I’m sure you can imagine that if I disappear for so long a stretch, things have been hectic.

A few evenings ago, I gave a history talk at the Duquesne Club about Pittsburgh’s Great Fire of 1845. Andrew Masich, the president and CEO of the Heinz History Center, was tasked with introducing me. So, a couple of things … first, in keeping with my brand of “this event you’ve known about for months is in five hours and you haven’t even considered if you have anything appropriate to wear,” I donned an $8 used sweater from Poshmark and dress pants I snagged at this trendy boutique named El Club de Sam—it’s very exclusive; you’ve probably never heard of it.

Second, as Andy ran down the list of who I am, what I’ve done, and what I’m currently working on, I stood there to the side and said to myself, “Damn, girl. Aren’t you tired?”

I’m a little tired! But let’s chat.

1. How to lie with numbers and almost get away with it

If anyone needs to be wearing $8 used Poshmark sweaters that still manage to look cute, it’s the City of Pittsburgh, because, as it turns out, her finances are a hot mess.

There have been lots of articles written about this mess, but let me sum up the saga for you, because it’s important we understand what is going on, how we got here and what hope, if any, we have of digging our way out. I’m going to do this like you’re five to ten years old. Not as an insult to your intelligence, but because budgets are adjacent to math and I think we all know how I feel about math.

Here’s basically what happened. Old Mayor’s administration has to make a budget for the next year. Old mayor is heading out the door due to not being reelected, so he’s basically creating two things:

1. A budget that his replacement will inherit

2. A budget that will hopefully make his administration look like it had been fiscally responsible and is leaving the city on strong financial ground

You don’t want to leave office in a financial hole, especially not when the voters kicked you out and especially not when you’re mayor of a city that previously spent years under Act 47 oversight. No, you want to go out on a high note, as if to say, “Hey, your loss. We did our jobs and we’re leaving the city in good shape. Peace!”

This goes without saying, but, politicians care deeply about legacy.

Okay, so Old Mayor’s team looks at the budget and has to plug in new numbers for the next year’s budget in a way that, hopefully, when the spreadsheet does the math there’s a positive number in the final total field—as opposed to a big fat red negative number that kicks them in the teeth.

This is a basic accounting concept: positive dollars in the bank is good; negative dollars in the bank is you better get your butt on Poshmark and look for $8 sweaters, my guy. And also, your mom (the state) might step in and say, “From now on, I need to pre-approve all of your sweater purchases until you can show me you know how to stick to a damn budget.”

Still with me? Need a juice box, Lukey?

Wow, that was a throwback.

Okay, so what appears to have happened is Old Mayor’s Administration, which from heretoforeafter we will call, for shits and giggles, the Gainey admin, plugged in realistic numbers and the total left at the bottom of the spreadsheet was a BIG FAT RED NUMBER. As in, if things happen the way they will likely happen and we spend the money we are likely to spend, we are going to end up with a deficit, i.e. negative dollars.

Dollars are so much more fun and powerful when they are dollars that exist.

Let me explain budgeting to you as a person who once held a job creating programmatic budgets for nonprofits until she revealed her identity and got fired for it … it’s SUPER EASY TO LIE WITH BUDGETS. OMG it’s so easy, you guys. The dirty little open secret is this: you just … change the numbers. Because the numbers, you see, are still theoretical at this point in the game, so you work backwards from what you want that final number to show. You get creative. Except in the nonprofit case, you’re actively TRYING to create a red number so the foundations will take pity on you and give you money.

In creating a budget for a city, you just … fudge the numbers the other way. Oh, this average $x million in overtime pay we end up with every year? We’ll just pretend we’re not paying any overtime in 2026. You change that number to 0 and boom! The big red number magically moves closer to green.

All of our plow trucks are going to fail within two years? Oh well, let’s just remove this $x million on new equipment and pretend the trucks are fine and they’ll last. Boom. The big red number magically moves even CLOSER to green.

You keep doing this line by line until, you guessed it, BOOM! The number is green and you have a budget that is “balanced.”

You look good and your legacy is intact. That’s essentially (albeit super dumbed down), how it appears the Gainey admin did the city budget that the O’Connor admin would have to work with.

You’ll remember that when Gainey first presented his outgoing budget in 2025, City Council immediately recognized it wasn’t reasonable and raised taxes to cover what they knew was going to be a shortfall. This, dear reader, is exactly what it sounds like—City Council saying to Ed Gainey and his budgetary witches…

Of course, the Gainey admin claimed (and continues to claim) their numbers were realistic. Spoiler alert: no they weren’t and it’s kind of remarkable they continue to lie like this. (Please don’t email me if you worked on the Gainey admin’s budget. I cannot express how deeply little I wish to hear your excuses or justifications. I’ve built too many budgets, my guy. I know the tricks.)

It gets even worse. Now that the O’Connor admin has their people in there, and now that they’ve gone deep into the budget, the finances, the accounts payable/receivable, etc., and have access to the budgeting software, it appears that the Gainey budget was an even bigger lie than previously understood.

The additional lie is this: the Gainey admin intentionally didn’t pay a huge chunk of invoices in order to further substantiate their budgetary lies, saddling the incoming administration with these bills. To dumb it down again … rather than having a deeper BIG RED NUMBER hole to dig out of, they made it a shallower hole by keeping invoices off the books by … simply not paying them.

Let me illustrate this way of lying with accounting: if your bank account says you have $3,000, but you KNOW your mortgage is $1,500 and it’s due at the end of the month, you know in your heart of hearts that on March 31, you really have $1,500 dollars in the bank. But if you decide to simply not pay the mortgage until, let’s say, April 2, well then at the end of March, you can say proudly, “I have $3,000 in the bank.” It might be true, but it’s not REALLY TRUE. It’s only air-quotes-true. You’re lying with accounting. You’re lying with numbers. You’re lying with math.

That’s what the Gainey admin appears to have done.

All this to say, Pittsburgh, we are in a giant hole even though the Gainey admin tried to sell us the lie that there was no hole at all. This is big fat red news. So big, in fact, that City Council has taken the rare step of reopening the already approved budget for modifications to hunt for ways to get the numbers to be at least within shouting distance of realistic.

You guys know I’m hard on mayors. It was once my entire frickin’ brand, right, Lukey? I criticized Peduto when it was called for. I generally never had to go after Gainey until very late in his term when the whole police chief drama happened and he kind of went haywire in a press conference and the “oh, you are NOT going to get reelected” writing appeared on the wall.

Thus far, O’Connor has surprised me in some very positive ways. City government experience aside, I expected him to just kind of be playacting mayor, if I’m being honest. Like a kid sitting in his dad’s big desk chair pretending to read important papers. Remember I did the math on the snow plows and that math computed out to basically displaying BOOBIES in the calculator window? I couldn’t even comprehend how he was going to rise above the math when we got two feet of snow in January. So I expected him to fall flat on his face right out of the mayoral gate. Instead he hunted for private snow-removal contractors and got local corporations to fund the purchase of a few new plows. Bandaids, yes, but, dear reader, I didn’t even realize he had access to a first aid kit.

In light of what he’s done thus far, his transparency in sharing what he’s now up against (which is basically having his mayoral honeymoon phase pulled out harshly from under him), I’m going to optimistically say this and hope he doesn’t prove me wrong and then force me to write a long “Dear Mayor O’Connor” open letter in two years that ends with something like, “Lick rust. Sincerely, PittGirl”: I think he’s the right person to lead us out of this financial mess.

Yes, your faithful Pittsburgh blogger, writer, columnist, grand dame of snark and kicking pigeons while wearing stuff she bought at Marshall’s, is saying this: Make no mistake. Things are bad financially for the City of Pittsburgh. We are in a ship with its bow pointed directly into a monster storm, but we at least appear to have a capable captain at the helm.

Grab some Dramamine and hold on to your butts. It’s going to be an interesting couple of years. I’m rooting for our mayor.

2. AI can’t handle these Pittsburgh streets

In some ways, generative AI has greatly improved from its early days, but in other ways, it still simply cannot get a handle on Pittsburgh. I just had to share with you this fake AI profile on Threads which is obviously attempting to catfish lonely local men in order to scam them.

Holy topographical hallucinations, Batman!*

Roads that lead directly to the river level downtown? A neighborhood where PNC Park used to be? The incline and Mount Washington just absolutely picked up and moved to the the North Side? The Fort Pitt Bridge where the Fort Duquesne Bridge used to be? One of the Steelers logos is missing an S, and there’s a Steelers logo on a shirt featuring the Roberto Clemente Bridge, which makes no sense. And don’t even get me started on whatever this is.

Though I’ll tell you what this is. This is AI going, “Hmmm, Pittsburgh, steel, industry, machines, Steelers, Steely McBeam, iron, steel, bridges, steel, [Chewbacca sounds], embroidered steel beams on shirts with a random gear! Yes! That screams ‘Pittsburgh!’”

You’d think with so many clues revealing this person does not exist in Pittsburgh, let alone on this actual Earth, this scammer would catch no fish. You would be super super wrong:

God bless Joe Woos for calling it out (and for my pal, Pittsburgh’s own Jim Lokay who also called it out, which is how I found it). Anyway, check in with the men in your life and explain to them how to spot AI before they wire their entire life savings to some 47-year-old scammer in Russia.

*not a euphemism

3. The Second Coming of Pittsburgh City Paper

Word is just hitting that Pittsburgh City Paper has new local owners and it will resume online and print publishing!

We’ll be back on all our beats: community-centered news, politics, protests, up-and-coming art, counterculture, events, food finds, opinionated rants, undie runs, jagoffs, and perhaps our favorite: roving adults-only vans. (IYKYK) Soon you can once again scroll through our newest stories, or get outside and find our latest issue at your corner coffee shop or bus stop. Wherever you are, we’re there, too.

We’re bolstered with new, local ownership, new ideas, and a new strategy that prioritizes the needs of our neighbors — with accountability, sustainability, and creative new projects.

This is remarkably good and unexpected news. Though this is where I immediately want to know who bought it. Luckily, the Trib has those details:

Under the new agreement, Pittsburgh-based nonprofit LocalMatters is the majority owner of a for-profit entity called Pierogi Press LLC, which operates City Paper. LocalMatters is designed to help local news organizations become self-sustaining.

On Wednesday, Trachta and Chris Maury, who is affiliated with Pierogi Press LLC, declined to disclose the purchase price of City Paper.

Maury is a former engineering manager for Apple who reached out to City Paper’s editorial team to start the process. When asked about the terms of the of the sale, he said this.

“(The Block family) recognize that the dollars going to the Blocks are dollars that are not going to the longevity and kind of the funding necessary to see City Paper to a successful place, and so the terms of the deal reflect that,” Maury said to TribLive.

LOL. I’ve read it six times and that is an extra large word salad prepared by that chaotic Muppet chef who likes to really make the lettuce and french fries fly.

One thing I’m taking from this positive news is that if the Blocks were persuaded by cash-dollah-bills to sell the City Paper, maybe they’re still willing to sell the P-G. This nonprofit model is essentially what Kevin Acklin has been trying to make happen, but seemingly with no headway. I guess for now we just hold out hope until the last ember is stomped out by the Block family, who I continue to maintain can go lick rust. Respectfully.

4. Big PastFinders news, so don’t skip this one, you jags!

I know I’ve been talking to you about Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen/PastFinders for around three years now, but BIG NEWS. The app was officially launched at the Pittsburgh Film Office’s Oscar gala this past weekend!

You can hop into the PastFinders app and explore over 100 filming locations scattered around the city, from The Dark Knight Rises to Silence of the Lambs to Southpaw to Perks of Being a Wallflower to Jack Reacher and more. There are walking tours you can take in-person or virtually with more coming soon. Each location includes photos of that spot in the film.

I have also begun building walking tours in Allegheny Cemetery!

My daughter and I took the one I built recently and had a whole blast. I was very careful with dropping GPS points for this tour so that you literally CANNOT not find the grave marker you’re looking for.

How cool is that?? Go take a walk and visit graves such as Josh Gibson, Jane Grey Swisshelm, some mayors and more. Just watch out for the geese. They truly believe they own the entire grounds. They’re just fat, tall, schematically organized pigeons, to be honest. You can also take this tour (and any tour in the app) virtually!

Download the app on Apple or Android if you haven’t already. If you were an early adopter, please look at all we’ve built and changed and improved over the past year, and even just the past three months.

Group hug!

5. Random n’at

Big local things presented as little listy things:

• The Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum is now the Franco Harris Sports Museum. Love this!

• The city continues to redd up before the NFL Draft, and that includes all the litter that you have been noticing lately now that the winds have died down and the snow has melted and there is trash every. where. This is a great time to jump onboard Allegheny Cleanways’ Immaculate Collection campaign which is now in full swing and relies on the whole city to pitch in and pick up. Explore the site for all the ways you can help! (Full disclosure: not an ad. I sit on their board’s development committee as an independent member because I’M SICK OF ALL THE LITTER, YOU GUYS.)

• Alternate Histories has a new-ish locally printed, locally designed (by artist Fio Avocado) tote bag that features the Monongahela Monster attacking the Smithfield Street Bridge and I love it so much. Not an ad!

• You must must must go see Eureka Day at Pittsburgh City Theatre. It is so good and is the hardest I have laughed in a theater in my life. Legitimately that hilarious. Not an ad. Support local theater! It’s here until March 29.

• I know it seems like right when the pandemic hit, I stopped talking about Make Room for Kids at Mario Lemieux Foundation. This is me telling you that we never stopped working on it and that I’m going to be sharing some wonderful news with you soon! For now, one thing we did recently was gift Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s transplant unit with a new 50-inch TV and cart that can be wheeled to the bedside of transplant patients who, for medical reasons, cannot move to a position that allows for them to game or watch television. How great is that! We’re told staff and patients on 7B are thrilled.

  

  Another group hug!

6. Wrap up!

That’s all, yinz! Have a wonderful week, weeks, month, etc. Be kind! Support local businesses, artists, groups, organizations, peeps, and events! Get the PastFinders app, you jags. Buy my book! Don’t litter!

And be sure to come out this weekend and see my new band Ed Gainey and the Budgetary Witches. Tickets only cost $2! We swear!

Don’t look at your receipt!

It wasn’t that long ago that I wrote in this very newsletter one of my furious open letters that I’ve been writing for 17 years now, this one to Pirates owner Bob Nutting. That open letter was so bursting with the fiery flames of my righteous indignation that it was reprinted as an essay in your paper, ironically launching a stint of me contributing essays to the Post-Gazette, which you announced today would cease operations in May. I used that letter to ask Bob Nutting a question.

“Are you proud?”

Over and over, I showed him the legacy he was destroying—a legacy that includes the extraordinary life sacrifice of Roberto Clemente—and I asked him, “Are you proud?”

I now ask you that same question you printed in your paper that day … are you proud?

Your family statement announcing the closure stated, “We are proud of the service the Post-Gazette has provided to Pittsburgh…”

Are you proud of what you’ve destroyed? Do you know what we call people who stand over smoldering ruins and take pride in the destruction? Supervillains.

Are you proud that you failed? Are you proud that you are losers? You’re losers in court. You’re losers in legacy and in being good neighbors and in business. You’re losers who stand in front of your newsroom drunkenly berating staff. You’re losers who childishly smack people with hamburger bags. You’re losers who tell your employees you’re shutting down their paper via a prerecorded video rather than having the guts to stand in front of them and look them in the eye. You’re even losers in fashion.

You look like Sheriff Woody interviewing to assistant-manage a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But most importantly, you’re losers in being Pittsburghers. You took a storied history stretching back to our military fort era and you pulled on your stupid cowboy boots and you stomped it into the ground just weeks after you ripped the City Paper away from us. You spent years and likely millions fighting a ruling you knew was inevitable because you knew full well that you broke labor law.

But you did more than just spend money; you spent our legacy. You bankrupted our history. You poured acid on it and watched it shrivel away, not caring one bit because you have enough money in your pockets and in your safes and in the art in your homes and the accounts in your banks.

I don’t begrudge anyone their wealth; I despise those who purchase or inherit legacies and then do nothing to protect them. That’s the tragedy here. It was never safe in your hands. You never cared for it the way you should have. You shifted your editorial slant to mirror your own, which stands in complete opposition to the majority of the city in which you operate, and wondered why your subscription numbers plummeted.

You let us all down and now you’re taking your ball and going home because the highest court in the land ruled against you. You don’t get to blame the union when court after court said the same thing—you, you, you were the losers. It all started with you and it now ends with you when it should have ended years ago with you recognizing you aren’t worthy of our city, our paper or our history.

I don’t know what it would have taken, that is true. Print journalism is an incredibly challenging market. But I do know you weren’t invested enough in the legacy to commit yourselves to making it work. You fought the strike and even when the writing was on the wall that you would lose, you fell prey to something that intellectually weak people often do: sunk cost fallacy. Yes, I’m telling you that your attitude is akin to cult-think. You became too focused on the money you already spent and the position you already took that you forgot to look into the future. Instead, you became terrified of doing the work of thinking reasonably. You were so far in, that even when you realized staying in would mean destruction, you stubbornly wouldn’t turn back. You spent and you spent and you marched your cowboy boots right past the point of no return knowing that by doing so, you were going to destroy the very thing you wanted us all to believe you were trying to save.

