Not Long for This World: Memorial Day 2023

May 29, 2023Leave a comment

impromptu memorial with photograph and flowers on tree — An impromptu/informal memorial for an unknown young man, attached to a tree in Woods Run

On an otherwise unremarkable side street, a single roadside tree stands out from the rest. Attached to it is a bouquet of pink and white flowers, a solar-powered light, and enlarged color photograph of a young man. The subject is both movie star handsome and ruggedly everyman in his plain white t-shirt and stretchy track suit pants. Aside from the man’s face, every square inch of exposed skin has been tattoo’d in an array of text, glyphs, and images.

Of course we can’t know for sure—there is no annotation for the beribboned photo on this back-alley tree—but by now, we’re accustomed to think of these informal tributes as memorials for lost friends, loved-ones, or community members who’ve passed onto the infinite entirely too soon for those who mourn them here on earth.

memorial murals painted on brick wall — Shamus/Mikey, Polish Hill

Memorial Day. Let’s do this. In what has become an Orbit tradition, we take a hyper-local turn on today’s holiday. No, it’s not strictly about honoring our fallen members our armed services, but it’s also not about discount mattresses and blow-out doorbuster deals at the mall.

These impromptu tributes—painted on walls and staked into roadside berms, placed in windows and stuck into tree trunks—are the people’s memorials. They’re what we’ll be thinking about this day—yes, along with slaw dogs, Clancy’s chips, and beer from a can—as we memorialize the memorials that are inevitably not long for this world.

Happy Memorial Day, y’all.

purple cross memorial by large grass field — unknown, Perry South

detail from roadside cross of hearts with hard-to-read message — detail: “Please don’t think of me in sadness …”

memorial poster in retail store window — unknown, Homestead

roadside cross among creeping vines — unknown, Manchester

painted memorial for young woman — Lotte, Polish Hill

graffiti-style memorial with rats — Harley (the rat?), Chateau

brick wall with names of deceased community members — “Never Forgotten” East Ohio St. OG’s (sic.), Deutschtown

child's toys attached to chain link fence — unknown, Duquesne

roadside memorial with flowers and large red bow — Joseph Jackson, Wiley Ford, WV

memorial with flowers and angel figure — unknown, Bloomfield

roadside memorial with heart balloons and landscaping bricks — Chester, New Eagle

Can’t Sit Down: The Inevitable Parking Chair Post

May 21, 20231 Comment

single chair from dinette set on street, acting as a "parking chair", Pittsburgh, PA — The classic! A single chair from a dinette set, orphaned and alone, reserving an on-street parking spot. Garfield

Alone in the rain, playing dangerously in the street, a lone chair stands sentry over his master’s cherished sixteen feet of curbside frontage. The seat was once a member of a family—four, perhaps six, identical siblings joined around a matching dining table where the rest of the household would eat and cajole, argue and play. Now though, with that Camelot lost, just one chair is banished to the loneliest, last role of its life—standing on the street, waiting for a car to come home, holding a parking place.

plastic lawn chair holding parking spot in front of small house — Parking chair with backup cone, just in case. Lawrenceville

It’s strange to think of the omnipresent Pittsburgh parking chair as an endangered species or dying phenomenon—it is not, by any means—but the character of the object reserving that spot has changed significantly.

Twenty years ago, the parking scene was still dominated by chairs that once held keisters at the kitchen table. That image of the single chrome dinette chair, rusting and battered, dirty stuffing leaking through cracks in the upholstery, is indelible if you were lucky enough to see them in those salad days.

That time is past, though. Just look at this collection of photographs—the cheap, stackable, white plastic lawn chair has taken over the market and ex-dining chairs are few and far between. There’s still a lot of variety—folding chairs of every make and model and non-chair “chairs” (we’ll get to those)—but we still miss those diner-style seats that used to dot row house residential streets like birds on a wire.

For the last eight years The Orbit has resisted the urge to park our behind in this most predictable of subjects d’Burgh—it seemed too easy and too obvious.

Parking chairs are also really difficult to photograph well. I know, I know—boo hoo to this guy living the dream making fat stacks taking pictures of street chairs in Pittsburgh—do your job, amirite? It ain’t that easy, buddy. You want to see the chair, sure, but it’s (usually) only interesting in the context of a much larger thing—an entire house or a row of them—that it’s related to. So you’ve got to get this little thing in front of really big thing and then houses have all this visual noise distracting you, blah, blah, blah—it ain’t easy.

Anyway, the oddly routine experience of seeing single chairs randomly in the street is also right up our, ahem, alley. So that ultimately won out, even if these aren’t our finest photos.

