)

One tiny red castle, complete with a helipad and Mexican flag, mounted high on a brick wall in an alley in The Strip District. We’re not sure what it’s about or who came up with it, but a whole lot of people e-stopped by to check it out. It’s still there (although predictably weathered since this story ran in May), so, you know, get down there and check it out while you can.

Check back on Wednesday for The Orbit’s 2015 year-in-review, part 2: “The Sleepers.”