Please hear me, Block family: don’t for one day for the rest of your lives believe in your hearts that when you leave this Earth you will leave behind a legacy worth honoring or respecting. Don’t for one day for the rest of your time in Pittsburgh believe that we will see you in a restaurant or on the streets and not call out to you. To shame you. To remind you of what you destroyed. We deserved to keep our legacy; you don’t deserve a moment of peace in this town now that you killed it.

We will ring the shame bell. We will boo you to your face. We will mock your clothes and your hair and your hat and your billowy pants tucked into your stupid boots. We’ll remind you of your role in our story: the supervillains. We’ll remind you that you’ll all go to your graves not as builders—which is what true Pittsburghers are—but as destroyers.

You create nothing. You leave nothing. You are parasites who are no longer welcome in Pittsburgh where we now have to mourn that which you murdered.

May you leave. May you rot. May you choke on the inhaled ashes of the legacy you set on fire. May you take Bob Nutting with you.

PittGirl out.

[exhale]

1. Pittsburgh meets its long-awaited new airport terminal

After four years of construction, Pittsburgh’s new $1.7 billion, 800,000+ square-foot airport terminal officially welcomed its first passengers on November 18, 2025. With our city’s character showcased in every nook and cranny, visitors to Pittsburgh will get a good idea of what we’re all about well before they shoot out of the Fort Pitt tunnel to find the car’s occupants immediately and automatically shushed into reverent silence by a magnetizing cityscape. Nature, sports, landscapes, people, businesses, neighborhoods—Pittsburgh is on display in the new terminal in a big, international way. Pittsburghers were so eager to get an early peek at the transformation that thousands signed up to help with two trial runs, happily carting empty suitcases and a positive attitude as they bid farewell to the whirrrr of the speedy train and the clickety-clacks of the baggage claim floor tile and traded them for a short walk, soothing surfaces, double the number of security lines and 6,000 additional parking spaces. Kudos to badass CEO Christina Cassotis who led the project with grace, humor, expertise and a plainly evident desire to give the people of Pittsburgh an airport that represented not only them, but also their pride. Mission accomplished.

2. The City of Champions once more

The City of Champions doesn’t always feel like such what with the Penguins finding new ways to let goal leads slip through their creases* and with the Pirates continuing to suck the suck of a million Dysons—that is to say, they stay stunk. It remains to be seen at this writing what the remainder of the Steelers season will bring as they face the Ravens in a winner-take-all hold-back-your-hair-because-here-come-the-nervous-pukes season finale. But the City of Champions indeed secured a professional sports championship in 2025 via our pro soccer club, the Riverhounds. They won their first USL title in their quarter-century history on November 22, 2025 by defeating Tulsa in a 5-3 shootout in front of a televised national audience. Their sister club, the Riveters, finished their first year of play by winning their division before falling out of the conference semifinals. One thing is certain: with all this winning and with the Hounds selling out 73% of their home games since 2023, we’re gonna need a bigger boat soccer stadium. Good news! The team announced in August that Highmark Stadium will undergo an expansion to increase seating capacity to 15,000, putting the team in position for Division One sanctioning in the future. Pittsburgh? Soccer town.

*not a euphemism

3. County and city violent crimes fall to lows not seen in decades

There’s an entire set of southwestern PA residents who want you to believe Pittsburgh is a violent, crime-ridden hellhole. With their personal politics almost always backlighting their claims, they do everything to convince you. They point out every crime-related news story and hold it up as evidence: “SEE? DO YOU SEE??” they announce victoriously. They want you to believe that ANY city crime is a new phenomenon that correlates directly to ruling political party rather than what it really is—a perpetual issue that all urban centers have faced since urban centers became a thing. Take it from this historian; you ain’t seen nothing compared to crime during earlier eras. That said, Allegheny County now has the receipts to prove that violent crime is not only falling, but is doing so in historic fashion. I don’t have to give you the numbers when you can just look at the chart of homicides reported to the Allegheny County medical examiner over the past nearly two decades. The City of Pittsburgh can claim the same, as they’ve seen the fewest homicides AND non-fatal shootings since as far back as 2018, the earliest year I can research on their dashboard. Yes, there’s crime. Yes, there are problems. So shush the fearmongers and get out and enjoy all our city and county have to offer.

4. The long nightmare of a Post-Gazette strike finally ends

It has been a long three years since I last contributed to the Post-Gazette out of solidarity with striking union members. It has been a long three years since I last shared a link to a Post-Gazette article. More importantly, it was a long three years that the newspaper was a struck paper before a series of legal wins at the federal level motivated the Guild to return to work in November 2025 with a stated goal of immediately doing their part to return the paper to its former status of “One of America’s Great Newspapers.” I cannot express how much, as a historian, I value the rich legacy of the Post-Gazette—one that stretches back to the earliest days of Pittsburgh when it was still a military fort town. I need so badly for the paper to survive. I hope the Blocks understand the enormous responsibility they shoulder to protect its legacy. I hope they understand that it’s not about them or their family or their status or wealth. It’s not just about business. It’s about the seams of solid, honest journalism that run through the bedrock of any healthy city. If the Blocks don’t much care to continue protecting the legacy, I wish they’d walk away.* Long live the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Please subscribe. Not an ad.

* Bob Nutting, are you also listening?

5. Pittsburgh makes THE LIST

Pittsburghers love to brag when we make published lists, from the massive accolades that come with being named the Most Livable City to the scattered applause that comes with being named something like “One of the best cities for deodorant sales.” But this year we made a truly brag-worthy list: National Geographic’s Best of the World for 2026. As their editors and experts compiled their popular annual travel recommendations, they nestled our very own metropolis amongst some of the world’s most picturesque places—South Korea; Rio de Janeiro; Yamagata Prefecture in Japan; Rwanda; Khiva, Uzbekistan; Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s an impressive list and Pittsburgh being the only U.S. urban center on it is quite a compliment. Why did they put us on the list? They point to our museums (especially next year’s Carnegie International) and places like the North Side’s Pop District and Aviary, neighborhoods like the Strip, the forthcoming Market Square unveiling slated for April and other revitalization efforts happening alongside preparations for the NFL Draft. This is one list we shouldn’t hesitate to brag about for all of 2026. I mean, be really annoying about it.

6. The Kamins give … and give … and give … and give

Listen. I’m never ever ever going to be happy about the name Carnegie coming off of the Science Center. I hate it. I hate it so much. I hate it like the Pittsburgh Penguins hate a three-goal lead. It’s the historian in me; it’s the yinzer in me. Call things what they’re called once and never ever change the name. Are you listening, Starlake/First Niagara/Post-Gazette/Chicken of the Sea/Chef Boyardee Amphitheater? The same goes for Heinz Field. That said, having visited the Science Center recently (I’m a member!) and experiencing the impact of Kamin money … well it shut my fat. mouth. up. The $65 million donation means that everything is shiny and new and overhauled and painted. Have you seen the cool screen in front of the miniature railroad? The refurbished open and inviting lobby? The new Sports360 exhibit? Even the website got itself a spiffy makeover. And it’s not just the Science Center. The $11.5 million they’ve given to the History Center means kids 17 and under get to visit for free … in perpetuity. They donated $25 million to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for a refresh of the Hall of Dinosaurs and ongoing paleontological research; it’s the largest gift since Carnegie’s in 1895. Tack on another $65 million they donated this year to the new UPMC Presbyterian tower in Oakland for construction and ongoing research support and it’s clear the Kamins seem hellbent on singlehandedly shoring up our city’s cultural and science institutions. And we all benefit from that. Bravo.

7. Oakmont CC shows the world’s best golfers who’s the boss

Like the new airport, it felt like we’d been waiting forever for the 2025 US Open at Oakmont Country Club. The world’s best golfers finally teed off for the 125th playing of the major on June 12, 2025, vying for a total purse of $21.5 million across four days of tournament play in front of around 200,000 total spectators injecting an estimated $288.8 million into Pennsylvania’s economy. This was the 10th time Oakmont has hosted the tournament, the last nearly a decade ago, and it maintained its reputation as a day-ruining course that makes even the world’s most talented golfers want to yeet their clubs, bag and all, into the sun. American J. J. Spaun won his first major by being THE ONLY PLAYER TO FINISH UNDER PAR … and just barely, coming in at a whopping one stroke under. If there’s a golf course in hell, it’s probably Oakmont. But it’s also in heaven, as any golfer will tell you they’d swim the Mon for a chance to tee off on this course they know will kick them crying to their knees. Despite some dramatics from Mother Nature, including windy storms and lightning, the Open was a huge success and once again showcased that the Pittsburgh region is more than what the world thinks we are. Though she be but little, she is fierce.

8. Downtown revitalization kicks into high gear … finally

This year, the much-needed post-pandemic downtown revitalization stopped being theoretical and started feeling real. Take a little stroll once the weather isn’t the kind that makes your skin hurt and makes you question why you live in a place that has air that makes your skin hurt. The signs of revitalization are everywhere, thanks in part to a $600 million investment by the state. Market Square is already showing off portions of its new look that will soon serve as a visual throwback to its late 18th-, early 19th-century history as an open air market. Arts Landing, the Cultural Trust’s new outdoor civic space is taking shape, promising to bring some much-desired additional community space to the Golden Triangle. On the North Side, the Pop District continues to fill out while the Esplanade that we seemed to hear about for a decade has actually broken ground. This Post-Gazette article highlights additional revitalization projects that are underway, including new housing and hotels. I’ve been saying since the end of the pandemic that we have to start looking at downtown less as a center of business and more as a destination. These changes will go a good ways toward doing that very thing.

9. A Pittsburgh dad does a good good thing

When SNAP benefits took a hit in 2025 due to government shutdowns alongside cuts outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (I still can’t believe that’s what it’s called; we are not a serious country), many families across the U.S. found themselves experiencing unexpected food insecurity. As donations poured into the nation’s food banks in an effort to offset the cuts, one local man decided to take matters into his own hands. In October, Whitehall’s A.J. Owen took his young sons on a $150 Aldi run on Steelers Sunday to create a bin-based food pantry. Saying he wanted to be one of those helpers Mister Rogers spoke about, his front lawn food pantry went viral on TikTok where he shared his daily work with captions like, “We will not let Pittsburgh go hungry.” Before long he was taking congratulatory calls from Governor Shapiro, enjoying national media coverage, finding thousands of dollars in donations in his mailbox, and even better, inspiring people across the country to start their own free food pantries. Named one of Good Morning America’s Changemakers for 2025, A.J. continues to preach the gospel of fighting food insecurity with community action while making Pittsburgh proud to call him one of their own.

10. Sara Innamorato exceeds her 500 in 500 goal

When Sara Innamorato stepped her stylish heels and comfy sneakers into the footprint left behind by Rich Fitzgerald in early 2024 as the first woman to lead Allegheny County, there were a lot of judgmental eyes on her. Could she do the job? Does she have the education? The skills? The charisma? Is she too progressive? Can she really make a difference? Armed with a blazing smile, visible tattoos, and an unmistakable hell-yes attitude, she set out to prove her critics wrong and her supporters right. One of her lofty goals was the 500 in 500 initiative that she launched in June 2024 with the goal of identifying 500 affordable housing units available in Allegheny County in 500 days and matching them with those experiencing homelessness, particularly those using emergency shelters as long-term housing. Smartly, instead of devoting resources to building new shelters to solve the overcrowding problem, the county chose to devote resources to getting people into homes, thus freeing up the shelters for what they’re intended—emergencies. On October 18, 2025, day 500, Innamorato announced that 622 people had been housed in 387 units, while another 83 people were in the process of moving into an additional 37 units. Another 12 units had been identified for matching with those in need. Beyond that, 132 additional units are pledged to the initiative or are under construction. This is the way forward, and Sara Innamorato deserves applause for addressing the problem with equal measures of empathy and action. Job well done.

There’s a lot to be proud of in Pittsburgh as we close out 2025. Tomorrow, we must look to 2026 when the city will encounter economic turbulence. How our city and county leaders handle this will determine our path for likely the next decade. Will they find a way to pull us out of a dive to soar above the mountain? Or will they crash us back into state oversight? I remain hopeful that regardless of what 2026 brings, we have proven time and again that we are a resilient people who always find a way to rise out of the ashes of whatever burned down around us.

See you in 2026!

My teen daughter and I were driving back from the evening sensory-friendly session of Handmade Arcade a few weeks ago and were on the Boulevard of the Allies heading toward Oakland when she pointed out a large Christmas tree on the South Side. I, in turn, pointed out the Duquesne Light clock and said, “I’ve told you about that, right?”

She said, “Uh. Something about it being the biggest clock in the world?...”

I enthused, “Not anymore! At one time it was considered to be!” Then I eagerly launched into its origin story as part of a Coca-Cola billboard along the face of Mount Washington in the 1930s before being moved in the 1960s.

Now, my daughter has the kind of smarts that come along with autism. She’ll talk Pliny the Elder with you as much as she’ll explain complex paleontological findings using phrases like “we actually now believe [some newfangled complex paleontological finding].” She, therefore, thinks her mom is a complete doofus and not just because I once admitted to her that I thought reindeer were mythical creatures well into my 40s until I saw one at Living Treasures Animal Park and nearly fell out of my skin all THEY DO EXIST!

After I gave her the history of the clock, she said absentmindedly toward her window, “You sure know a lot about Pittsburgh history.” Reader, I immediately turned into Khaby Lame all …

I entered a wild flail. “I done been telling you that! I teach Pittsburgh history! I have a Master’s degree! You’ve seen it hanging on my wall! I am smart!”

And she was like, okay, what’s 13 minus 8? and so I grounded her.

Speaking of math not being real … let’s chat!

1. The math finally maths

It wasn’t Snowmageddon territory, but Pittsburgh was smote with enough snow to create some beautiful chaos as peaceful silences that come from a thickly laid snow blanket were occasionally disrupted by the sounds of motorists attempting to get their sedans up some of Pittsburgh’s steepest streets from a dead stop rather than trusting the physics that says you need some momentum if you want to have even a glimmer of hope of making it to the top before you run out of gas.

While some of the city streets remained unplowed or unsalted even 48 hours or more after snow ended, the Gainey admin released a statement saying they expect a return to pavement by the end of today for all city streets (honestly likely more abetted by warming temperatures than salt application).

Now, you’re wondering as I do every year: snow has been a city issue since we were born in 1816. How have we not figured it out yet? The answer, I’ve found, is in the numbers. Back in February of this year, public works director Chris Hornstein reported:

The city should ideally have roughly 123 snow-fleet vehicles to adequately handle “what I think residents want to see” in a street-clearing response. Instead, it has 103 snow fleet vehicles — and around a third of those, or 37 vehicles, are out of commission.

Okay; 123 is the magic number for adequate snow-clearing and Pittsburgh was working with 20 fewer than needed back in February. Let’s see what was available to DPW crews during this weekend’s snow, some nine months later:

Winter weather operations began on Saturday with 61 trucks and 16 reserve units.

No need to call in Scooby and the gang; the mystery has been solved. The City of Pittsburgh DPW crews were expected to clear seven to nine inches of snow with [checks calculator] 46 FEWER TRUCKS than the 123 needed for adequate levels of snow removal and with only 77 of their 103 trucks actually working. Talk about being set up for failure.

The math says no amount of reconfiguring the routes or timing is going to solve the problem. The only thing that will do so is either it stops snowing forever in Pittsburgh, or the city adds to the snow-removal fleet. The Gainey 2026 proposed budget, which is considered by council to be anywhere from fiscally problematic to a bald-faced rose-colored lie, calls for a nearly $1 million investment in the DPW vehicle fleet, though there is no specificity indicated as to how much of that would be earmarked for snow-removal vehicles.

It remains to be seen what the 2026 final budget will include, as Gainey’s desperate desire to leave office on a high note that he believes strengthens his mayoral legacy butts against the desire of the council he leaves behind to not run into a massive shortfall that ends up being the first domino to fall on our way further into very scary economic territory.

Buckle up, kids. And not just because your mom is about to try to get up slushy Canton in her 2002 Ford Escort.

* Yes, I had to use a calculator. Don’t tell my daughter.

2. How dare Pittsburghers have a Pittsburgh accent! shouts man yelling at clouds

This is from weeks ago, but please read this unhinged letter received by the Trib’s entertainment reporter Rob Owen:

Q: Why don’t local TV anchors and field reporters get together on pronunciations of area towns, neighborhoods, etc.?

I see this on newscast after newscast: Anchor uses Pittsburghese and field reporter uses another pronunciation (many times the correct one) or vice versa. Seems like a good way to pick who is the Yinzer born and raised and who is a transplant from elsewhere.

Is there no one at the stations whose job it is to get them on the same page? Why don’t they decide we’re going with one or the other?

Examples:

Pittsburghese: “North Ver-sales.”

Actual: “North Ver-sigh” for North Versailles.

Pittsburghese “Lower Berl.”

Actual: “Lower BurrEL” for Lower Burrell.

Pittsburghese: “DahnTahn.”

Actual: Downtown.

— Dave, Pittsburgh

Internet, if I, a news anchor, had it thrown back to me in the studio by a field reporter who just pronounced North Versailles as “North Ver-SIGH,” I would simply …

… and then I would start laughing and I would never stop laughing and they would fire me for it and I’d also have to be committed to a mental institution due to the world’s first case of “incurable ROTFL” and then one day my gravestone would just read *dies laughing*.