Finally, if you’ve got a great parking chair, a photo of one, or a story about them, we’d love to hear about it or get tagged on it.

folding chair painted in Steelers black-and-gold — Steelers parking chair! Lawrenceville

metal folding chair on street in front of row house in Pittsburgh, PA — Lawrenceville

plastic chair holding parking spot on street — Parking spot au naturale, Greenfield

brick row house with folding chair in street marking parking place, Pittsburgh, PA — Lawrenceville

folding chair on street in front of row house, Pittsburgh, PA — Lawrenceville

folding chair used to save parking place in front of row houses — Lawrenceville

plastic chair with weight attached to seat by tape — No parking AND no sitting. Polish Hill

plastic lawn chair on street in front of small house — Out front and proud. Hazelwood

stacked lawn furniture in front of row house — Parked parking chairs, ready to deploy. Bloomfield

two high-backed wooden chairs left on street in front of row houses — Parking chair twins! Lawrenceville

wooden chair holding parking spot on street — Chair’s eye view. Lawrenceville

Just in Case You Didn’t Get the Hint …

chair painted with "No Parking" message — “No Parking.” Lawrenceville

metal folding chair with hand-written sign reading "Please do not move chair. Therapist coming." — “Please do not move chair—therapist coming.” Lawrenceville

plastic lawn chair with "No parking" message — “No Parking! You will be towed away.” Bloomfield

Parking Non-Chairs

custom built parking spot holder created from stools and "No Parking" signs — “The Thing” (our term), Bloomfield

traffic cone with Halloween decoration in front of row house — Park here and you’ll get hexed! Parking witch, Southside

stacked milk crates holding parking spot — Parking milk crates, Bloomfield

Traffic cone covered in stickers — The cone of toxic masculinity, Bloomfield

restaurant tray holder used to save parking space — Parking tray holder and 4×4, Lawrenceville

chair and traffic bollard left in front of row houses — The “Anything Goes!” Parking bollard, parking chair with 2x4s, Lawrenceville

Losing One’s Mind: A Scene Report from Art All Night 2023

May 7, 2023May 7, 20232 Comments

dollhouse covered with large collection of decorations — Sometimes a picture may be worth even more than a thousand words. “I Lost My Mind” (detail) by Erin Harper was included in Art All Night 2023

There will be time to murder and create. The words are painted and collaged onto a set of five entrance steps to an elaborately over-the-top front porch. The three-story, Victorian-style dollhouse is covered with a blitzkrieg of … everything. Small toys, buttons, shells, bottle caps, and other found objects have been hot-glued to its surfaces along with a loose collage of magazine cuttings, product packaging, and patterned prints. The decoration is not limited to the exterior of the house. No, the walls and floor of each interior room are decked-out, each in a different over-the-top theme.

The art piece, titled I Lost My Mind, is by Erin Harper. One hopes Ms. Harper was speaking metaphorically of both the losing of minds and murder, but she certainly found time to create. It was perhaps the most striking work at last weekend’s Art All Night, this year again at 31st Street Studios in the Strip District.

Let’s get something straight: there were boobs—lots of them—wangs too. And yes, there was at least one hoo-ha. In addition to the requisite nudes and soft-porn, other Art All Night perennial genres included sports art, paint-splattered baby dolls, skip-a-little-rope, smoke-a-little-dope doobie visions, skulls, skeletons, and zombies, visual puns, and lots and lots of renditions of the downtown Pittsburgh skyline. This being the first Art All Night since the Dobbs decision came down, women’s rights and body autonomy was an important topical issue.

painting of three lizard people with human in net bag — The Sleestack came back. “Slimy,” Don Strange

These specialties are not the sum of the artwork included at Art All Night. Despite the focus of this piece, know that Art All Night also features landscapes in oil, portrait paintings, photography, ceramics, elaborate sculpture, delicate craft, terrific kids art, and all the rest. The event, of course, is so much more than paintings hung on plywood walls—the mass of people out-and-about, kids going nuts on cardboard, performance art, the drum circle under the 31st Street Bridge.

But it is this collision of the sublime, along with the ridiculous and the mundane that makes Art All Night so special. And what is most thrilling is that these individual bizarre expressions—created as jokes or under the influence of hallucinogens or mental health issues as they may—have an outlet for public exhibition.

crude painting of woman in clown makeup and rainbow outfit — What the heck, man? “Brittany in a Sketchy Atlantic City Hotel,” Joseph Heckmann

I don’t know if there’s a gallery out there that would show Joseph Heckmann’s Brittany in a Sketchy Atlantic City Hotel, but I’m sure glad I got to see it. What was Brittany doing in Atlantic City and why is she dressed like a clown headed to aerobics? Does she really have a giant tattoo of another clown on her left leg? I want answers, sure, but Heckmann’s acrylic painting gives us that great gift of wonder—not just about the subject of the artwork, but about its creator too.

painting of creature with two faces and Mickey Mouse ears holding both a skull and a rainbow — A whole different rainbow connection. “Death, Division, and the Iconography of Hope,” Adam Greene

That is Art All Night’s great gift to the world—both to its event goers and its art contributors. It continues, 26 year on, to be a safe space of free expression for every kind of any person to do what they want to do and share it with everyone else. Hats off, yet again, to the fantastic crew that manages to pull this genie out of a hat year after year.