Golden Babies: The Final Chapter?

April 17, 20164 Comments

golden baby hanging from electric line, Pittsburgh, PA

Golden baby #4 (aka “Clement Baby”)

Almost as soon as this blogger’s index finger migrated January’s More Golden Babies! post from “draft” to public record even more tips on the mysterious street art/prank started rolling in. Three of them, in fact, one right after the other. Another golden baby had been spotted just off Main Street in Bloomfield/Lawrenceville, a second over on The North Side, and yet a third down in the 10th Ward on Butler Street. That last one turned out to be duplicate report of Butler Baby (golden baby #3), but, as a famous realist–and entrée–once said, two out of three ain’t bad.

silhouette of baby doll dangling from electric line over row houses, Pittsburgh, PA

Golden Baby #5 (aka “Sampsonia Baby”)

Oh, you can believe that chops were licked and hootenannies kicked into high gear to confirm these reports. Orbit readers who’ve already perused the included photographs will note that we were not let down in our pursuit.

Golden Baby #4 is (still) dangling from the electrical infrastructure on tiny Clement Way, just off Main Street, right next to The Shop and Liberty Beer. Golden Baby #5 was caught hanging loose in the Mexican War Streets on the very block where both The Mattress Factory and City of Asylum houses are. In both cases, the baby dolls seem to perfectly match their siblings: same gold paint, same white onesie, same dangle by the ankle.

The jump across the river for #5 was especially interesting as it meant our perpetrator(s) may be, you know, “city-wide,” rather than concentrated purely in the Penn and Butler stretches of the East End. How many more would there be? We’d just have to hang back, wait, and see what else turned up.

golden baby hanging from electric line over brick building, Pittsburgh, PA

Golden baby, blue sky. Clement Baby

Well…the calendar turned from February to March, we ate a bunch of fried fish and mac & cheese, and now we’re half way into April and there’s been nary a peep from any more golden babies (or their spotters). The 1-800-ORBIT-ME hotline sits silent, phone bank operators idly twiddling their well-intentioned thumbs. We can’t get a grainy cell-phone baby photo tweeted at us to save our lives. Sigh.

Is this it? Is this the way it all goes down? If so, that’s O.K.–we had a good run. I’m tempted to say, like a famous minstrel–and heartbreaker–once did, don’t do me like that. But, you know, that ain’t how it is. No, Mr. or Ms. Golden Baby dangler, you did me pretty good. Yeah, you did The Orbit pretty darn good.

golden baby, electric lines, and sky, Pittsburgh, PA

Upside-down you’re turning me. Sampsonia Baby

The Sweet’N Lowdown: Three Theories on a Street Art Secret Stash

April 13, 2016April 15, 20161 Comment

Tiny wooden picture frame containing a Sweet'n'Low packet

Street sweets

What makes a person frame a single Sweet’N Low packet and then hide the tiny objet d’art inside the metallic drain of an Oakland office building? Strange but true, The Orbit came across exactly one such exhibit earlier this week, on the side street face of one of Pitt’s off-campus buildings. Yes: conspiracy theorists are rampant, their evidence minimal, but the desire for truth is as strong as black coffee.

Theory: The framed packet as tribute to an artificial sweetening classic

This one comes from co-worker Rizzo, present at the discovery. I always say: if you want to know about something that pretends to be sweet, look no further than Rizzo. Sweet’N Low, though not the first artificial sweetener, owned that market for half a century. That’s not so true any more. Splenda, Equal, NutraSweet, Truvia, Sweet Leaf, and probably others, are all out there crowding the field. In Rizzo’s theory, the perpetrator has created a tiny tribute to that most famous saccharin-dextrose concoction whose time has come, wolves hopped-up on Splenda gathered at the door. One would hope for the honor of being memorialized in bronze and on public display, rather than hidden in a dingy side street hidey-hole, but if you’re Sweet’N Low, I guess you take what you can get.

Brick wall with bricks missing and metal opening containing tiny picture frame

A couple missing bricks and one secret hiding place

Theory: Sweet’N Low sachet as cruel “gotcha”

What if the tiny picture frame didn’t always contain a Sweet’N Low packet? How many works of fiction have placed stolen artwork in obscure secret stashes–often hidden in plain sight. Nothing quite gets the heart racing like a great heist film–cat burglars in berets and turtlenecks spiriting stolen canvases on thrilling guy wire runs between rooftops. In the best of these, the original owner of the artwork is always shown aghast the following morning with the discovery of the disappeared oil painting replaced by a cheap, comical substitute–the thief’s ultimate “you’ve been had.” Perhaps the tiny frame once contained a pocket Picasso or a miniature Miro, its present owner having slipped in the pink packet with a wink to let you know there’s no sugar here, but you can have one of these.