Someone come get your man Dave and explain to him it hasn’t been pronounced like the French Versailles since we scared them into burning down their own fort back in 1758* and anyone who attempts to pronounce it as such had better be prepared to be laughed out of the city like that 5-foot-7 dude who likes to let delusional people think he’s JFK Jr.

BOOM! Politics!

Also, honestly, it’s a miracle we pronounce Duquesne the way we do. I kind of miss the days when Google Maps would say, “Turn right onto Fort Doo-KEZ-nee Boulevard.”** Damn you, whoever corrected that.

* Yes, this is an historical exaggeration. Do not email me. I swear to God.

** When I teach Pittsburgh history, I always do a little spiel on how it’s weird Pittsburgh named so much stuff after losers: Grant. Braddock. Duquesne. I’m a fun teacher!

3. Baby got back … her chipped chopped ham, n’at

I’m going to say something controversial, so grab your yinzer butts: Eat’n Park’s iconic Smiley cookies aren’t very good anymore. Is it yinzer sacrilege to say that? What if I also told you that I order salads at Primanti’s? Fight me.

Anyway! My local Isaly’s used to have these yellow iced smile cookies that were always so much tastier and fresher. I’d walk my little toddler son down each Saturday for a cookie and milk and a coffee for me. Then we’d get some chipped chopped ham or a needed loaf of bread and we’d walk home and I swear I’m not making this up in an effort to secure my yinzer card from your grabby hands. These days, Smiley cookies are so mass-produced that you no longer get them fresh with the icing a bit soft and the cookie a bit chewy. Read the replies to this Reddit post and you’ll find that most people claiming to love them admit it’s more out of a sense of nostalgia than the actual taste and texture.

Do you really love them? Or do you love the IDEA of them?

That said, great news, Isaly’s lovers!

Isaly’s is making a comeback, with plans underway to open a new shop in Pittsburgh’s Strip District that brings back the traditional charm and offerings that made the original stores beloved throughout western Pennsylvania.

Our iconic brand, since 2015, is returning to its roots — inspired by memories of skyscraper ice cream cones and deli counters serving signature chipped chopped ham. We’re reintroducing these nostalgic elements in a new 3,500-square-foot space at 2111 Penn Ave., marking the first new Isaly’s store in decades.

I. Am. Ecstatic.

Finally we get something old back again*, which surprisingly doesn’t happen often enough here in a town with a wildly overdeveloped sense of nostalgia. Can you imagine if they opened a tiny Hills somewhere, complete with the cafe? And the store that was attached to the cafe only sold Hills-branded merch and nostalgic throwback items like these toys or these shirts** so you felt like you walked back in time? Extra credit if they housed modern payment terminals within old cash registers.

I know we’ve already established this on many occasions, but I have the best ideas.

I expect you all to join me in patronizing this new Isaly’s enough to make it profitable. Don’t disappoint me or I’ll deliver a dozen day-old Eat’n Park Smiley cookies to your front door.

Hope you like chalk and cavities.

* Remains to be seen if we will be getting one of the new Chi-Chi’s restaurants. I’d truly love a classic Baja Burrito. I feel like since Pittsburgh is the regional home to the green onion Hep-A outbreak that took four lives in 2003, we’re probably not high on their list of markets they’d consider to be potentially profitable. Shame.

**That’s a local company BTW

4. I wanna talk about me me me me

I have been really busy and have so many things I’ve been wanting to share in detail with you all, but I have to just round them up here for you.

• My podcast interview with City Cast Pittsburgh about my Yinzer Holiday Gift Guide is here. In it, I say my favorite thing I’ve ever said about Terrible Towels: “They’re meant to have their character SHOVED into them.” (Also, please subscribe to and support City Cast Pittsburgh because it is an important media outlet that is always full of great local info and insights.)

• My KDKA-TV Talk Pittsburgh interview with Heather Abraham and Boaz Frankel about the gift guide can be viewed here. (You guys know I don’t watch videos of myself because of all my [gestures widely at my whole everything] issues, so email me with specific praise only. Emails not containing specific praise will be printed out and fired into the sun.)

• I also did a KDKA Radio interview about the gift guide but I can’t find a link to that. In it I was asked what opinion I have that would get my yinzer card immediately revoked and my answer was that the Pittsburgh Left creates more traffic problems than it solves. I’ll die on that hill while you flash your high-beams at me even though there IS NO ONE BEHIND YOU. OMG JUST GO.

• There are a bunch of new and fun self-guided audio/visual walking tours on the PastFinders app, including: downtown Pittsburgh’s public art, our theaters past and present, and a long Welcome to Pittsburgh tour that loops downtown. We’ve also got walking tours of Homestead and even places like Boston, Philly, ATL, and more. Check them out and learn something while you get out there and explore! It’s free and the Android version should launch in the next few days.

  

  Also, I’m designing all of the cover art in the app without the assistance of AI, so be nice. It’s a struggle for someone not trained in graphic design. If your organization would like to put a walking tour on the map, or just build a collection of scattered historical waypoints for users to explore, reach out to me!

5. An Ode to the Rabid Black and Gold Fan

My latest column for Pittsburgh Magazine is essentially me backing up my long-held belief that Pittsburgh’s modern diehard sports fandom is actually a historical remnant of the days when our teams essentially helped save Pittsburgh’s pride during the steel industry collapse. I found some great quotes and video. First, this from Terry Bradshaw defending the city:

In 1975, an interviewer with Playboy magazine advised Terry Bradshaw that he’d enjoy greater fame playing for a more “glamorous” city. Bradshaw told the interviewer to look out the window onto Pittsburgh and tell what he saw. “Murky steel mills and green water,” came the reply. But Bradshaw, suddenly defensive, pointed out more. “I see the stadium. I see a barge … There’s the Clark candy bar company on the hill. That pretty bridge. The hillside. Hey, what better view could you want? How much more glamorous can a city get?”

And this:

In an NFL film from the 1979 season, Steeler fans are celebrating a playoff victory at a local dive when an older woman, surrounded by blue-collar yinzers, says earnestly to cheers, “It’s the greatest thing ever. It’s done so much for Pittsburgh, for the sports fans … see, we’re greater than just millworkers; there’s more than that to Pittsburgh, right?”

You can watch the video here. Start at 14:33 if you’re looking for that exact snippet.

Give the whole thing a read. I think it will help you understand why sports yinzers are the way they are and why they are also deservingly unapologetic about it.

6. Random n’at

Just a few little things that are actually big things:

• Speaking of great ideas, this opinion piece in Public Source arguing that the Clemente Bridge should be transformed into a linear city park has my enthusiastic stamp of approval. MAKE IT HAPPEN.

• Joe Manganiello moved back home, in case you see him this winter at the Iggle buying a panic-laden cartload of milk and toilet paper. A true yinzer.

• If you’re hunting for a last-minute gift, Iron City Distilling will be selling only 176 bottles of their new Bessemer Rye starting this Friday, December 19th at 10:00 A.M. in their shop at 150 Ferry Street in Creighton. There’s a two-bottle limit. Not an ad! Look at the cool label. You know I buy things solely based on a label that speaks to me:

  

• Another last-minute idea is either donating to the Mario Lemieux Foundation on behalf of your loved one during the “Mario Match” period, or grabbing one of these cool new Goorin Bros. hats! Also not an ad.

  

7. That’s all, yinz!

That’s it for today! I’ll see you before December 31 for this year’s Ten Best Things That Happened in Pittsburgh in 2025 roundup. It’s full of good news and awesome local progress and accomplishments made in the city over the last year despite …

I love you, Seth Meyers.

Be kind! Shovel your damn sidewalks! Email me specific and effusive praise! Have a wonderful holiday! And be sure to get out and see my new band Bald-faced Rose-Colored Lie.

We do lots of Taylor Swift covers.

You know the drill, unless you’re new here. In which case … why has it taken you so long to find me? Nothing is an ad. No products are AI-generated (see note at end of post). I have not received any item on this list. I do not accept free goods or discounts. I have spent hours and hours finding local makers who should have stock or the ability to meet demand. If an item sells out, email the maker and see if they can help you. Make it worth their while. Also, this year I really tried to fill the list with plenty of affordable options in light of [gestures widely at everything everywhere all at once].

As I ask every year, don’t gate-keep the list! The point is to share it with as many people as possible so that our local shops can get lots of business. I’m saddened when I revisit great shops only to find they’re no longer in operation. So buy what you want and then send the list to others and encourage them to shop local.

And off we go as soon as we have a quick prayer circle for all of our credit cards. In MasterCard’s name, fa-la-la-la-men.

1. Sleepy Hollow Pittsburgh-themed soaps, $8-12

You know how they say last but not least? True. But in this case, this is literally a “first because, hell yeah!” situation. These locally made soaps are floating my rubber ducky*, you guys. I’m confused as to how I wasn’t aware of them until now, which speaks poorly of your job performance. The side business of husbands Tim and Joey, all of their soaps are works of art, and their Pittsburgh-themed versions are true stunners. Look at their cute little Goodnight PGH soap and the confluence! There is a lot of black and gold merch out in the world that looks like Steely McBeam designed it while on an LSD trip, but these are classy enough to put in the fanciest soap dishes. Their mini soaps and the $10 sample sets would be perfect stocking stuffers for campers or literally anyone who bathes. They also have gift cards, deodorant, shower steamers and more! Go nuts and shout, “Hell yeah!” (The swirly Champ Yinz soap is currently sold out, but I’m hopeful they’ll get a new batch up there soon!)

* not a euphemism

2. Tabbara Advent Calendar, $65

This is high on the list because if you want it, you’ve got to order it as ASAP as possible. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Just go straight to the link and hit “add to cart” because I don’t know how long they’ll be available and they are shipping very soon. Okay, that out of the way, let me say … HOLY WOW! This might be the prettiest and coolest chocolate advent calendar I’ve ever seen. Tabbara is new to me (again, you suck at your job) and they’re a woman-owned third-generation chocolatier with roots stretching back to Beirut, Lebanon. Look at the chocolates with their stamped winter phrases and their numbers and I’m so fully freaking out with warm and fuzzies right now that I’d literally cuddle a cactus just to have something to hug. As PittGirl used to say, “Squeeeeee!”*

* She was a bit much, was she not?

3. Pittsburgh-themed spirits from $25

LISTEN. It is not unusual for me to purchase bottles of wines and spirits for gifts based solely on how much I like the label, and thus these are the bottles I would absolutely buy for the person in your life who loves the Burgh as much as they love a good locally distilled spirit. Included are:

• Wigle’s Renegade Rye ($39), because as a historian, I love the local Prohibition angle of this one so much.

• Threadbare Cider’s Allegheny Dry or Bridge City Bubbly ciders , available at their Ross Park Mall bottle shop.

• Boyd and Blair’s Happy Valley Vodka made from Pennsylvania potatoes for those in your life who like to shout “WE ARE!” right into your face, or any of their officially licensed Steelers spirits ($25 and up) for those who shout “PLAY RENEGADE” right into your face.

• Lawrenceville Distilling’s Parking Chair vodka or any of their Pittsburgh themed bottles from GINzer to Jaggerbush ($27 and up).

4. Gold or silver Linear Stick Earrings by Light Shine, $20.78

Eeeeeeeeeeeee! I love earrings with an unusual thread; therefore, these understated baddies made the list. I do think these will sell out as it’s a small maker and literally anyone with holes in their head can wear these and make them look good. If they sell out, the rest of her shop has fantastic affordable alternatives from these understated silver Triangle Drops ($20.78) to these statement colorful clay earrings ($30.78) in a soothing ombre, or this paperclip floral toggle necklace I’m coveting ($40.78). I do love a good toggle piece. She also has a selection of faith-inspired items for the religious person in your life.

5. Feliz Nebby Dad tee from Luluz Design, $30

The way I cackled in Spanish. Created by local Luluz Design, who has appeared on the list in the past, this is a shirt that will only work if you wear it in Pittsburgh, but, man, would it be a hit at the casual holiday party with your pals. It’s on preorder right now, yet will for sure arrive before Navidad itself. Show up at the party bearing these Luluz yinzer-themed drinking coasters ($16) as a hostess or White Elephant gift:

6. Hopebound Recycled Bead Bracelet by Zip With Us, $20

Again, let me say this: Eeeeeeeeeee! How about we all get together and support a mother of four from Valencia who uses her free time to create zip shirts and onesies for children undergoing cancer and other life-saving treatments that require regular access to their chemo ports or medical lines? The wild part? She provides sick children with a zip-shirt or onesie FOR FREE. Wow. While we don’t all know someone who has a sick child, we do all know someone who would love a beautiful bracelet that supports such a worthy local effort. In comes the new Hopebound Recycled Bead Bracelet by Zip With Us. Available in three colors of African glass beads and handmade with knotted waxed linen, these make beautiful stacking bracelets, as seen in the photos. They’re only $20 and are available in two lengths or a custom length. Plus 100% of the proceeds go right to Zip With Us. Love this!

7. Pet collars from Collars by Kylie, $18 and up

I believe I put some version of these collars on the list many moons ago, but they are worth a revisit! These adorable pet collars are locally made and come in a variety of fabrics and in various sizes with your choice of buckle type, including dainty little breakaway latches for the wee-est of kittens. I particularly love this holiday-themed collection, and I imagine there’s many a dog named Sid in the city that would look adorable sporting one of the Pittsburgh sports-themed collars. But don’t sleep on some of the more understated options, like her plant-themed collars. What’s very cool is you can add on a keychain fob, scrunchie key-fob wristlet, hair scrunchie or a leash that matches the fabric you choose for the collar! Poop-scooping, but make it fashion.

8. Rosalind Candy Castle chocolate gifts, starting at $6.50

I like my chocolate to be made in a castle because I am very fancy in my fancy-pants*, and thus I’m a fan of anything that comes out of the Rosalind Candy Castle in New Brighton. Shop in their store, online (with wrapping options!), or check their product locator to find their candies around the region. For gift-giving, I have four options, all crafted in small batches, that are winners for the hostess or the chocolate-lover in your life: the Peanut Butter Christmas Novelties box ($19.95) is full of adorable seasonal figures like bells, Santas and wreaths; 10-piece Holiday Gift Box ($13.95) is affordable, less Christmas-specific, and you can also get it with the Pittsburgh skyline on the chocolate bar; five-piece Christmas Set ($9.95) would be ideal for children. Finally, for only $6.50, the most excellent wine gift accompaniment in the form of a bottle hanger featuring four of their truffles. Pair that one with a good bottle of wine and you’ve got a complete gift! Check out their whole winter holidays section!

* Purchased from Marshall’s for $14.99

9. John and Millie Muse wooden incline toy, $18 at Love, Pittsburgh

I’ve seen John and Millie Muse’s locally made wood toys at various shows and stores over the years, but this is the first I’m seeing their wonderful toy incline! (Related: you’re fired.) How adorable and a fun way to instill funicular enthusiasm into the youngest of Burghers. (Stand by for an incoming stroke of branding brilliance: “They put the fun in funicular!” Now please stand by for an incoming band name: Funicular Enthusiasm. I’m a genius.) I’m using the word funicular because I’ve recently had a person from Ireland and a person from NYC refer to our inclines as such. Very fancy. I like to say it with a French accent while I nibble my chocolates that were made in a castle while wearing my $14.99 pants from Marshall’s. You can also find the toy at the University of Pittsburgh shop for $16.

10. Revive & Revel skin and gear goods, starting at $12.99

Did you guys know that Revive & Revel is headquartered in Pittsburgh, because I sure didn’t and you are sure as heck still fired. Talk about the perfect gift for the runner, athlete or outdoorsman/woman in your life. What makes this company unique is their focus on creating products that are made for sport, sweat and stink, and it all grew out of their dissatisfaction with existing sport sunscreens. I especially love that their sweat wipes are biodegradable and their sunscreen complies with Hawaii’s reef-safe sunscreen guidelines. Their skin products are long-lasting even with sweat, and are quick-drying for easy reapplication. They also have waterproofing and odor-eliminating sprays to help with overall shoe and gear stink. These sprays would also be a good stocking stuffer for a hockey or lacrosse player because I’m told their gear is stinky enough to make Satan cry.

11. Bar and Open Sterling Rings by Angelee Jewelry, $90 and up

I am obsessed with every single one of Angelee Jewelry’s rings, especially her long bar and open versions, because WHAATTTTT! How unique and eye-catching! Angie, the maker and Sewickley native, studied under a master silversmith and has been honing her craft for 15 years now. Thus, her locally made jewelry creations are works of art and the ideal gift for the special person in your life for whom you go big each year. I can’t speak to the supply or the turnaround time on these because, again, this is art, so get your orders in ASAP if you choose to purchase any of her works.

12. Customized handwritten recipe cutting board by Black River Arts, $70 for the first, then $30 each (was $80, so get on this sale)

I discovered woman-owned Black River Arts out of Derry while shopping in Ligonier this fall and I just had to put this handwritten recipe cutting board on the list because what a gorgeous way to pay tribute to a cherished family recipe! I’ve seen mass-market produced ceramic plates along these lines, but I really love the locally engraved take on the trend. Dig out your elder’s old handwritten recipe, or, if they’re living, ask them to write it down by hand. You then send that to Black River Arts and they’ll clean it up and laser-engrave it onto a cutting board that will be perfect for display or gifting. The first board will be $70 (was $80!), so this is one of the pricier items on the list; however, additional boards are only $30, so it could average out to a more affordable gift. Consider splitting the cost with your siblings and/or cousins. Or put your own cherished recipe on it and gift it to your children and say, “If you let this recipe die with me, I’ll haunt your cupboards forever.” I’m a good mom.

13. The Boxy Pouch by Querida Designs, $36

Wow! Look at those! Look at the design! Look at the structure! Look at all these exclamation points!!!!!!!!! Fiber artist Rachel Stine has a ton of awesome goodies in her shop of locally made bags, pouches and other textile goods, but her Boxy Pouches make a wonderful gift for use as toiletry or shaving bags for the traveler in your life. Loving that carrying handle! These three prints are my favorites, because it’s all about me, but check out the whole line to find the perfect bag for your person (or yourself). There are some simple geometric prints too for the minimalist look. Also check out the rest of her shop, especially her crossbody bag collection. I’ve got my eye on that bee bag.

14. Kool Image Dolls, $34.99 or $99.99

Reader, meet Zuri and Nia (and their designer Dominique), the first dolls to accurately reflect Black bodies by incorporating lighter palms and soles … and it happened here in Pittsburgh! I had wanted to feature these a year or so ago (what is time?), but the next batch wouldn’t have been ready until after the holidays, so you can imagine how excited I was to see they are currently available for purchase! These dolls, soft Nia, for the 6 months and older infant set and, Zuri, for the 3 years and older set, are a labor of love from Pittsburgh sculptor Dominique Scaife, who set out to work with doll manufacturers to create a doll that “affirms and reinforces to children of color how beautiful they are.” Due to its small-batch nature, this is one that should be purchased the moment you know you want to buy it for the child in your life. And yes, you can purchase for that child their own shirt that matches their doll’s! Someone who can afford to do so, please donate several of these to this year’s Stuff-A-Bus.

15. Triple B Farms gift boxes, starting at $18.99

I have loved Triple B Farms since my children were in grade school as it’s in regular rotation among local school field trips. Students go to have fun, take hayrides, learn how plants grow and see all the farm’s animals (including peacocks). I pick baskets of berries there in the summer and apples in the fall. My sister is a baking genius and she uses their fruits to create her marvelous pies, crumbles, crisps and scones. Their farm store is a treasure for grabbing the jams, spreads and other goods they make from scratch. They have a wide assortment of thematic gift boxes that would delight the jam, charcuterie, coffee, pumpkin, strawberry, blueberry, pickle or breakfast lover in your life. I’m a big fan of their Route 51 Traffic Jam because, well, it’s very my brand. That one is included in several of their gift sets, but I’d imagine you know someone who would especially love their Pittsburgh FAMOUS box ($44.99). Poke around all their boxes to find the perfect one, or if you’d like a more affordable gift, grab individual jars of any of their goods. They have a maple bacon jam ($6.99) that my son loves to put on his burgers. Also, you’ll note their Pittsburgh box features honey by local Bumbleberry Farms. They have been on the list before and you should definitely check out all of their honey-centric gift boxes too.

16. Barefoot Forge railroad spike bottle openers, $25 for 1, $20 each for five or more

Barefoot Forge is new to me (so so fired) and I’m loving everything they make. They’re a collective blacksmithing group owned by Craig Cowan and their shop is in the North Hills. You can gift blacksmithing, steel making and welding classes (and date night classes!) to learn to make things like rings, knives, metal roses or coffee scoops. How fun! For an affordable gift that anyone can use, I love these bottle openers forged from railroad spikes. They’re forged in their shop and you can get a discount if you purchase five or more (great groomsmen gift idea). These really speak to my industrially appreciative heart. Man, Industrially Appreciative is a kickass band name that should definitely be the opening act for Funicular Enthusiasm. Check out the whole shop for their more pricey items, like these stack rings (from $50) that I’m in covet with. I would rock three of those so hard, my own face would melt off blast furnace style.

17. Yinzilla monster gifts by Alternate Histories

I have an autistic teen who loves Pittsburgh and whose hyper-fixations include Godzilla and the old B-movies out of Japan. God help you if you ever start talking to her about Godzilla; it’s like bringing up The Three-Body Problem books to me.* You better believe she’s getting lots of Yinzilla stuff this year. Yinzilla is the Pittsburgh Godzilla created by Matt Buchholz of the famed and local Alternate Histories shop. Matt has been expanding his product line for years and he’s one of the city’s most prolific and well-known makers and artists. Items I love, (but check out his whole shop):

• Yinzilla T-Shirt, $25, in the style of the old Godzilla movie posters out of Japan

• Yinzilla City, $25, in the style of Iron City

• Yinzilla holiday greeting card, $5

• Where’s Yinzilla: A Kids Book About Monsters and Pittsburgh, $14.99, and AH! MAZING! It’s locally designed, locally printed and hilarious. Go look at the sneak preview photos. Kids are going to love this 56-page delight!

• Yinzilla sticker sheet, $8, and perfect for the stocking. Eat’nHumans. LOL.

* Incidentally, she once got me talking about that trilogy and when I finally came up for air, she gave me a wide-eyed look and then said snarkily, “Now I see where I get my autism from.” Girl, you know you got it from Tylenol.**

** This is a joke. Don’t email me.

18. Tale of Silver vintage stamped charcuterie utensils and bookmarks, $17 and up

I’m a fan of whimsy and I’m a fan of charcuterie and I absolutely do eat it as a girl dinner sometimes because nothing says, “I do what I want,” like feasting on adult Lunchables while watching Psych reruns. If you are looking for a way to turn a food, wine or book gift into something more substantial, look no further than the local wares of Tale of Silver, run by Cara Cunningham. She is a mom and a maker and she has a shop full of vintage/antique spoons, forks, and knives that she converts into gifts that would bring a spot of joy to a charcuterie board, or a wheel of brie, or a slab of butter, or a jar of jam or a pile of dainty pickles or a container of homemade soup. For the reader, check out her collection of cheeky spoon and fork bookmarks. I have an affinity for this kind of stuff because a long time ago my grandfather made me a ring from the end of an antique fork and I still have it though he died long ago. These kinds of gifts last forever. And speaking of bookmarks…

19. Gifts for bibliophiles, $5 and up

I love a book-loving brain as much as I love books, so it seems only fitting I round up some of the best local literary gifts to spread joy among the readers in your life.

• Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh embroidered “Free to the People” knit beanie hat, $22.99

• Write Pittsburgh Candle that smells like aged pages, tobacco leaf, teakwood and amber. The perfect candle to burn while you’re snuggled up with your winter read with your castle chocolates and Marshall’s pants. Created by local literary candle company North Ave Candle; $17, with proceeds benefiting Write Pittsburgh. What a great collab! Pair it with …

• Literary matchstick vials from North Ave Candle available in a variety of options, $8

• Old Books incense sticks by PSquared at Love, Pittsburgh, $5

• White Whale Bookstore mural tote, featuring their building’s iconic mural. Screen-printed locally at Commonwealth Press, $22. Fill it with books and you have a complete gift!

• Celtic Dragonfly Pewter Bookmark from Wendell August Forge, $9

• Carnegie Library Tote by KLoRebel, $23. She only has these on her Etsy shop and not her main shop, so I’m guessing there are very few left. Like maybe only three? Grab them ASAP if you want one and gift it with the Free to the People beanie.

• Stand with the Banned t-shirt from City of Asylum, $30

If none of those suits your needs, can I interest you in … [dramatically whips open trench coat] any of these…

20. Cord + Iron Book Lovers or paint can soy candles, $19.99 and up

“Introverted but willing to discuss books” is also my brand, especially if you’re willing to discuss The Three Body Problem trilogy. Any of these witty glass jar literary candles from Cord + Iron would be a delightful gift for the book hoarder you tolerate. Also eye-catching for their unique aesthetic are their paint can candles which add an understated flair to candle-burning. All of their soy candles are hand-poured in Beaver using natural soy wax. As a note, I am deeply obsessed with their special edition 1996 candle, $34, featuring a cassette tape label, because, man, was that a good year in my life. Also check out their Showgirl candle, $19.99, for the Swifties on your list.

21. All New! Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Lionel Boxcars, from $99

If you snagged the much-coveted Mister Rogers Aquarium car from Lionel on last year’s Yinzer Gift Guide, then you’re probably going to want to add a few additional boxcars because Lionel has been BUSY on the Fred Rogers front! Available for purchase right now are the new Neighborhood of Make Believe Character Boxcar featuring all of your favorite puppet friends, and the Speedy Delivery Boxcar. You can also preorder the Mister Rogers “Behind the Scenes” boxcar with “Won’t you be my neighbor?” painted on the top, but the way Lionel works, you don’t really know the date that one will ship, so it might not arrive before the holidays. The first two can be tough to find because they’re so new. Here’s a site that has some ready to ship (and I did see some on Amazon). As for the one that’s still on pre-order, you can go here for that one. Also, one of their earlier releases is a boxcar that plays iconic Mister Rogers sounds on a timed loop! Love that! Now I want an entire Lionel train set that is just the Mister Rogers boxcars and I want them to be traveling around a tiny Neighborhood of Make-Believe while being pulled by their engine, Trolley.

22. Lux Artisan Chocolates, starting at $12.95

I don’t even like chocolate that much, but looking at the Lux website, a Pittsburgh-based chocolatier, I am ready to jump into my screen … clear eyes, face first, mouth open. Gorgeous gift for the chocolate-lover in your life, or as gifts for your employees. You could go quite affordable with a 12-piece set of their mini chocolate squares, $24, or a 6-pack of their stunning bonbons ($18), or go big with one of their customizable gift boxes that include various samples across their line. YOU CAN ALSO CREATE YOUR OWN CHOCOLATE BAR BY PICKING THE INGREDIENTS YOU WANT. How cool is that? And yes, they’ve got the Dubai chocolate ($17.95) that everyone is addicted to these days. Me? I prefer inhaling salted caramels ($13.95) until my teeth hurt good and my belly hurt bad. Did I just write a rap?

23. Striped wood cutting boards by JRG Kribel Woodworking, $54.99+

My closet is mostly stripes and therefore I was immediately drawn to the pattens of these cutting boards. Based out of Amity in Washington County, JRG Kribel Woodworking has a wonderful Etsy shop of functional wood products like cutting boards, charcuterie platters, old fashioned toy peg games, jewelry boxes and more. I’m particularly liking their bread boards for the ability to choose your wood patterns and to include a bowl for olive oil dipping. Select from five wood color options and, if you choose the olive oil option, five bowl patterns. The striped paddle cutting boards (54.99+) come in an even wider variety of woods/stripes! This is the kind of gift you don’t even need to pair with anything to make a statement. Gorgeous and meaningful on their own, but you could always grab a bottle of good olive oil or make a loaf of sourdough (that you learned to make during the pandemic) to pair with these.

24. Some jewelry I’m loving, $25 and up

Whew. Just looking at that photo collage gives me a peaceful feeling, even if it makes my checking account’s spidey senses tingle all “Oh lawd it coming.” The local jewelry makers have been kicking all the ass this year. Look at these four gorgeous options, two of which are space-themed! These four pieces come from three local makers and any of them would make a lovely gift for your person.

• Gold Ring Drops earrings by Jenna Vanden Brink, $56. Jenna, who has been on the list before, is a ceramic artist and thus these delicate drops of perfection are made from thin porcelain clay, painted with glossy glaze, and finished with gold luster which is fired onto the surface of the rings. These are a really classic look, so they’re suitable for just about anyone who loves a good hoop earring and who loves to be able to say “they’re locally made” when someone compliments their jewelry.

• Small Sun and Moon two-sided pendant necklace, $68. This also comes from Jenna and it’s such an inventive idea to put the sun and moon on opposite sides of a necklace pendant, and in such a way that they are understated and classy. There’s a larger version for just $10 more. Go to the item descriptions to read how Jenna creates these tiny works of celestial art.

• Leo and Lynn Star Double Hoop Illusion Post earrings, $25. These affordable locally made earrings are so whimsical and they give the illusion that the wearer has a double ear piercing even when they don’t. Love that! I would totally wear these. (And my checking account just said, “WE KNOW!”) Check out the rest of their store, which I’ve featured before, as they have very popular customizable hand-stamped necklaces.

• Three Rivers Porcelain Necklaces by Amy Solomon, $55. Hell. Yes. Look at this minimalist interpretation of our city’s three rivers by local maker Amy Solomon. Each of these handmade necklaces are individually painted and thus will vary slightly from the photos. You can choose to have the rivers outlined with silver or without. I can’t decide which version I like better, but I think I’m leaning toward without. There’s a gold version too, $75.

25. Pittsburgh t-shirts by the Lost Borough, $29

I stumbled on the Lost Borough at last year’s Handmade Arcade and then immediately shared their shirts in this newsletter. I also told myself they needed to be on the gift guide this year. I particularly love the look of the Winter in Pittsburgh shirt and the historical Hell With the Lid Taken Off shirt. For the public transportation-lover in your life, check out all the tees that feature the old Pittsburgh Railways trolley line numbers that once serviced various local neighborhoods. The shirt descriptions include thoroughly researched info about the neighborhoods and their trolley lines, so be sure to print that out and share it with whomever you gift these baddies.

26. Tea Towel roundup, $10 and up

I love tea towels. I love giving and receiving them as gifts. I love how useful they are. How they are works of art. How they make me laugh and remember the person who gave them to me. The way they look hanging from my stove handle. The way they can be combined with other kitchen-themed gifts or homemade baked goodies. Thus, let me share a few of my new favorites for this year!

• Pittsburgh Foods by Commonwealth Press, $15

• CMU/Julia Gash, $17.99 (check out the whole collab collection for this design on lots of other products)

• America and cheese by Sapling Press, $10*

• Chinatown Inn by KLoRebel, $25. Heck yes!

• Allegheny County Creatures by Pittsburgh City Paper, $15

* I’m 90% sure the answer to, “But how can we get more cheese into it?” is Psych’s “Fries Quatro Quesos Dos Fritos.”

27. Stocking stuffers from $2!

Figuring out what to put in a stocking has always been a challenge for me, but over the last several years, as my kids have grown (23 and 18! I am old! Exclamation points!!!!) to appreciate things other than candy, Slinkys and fidget spinners, I’ve begun focusing on locally made items for their stockings. Some good ones to grab:

• “Heart in Pittsburgh” leather keychain by Kinship, $10

• Pittsburgh photo keychains by CrazyCityLadyPhotos, $6 (choose from dozens of photo options). She also has magnets and other items with her photos.

• Six-sided dice by Reimagined Recycling, $2 and up and made from locally collected and processed single-use plastics. Put some colorful eco-friendliness into your next board game!

• Radiate Bitchitivity and Gay Agenda stickers from LiaDelyonArt, $3, because I love the sass and there are days where I definitely radiate the bitchitivity and it is glorious.

• Golden Triangle Calendula Salve or Duquesne Incline Soap from Pittsburgh Worsh Co., $9 or $20. How the heck do they get the incline image into the soap? Impressive.

• Yinzilla Big Ideas pocket notebook by Alternate Histories, $5. A silly place to doodle or jot down notes. And speaking of jotting down notes …

28. The Page wallet by Clark Morelia, $65

Local leather studio Clark Morelia (on the list last year for their dog leashes and collars) has a whole line of useful, minimalist wallets, but their new full grain vegetable-tanned The Page notebook leather wallet is just a little drop of delight! Perfect for that person who eschews the Notes app in favor of jotting their thoughts, ideas, reminders, spotted birds and random doodles onto actual paper. The great part is that if they want to use the wallet without the notebook at times, it comes right out and they can use the slot for additional cards. It’s like two gifts in one! If you’d like a more affordable gift from this shop, check out their handmade Commuter leather wallet for $45 or their Essentials leather wallet that holds 5-8 cards and is only $35.

29. Locally roasted coffees and Copper Coast Coffeehouse truffles, starting at $12

Like wines and spirits, sometimes I’m drawn to a coffee simply because I like the branding or the philosophy. Case in point, these locally roasted coffees that are not only very popular, but enjoyable to look at and/or are operating in service to a greater cause. For a bigger gift, pair a bag with the stunning 6-piece Coffeehouse Collection of bar truffles from local Copper Coast Confections because, goodness, are they something!

• Redhawk Coffee Roasters’ City Drug blend, $21 and up, which is the locally roasted blend they use in their four shops. An added bonus to this local favorite is the King Kong-themed art featuring the Pittsburgh skyline.

• Redstart Roasters bird-friendly coffees, $12 and up, are locally roasted and available in a variety of internationally sourced beans from places like Peru, Ethiopia, Columbia and more. Their focus is on eco-friendly coffee growers who are committed to protecting birds and their sanctuaries around the world. I love that! This is a great gift for the bird-watcher in your life as they sip their morning bird-friendly coffee while watching their bird feeders for new visitors. Shipping is free to Pittsburgh, but you can also visit their cafe in East Liberty.

• Artisan Truffle 6-Piece Coffeehouse Collection, $25.95. The six coffee-flavored truffles are Irish Crème, Dark Espresso, Hazelnut, Café Latte, Milk Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel, and Chai Tea. Ugh. I need all of these.