Craig Hall, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

In context: Craig Hall, home of the secret stash of tiny street art

Theory: Art scavenger hunt prize gone missing

It’s only a couple weeks past Easter, and we’ve still got egg hunts on the membrane. What if a cabal of clever art-gamers decided to stage a city-wide scavenger hunt for tiny hidden art pieces, each one identified by its common wooden frame? Maybe the Sweet’N Low portrait is just one that got away, left behind unclaimed. Somewhere out there, there’s a participant laying awake at night, replaying the one missed clue: At Craig on Craig, at the base of the leg, lies something pink, and something sweet. That’s the treasure hunt this blogger wishes he’d been invited to. Sigh. Add another one to The Orbit‘s big list.

We may never know lowdown on the Sweet’N Low, but then again, who really wants to know what’s in that pink packet anyway? The taste is good enough…isn’t it?

(No Longer) In The Mood

April 6, 2016Leave a comment

Mood Indigo: Pressure Chemical’s Lawrenceville plant

The story was a little too good: little Pressure Chemical was the home of the mood ring–and they had a wall of the objects as mementos in the offices of their Lawrenceville plant. But, as sophisticated Orbit readers know, don’t believe everything you hear.

It turns out, though, that the story is half true–or, at least, partially true. Pressure Chemical was indeed integral in the production of the mood ring, that most iconic groovy fashion fad/accessory of the 1970s–and it’s one that’s still available today, unlike the pet rock.

Mood ring. Green is alternately “normal,” “active,” “romantic,” or “jealous,” depending on the chart. [photo: the Internet]

When we want answers, you can bet we get them. The Orbit staked-out Pressure Chemical’s Smallman Street building and weren’t leaving until we could go all the way to the top. O.K., we actually just got really lucky and CEO Larry Rosen happened to walk out the front door before we could even get to the buzzer. Even on his way to a meeting, Rosen was friendly and took the time to answer all of this blogger’s questions about Pressure Chemical’s involvement with the 1970s fad, the legend of the wall of mood rings, and the building’s most recognizable feature, its multicolor flowing stripe.

detail of stripes painted on Pressure Chemical's building, Pittsburgh, PA

You’d be happy too. Pressure Chemical’s smiling stripes.

Rosen confirmed that yes indeed, back in the 1970s heyday of the fad, Pressure Chemical brewed the liquid crystal component that actually makes the rings’ color change. No mood rings were manufactured in the facility, nor is Pressure Chemical currently involved in producing material for the still-available accessories. And no: Rosen tells us there is no such thing as a wall of mood rings in the office. Sigh.

As for the Pressure Chemical building’s most recognizable decorative flourish, Rosen told us that a few years back the Lawrenceville Corporation was helping out with facade beautification grants and the company took the opportunity to paint the exterior of the building its present deep blue with the tri-color wave/stripe that wraps around the entire facility. He’d like to repaint the front, but the proximity of power lines make it an OSHA violation to paint while the electricity is live. The rest of the building has since been repainted.

detail of Pressure Chemical plant with American flag, Pittsburgh, PA

Ain’t that America: stars and stripes and stripes

So, in the end maybe we didn’t get to bag the great photo of a spread of mood rings mounted to Pressure Chemical’s waiting room wall. But we can still dream of a place where such a thing exists, each of their liquid crystal bits glowing in slightly different temperatures as if ghostly disembodied fingers fill them all at a grand family reunion. We’ll always be in the mood for that.

An Orbit Obit: Clemente Street Art

April 3, 2016Leave a comment

wheat paste and colored wood block street art of Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh, PA

Wheel Emporium (detail), 2013

Today it begins. The period from now until the early dark eves of October is, for many sports fans, a restoration of when things feel right. It is a time of chin music and LOOGies, where men scratch their groins and spit sunflower seeds in concrete dugouts awash in discarded Gatorade cups. It is the season where contests are interrupted at the discretion of “managers” who summon pitchers and catchers at the mound for tense mid-game summits, runners in scoring position the imminent threat. Phrases like “O-and-two, the count,” “low and outside,” “check swing,” and “foul ball” will be repeated ad infinitum. Rivers of yellow mustard, sweet relish, and, yes, ketchup (heathens!) will adorn a non-stop parade of frankfurters. It is a time when spring’s inevitable showers send both players and spectators alike to huddle under whatever protection the park offers while radio announcers ramble on in aimless filibusters to occupy the dead air. It is baseball season.

wheat paste street art of Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh, PA

Wheel Emporium, 2014

Wheel Emporium, a retail outlet and installation garage for what they used to call mag wheels, existed at the corner of Penn Avenue and 34th Street in Lawrenceville for years. The small shop was shuttered some time around 2012 (?) and plywood installed to protect the giant panes of glass in its showroom windows.

Though this blogger would sooner, uh, put ketchup on his hot dog than pay money for fancy auto parts, we always enjoyed passing the little shop with its big windows and array of shiny chrome. But what we liked even more was what came after Wheel Emporium closed: the terrific pair of elaborate street art tributes to Pittsburgh Pirate great Roberto Clemente.