30. Wall calendar roundup!

Wall calendars make great gifts for anyone from co-worker to employee to partner to college student. Eschew the boring mass-produced versions in favor of one of these local options:

• Strawberry Luna, $26

• Dave DiCello, $25

• Dustin McGrew, $19.99

• North Park Bald Eagles, $23.92

• Pittsburgh Reflections by Carla Cardello, $25

31. White elephant gifts, $25 and under

If you’ve got a White Elephant gift exchange on the calendar for this year, I’ve rounded up a few great local options priced at $25 or less that would be a delightful infusion of humor and/or whimsy for all genders …

• Blizzard of ‘93 candle by NYOB, $20. If your gift exchange is among those who are old enough to remember that epic life shutdown, then this is the one for you.

• Pittsburgh Pothole Ornament by CJ7Designs, $15. LOL.

• Pittsburgh felt magnets by HeartFeltbyJulia, $9 each, so grab two or three.

• Hilarious prints by Paint by Dumbers, $15 each. Art is a great gift, especially any of the dozens of these laugh-out-loud prints by a local artist. Good luck choosing though; there are way too many awesome options.

• French Macaron Soap Sampler by HipModernSoap, $25. They look good enough to eat. But don’t.

32. Allegheny Cleanways/Commonwealth Press Swag, $20 and up

Last and definitely not least! As you know, I’ve been serving as an independent member of Allegheny Cleanways’ development committee for over a year now. Today is the last day of the preorder period to snag some awesome merch from Commonwealth Press with proceeds benefiting the work of this org that is on the ground and on the rivers regularly cleaning up litter and illegal dumping. As you can see from the shirt design, if all the 50,000-some illegally dumped tires ACW has ever removed from our local environment were to be stacked, they would be taller than freaking Mount Everest. That is sad, but that is also fantastic news because what a difference they’ve made for Pittsburgh. Grab a hat or shirt today for the person in your life who cares about nature, cares about the Earth, and cares that our city’s greenspaces be cleaned of litter. Again, today is the last day to preorder one of these, then you’re kind of screwed.

Telling you that you’re screwed seems like the perfect place to end this year’s gift guide. Before I go, let me hit you with links to a few other options! The tiny pots from LGG Creative Art, hand-turned wood pens and stitch removers from Horner’s Pens, Arnold Palmer umbrella-themed Corkcicle water bottles for the golfer in your life (currently on clearance so grab them now!), and the Studebaker Bessemer cuff, $78. If none of that works, grab a gift box of assorted and themed local gifts from the local Kinship company!

Happy shopping, loves!

Note: An additional challenge this year was excluding AI-generated art. I believe I succeeded; however, if you notice something amiss on the list, please reach out to me.

This salutation is brought to you by the fact that Netflix inexplicably put “How I Met Your Mother” in my “Because you watched Bridgerton” recommendations and now I no longer understand how anything works.

How are you? I’ve been up to my usual shenanigans. Writing. Living. Working on the PastFinders app with our small but mighty team while we gear up for the Android launch. I had a wonderful time presenting on Pittsburgh’s Great Fire of 1845 at the South Park Township Library a week or so ago (what is time even?). It was a capacity crowd and it was so nice to be able to step back into my history teacher persona for an hour. Several attendees handed me a copy of my own book to sign and I really appreciated that. Here are some photos from the library:

This is what I look like when I’m teaching.

Absolutely amazing that that dorky frizzy-haired milkshake doesn’t bring a stampede of boys to my yard. Let’s talk!

1. And the ghost of Gene Kelly lets out a satisfied cackle

We are immediately launching into the “HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS” portion of the newsletter, so go ahead and do that now. As you know, Pittsburgh has a new Walk of Fame similar to the famous one in Hollywood. Our version was officially unveiled this week in the Strip featuring star plaques honoring ten historical and iconic Pittsburghers: Andrew Carnegie, Rachel Carson, Andy Warhol, Roberto Clemente, Nellie Bly, Fred Rogers, Jonas Salk, August Wilson, George Benson and Michael Keaton. As you know, only those last two are still living. Michael Keaton was the only honoree to attend the ceremony alongside hundreds of spectators and VIPs.

You guys. Yinz. Y’all. Youse. Yehosephat. Please look at this Instagram post by WTAE’s Michelle Wright:

Holy shit. Please allow me, through the use of Moira Rose of Schitt’s Creek gifs, to walk you through the progression of my emotions when I saw that they had misspelled the name of the only honoree in attendance at the unveiling.

Can you imagine how many people laid eyes on some version of this and didn’t notice the mistake at any point leading up to installation and unveiling? My secondhand cringe is completely off the charts. If I had any sort of proofreading duties or major involvement and I unveiled in the presence of the media, the public, and Batman himself a permanent sidewalk-embedded plaque that had his name misspelled on it, I would simply…

Sometimes, you just gotta march yourself into the sea. This fiasco is probably karma meted out by the soul of Gene Kelly who was ridiculously not included in the first class of honorees (yes, I know about his plaque on the Pitt campus. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.)

Gentle reader, I am straight up begging you. If you have a project like this, something that has to do with Pittsburgh history or Pittsburgh people or Pittsburgh being a cool place or having or needing a cool new thing, reach out to me! Bring me into the fold! Pick my brain for ten minutes! I have good ideas and I would have caught the misspelling. And I would have told you to include Gene Kelly and I would have pointed you in the general direction of the nearest sea if you said no.

I have so many good ideas and no one will take them and run with them. Behold:

• A life-sized statue of a zombie hoisting itself halfway out of the river and onto the wharf near the Point as a tribute to George Romero. It would become a hugely popular photo op.

• An incline-themed advent calendar with a little incline that makes its trek to the top over 24 days at which point it lights up and the little wreath on it lights up too and then the door opens and a little gift is revealed and it’s magical and perfect and you charge like 75 dollars for it but people still buy it because it’s amazing.

• Link all the tunnels in Pittsburgh to the E-ZPass system so that drivers get a small account credit every time they enter without braking.

• A statue of Gene Kelly swinging on a working lamppost on Grandview Avenue on Mount Washington that is also a fountain that rains on him and his umbrella.

• A PRT bus painted to look like Trolley from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Or paint all the golf carts that transport the elderly and disabled around Pittsburgh airport to look like Trolley or incline cars. Or paint an incline to look like Trolley. Or include the Neighborhood of Make-Believe in the miniature railroad village at the Science Center and have Trolley be one of the engines that stops there.

• Rip the damn eyesore billboard off of Mount Washington and never let another take its place unless it’s a sign that says, “Welcome to the Neighborhood.”

• A Nellie-Bly-themed online magazine written solely by local girls in order to hone their writing and journalism skills. It should be called Bly All Accounts.

• You buy me this penthouse on Mount Washington

Like I said, the best ideas. Let me know if you need my mailing address to send me the keys and a housewarming basket that’s just all cookies and cash.

2. “We got cows.”*

Gentle reader, please read this amazing headline from the Tribune-Review:

Ah-*clap*-mazing! And I have some thoughts:

a. If I ever straight-up lassoed a loose cow on a highway and the media didn’t refer to me as a magical cowgirl, we’d be having us a good old-fashioned shootout in the local saloon because that is some meet-’em-at-high-noon-on-Main Street shit I performed. But they went with horseman. Is that what they prefer to be called? Let me show you the difference between a cowboy and a horseman.

Cowboy:

Horseman:

b. If you referred to me as a “horsewoman” after I lassoed a heifer of unknown origin that had absconded down I-79 like that Connellsville housepig that one time, my brain would immediately go to those TikTok girls who run like horses, or to Bob’s Burgers’ Tina Belcher writing her semi-erotic Horsetorical Fiction.

c. Is “Heifers of Unknown Origin” a good band name or the greatest band name ever?

* If you don’t get this reference, I am sad for you.

3. A throwback to simpler times

It’s fully appropriate that I put this at #3 on the list. Remember when things were easier? When social media was new and wasn’t yet a complete raging hell-pit where peace goes to be strangled to death? When we were talking about the color of dresses, Daniel Sepulveda’s muscles, Maxime Talbot’s Great Shush-ening, and whether Lukey was actually doing the work or was just flitting about town handing famous people mayoral proclamations? When Jeff Reed got cited back in 2009 for kicking that Sheetz paper towel dispenser like it had been teed up on the 30-yard line?

If you’ve forgotten:

Steelers kicker Jeff Reed was cited with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct after throwing a tantrum over an empty paper towel machine at a Westmoreland County convenience store, state police said.

Well, look what I found in a Westmoreland County antique shop yesterday!

I could not be more deceased if I walked myself straight into the sea. I honestly love it and I hope it finds a place of honor in someone’s yinzer mancave. You’ll be wanting to get yourself to L & L Fleatique Too in Adamsburg if you want to snatch this up. It’s upstairs near the back. Tell them PittGirl sent you and they’ll go, “Who the f—…”

4. Random n’at

I am way past my space limit so I’ve got to wrap this one up with our little things that I don’t have space or time to turn into big things:

• Grandpa Joe’s placed giant rubber ducks along rooftops in Canonsburg. I love this kind of thing! More of this!

• It looks like we’ll be losing Monroeville Mall under Walmart’s development plans for the site. I’m conflicted. That’s the mall of my youth and it’s basically historical thanks to Dawn of the Dead. But I also understand malls just aren’t what they used to be, so transforming this space into mixed-use is probably for the better. I just hope that they incorporate plenty of greenspace, as it’s currently just a massive concrete slab.

• I’ve already begun work on this year’s Yinzer Holiday Gift Guide, so please get your suggestions to me soon for local shops and items to include!

• I had no clue that Kurt Vonnegut had a connection to Pittsburgh and to CMU to the point he’d been known to bust out a school cheer. Read about it here!

• Pittsburgh was named one of the best places in the world to travel in 2026 by National Geographic. Good for us!

5. And that’s it!

Have a great week or two! Be kind! Paint more things to look like inclines and Trolley! Have a wonderful Halloween! Be safe!

And most importantly, keep tabs on your heifers, unless you want one to go frolicking down I-79, creating a mess of traffic until a hot cowboy shows up on horseback to lasso it and you, and then accidentally sweeps you off your feet both literally and figuratively.

Oh, no. Did I just write the best meet-cute for a Hallmark TV movie called Lassoed by Love?

Send me a check.

Can we talk about our recent weather being such that I’ve been afraid to look directly at it for fear Mother Nature will snap out of it and be all, “[blink] Oh, wait. This is when I’m supposed to be a real misery-flinging bitch who enjoys seeing people suffer.”

Then I looked at the forecast for the week and apparently one of you did indeed look directly at it, because now it’s payback time. Sigh.

Lots to chat about today, so let’s talk!

1. Death by bike lane?

The big local story right now is, unbelievably, bike lanes.

Somewhere in Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto’s spidey senses started tingling as if the Bat-Signal just lit up the sky. Did I just combine two different superheroes from two different universes? You betcha. I don’t follow the rules. I’ll say things like, “Sidney Crosby really hit a home run with that goal.” Truly fearless.

Anyway, we are crazily still fighting about bike lanes in Pittsburgh despite most cities being long past this stage, having accepted and embraced them. I feel that I should state my personal relationship to bikes before I offer an opinion on this matter, and that relationship can be summed up as this:

It’s not great, you guys. Remember how in Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin was always convinced his cute little bike was actually a disguised demon hellbent on destroying him? Exactly that. I also feel that way about cats, pigeons and fitted sheets come folding time.

Of course, as a pre-teen, I used to ride my tricked-out banana-seated butterfly-barred bike down my steep street without a helmet, with silver streamers flying gloriously out of my handlebars, my legs sticking straight out off the pedals for maximum thrills—pedals that were my only braking mechanism, mind you—and I’d reach velocity enough to dry out my eyeballs before I’d get to the bottom and shoot across the moderately busy intersection with a split-second “hope I don’t eat a car grill and die before I get to make out with Jordan Knight” glance and then race up the facing hill where I’d turn around and do it all over again.

But then I stopped riding bikes and—I’ve told this story before and you’re gonna hear it again—by the time I mounted a bike as a young adult, I was with my sister Tina Fey in Texas where we were biking around her quiet rural-ish neighborhood and I was doing … pretty okay … when an old lady in a massive Lincoln passed me a little too closely while driving a blistering four miles per hour at which point I screamed and let my bike and body tip gently against her car. It was the slowest bike/car collision you’ve ever seen. You could have popped a mini bag of microwave popcorn in the time it took for this catastrophe to unfold. But that didn’t stop me from telling my family upon returning to the house, “I was just hit by a car.”

Wait. Am I the drama?

My point is, I’m not coming into this fight as a cyclist nor as a Strip District business owner. I come into it trying very hard to understand the positions of the various stakeholders.

What is on the table here is a traffic-calming (and street beautification) measure for the Strip over eight blocks on Penn between 31st and 22nd streets. If you aren’t familiar, hop onto Google Maps and do a street-view drive so you can understand what it looks like now. The approved plan, for which construction is slated to begin soon (maybe), will convert what is a two-lane inbound street with on-street parking and loading zones into a one-lane inbound street with on-street parking, loading zones and … a protected bike lane.

Yes, they are literally asking motorists to merge into one lane for eight blocks that have no opposing traffic flow, which means no stopping to let people sit to wait to make left turns across traffic—something that would indeed truly fork up the traffic flow.

This proposal, which you can view here on a block-by-block basis, seems perfectly reasonable to beautify the area, expand Pittsburgh’s biking infrastructure while maintaining auto traffic access, and decrease accidents in an area highly prone to them.

Some business owners, seemingly led by the owner of Pittsburgh Winery, have been against this proposal from the start and now they have actually filed a lawsuit against the city to stop the construction, with their chief reasons being the following:

• It will hinder emergency vehicles

• It will create traffic jams that will kill their businesses and they’ll have to close

Let’s be real; the main reason is that second one. I know it sounds super scary because they have attached to the lawsuit a letter from the firefighters union president, but take it with a grain of salt, frankly. Pittsburgh is full of one-way, single-lane streets that occasionally clog up, yet emergency vehicles do what they need to do. And that’s the thing here: are we just going to pretend like the less congested Liberty and the more spacious Smallman don’t exist and aren’t open to vehicular traffic? Are we going to act like there isn’t an entire street grid around this eight-block stretch? This isn’t Moses parting the Red Sea and that’s your only way through so get marching and hope you like walking on squishy flopping fish.

I’m not trying to be a bitch (it just comes naturally), but, no, this isn’t really a valid reason, and furthermore, it’s not the real reason the business owners are against it. If safety was their main concern, they’d be in favor of this measure to decrease accidents in the most accident-prone stretch of street in the Strip. They’d want to make things safer for cyclists and pedestrians who use the street far far more than emergency vehicles. So, the REAL reason …

Traffic jams kill businesses to the point that some of them are claiming outright that if this project comes to fruition, they will be forced to close their doors.

“If they make it one lane, it’s just going to choke all the business out,” Coen told TribLive.

This is driving me nuts because I never hear any reason why they believe occasional backups kill businesses. Humans are smart. Oh, there’s usually traffic on that street around this time of day! I’ma take a side street and park somewhere down that way and then I’ll walk over. They don’t say, Oh, traffic. I’m going to just turn around and go home and never ever patronize that business. Besides, have we not already had this bike lane argument over and over again over the years? Have these owners not bothered to learn how this is the exact kind of project that encourages foot traffic and patronization of establishments in busy corridors of commerce? That multi-use streets are ACTUALLY THE GOAL for improving city economies? You let cars, pedestrians, and bikes have safe access to your city blocks and things. get. better.

If a business has to close because a two-lane one-way inbound becomes a much prettier one-lane inbound with bikes, I have some bad news about the overall health of that business. On an evening last week, I was in the Strip for an event and I hate to break it you you all, but people really use those bike lanes! So many bikes. Cyclists, pedestrians and car drivers will increasingly see this 8-block stretch as a safe, friendly destination to visit rather than a run-down B2B stretch of road that you just need to get through, which is mostly how it looks and feels now.

I am not anti-business. I literally co-owned Las Velas which opened the very week Market Square was torn up back in 2010. I understand the temporary headaches construction creates for businesses. I understand the fear that new traffic patterns might change things for the worse. But this seems like a knee-jerk overreaction by the businesses in the Strip.

I hope they lose their lawsuit because otherwise it would set a dangerous precedent that stops Pittsburgh (and other cities) from making street changes that will actually increase safety and spending at local businesses. PEOPLE buy products; their cars do not, so make it easier for the people. Make it safer. Make it prettier. For the people, not the cars.

And watch what happens.

2. “My eyes; my eyes! -Phoebe Buffay” — Virginia Montanez

Pittsburgh, we have too many damn vape shops and I’m so sick of it.

Yes, I realize a vape shop is better than an empty storefront, but every single one I’ve ever seen is a complete visual shit-show. Looking at one feels like being high on six kinds of mushrooms and four kinds of bath salts. Twelve different colors of neon signs and string lights blinking at twelve different speeds. At least three blinking “OPEN” signs. Their interiors all lit up with the bluest, harshest florescent lights on the market. These shops are the visual equivalent of grand mal seizures, and I can say that because I once had one. You can literally give directions to them by saying, “Turn right and follow the glow. If your eyes stop stinging or you stop feeling inexplicably sad, you’ve gone too far.”

Our downtown is quite small and yet there are already almost 30 vape shops in and directly around it. That’s too many and yet more are coming. I understand that the fact there are so many speaks to the market for them, but still, it is simply not the kind of establishment we need dozens of in downtown and surrounding neighborhoods.

Hear me, yinz. Item number 1 of this edition has a correlation to item number 2. If we don’t start approaching Downtown as a place we need to transform into a bike-, pedestrian-, resident-, family- and tourist-friendly destination rather than merely a place of commerce that people commute to daily and “let’s get back to the office now that the pandemic is over!”, it will never attract more than what it does now: new bank branches and new vape shops that glow as bright as the sun in a city that is supposedly trying to become DarkSky compliant. We will have no variety of establishments, which is what we need to grow downtown. Get it? It’s all connected.

So anyway, I’m glad to read this:

Pittsburgh City Councilmembers Bobby Wilson and Daniel LaValle are introducing legislation this week to change the zoning code and limit the number of smoke and vape shops in city neighborhoods and business districts, especially Downtown

We’re not saying we can’t have them, but we have enough now. If you’re a vaper, smoker, etc., you’ll still be able to buy the product you love and quite easily; you just might have to walk or drive a bit further to your favorite glow-in-the-dark smoke-dispensing establishment. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I’m going to run for mayor and my tagline will be MONTANEZ: Fewer vape shops, more cookie tables.

Baby, I’m winning that race for sure.

Also, I asked Google Gemini to recreate the famous Michael Scott/Wayne Gretzky image from The Office, but using “Virginia Montanez” instead of Steve Carrell and this is what it gave me:

I guess I’m just not famous enough … yet. Wait until I become mayor and commission a giant stone statue of a drenched zombie hoisting itself out of the Mon near the Point.

INSTANT FAME AND FORTUNE.

3. So much history!

More than anything these days, I’m a historian. As in, that’s how the majority of my work time is spent. Either teaching it, giving presentations on it, writing it, researching it for PastFinders or Pittsburgh Magazine, etc. So that means I have tons of Pittsburgh history stuff to share with you since last we talked.

First, I wrote a column that has pissed off the local conspiracy theorists and for that I sincerely apologize do not give a shit. The column is about how today’s anti-science conspiracy theories are an insult to Pittsburgh’s rich history in the field of science. From Salk to Brashear to Irwin to Carson. I’m sure you can imagine how many are trying to argue that “questioning science is the scientific method.” Here’s the problem: that’s valid provided you question the science WITH MORE SCIENCE to refute the earlier science. You can’t just rely on thoughts, feelings, a debunked paper or two, and the meandering words of a brain-wormed weirdo and call it the scientific method. Even Aristotle knew better and he believed eels were born from mud and rainwater. A snippet:

Salk’s polio vaccine — declared “safe, effective and potent” on April 12, 1955 — also laid the groundwork for the measles vaccine licensed for use less than a decade later, demonstrating for the field how to create, test and produce safe vaccines for mass public rollout. Measles, one of the most contagious of all the world’s known infections. Measles, right now sickening children and robbing lives with a resurgence catalyzed by falling vaccination rates. Measles, the problem we already solved by eliminating it in 2000 in the United States — thanks, in part, to the work of Jonas Salk.

Science, denied.

There’s lots more in there, so go have a read and then do not under any circumstances email me your “proof” of your pet conspiracy theory. Do, however, email me effusive and specific praise while offering to mail me cookies, diamonds or deeds to homes on Mt. Washington. But only if it has a view.

Second, I wrote a column about great disasters in Pittsburgh history, natural and otherwise, that you likely never heard about despite their devastation. From escaped monkeys, to unventilated tunnels, to train wrecks, floods, fires, and things just going KABLOOEY without warning. There’s even an accompanying CityCast Pittsburgh podcast episode where I chat about this column. Fun!

A few other history things from me:

I’ll be giving a lunchtime talk at South Park Library on October 8 where I’ll be presenting the Great Fire of 1845 that destroyed 1/3 of downtown Pittsburgh. If you’ve never heard me teach history, you’re in for a treat because it’s fun, visual and informative, and just a bit dorky like me. It’s free so register here and come say hello and get your learn on.

Finally, I did a podcast with my pals at AwesomeCast to chat about my writing, my work and the new PastFinders app. I had a blast. Have a listen here. There are also lots of video clips on Instagram. Download the app here. I’m so excited to tell you that the Pittsburgh Film Office will be putting walking tours on the app featuring iconic filming spots around the region. How fun! I’ll keep you posted on when those tours are live.

4. A plethora of Burghy Halloween-themed goodies!

What a delicious plethora of ghoulishness and gourds! Is that too long for a band name? Or maybe that’s my new gravestone epitaph? Email signoff? Autobiography title? So many possibilities! Anyway, who even knows when the next edition of the newsletter with come out, so let’s get our Burghy spooky season merchandise gift guide out now. Lots of local awesomeness in here from decor to candles to even a glow-in-the-dark Terrible Towel for all your nighttime twirling needs (clockwise from top left):

• Eat ‘n Park Halloween Smiley Cookie long sleeve shirt, $19.99

• University of Pittsburgh official Halloween tee, $18

• Book of Spells Hocus Pocus cake by Oakmont Bakery, $30

• Beware the Tunnel Monster shirt by Pittsburgh Personified, $26 and up

• Corner steel spiderweb wall decor by Keystone Steel, $82 (pricey but amazeballs)

• Plague doctor candle by Wicksburgh (but check out all their spooky candles!), $12

• Poe- and Charlie Brown-themed candles by North Avenue Candle Co., $29 and $22

• Glow in the dark Steelers Terrible Towel, $16.95

• Glass pumpkins (or glass pumpkin workshop) by Pittsburgh Glass Center, various prices. For this one, you can simply walk into the PGC storefront and purchase already made glass pumpkins in a variety of colors and sizes, or you can sign up for a class and create your own!

• Undead Pittsburgh shirt by Commonwealth Press, $25

Get to shopping. Nothing is an ad!

And along those lines, my insanely popular annual Yinzer Holiday Gift Guide will be published a bit before Thanksgiving, so start getting me your suggestions now. Items should be either locally made or made by/for local companies. Does that make sense? You know what I mean. The point is this: local spending.

5. Random n’at

• Kourtney Kardashian came to Pittsburgh and ate at a restaurant and visited a museum it made the local news lolwtfbbq.

• DVE Rocks Children’s raised over $1.2 million this year!

• The Pittsburgh Pirates ended another losing season with a last-place finish and the fourth-worst record in the whole league. And Bob Nutting will still sleep soundly despite his ongoing deliberate trashing of Roberto Clemente’s legacy-holding ballclub. I hope his socks always feel a little damp and he always feels an itch at the back of his throat that he can’t scratch. I’m nothing if not gently and whimsically evil.

• A Riverhounds player has been accused of using a racial slur during a recent match that was subsequently suspended due to the allegation and altercation. YIKES.

• This Mt. Washington penthouse for sale is a dream. Gosh. I’m going to buy it with all the money I make from my zombie-crawling-out-of-the-Mon statue idea.

• I should have put this with the other history stuff, but I’m already down here and so too bad. You can now read my history Master’s thesis on Pittsburgh and the 1918 “Spanish Flu” epidemic in which I tabulated over 3,600 death certificates to determine who died during the outbreak here in Pittsburgh, the city with the highest U.S. death rate. A snippet from the conclusion, of all places:

  "Pittsburgh was created out of water and coal. She was built among valleys, ridges, slopes, and flats. She was the product of labor, the mother of smoke, and the father of steel. She was wealth and she was destitution. She was Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick as much as she was Constantine Uglinski and John Kopinski. She was the peace of a clear night along Millionaire’s Row as much as she was the fiery brutality of hell with the lid taken off. She bent and even broke a time or two under the weight of change, growth, and loss."

  Let me know your thoughts if you read it as it really dives into how the city leaders and industrialists let down the working class by way of pollution and overcrowded housing across decades leading into 1918, and thus that’s where the real blame lies.

6. That’s all, folks!

Have a great week! Don’t litter! Be kind! Tell your dog I said hi! Tell your cat I said [eyes warily with distrust]. Download the PastFinders app! Buy my book! Come see me at South Park Library! Stop being weird about bike lanes! Get your flu and covid shots!

And be sure to come see my band Moses and the Squishy Flopping Fish.

We’re hoping to play at Pittsburgh Winery.

What?

Is it really a newsletter if it keeps no schedule and each time I publish it I have to make a dramatic entrance and declare I’m back, bitches?

I’m back, bitches.

Let’s see. What has been going on since last we talked at the start of summer? Oddly cold temperatures were immediately followed by the heat of a million suns and the rains of a thousand storms. And the Pirates are … playing well. No, wait, they suck again. They’re playing well again! No, they super suck the suck of a trillion black holes. Someone check the book of Revelations for me and let me know what this all means, thanks. Maybe Aaron Rodgers’ presence here caused a hellmouth to open in his honor?

I defended my master’s history thesis on Pittsburgh during the 1918 pandemic, so I can now say I’m officially done with grad school. But as soon as I finished my thesis, my work with PastFinders (formerly Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen) ramped up (more on that below!), plus my Pittsburgh History to WWII class at Pitt-Osher began in early July. I truly love teaching this class, but it does require lots of prep work. The final class is tomorrow when I’ll be teaching them about pollution, politics, the 1918 pandemic, Prohibition, and philanthropy. This edition of Breathing Space is definitely brought to you by the letter ...

So that’s what my life is like right now. But it’s okay. As soon as the class ends, life will slow down and I can breathe and be a normal human being again.

Maybe.

Let’s talk!

1. Looking for the adult in the room

One thing I did recently in an effort to live as much of my life in the real world as possible versus the time-sucking virtual, was subscribe to a print newspaper. Since I committed to not supporting the P-G until the labor dispute ends, I chose to subscribe to the Tribune-Review.

When my 22-year-old son saw the fresh newspaper on the kitchen island one morning, he rolled his eyes as if I’d hired a personal scribe to chisel the news into a stone tablet for me each morning. He said, “You’re wasting paper and trees and you can read all of this online,” to which I said, “Yes, but there’s no fighting in the comments. There’s no pop-up ads. There’s no random page reloading. There’s no oh, this reminds me of something I wanted to Google and so let me close out of this and go Google that thing and here we are at Google and what the hell was I going to Google again? Might as well scroll Instagram where 74% of suggested posts are shitty AI-generated uncanny valley garbage where hands look like feet and faces look like Temu versions of that doll from the M3GAN movies.”

A plus side of reading the news quietly each morning is I get treated to the Trib’s letter to the editor selections and my goodness gracious (apparently reading an old timey print newspaper makes you say things like “my goodness gracious” and “for heaven’s sake.” Can’t wait until I have a reason to exclaim “What in the Sam Hill!”). There have been a bunch of these letters that make me sit and stare into the distance for a while, my brain liquifying, my face straight up melting off Lost Ark style. For instance, first please read this level-headed letter from a political science student at Pitt-Greensburg who wrote in defense of students’ right to protest. A snippet:

Let’s be clear: Peaceful protest is real, and it matters. It’s not chaos. It’s not a threat. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have in a democracy. It’s how civil rights were won. It’s how injustice is exposed. And it’s happening right now across in this country — by people demanding change, not destruction.

…

We must defend the right to protest, especially when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it challenges power. Because that’s exactly when it matters most.

There is nothing more American than standing up and saying, “Enough.”

Regardless of your opinion as to the content of his letter, you must admit he stated his case with maturity. Days later, the paper posted a response to the student’s letter. The writer? Don Liddick, a criminal justice professor at Penn State-Fayette. Thy butts. Find them. Hold them. Ready?

A student letter-writer recently lamented the sending of federal troops to Los Angeles and the brief detention of Sen. Alex Padilla (“Defending our right to protest,” June 20, TribLive). While I support his right to express his opinion, I feel the need to exercise my own right and call his view a contemptible load of horse manure.

I’m sorry, but who in the Sam Hill (hey-o!) is the adult in this exchange? It sure as hell isn’t Professor Don Liddick of Penn State-Fayette who elevates anger and insult above using fact and reason to support his arguments and displays a startling lack of maturity. He also sounds like he needs a vacation, a Valium, or some vitamins. Maybe this newsletter is actually brought to you by the letter V?

At any rate, Don Liddick of Penn State-Fayette is absolutely the kind of person who is going to email me something ridiculous and angry, and I honestly can’t wait because I plan to respond with, “This email is brought to you by the letter L,” followed by this gif.

Grow up. And that’s not directed at the student in this scenario, but the teacher. We are living in the stupidest of times, as additionally evidenced by this letter to the editor ranting that public school teachers … you still got your butts? … make way too much money.

Sorry if that just made your face melt off. Try Neosporin.

2. Pat McAfee apologizes

I’ve not hid on my social media accounts my opinion that locally grown Pat McAfee has become problematic and that much of Pittsburgh maintains a parasocial, adoring relationship with him simply because he’s from here. This is what the yutes might refer to a “hot take” and “unpopular opinion.” I’m aware I’m in the minority on this.

I had already begun to be irked by him well before his February platforming and amplification of the dumbest, most pointless rumor to ever be spoken on a major media outlet. In this case, it was only amplified by Pat because the rumor involved the sex life of a random sorority member. Hear me; not that it would have made it right if she was, but this young lady, Mary Kate Cornett, a student at the University of Mississippi, was not a college athlete whose life was being publicly picked apart by a sport bro. She was just a girl, just a student, just a person living what should be some of the best years of her life—the college years—when Pat McAfee temporarily ruined it by repeating a rumor about her which then exploded further within the weird sportsbro/Barstool universe, except now with additional validity because of Pat. The weirdest part is that he spoke the dumb rumor to his panel members with such a serious tone that it sounded like he was reporting on the technical skill behind landing a triple axle in the winter Olympics.

Now, five months later, he has finally apologized and it’s not great:

I have since learned that the story was not true, and that my show played a role in the anguish caused to a great family, and especially to a young woman, Mary Kate Cornett. I think you all know from tuning into this program that I never want to be a source of negativity or contribute to another human’s suffering.*

I can now happily share with you that I recently got to meet Mary Kate and her family, and I got a chance to sincerely apologize to them and acknowledge that what I said about Mary Kate was based solely on what others were saying on the internet or what had previously been reported by others, and that we had no personal knowledge about Mary Kate or her personal life.

As a girl dad**, I also was very thankful for the opportunity to let Mr. Cornett know that I was wildly regretful for the part that our show, our program, played in his daughter Mary Kate's pain.***

I can now say that I had the opportunity to meet (Cornett’s family), chat with them, and they’re wonderful people, and I’m very thankful that they gave me the opportunity to tell them how sorry I was that this all happened, and that our program was a part of this. I deeply regret all the pain that this caused. I hated watching what our show was a part of, in her interviews and reading about it. And my hope is that this can be something that we all learn from going forward.****

* Pat, what in tarnation was positive about your original remarks? What, in the spreading of this rumor, would NOT contribute to someone’s suffering? You were specifically seeking to create negativity and to further suffering by commenting on a random person’s rumored sex life. Please be for real.

** Why didn’t being a “girl dad” stop you in your tracks from repeating the rumor in the first place? You’re just pandering.

*** It wasn’t “the show.” It wasn’t “our program.” It was you and only you and nothing but the you.

**** Please allow me to correct this for you, free of charge. “I’m very thankful that they gave me the opportunity to tell them how sorry I was that this all happened I did this, and that our my program was a part of this. I deeply regret all the pain that this I caused. I hated watching what our my show was a part of, in her interviews and reading about it. And my hope is that this can be something that we all I learn from going forward.”

You’re welcome; and also …

Hope you handed her a big fat check.

Reader, I TOLD YOU IT WAS AN UNPOPULAR OPINION; you don’t have to email me to defend him. You can continue to adore him; I’ll continue to be wary of his problematic schtick and hope he actually does learn something from this because he is nearly 40 and should have known better by now.

3. Pretty much ready for prime time

As you know, I launched Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen in 2023 to bring visible remnants of our city’s past to life. We forget history happened in color and in 3D, and my map was a way to try to bridge that gap. Last summer, Pittsburgh historian David Jardini, who wears many industrial, investment and academic hats, learned about my project and offered to partner up to turn the map into a mobile app, something I had wanted to do, but didn’t have the time, knowledge or money to make happen. He then pulled in Penn State engineering grad Harlan Shober to build the app. More recently, we snagged his daughter, college student Rinnie Jardini, to join us to help with the user interface. The four of us have become fast friends and a small, but mighty team that has been hard at work for nearly a year now.

What started as a project to allow you to take a walking tour of 50 historical remnants in the City of Pittsburgh has been transformed into a mobile app that allows you to take a walking tour of history in pretty much any city or town in America, Puerto Rico, the UK, as well as spots like Prague and Vienna (Harlan loves to use far-off places as virtual testing grounds, so you never know what city will pop up next).

The free app is on the Apple platform and Harlan is busy building the Android version. Our logo/branding was designed by local illustrator Rachel Sager, who has long been my go-to for these projects of mine, from That’s Church to Make Room for Kids to Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen and now PastFinders (not an ad, but she’s great!). We have some exciting partnerships in the works with local and state organizations to offer curated collections and tours. The Duquesne Club already has a collection of spots around downtown that correlate to their history that you can tour.

We have created an extensive walking tour that loops along our rivers to give you a visual and spoken history of every bridge that ever spanned the Golden Triangle from the old Monongahela Bridge (our first bridge) to the Fort Duquesne Bridge. This is a great walk if you have an out-of-town guest who wants to see the whole city, because it stops at the Point and showcases all three rivers plus the stadiums. Our tour of the Hill District was a labor of love for me to create, so please check that one out too.