Wheel Emporium, 2013

A note to bloggers: always get an establishing shot! We sadly just took close-up photos of the artwork–and of course they’re now long gone*–so there’s not really a sense of how the pieces relate. For sure, though, we can say there were two nearly life-sized black-and-white enlargements of old photos wheat-pasted to Wheel Emporium’s protective plywood. In the first, Clemente is in his batting stance, left leg starting its lift in anticipation of the incoming pitch. The other–perhaps just seconds later–shows the batter watching the rocket he’s just launched sail from the park, his body twisted in the follow-through of the heavy swing. In both, the artist(s) applied shards of cut painted wood to the plywood which suggest waves of energy coming directly from Clemente.

Wheel Emporium, 2014

The tale of the Clemente art took a strange turn a year later. At some point in 2014, the colored wood pieces were all removed and the rest of the exterior plywood painted over in a deep blue color. Amazingly, though, whoever did this chose to preserve the wheat pasted photos, leaving an equally-effective alternate version of the previous year’s art. In these, we see Clemente’s two-tone image really “pop” against the monochrome blue background. It would have been fantastic to re-install the wooden additions on top of the blue, which would have looked far superior to the noisy graffiti’d wood grain, but we can’t always get what we want.

Wheel Emporium (full), 2013

Roberto Clemente is debatably the most beloved Pittsburgh Pirate for his prowess both in the batter’s box and out in right field (which helped the team win two World Series over his eighteen year tenure) and also for his charitable efforts off the field. His life ended tragically in a plane crash Clemente was on for a humanitarian relief mission to Nicaragua in 1972. For all of these reasons, he’s certainly a fitting subject for not just his bronze statue at PNC Park, but also the street art tributes that appeared in Lawrenceville. We’d love to see more of them.

That said, The Orbit would be equally enthusiastic about seeing similar street-level honors bestowed on other Pirate greats. Imagine a stenciled and spray-painted Honus Wagner or a 3-D “Pops” Stargell constructed from recycled materials. If you don’t see the opportunities in “Big Poison” and “Little Poison” (brothers/teammates Paul and Lloyd Waner), then you’re not trying very hard. Hell, why not create a new set of Greenberg Gardens in the city’s many vacant lots? I guess we need to quit yapping about it and start…planting about it.

Strip District (current)

Addendum: We were so glad to see the tradition of Clemente wheat-pasting continue on a recent ride through the Strip District. This photo was taken just last week and shows what appears to be a relatively new photo of Clemente pasted to a vacant storefront on the 2700 block of Penn Avenue. In it, Clemente’s bat is pointed directly at the camera and he displays a look that’s both steely and also posed, perhaps stifling his characteristic smile to crack serious for the photographer.

bicycle lane marker of Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh, PA

Bicycle lane marker, Clemente Bridge

One final addition: over at The Portland Orbit, they recently ran a story called “The Beautiful People of the Bike Lane” about the terrific work of that city’s Board of Transportation to make customized, humorous bicycle lane markers. This cyclist was totally jealous and wished Pittsburgh would do something as fun and interesting. Well, it turns out that we do have at least a few these customized “bike guys.” You guessed it: they’re honoring the very same Roberto Clemente on the downtown bridge that now bears his name. It’s definitely Clemente art on the street, even if it’s not, you know, street art.

* The former Wheel Emporium was razed in 2015 and at present there’s a much larger building under construction that appears to be another combined retail/residential mixed-use space.

Egg Hunt

March 30, 20161 Comment

front yard display with Easter bunnies and eggs, Pittsburgh, PA

Lawrenceville

The bunny and the egg. That the high Christian holiday of Easter would be associated with two such non-religious totems seems strange. However it happened, we ended up with the bunny (always white; never a “rabbit”) and egg (brightly colored; sometimes elaborately decorated) as the emblems of the season. Eggs kind of make sense–Easter is either the celebration Jesus’ resurrection (if you’re Christian) or the spring holiday (if you’re pagan), and eggs certainly represent the spirit of rebirth (really, new birth) as well as anything. Bunnies? Not so obvious.

rowhouse window with Easter bunnies and eggs, Pittsburgh, PA

Bloomfield

This blogger grew up in The South and though my memory is foggy, I don’t ever remember Easter being as big a deal–and I really don’t remember people decorating their houses the way Pittsburghers do. The variance is minimal and it’s basically all store-bought, but there’s a lot of it.

De rigueur are plastic colored eggs in both chicken and dinosaur sizes, sometimes strung on lines or hung from trees, often just resting in a front patch of grass or nestled under shrubs. Occasionally these come in a light-up strand like Christmas lights. You’ll often see die cut two-dimensional paper eggs pasted into windows and taped on door frames.

The other nearly as common element is the white Easter bunny. These creatures vary from hefty ceramic hand-painted garden centerpieces to plastic stand-up figures to fuzzy paper decorations that look like flat piñatas.

small flowering tree with plastic Easter eggs, Pittsburgh, PA

Bloomfield

It strikes me that the palette is so slim. Just two images–plus the occasional flower, cross, or duckling thrown in as garnish–for such an important holiday. Compare this to Christians’ other big day: Mary, Joseph, the little lord Jesus, wise men, yonder star, the manger, Santa, elves, the sleigh, reindeer, presents, candles, candy, carolers–the list goes on and on. Christmas also gets its own defined color scheme, song book, and yearly television specials. I’m sure there are traditional Easter church hymns, but what about carols?

sidewalk chalk drawing of Easter egg, Pittsburgh, PA

The Run

This year, Easter Sunday rolled around and this heathen had neither a church service nor holiday ham supper to look forward to. So with a glorious seventy degrees and cloudless blue skies The Orbit set out on an old school egg hunt.

We weren’t actually out to possess any eggs. We just wanted to get an idea of who was out there decorating and what they were doing with the eggs. Of course, we’ll also take any excuse to ride the Orbit-cycle for a couple hours and poke our nebby Orbit-schnozes into other people’s business–and believe you me: schnozes were poked in the making of this story.

plastic Easter eggs hanging from tree, Pittsburgh, PA

Bloomfield

The ride took us all over the place–The Strip, Spring Garden, Central North Side, downtown, South Side, The Run, Panther Hollow, etc.–but observant Orbit readers will note that almost all these photos came from just two neighborhoods: Bloomfield and Lawrenceville.

Are these places Easter central? Maybe. Or did we just poke a little harder or a little wiser in the well-known nearby terrain? Well, that’s believable too. We definitely had insider information on the Easter crazy pair of neighbors on Lorigan Street in Bloomfield that generated several of these pictures.

tree with garland of plastic Easter eggs, Pittsburgh, PA

Lawrenceville

Along the way, we ran into one legitimate kid-centric egg hunt taking place in Arsenal Park. These eggs were not well-concealed–I must have spotted two dozen from the seat of my in-motion bicycle–but the target age of participants seems to start at the just-barely-walking, so I suppose it’s a fair contest.

The whole experience was good fun and good exercise and got us thinking that it might be interesting to stage an Orbit-sponsored, bicycle-based egg hunt for next year’s holiday. Would folks be into that? I don’t know, but maybe we’ll give it a try next year.

window flower box display with bunnies and eggs, Pittsburgh, PA

Bloomfield

rowhouse windows decorated with Easter bunnies and eggs, Pittsburgh, PA

Lawrenceville

front stoop display of Easter bunny and eggs

Lawrenceville

Dead Mall: Allegheny Center

March 27, 2016December 14, 20163 Comments

Former office building in Allegheny Center, Pittsburgh, PA

Former office building, former Dollar Bank

It was a Saturday afternoon and this American was at the mall. Nothing strange about that, right? Where it gets weird is that he was the only one at the mall. And I mean literally the only living creature on this giant plot of city-center property*.

I wasn’t even there to buy anything! But that’s lucky, because believe me, there was nothing for sale–no novelty t-shirts, no shoes, no Spencer Gifts, no Licorice Pizza, and (sigh) no Orange Julius.

Empty common area of Allegheny Center Mall, Pittsburgh, PA

Main common area

Allegheny Center, one of Pittsburgh’s three ginormous, well-intentioned, but ultimately disastrous urban redevelopment projects of the 1960s, is today the most intact of that triumvirate. The Civic Arena was torn down several years ago and its massive site is currently in development for yet another makeover. East Liberty’s business district is more gradually having its wrongs…undone (I’m not sure “righted” is fair–certainly the displaced residents wouldn’t think so).

This isn’t your average dead mall. For one, it’s not way out in the suburbs–just one river crossing and a few blocks separate Allegheny Center from downtown Pittsburgh. For another, even though as a shopping mall it’s definitely long gone, some amount of the property is very much in use. Many of the former retail spaces are now occupied by an unlikely collection of anonymous back offices for banks, utilities, tech companies, etc. There’s even a working soup-and-sandwich restaurant to serve the captive clientele (but it’s not open over the weekend).

Things are going to change fast for Allegheny Center real soon. Announced last year, the complex is about to have a whole bunch of money dumped into it to convert the mall space to a incubator and campus for high tech companies with the new name Nova Place. Radiant Hall has moved into the ground floor of the office building and Quantum Theatre will stage its next production (Ibsen’s The Master Builder) upstairs in April. We thought The Orbit ought to get in there and take a look before everything changes once again.

Large hexagon-shaped planters filled with both dirt and styrofoam packing peanuts, Allegheny Center Mall, Pittsburgh, PA

Empty hex planters

Allegheny Center isn’t just a (former) shopping mall. It’s a small complex of buildings that includes an eight-story office building and a similarly-sized set of apartments (which may still be in use). There’s also a terrific freestanding bank branch that has the center’s very of-its-time midcentury modern curved boxes.