If the city you are visiting doesn’t yet have a curated, thematic tour, you can simply use our tour guide Gideon to build your own walking tour. You can tell Gideon how far you want to walk, how much time you have, if you want to walk to a specific place and see cool stuff along the way, or if you want to simply take a loop tour from your current spot. He’ll craft a walking tour for you and then guide you along the way while reading you the histories of the stops and showing you historical pictures, if available.

We also have a map that is so fun to explore. It not only features all of our spots with extensive histories/photos in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia (check out our Birth of a Nation tour) and Harrisburg (we have two tours there), but it also contains hundreds of thousands of historical markers, plaques, and statues, allowing you to explore the buildings, spaces, and memorials that correlate to history regardless of where you are. You can also search the map for anything! Like “Where did Abraham Lincoln die?” or “How was the Statue of Liberty built?” and it will take you to the location and provide you with historical information.

The app is free! So download it and let us know what you think as we continue to make improvements and build out cities with artifacts and photos. My local media peeps reading this, I’m going to be bugging you soon about covering the app, but if you want to get a jump on it, just email me (virginia.montanez@historyremains.com is the best email for app stuff) and please don’t send me a loser gif when you do.

Egads, that’s my trick.

4. So very PittGirl-coded

You know I’m loving something when I pull out the PittGirl name that I’ve been trying to shed for years on account of I’m 51 (did THAT make your face melt off?) and it sounds so exceedingly stupid. But seriously, have you ever seen anything more PittGirl-coded than this collab between Penn Brewery and Kennywood?

I’m not a huge beer drinker (except sours; I will drink any sour beer at least once, get an immediate headache because my body seemingly no longer knows what to do when alcohol enters the chat, and then live with regrets for the next 18 hours) but every part of my soul is craving these. Here’s the full lineup:

Love them all! This isn’t an ad. It’s never an ad.

5. Random n’at

Here’s the big little stuff that is still important stuff, so don’t skip it!

• My latest column at Pittsburgh Magazine uncovers the lost voices of the child laborers, many of whom toiled 12-hour days in our steel and iron mills and our streets. Historians have traditionally focused on the children of the glasshouses, but I wanted to show children were engaged as laborers in dangerous industrial environments by employers who forced them to straddle a confusing space between adulthood and childhood. I’ve received lots of lovely emails in response to this particular piece, so be sure to give it a read. As a look-ahead, my next column tells the tale of some of Pittsburgh’s more obscure historical disasters. After that, you can expect a column that is going to get me so much hate mail, I’m currently girding my loins and preparing a list of phrases like heavens to Betsy! and my stars! No, it’s not about Pat McAfee. A snippet of the current column:

  Hear the whispers of John Jones, a hoist boy at Andrew Carnegie’s Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, who was instantly killed in 1877, when a cupola laden with pig iron fell on him after a rope snapped. When Superintendent Bill Jones sent Carnegie word of the accident (which he said crushed John “to a jelly”), he blamed the “boy’s carelessness and disobedience of order.” Jones went on to assure Carnegie that the horrific death only “delayed works slightly. Damage slight.”

  Jones, an orphan, was only 14 years old. He built Pittsburgh.

  One of my biggest finds doing child labor research was a Technical World magazine article in 1912 about the children who struck from Oliver Steel. The pictures are truly amazing.

  

• After a long hiatus from talking about my debut novel (which, if you haven’t read yet, please let me know so I can email you a loser gif. It has 4.53 stars on over 260 Goodreads reviews and not a single one of them is paid or is an ARC copy), but I’ll be doing a short reading from its pages on Tuesday, August 12 at 7 p.m. at Hop Farm Brewing in Lawrenceville for the 51st anniversary season of the Hemingway Series (archives are here). So swing by and say hello!

• I love this video that shows groceries being rung up in a 1965 cashier training video because we get a look at Alcoa Wrap and cans of Heinz Spaghetti. I’m such a sucker for this stuff. Start at 6:58 (the link should take you to that timestamp).

• My friend Jonathan Wander sent me a link to this absolutely delightful colorized video of Etna in the 1930s. So much good stuff to see like Burghy beer brands, Etna students, and Isaly’s. Enjoy!

• I’m sure you’re aware by now that public broadcasting has seen its federal funding gutted. In light of this development, I recently subscribed to WQED to support their work. You can do the same for them or Pittsburgh’s other public stations like WESA and WYEP. This isn’t an ad and I have no relationship with WQED. I simply can’t allow the home of Fred Rogers to fade away, and I’ll do everything I can to help ensure its survival. Feel free to let me know if you decide to support them so I can give you a virtual email hug!

6. That’s all!

Have a fantastic week or six because lol what am I even doing here anymore. Be kind! Stay cool! Buy my book! Come chat with me at the Hemingway series! Download the PastFinders app! Donate to WQED!

And be sure to get out to see my new jazz band Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat. We are old and, at all times, aghast.

PittGirl out!

I don’t. I feel. I just. I--.

I don’t generally like to make fun of strokes because I was highly susceptible to them for several years, but at the same time … I think I smell toast?

Now, before you go rushing for the unsubscribe button, trust me to handle this in a way that is reasonable.

WHAT THE ACTUAL F--

Kidding! Okay, here is my calmer, less “our pets’ heads are falling off!” response:

If we are to believe the lore—the “the standard is the standard” lore, the “Steelers Way” lore, the “we are better than you even when we aren’t better at football than you” lore—then we must see that Aaron Rodgers, ironically, does not belong in Mister Rogers’ actual neighborhood. We have not historically just been a football town; we have been a football town that 100 percent hook-line-sinker bought into and believed the lore and did our best to ignore the dings to its protective armor over the years. Eventually, the armor becomes so damaged you have to accept it as a loss and toss it aside.

Let’s put aside the fact that Aaron Rodgers is old and so far past his prime that his prime can only be seen by firing up the James Webb Space Telescope and then squinting real hard. What is left is not that he isn’t “Steelers material,” but that he is not “Pittsburgh material,” because he has proudly and openly established himself as anti-science and pro-conspiracy. He is, from first-person reports, an Alex Jones-type “did my own research” Sandy Hook “truther,” which is completely unforgivable.

Beyond that, he’s weird; he’s a jerk; he’s a liar, and he doesn’t care about others’ health (he spoke to reporters unmasked at that event which he attended under the cover of his own lie that he had been “immunized”). Mister Rogers would never. He’d say, “Be kind. Care about others. Tell the truth. Don’t be such a weird cringey jagoff. Feed your fish.”

But this is where we are, if we choose to take our blinders off and stare into the light of the truth: “The Standard” and “The Steelers Way” are not armored shields protecting us from being like those teams and fanbases we see as beneath us; rather, they are merely cheap disposable hooks on which we hung our collective, heavy black and gold pride. Once they fall, there is only sport and there is only money, and that’s all there ever really was and will be.

Here we go?

2. In which I commence with the blowing of your whole mind

Reader, if I told you to take a blind stab at how many illegally dumped tires Allegheny Cleanways has recovered from our land and waters, what would you guess?

In my head, I look at a car tire or a truck tire and I try to envision, say, 100 of them. Got it. Then 1,000 of them. Sure. Then 5,000 of them. That’s a lot of tires. My brain kind of breaks down after 10,000, maybe on account of the toast I’m currently smelling.

The answer to how many littered and dumped tires Allegheny Cleanways has recovered from our natural surroundings is …

53,000! Are you smelling toast too?

I struggle to picture 10,000 tires without my brain lighting small toasty fires and the number is more than five times that!

As you know, I serve on their board’s development committee as an independent member, and we recently began working with Pittsburgh’s own and awesome Commonwealth Press, specifically their owner Dan Rugh, to design some shirts and other items that benefit the work of the organization. Well, Dan, upon learning that ACW has removed 53,000 (!) tires, went and calculated that the below is an accurate visual representation. I must again ask you to hold on to your butt as you scroll down to the bottom on this:

I bet you didn’t hold your butt hard enough. Look at teeny tiny little Pittsburgh. Look at big giant Everest. LOOK AT THE TIRES THAT WERE ONCE IN OUR WATERS AND LAND.

I don’t even know what to say. What’s wrong with us? Why are we like this? If you’re one of those doing the dumping, why are you like this? If you’re on City or County Council, why aren’t you addressing this with more than lip service paid just long enough to get elected and then to sound smart and important and well-intentioned once you’re sworn in? If you’re Corey O’Connor, what are you going to do about this? If you’re Sara Innamorato, what are you currently doing about this? Put down the giant ceremonial scissors and do something real!

Our streets, sidewalks, highways, green spaces, forests and rivers are currently drowning in litter to the point it has become embarrassing so I’ll continue to shout and make myself a nuisance until someone in power does something big. In the meantime, we must place our support behind Allegheny Cleanways by volunteering our time and our donations. They’re the ones actually making a difference on the ground and in our waters.

I’ll share the new shirt designs at the Commonwealth Press store as soon as they’re ready. They’re so awesome! None of this is an ad.

3. You can lead a yinzer to a wormhole

My friend Jonathan sent me to this repository of historical Hearst newsreels that used to play before movies in America’s theaters between the 1920s and 1960s, but rudely neglected to do so with a proper warning that it was actually a wormhole of epic suction. I searched for “Pittsburgh” and found some gems lost two days of my life.

There’s Roberto Clemente joyfully rounding third with Phoebe Buffay’s flailing gait where he seemingly isn’t sure what to do with his arms (I can relate). Start at 1:10 for that goodness.

Here’s the Pitt football team getting smacked around by Illinois in Pittsburgh in 1946. Please go to :38 and watch the play and tell me what the heck this ref is signaling because as far as I can tell, it’s, “Get jiggy with it!”

Watch snippets of a 1944 homecoming parade for a local World War II hero through the streets of Pittsburgh here.

Watch the Pirates performing Spring Training drills in Hollywood along with Honus Wagner and Bing Crosby in 1948.

Bing shows up at Spring Training again in 1952 here. If you go to :30, you too can witness a sure concussion at second base. Or check out the newsreel of Jonas Salk’s successful polio vaccine in 1955 that also features video of the women working in his lab:

As a bonus, there’s this from the 1957 University of Pittsburgh polio mass inoculation effort at the Cathedral of Learning.

It goes on and on. There’s the 1945 Ice-Capades show at the Civic Arena to benefit wounded war vets. Go to :27 for a bonkers stunt that made me hold my breath because one wrong move and that guy is saying hello to the business end of an ice skate. The Steelers getting demolished by the Eagles in 1947, U.S. Steel pouring their 1 billionth ton of steel in 1952, the aftermath of the Western Penitentiary prison riots in 1953, a Pittsburgh Zoo gorilla, Jambo, being treated for a tummy ache in 1956. The way Jambo opens his mouth so wide for the care team to look inside nearly ended me.

Have fun in the wormhole! Search by anything. By a city, a sport, an event. Just make sure your pets have water before you dive in; there’s no telling when you’ll come up for air.

4. Write her name on your yinzer heart

Did you know that when Rachel Carson was making a name for herself in the environmental game, some men branded her writings as nothing more than emotional outbursts from a “hysterical,” “cat-loving spinster”? As I say in my latest column for Pittsburgh Magazine, “It’s when they bring up your cats that you know you’ve struck a nerve.”

My latest starts evocatively with “Sex sells” and then asks, “Where are the women?” when it comes to Pittsburgh history. I’m sharing the story of the first woman to direct a female film, Pittsburgh’s own Lois Weber, who didn’t shy away from controversial topics in the more then 100 films she wrote and/or directed in the silent film era. She platformed women via her films to such an extent that flustered men began wondering, Where are the men?! She died mostly forgotten, in part due to her refusal to stop telling women’s stories, but I hope Pittsburgh will never let her legacy be erased.

A snippet:

Lois Weber did not return to the shallows of “sex sells” because she never went there in the first place. Her choices, even those involving nudity, were always made with her heart holding fast to who she was and what she believed. She believed in women.

Hollywood erased Lois Weber despite initially warning us that hers was not a name to be forgotten. We, too, have forgotten her. We’ve forgotten a Pittsburgh woman who never wavered from her individuality or her earnest desire to reveal to women the seemingly absent agency available in their lives.

Give it a read and let me know what you think!

5. Random n’at

Some little treats for you!

• Kraft and Uber have teamed up to “verify” establishments that use Heinz ketchup over inferior tomato-flavored watery goop.

• I promise my next edition of this newsletter is going to give you all the details on what has become of my Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen project (hint, clicking on that link gives you the full sneak peek). I’m so excited with what our team has created for you! In the meantime, I’m searching for someone who knows anyone at Allegheny Cemetery. My email to them has gone ignored and I’m about to go all Miss Piggy “Moi?!” about it. Email me at ginnymontanez@gmail.com. And media peeps that would like to cover the project, you can email me too!

• Starting September 1 and continuing for the foreseeable future, children under 18 and school groups can visit the Senator John Heinz History Center for free thanks to a donation by the Kamins. Take your kids. It’s an awesome way to connect them to the Pittsburgh story. Not an ad!

• Pittsburgh-based Dicks is buying Foot Locker and will not be renaming it to Dick Locker. Whew. Bullet dodged.

• Light of Life Rescue Mission has opened a free hair salon for their clients. Love that!

• Pittsburgh finally saw not only an increase in population, but the largest such increase among the state’s municipalities between 2020 and 2024. It’s a start!

• My Pittsburgh History to WWII course for Pitt’s Osher School now has 58 students enrolled. It starts in person on July 1 and is once a week for five weeks. There’s still time to sign up if you’re age 50 and over! See page 24 here.

6. That’s all!

I’m super out of space and time. Have a wonderful weekend! Be kind! Don’t illegally dump tires! Don’t email me your opinions about Aaron Rodgers; just start your own Substack! Do email me if you know someone at Allegheny Cemetery!

And be sure to come out this week and see my new band Wormhole of Epic Suck. Our opening act is Phoebe Buffay’s Flailing Gait.

We rock so hard, you’ll smell toast.

When last we left our intrepid too-old-for-this-shit MA History student, she had made substantial progress on her thesis after a brief bout of mental paralysis. Since our last episode, she accidentally wrote a dissertation and she accidentally broke her brain so hard that every night for a month the only dreams she had were dreams of … writing a thesis. Her dreaming brain was making up fake sources and then having her dream self read the fake sources and then incorporate them into the dream thesis using proper Turabian citation style.

DO YOU KNOW HOW VERY FORKED UP THAT IS? I’m surprised liquified brain matter didn’t just start oozing into my nasal cavity. I don’t think Puffs makes a tissue for that. Man, Liquified Brain Matter is a great punk band name. I might go with that one. But let’s see how this edition shakes out.

Since I last wrote, I spent most of each day in my office researching, writing, teaching myself statistical analysis and pivot tables (dear lord) and wrestling with stupid-ass Microsoft Word. At one point, I inserted a photo, text-wrapped it, and two whole paragraphs of text got themselves widow-and-orphan-controlled to the next page and I’m pretty sure my Mac called 911 on me. Why are we trying to put humans on Mars when we can’t even insert pictures into Microsoft Word without it bursting into flames?

I’ll have more on my thesis for you in future editions, because it’s important Pittsburgh history showing how decades of city failures to abate pollution and housing shortages left the immigrant working-class wards more susceptible to mortality during the 1918 influenza pandemic.

For now, let’s get me back on my regular bullshit, and talk about all that we’ve missed.

1. Dear Bob Nutting, no one here likes you and you’re bad at your job

The Pittsburgh Pirates are in last place in their division having won only 10 of 25 games, which is honestly about 9 more than I’d have predicted. They stink and they’re finding new stinks to stink and new ways to stink them.

It really does seem that the growing frustration with Bob Nutting’s ownership has reached a level that not even he can ignore, as he historically has. He has had a no good very bad stretch of weeks.

Brick-gate aside, which is a whole story in itself, he was booed during introductions at the home opener while a plane circled overhead with a massive SELL THE TEAM banner. There are actual billboards in the city asking him to sell the team, and other than Bob Nutting himself (and his family), the only person who doesn’t want him to sell the team is Lucifer B. Satan.

In response to the team’s poor start, Nutting first blamed the players, saying, “I think that I’ve done everything that I can to provide the tools and resources to the team. There is a point where it becomes execution.”

Gross. This is like buying scissors at the dollar store and then wondering why they can’t cut carpet. Be for real.

In another interview, Nutting served up an insane word salad. Get some buttermilk ranch and piping hot french fries because I’m about to share the entirety of his recent comments:

I really do appreciate and respect the passion that the fans have for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the desire they have for this team to win. What I want them to know is that I share that, working every day to put a winner and a championship team out here on this field. We did a lot of that work over the offseason. Fundamentally, my role is to make sure that we have [general manager] Ben [Cherington] in place, and we have Shelty [manager Derek Shelton] in place, and they have the tools to support our players and provide everything that we possibly can to give them an opportunity to succeed.

“I think the other piece that is important for me to do is to make sure that we're filtering out what is a potential distraction, moving us down the wrong path, and get a laser focus on those things that are going to give us the ability to put a championship team on the field. So, I think this year, Ben understands how important this season is. Shelty understands how important this season is. And, as they rebuild coaching staffs, as they rebuild positions, as we've provided more analytics support, those are the things they believe will put us in the strongest position we can possibly be in to win.