Much has been made about what The North Side lost when the Allegheny Center project came in–most notably its beautiful, central market house and sensible street grid. That was all before this blogger’s time, but the pictures are heartbreaking.

Entrance to parking garage and curved, projecting windows, Allegheny Center Mall, Pittsburgh, PA

Parking garage entrance and characteristic curved exterior features

That said, the fifty years that have passed since Allegheny Center was built in 1966 have largely been kind to what could have been a horrific featureless and windowless box like many of its enclosed mall peers. The overall design is an inventive mixture of interior and exterior space. Shoppers could get to destinations both within the enclosed mall area and also from a number of outside-facing storefronts. Allegheny Center’s original plan devoted much of its space to an open garden/park are on what is now just a bizarre gray plane. The center had mixed use as a central focus, accommodating retail, dining, office, and residential space. Parking is entirely hidden within underground garages. Maybe most surprising, given what we’ve seen of mall design since, nearly 100% of the exterior space contains big windows with views of downtown Pittsburgh (to the south) and up to the hills of Fineview (north).

Aerial photo showing Allegheny Center's original open space parklet and red polymer surface

Aerial photo of Allegheny Center’s original open space parklet with red polymer surface [photo: concretedecor.net]

It’s also in amazingly great condition. I was struck by how absolutely clean and immaculately cared-for the entire property seems to be. Inside the mall, the arched atrium windows still let in a great slanted light, the original tile may show its age in color selection, but not in cracks or wear. Windows–there are many–are clean and bright.

Outside we didn’t see any of the tell-tale signs of other dead malls–no rust or leaks, no cracked window panes or graffiti, no trash, cigarette butts, or weeds. The exterior retail spaces have all been boarded-over with plywood to protect them. We obviously don’t know what things look like underneath, but if they resemble the rest of property, restaurants and retail stores could move back in tomorrow. [Note to Lou Pappan’s heirs: please consider this!]

While it’s certainly dated, the architectural design has the remarkable quality of being both curved and boxy, regular and asymmetric, retro and modern. By today’s standards, it’s cool…or, at least, it could be. By any yardstick, it’s got a lot more potential than Century III. Let’s all cross our fingers for Nova Place.

Empty exterior common/garden area, Allegheny Center Mall, Pittsburgh, PA

Exterior common area with boarded-up former storefronts, former parklet

* This is only a slight exaggeration–during our half-hour visit we did see one dog-walker (outside) and one security officer (inside).

Sources:

Developer plans to turn North Side’s Allegheny Center into technology hub, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 21, 2015.
The Science of Slim: Polymer-Modified Toppings, concretedecor.net, Nov. 2008.

Pittsburgh’s Next Hottest Neighborhoods

March 23, 2016January 30, 20179 Comments

older frame houses with clear blue sky and bare trees, Pittsburgh, PA

Allentown rooftops, just around the corner from NoCarSoSoSlo

Pittsburgh is famously a city of neighborhoods–ninety of them, to be exact. Most are incredibly distinct. There’s no questioning the transition from Bloomfield to Oakland or Larimer to Lincoln or Polish Hill to Lawrenceville–you have to cross a bridge to get there. Spring Hill and Troy Hill are way up on the top of steep hills; Spring Garden is down in the valley between. More subtley, Bloomfield and Friendship are on the same plane, but as Friendship Ave. dog-legs around, the street grid changes bias, the blocks change dimension, and Friendship’s stately detached homes yield to tight Bloomfield aluminum-clad row houses. It’s clear you’re somewhere else.

But not all of the city is as well-defined, nor is it all prospering at the same rate. What to do? Enter the acroname–the citizen and/or developer-based rebranding of urban spaces to upsell low-rent sections of town into yuppie havens and “whitopias”. New York has famously come up with SoHo, TriBeCa, NoLita, Dumbo, etc. to address this; others have followed suit. Pittsburgh has been blessedly free of this trend*, but at the rate we’re gentrifying–and our collective me too obsession–it seems like it’s only a matter of time.

Here then is an Orbit modest prediction/proposal for the rebranding of some parts of town that are maybe a little harder to define just how and where they fit in.

NoSOak (“No Soak”)

Empty beer bottles, an American flag in the window: that looks like NoSOak to me

The residential section of central Oakland, with Bates as its main through street, was traditionally an Italian-American neighborhood, but that legacy has largely ceded to college ghetto. Ratty old couches fill front porches , flags and beer signage decorate dirty windows. By rebranding itself NoSOak (North of South Oakland), the neighborhood’s landlords and property developers may be able to usher in an entirely new clientele of tech yuppies and hospital workers, eager to rehab those turn-of-the-century row houses on pedestrian-friendly blocks, the lovely aroma of street tacos perpetually wafting in the breeze.

NoCarSoSoSlo (“No Car–So, So Slow”)

Detail from the hand-painted storefront of the Mount Oliver Mens Shop, Pittsburgh, PA

The Mens Shop, a NoCarSoSoSlo icon for generations

The southern borough of Mount Oliver is a politically-independent island entirely surrounded by the city of Pittsburgh, but hasn’t benefitted from (or gotten ruined-by–take your pick) the rapid gentrification that so much of the city is experiencing. Heck, even hilltop neighbor Allentown has a heavy metal coffee shop now! With the rebranding NoCarSoSoSlo (North of Carrick/South of the Southside Slopes) the borough can reference two city neighborhoods without ever mentioning you have to pay goofy Mount Oliver taxes.

VoBeShaBlo (“VO-bee-shay-blow”)

older frame houses, train tracks, and busway, Pittsburgh, PA

View of VoBeShaBlo through the chain link fence of the Aiken Ave. Bridge

The two-to-three-block-wide strip that runs between the train tracks/east busway and Baum Boulevard are technically Shadyside, but it’s physically cut off from the heart of that neighborhood and it doesn’t share its hoity-toity feel. To mix our metaphors like we’re real urban planners, VoBeShaBlo (The Void Between Shadyside and Bloomfield) is a line in the sand that its resident “Shay-Blowers” will wear with pride, finally attaining an identity that’s been missing for a long, long time.

The hoodlet has some appealing (potential) amenities that can make this work. There are nice, if not fancy, older frame houses (although not that many of them). Between Centre and Baum they’ve got a bigger business district than a lot of city neighborhoods. And it’s well-connected/located if you’re either a cyclist or bus rider. VoBeShaBlo’s Giant Eagle even sells beer!

PaHolE / WheBiJIs (“PAY-hole / we-BIJ-iss”)

Tile sign for Big Jim's in The Run, Pittsburgh, PA

Big Jim’s, a PaHolE / WheBiJIs institution since 1977

Four Mile Run, or just “The Run”, is the tiny sub-neighborhood under both The Parkway and Swinburne bridges. Its technically a part of Greenfield, but doesn’t really feel like it. Like Rodney Dangerfield, a lot of people go back to school via its walk/bicycle path directly to central Oakland and cyclists know it as the connection point to the jail trail. But with literally just one-way-in/one-way-out, motorists typically ignore it and most of Pittsburgh has probably never even been to the neighborhood.

Luckily for PaHolE / WheBiJIs (Panther Hollow East / Where Big Jim’s Is) there are a couple of great local places of note including the great St. John Byzantine Church, access to the Schenley Park ball fields, city steps up to Greenfield proper, and Big Jim’s terrific eponymous tavern. Let’s quit fooling around and put it on the map.

HiDiBuNoQuOak (“HI-dee-boo-no-quoke”)

View down Dunsieth Street, Pittsburgh, PA

Looking down Dunsieth Street toward Carlow University in HiDiBuNoQuOak

The area around Pitt’s upper campus doesn’t really feel like it fits in anywhere. It’s the university, so that’s Oakland, right? But it’s also way up the hill–at the southeastern edge of The Hill District–physically separated from the hospitals and school buildings below. By embracing their new identity as HiDiBuNoQuOak (Hill District, But Not Quite Oakland) residents tell the world they’re doing their own thing in their own time, man. No quoke.

* LoLa (Lower Lawrenceville) and Eastside (East Liberty adjoining Shadyside) are the two painfully obvious exceptions, although The Orbit doesn’t know anyone that actually uses these terms.

Street Beat: Who is the Dirty Poet?

March 20, 20162 Comments

Three of The Dirty Poet's poems taped to a light post, Pittsburgh, PA

In the wild: The Dirty Poet’s work where most people experience it

You’ve seen his work. At least, you have if you’ve loitered around any less-than-respectable tavern, coffee shop, or music venue in Pittsburgh’s East End over the last decade.

Xeroxed in small batches–usually two or three bite-sized poems at at time–cut down to vertical half pages, and taped to light poles, left on bulletin boards, and passed hand-to-hand (if you know who to talk to), The Dirty Poet is an old-school bard of the boroughs, a tale-teller of the tarmac. Like the clergyman preaching to drunkards on Skid Row, The Dirty Poet takes the mountain to Mohammed with that very deliberate pre-Internet mass communication, the flyer and handbill.

The Dirty Poet sits on a set of Pittsburgh city steps with his face hidden behind an open copy of his book

The Dirty Poet: his head is always in a book

The Dirty Poet, who spoke with Pittsburgh Orbit on condition of anonymity, claims he is the best read poet in Pittsburgh. Admittedly, this is probably not a high bar, but it would be difficult to name any competition for this title*. “People read these poems that would never read any other poetry,” says The Dirty Poet, and he’s right.

The work is taken out of the English department, out of the bookstores and coffee shop readings, hell, you don’t even have to enter a building–it’s right there on the sidewalk. One needn’t have a college degree or even a library card. [Spoiler alert: you do need to be able to read.] By taking the poems directly to the streets, taped up on light poles, it’s as populist and mass accessible as it could be. Whether he’s reaching people hungry for an unslaked thirst for verse or just bored and waiting for the bus, they’re all [OK, some of them] joining the revival in this tent.

The Dirty Poet has also been at this a long time. Writing his whole life, he began the practice of pairing his Xeroxed literature with the other gig flyers, ads for weight loss studies, and rock band stickers that litter the street some fifteen years ago. That’s more time than most poets have cumulatively spent in grad school, getting rejected by literary journals, and giving up writing entirely.

In our conversation, El Dirtero spoke with obvious pride about the many chance meetings he’s had with readers as he’s plied his trade on the pavement. “Guys in their twenties come up to me and tell me they’ve been reading me since they were teenagers,” the Dirty One says, “I think I speak to a universal feeling of alienation.”

The Dirty Poet sits on a jersey barrier with the graffiti "Your vulgarity is a virtue"

The Dirty Poet: vulgar, virtuous

But what of the poetry itself? It’s loose, personal, true, vulgar, cynical, sly, smart-alecky, profane, and, yes, possibly (but not usually) dirty. It also doesn’t rhyme and it’s definitely not for everyone. “I write poetry to process my experience,” the Soapless Shakespeare tells us. Subject matter ranges from the topical (politics, gun violence, race relations) to observational (hypocrites of all faiths and isms, technology dependence, media and mass culture) to many personal anecdotes of characters and experiences throughout his life. The Great Unwashed assures us these are all true.

One final note: Pittsburgh Orbit was planning to reprint a couple of The Dirty Poet’s pieces here, but in the spirit of his work, we thought it only made sense to urge our readers to take the time, step outside, and check out the poetry where it lives, right on the streets of Pittsburgh. If you don’t see it, you’re not trying very hard. And if you don’t live around here, well, this is just one more reason to come pay us a visit**. The Dirty Poet will still be at it when you do.

* Billy Nardozzi, the “Chaucer of the Classifieds,” seems like the only legitimate competition for this title, but when you get into pay-to-play territory, the water gets muddied pretty quick.

** Those looking for a more substantial collection of The Dirty Poet’s work can find the collection Emergency Room Wrestling on Words Like Kudzu Press.

A Thomasson!

March 16, 20167 Comments

Man relaxing on unused, but well-maintained entry steps to apartment building in Pittsburgh, PA

At least one guy uses this thing. The Thomasson, after a full rehab, March, 2016

We got really interested in Thomassons from a story of the same name on the great 99% Invisible podcast. A Thomasson, as defined by the Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei who first identified and named them, is an architectural leftover or vestige that no longer has any use and is actively maintained. The name is a reference to one Gary Thomasson, a baseball player who, through twist of fate and contractual obligations was paid to ride the bench–ineffective, but maintained. [The podcast has that whole backstory.] Pittsburgh Orbit became obsessed with finding a local Thomasson.

Pittsburgh is littered with evidence of architectural decay. The giant extant former stone supports of the old Point and Manchester bridges downtown or the countless foundations of long-gone hillside houses come to mind–but there are plenty of examples. The tricky part in identifying a Thomasson is in finding one that people are still actively taking care of.

Bellefield Tower and Bellefield Clinic, Pittsburgh, PA

Bellefield Tower, Oakland. The mother of all Thomassons or still in use?

Bellefield Tower, at the corner of Fifth and Bellefield streets in Oakland, is a potentially glorious Thomasson–we could go as far as saying the mother of all Thomassons. But does it count? Bellefield is a freestanding bell tower that appears to have outlived the church (we assume?) it was once attached to. It’s now mere feet from the curved puce and mauve shopping mall chic exterior of Bellefield Clinic, making for possibly the most painfully awkward architectural juxtaposition in the city.

But does the tower really have no current use? It’s hard to say–this blogger has never heard its bell ringing, and it seems too small and awkwardly-shaped for much else. But possibly the clinic stores scrubs and hypodermic needles there. Maybe a couple of lucky administrative employees get solo offices, each with a tiny staircase. The point is, it could be in use. An investigation is in order*, but we’re not ready to call this a Thomasson…yet.

Apartment building on Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA

In context: Webster Hall’s Thomasson (pre-rebuild), Summer, 2015

Luckily, though, almost right next door, on the corner of Dithridge and Fifth Avenue, sits Webster Hall and what is an undeniable Thomasson. The eleven-story apartment building clearly used to hold something like lunch counters, or maybe retail spaces, on each ground floor corner–you can tell by the decorative masonry work and big window openings. There’s also a strange pair of steps that lead up to a now-bricked-in and glassed-over former entry point. It’s dressed-up with a pair of inviting potted boxwood shrubs, but they’re not fooling this blogger: in nine years of working a block away, I’ve never seen anyone (except The Orbit‘s hired stooge/model) use this as a resting spot. And why would you? As steps, they’re an uncomfortable, awkward seat–there’s no back and not enough leg room–and who wants to relax on busy/noisy Fifth Avenue when you could walk two blocks and be in Schenley Plaza?

Work truck and crew repairing unused steps on apartment building, Pittsburgh, PA

The Thomasson during reconstruction, Feb. 2016

The steps are also undeniably under active maintenance. By last fall, they had lost some of their mortar, causing stones to shift and structure to break apart. The coming of winter only made it worse. When Team Orbit spotted a work crew out front in January it led to some great group rubber-necking and speculation, trying to get a glimpse at what was happening under the mysterious plastic tent. Would they tear up the downtrodden, useless steps-to-nowhere, dashing our hopes that this was our first legit Thomasson? Or was the crew there to make things right–to enpower Oakland’s pedestrians to once again bypass this funny stoop on their way to more pleasant places of repose?

Well, by this point in the story it’s no surprise that the workers came armed with mortar and trowels (not a jackhammer) and we can happily report that the Thomasson is alive and looking as good as new. To Pittsburgh’s other Thomassons, hang in there: we’re coming for you!

* Yes: finding out what’s up with Bellefield Tower is on The Orbit‘s big list!

Murals of the Sewickley Speakeasy

March 13, 2016March 13, 20166 Comments

disintegrating mural from Sewickley Speakeasy, Sewickley, PA

Waiter

Nothing lasts forever, we know this. This is especially true of art, which is produced in much greater quantity than there is demand, often in fragile formats and up to extremely subjective taste and value judgement. But to have one’s canvas get dusty in the basement or torn in a move has got to be a wholly different experience than watching the slow-motion disintegration of something as large and inescapable as a giant public mural right along a major thoroughfare where passers-by literally can’t miss it.

George Gershwin

The Murals of the Sewickley Speakeasy have a lot going against them, at least in terms of longevity. First, they’ve got to deal with an inhospitable Western Pennsylvania climate–drastic temperature fluctuations, dense humidity, snow, ice, sleet, rain, and, yes, occasional bright sunshine. Then, they’ve been painted on a retaining wall holding back a steep incline. The hillside runoff alone, leaching through the concrete, would likely separate paint from surface material in short order. Add to this the wall’s position, mere feet from busy Route 65, which must receive plenty of kicked-up salt, exhaust, and road debris.

W.C. Fields

Given all that, maybe it’s no surprise the murals have weathered so severely in not even twenty years. We don’t know what they looked like when the paint was fresh, but even with an obvious nostalgia theme in mind, dollars to doughnuts they didn’t have the washed-out, sepia-toned color you’ll find today–and that’s where you can still make out an image at all. On large stretches of the seven mural sections, great amounts of the underlying paint and nearly all of the recognizable figures are gone.

Greta Garbo

What’s left, though, is beautiful and tragic. I’m sure when the owners of the Sewickley Speakeasy commissioned these pieces they set out for an inviting, mood-setting series of vignettes to invoke not just the conviviality of any great nightspot, but certainly also the high-style/wink-and-nod underground romanticism of Jazz Age urban life–a place where some of America’s greatest musicians and movie stars mixed with politicians, bootleggers, flappers, and toe-tappers (not to mention the penciled-in family members of the bar’s owner).

Some of that still shines through the cracks, but mostly we get ghosts–fractured, fallen apart, and disappearing into clouds of base primer and bare concrete. In some cases, the remaining images are astonishing. George Gershwin, still nearly intact but soot-covered enough to look as in black face, sits at an invisible piano. W.C. Fields, with cocked top hat and great drunkard’s schnoz, is clearly identifiable against a blitzed-out snowstorm of fragmented paint chips. All smiles, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Pittsburgh’s-own Lena Horne still look like they’re having fun, oblivious to the dust storm blowing in fast*.

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Lena Horne, piano player

The Orbit reached out to August Vernon, the artist who painted the murals back in 1999, but either he doesn’t want to talk to us or he really doesn’t check his email. From what we can tell, Vernon continues to paint large-scale murals, but now from a home base in a warmer, sunnier climate (either Florida or South Carolina–his web site lists both). The artist’s changes in latitude have likely put grimy Route 65 and the Sewickley Speakeasy murals far in his pastel-colored rearview mirror. That’s too bad, as we really wanted to know what the experience is like to see such an epic project fall into this nether state and what the outlook is like for a working artist who must confront this potential deterioration on a daily basis. We’d also love to get his memories on creating the Speakeasy murals.

At this point it seems unlikely we’ll hear from Vernon, and if so, that’s something he shares with his most famous characters. We’ll never know the real Clara Bow, or Rudolf Valentino, or Bette Davis. The world was left with their films, and we’ve got Vernon’s painted tributes–at least, until they’re gone with the wind.

Clara Bow, Al Capone and friends

* Help identifying some of these characters from an entry on pghmurals.com based on a 1999 Post Gazette article by Barbara Cloud.