“We had a disappointing start. It's a few games in, and we need to see real performance. I have high expectations this year. The organization knows we have high expectations, and I know the fans have high expectations."

The thing with historians is, when we notice even a hint of a pattern across time, we will dig into the archives to prove our argument that there is, in fact, a pattern. Let’s do that now as we pull out some Bob Nutting quotes since 2014:

• 11 years ago: “We’re going to make sure we’re never focused on total dollars, but how do we really invest effectively so we’re getting the right mix of our development systems, the right mix of talent coming into the organization … and we need to perform and win in Pittsburgh.”

• 10 years ago: “Our fan base has been reenergized. The results have been additional revenues, all of which we have invested back into the club.”

• 9 years ago: “As we look for the reasons we’ve been able to be competitive, we had a commitment for the past many years to infuse talent into the organization every way we can.”

• 8 years ago: “I respect the fans’ concerns and questions because I think it comes out of a really good-hearted place that we are all in. We want to see this team perform up to the level that it can and up to the level that a historic franchise deserves. That message hasn’t changed and will never change as long as I’m in this seat. We believe that by continuing to infuse talent into the organization at every level we can, every way that we can, that we can create a sustained, competitive team. We need to focus on how we move forward, how we push, how we deliver a level of excellence beyond what we’ve done in the past.”

• 7 years ago: “This year is not a rebuild year. This year is a new direction. We believe that we have the better approach to create a championship team. We certainly believe we have the better approach to be competitive year after year. Do we get there in three days? No. Do we get there over the course of a spring and a season? That’s what we’re focused on doing.”

• 6 years ago: “I’m not sure I’ve ever been more energized, enthusiastic or pleased with the direction of the organization. The next chapter of the Pittsburgh Pirates is going to be incredibly exciting … we’re going to take a fresh look at every corner of the operation. There’s no question that it’s time on the baseball front. The idea that we are hoarding cash as a team is simply not accurate. It’s time for another burst of innovation. It’s time for a fresh approach.”

• 5 years ago: “I think we have a solid core, but we need to build around it. We need to supplement. That will take some time.”

• 4 years ago: “I know how much fans care, and I know how much they want this team to be better. We’re working every day, putting the right people in place to accomplish that. I hope they know how much I care, too. There’s nothing more important to me than getting this right. I respect that they get mad. They should also know that I appreciate and respect the passion and the caring. My responsibility is to make sure we look broadly and don’t get tunnel vision. I am deeply committed to never using the existing [league economics] system as an excuse.” Narrator: He has since used it as an excuse multiple times.

• 3 years ago: “I do believe we’ve rebuilt [the minor league] foundation to the point that we can really focus on the major league club.”

• 2 years ago: “We saw real success nearly a decade ago now. It’s been far too long. It’s time for us to get back … we’re just getting started. I think we’re right at the brink of seeing success … It’s been challenging the last few years, but it’s been a building window and we’ve made real progress. We’re seeing the tangible results of that progress. I look forward to seeing where we’re headed.”

To the dumpster, Bob. That’s where we’re headed. To a floating-in-the-flood-waters-while-on-fire dumpster. Because that’s where you have steered the team. I cannot strongly enough express to you that nothing you say matters anymore because we no longer believe a single word out of your mouth. If you’re going to insist on owning this team, at least respect the fans enough to shut the hell up forever.

Sell the team? Relegate the team to the minors.

2. Dear Aaron Rodgers, no one here likes you and you’re a virgin who can’t drive

The Steelers still don’t have an answer from Aaron Rodgers about whether he will be joining the team, as it seems the science-denying conspiracy-theory-loving uneducated elderly narcissist is content to just string teams along.

Today, the Trib reports that The Athletic’s Michael Silver has some scoop on the delay:

Silver says Rodgers may be leery of signing with the Steelers because they aren’t making him feel special enough in their recruitment.

“I think Aaron wants someone to roll out the red carpet for him … Aaron would love to be swept off his feet.”

To quote Prince:

The entire city of Pittsburgh doesn’t even own a single metaphorical red carpet that we would roll out for anyone except maybe a resurrected Roberto Clemente, THAT IS WHAT MAKES US PITTSBURGH. We elevate who we choose to, not who demands it of us. They’ll never do it, but I wish the Steelers would just get themselves some comically large scissors and cut him loose with a “Don’t let the door hit you in your Sandy Hook conspiracy theories on the way out.”

3. Help me help … me, and the litter problem.

April is Earth Month and I had wanted to do something to help out my peeps at Allegheny Cleanways this month, but as we’ve discussed, my availability was extremely limited because I was in a fight to the death with Microsoft Word. Also, my brain liquified possibly. Therefore! Can 25 of you please help me? I had wanted to get 25 people to donate just $25 to Allegheny Cleanways as a show of support for the organization that is on the ground every single week doing multiple litter and illegal dump cleanups. If you’ve noticed how bad the litter problem is around here and want to be one of my 25 people, click here and make a $25 donation and then email me at ginnymontanez@gmail.com so I can hug you and thank you.

4. Owl be loving you … foreEEEeeverrrr

(If I didn’t just deposit a New Kids on the Block earworm into your brain, you are not my people.) This is old news, but still hilarious.

A great horned owlet named Muppet fell out of his nest under the Panther Hollow Bridge, because that’s where we are in society: our pets heads are falling off and our owls are falling out of nests. Muppet was rescued, rehabbed (his beak got busted up a bit but scars are badass so it’s okay) and reunited with his family who were probably like, “We pushed you out so you would fly, you idiot! You are not a penguin!”

First of all, KDKA found the story so important they dispatched Ross Guidotti to the scene straight from an Irish sheep farm:

Second of all, Muppet, who Guidotti referred to as “Pittsburgh’s prodigal owl” has very clearly gone through some things, seen some things, and is over all the things.

On the left, how I look when I see a driver change lanes inside a Pittsburgh tunnel. On the right, how I look when Pirates manager Derek Shelton says, “It’s time to win,” but also how I will look when the Steelers eventually announce that Aaron Rodgers is their new quarterback.

I feel you, Muppet. What is even happening anymore?

Also, Ross Guidotti, lad, you are out of your mind if you think Pittsburgh’s Prodigal Owl isn’t my new band name. Ironically, we never play the same venue twice.*

* bible-based-bah-dum-TISS!

5. Allegheny County will throw your love away

I don’t know who has taken over the social media duties over at Allegheny County but I love them and if you aren’t following, you are missing some real gems.

Here they are telling yinz jags to stop putting love locks on Pittsburgh bridges because crews will just cut them down and dispose of them along with your forever-cursed love:

And here they are cinematically transforming their pothole fillers into badass action stars:

Two thumbs up. Give the social media crew a raise.

6. Random n’at

• This post on Threads broke my already-broken-down brain:

  

  Broken-Down Brain is also an excellent band name, email sign-off or gravestone epitaph. But seriously. We can’t be the only ones who say “baked botatoe,” can we? I tried to enunciate the P aloud and ended up sounding like I should be starring as an upstairs lady in an upstairs/downstairs British period piece.

• The Pittsburgh metro area once again has the worst air in the Mid-Atlantic region, the 12th worst in the nation for year-round pollution levels, and overall got a big fat F in air quality. This is bad and we are about to flunk out of air quality school.

• Two BASE jumpers parachuted off the roof of PPG Place and may have gained access via a duplicated key. Hope they punched some pigeons on the way down. If you’re going to illegally take to the skies, at least be useful.

• Pitt-Osher asked me to teach my Pittsburgh History to World War II class again this summer. Here’s the description within the catalog.

  

  It’s five classes, in-person, on campus and loads of fun because I show you TONS of primary sources. Just ask my previous students. Get yourself signed up if you’re 50 and older and want to be a in a class that lets you see fun slides like these:

  

6. That’s all for today!

I have a whole life to catch up on, a garage to clean, rooms to paint, an app to launch (which you all are going to LOVE LOVE LOVE. More on that next week!), a column to write and a book to write and and and. Have a great week or two! Enjoy the weather! Be kind! Don’t litter! Donate $25 to Allegheny Cleanways! Sign up for my class!

And, Bob Nutting, if you are reading this, sell the team and ride off into the sunset forever; just don’t forget to take your bag of lies with you when you go.

Batman is right; my brain is completely trashed. Every single cell hanging on for dear life while drunkenly slurring words scolding me for not doing this taxing shit in my 20s or 30s when they had a fighting chance to contribute. Instead I’m half-a-century old which means they are half-a-century old which means I ask them to figure out how to build a pivot table in Excel and they say, “Eat shit and die, grandma.”

But! Progress is being made in spite of their ineptitude. I had a great meeting with my committee yesterday and I’m on my way to writing something that will be a pretty decent contribution to the historiography of Pittsburgh’s pollution, housing, and infectious disease response.

Let’s talk!

1. Does Ed Gainey need a Snickers?

If you had asked me two weeks ago if I thought Ed Gainey wanted to be mayor of Pittsburgh for another term, I’d have said, “Absolutely, yes,” but in light of a recent press conference that went off the rails, kept going until it reached the edge of a cliff, and then plunged to the ground where it exploded in epic fashion, I’m no longer sure.

As you know, Pittsburgh’s previous police chief made some kind of bonkers handshake deal with Mayor Gainey that said he could eventually resume being a traveling NCAA basketball ref WHILE being the chief of police of a major U.S. city. When the deal was exposed, making Gainey and Scirotto look like complete fools, Scirotto retired to go ahead and pursue his whistle-blowing foul-calling dreams. Needing a replacement, Gainey looked to assistant chief Ragland to step into an acting police chief role while they let the dust settle and figure things out.

Now, I go downtown quite a bit. I go to all the places. I go to the South Side and North Side. The Strip. Allentown. The city is not some den of crime where you should feel unsafe. That’s simply not the reality, despite what anyone is telling you. BUT, yes crime happens and it needs to be confronted and addressed with constant vigilance.

That said, Ed Gainey and Acting Chief Ragland held a press conference the day after a teenager was shot Downtown. They touted their progress on the crime reduction front without being able to give specific numbers, going instead with the tried and true, “Believe me, bro.” And the local media did what they are supposed to do … push back. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE NEED JOURNALISTS TO DO. Do you all get that? Does Ed Gainey get that? That’s what keeps power in check. When that goes away, things get real corrupt real fast.

A snippet:

The press conference, however, quickly turned combative. Gainey and Ragland asserted that crime was decreasing Downtown, but neither cited statistics. The mayor, who is locked in a contested Democratic primary race for reelection, pushed back when reporters challenged him.

“Don’t believe me — do the math, it adds up,” Gainey told reporters. “I’m not here to ask, ‘Do you see the difference?’ I’m here to say, ‘Look at the progress we made.’”

One TV reporter later asked Gainey to compare 2024 crime statistics Downtown with those from a year earlier.

“I’m not gonna speak without knowledge,” Gainey said. “And I haven’t looked at the numbers.”

I am trying to understand what he thinks the difference is between the two statements “Do you see the difference?” and “Look at the progress we made,” and here’s where I landed:

Regardless, your jobs as mayor and acting chief of police are to DO THE ACTUAL MATH. Look at and know the numbers off the top of your head if you’re going to hold a press conference claiming progress against crime. Be ready to fire those numbers off to prove your statements. Bring facts, data, and reasonably drawn statistical conclusions with you, not a defensive attitude that quickly turns to scolding the local media like they’re kindergarteners doing a call-and-response alphabet letters drill. But that’s basically where it went from there, because during this press conference, WPXI’s Rick Earle pushed back a bit and Mayor Gainey became weirdly, weirdly, bonkersingly and combatively defensive.

When Earle said, “Hey, what’s up, Chris, thank you,” Gainey insisted several times that Earle address the acting chief as “Chief Ragland.” Earle remained silent.

“That’s what I thought,” Gainey said.

“The reality is, public perception comes from you,” Gainey told Earle. “And at the end of the day, if the perception is only on the negative, then that’s what you promote.”

Dear Mayor Gainey; the public perception in this case can also come from you, and this was a bad bad bad look.

It got weirder:

Gainey also asked roughly two dozen supporters in the police substation to applaud for the city’s beauty, the work of police officers and the claim that Pittsburgh is in a better place now than it was a few years ago. They clapped.

Same. Energy.

Then Gainey gave this weird impromptu interview to the Ragland and it got so weird even ChatGPT would be like, “THIS IS AS WEIRD AS I CAN MAKE IT. THERE IS NO WEIRD WEIRDER THAN THIS WEIRD.”

Gainey: Ragland, you want this job?

Ragland: I do.

Gainey: He wants this job. Did you do the Downtown plan?

Ragland: I did.

Gainey: Did you help out on Northside when [they] needed help?

Ragland: Absolutely.

Gainey also demanded a thanks for the work of the acting chief.

“What I’m going to tell you is that he has the qualifications and he also has the record of why’s done a fine job for the city of Pittsburgh and, for that, Rick, you should say ‘Thank you,’ say ‘Thank you,’ Rick. Can you say, ‘Thank you?’' Gainey said.

Absolutely unhinged behavior from Ed Gainey. Full stop.

The condescending superiority is completely gross and unnecessary in the face of legit questions and criticisms. You backroom-handshake-dealt your previous chief into an arrangement where we’d have a part-time police chief and a part-time gig worker with full-time pay (baloney on the pay cut agreement claim; no way do I believe that) and you’re upset people are pushing back on your naming the acting chief as chief without some reservations and questions? A kid gets shot downtown and you expect applause for your crime-fighting efforts not 18 hours later? You think so little of the media you treat them like literal kindergarteners being reminded of courtesy rules?

Bad. Bad. Bad.

WPXI has a short video out or you can watch the whole thing (Particularly after 31 minutes in) if you can handle the secondhand embarrassment you’ll feel at seeing an elected official just lose his mind in real time in front of cameras and reporters. Quite a sight.

CommUnity, it’s over for Ed Gainey’s mayoral reelection ambitions. The frustration has set in and he is showing that he is ill-equipped to handle it. Corey O’Connor will be the next mayor of Pittsburgh. Bet the house on it.*

*Please don’t actually bet your house on it. If you lose, I will erase this post and pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about.

2. The solution is that there is no solution. Good job, everyone!

Let me show you something and I need you to not just reflexively scream and violently fling your computer or mobile device against the wall.

Look at this.

I KNOW. Calm down. Actual nightmare. A complete shitshow. Whoever designed it should have to be resurrected from the grave and then locked in a room with a defiant Ed Gainey and be scolded all, “Did you design this innavigable monstrosity? Yes, you did. Did you fuck it up? Yes, you did. Are you a demon? Yes, yes, you are. Now clap for me and tell me I am smart and cool and re-electable.”

That Beechwood Blvd./Forward Ave on-ramp to I-376 EB is a massive problem. It cannot be overstated how much that screws up already-terrible tunnel traffic at all hours of the day because most everyone coming down that ramp needs to cross a lane to get to the Squirrel Hill Tunnel lanes. Weekly, I wish that ramp would die by sinkhole or asteroid.

Good news! PennDOT has decided to do something about this hellscape! Bad news! They’ve presented this slate of alternatives, none of which seem to significantly rectify the situation. Having an on-ramp immediately before a tunnel entrance is the problem, especially in Pittsburgh: The Land That Tunnel-Driving Skills Forgot. This exacerbates the backups at the outbound Squirrel Hill Tunnel and both ends of the Fort Pitt Tunnel. Based on these plans, PennDOT has pretty much just accepted that this is the way it’s going to be until the collapsing sun swallows the Earth while Ed Gainey stands there and shakes his fist screaming into the expanding void, “Did you fuck up your sun-shining? Yes, yes you did!”

3. A brief tribute to Mike Lange

Mike Lange died. I know the younger people might not realize this, but it is not an exaggeration to say he had a big role in turning Pittsburgh hockey into something we as a city felt emotionally connected to. He became the cultural bridge between the team and the people, and he did it with words shouted with breathless, unabashed, over-spilling exuberance. Yes, he was more than his words, certainly, but he loved words, smashed them together into barely sensible phrases that us fans could point to and laugh about and rally around and scream at each other in the hallways at school or work. Inside jokes shared by a whole city that we could print on signs and hang in our home windows during playoff runs. Utterances that became memes decades before we even knew what memes were. He made hockey cool. He made hockey joyful. He took hockey from something we watched and turned it into something we could lean into and say, “We are all a part of this together.”

Yes, winning and Mario were important, but like Myron to the Steelers, Mike Lange was that beloved persona whose excitement and love for the game and the team were so infectious, you couldn’t help but grab on to his always outstretched hand and let him take you flying.

Like Roberto and Franco and Sophie and Fred and Myron, we’re lucky he was ours and his legacy is safe here.*

Go and visit this Wikiquote page full of some of this most amazing phrases.

Watch Sophie Masloff scream “Scratch my back with a hacksaw!” standing right next to the legend himself.

Such an amazing time to have been a Pittsburgher.

And while we are in the In Memoriam file, we also recently lost Jon Burnett, longtime KDKA host and weatherman, to suspected CTE. He was definitely a viewer favorite and this is a loss that I know many in the local media are taking quite hard.

Man, death is stupid. Much love to those who loved both of these men.

*Dear Bob Nutting, you are THISCLOSE to not being a good steward of Roberto’s legacy. Sell the team.

4. Wearin’ and drinkin’ and eatin’ o’ the green, n’at

St. Patrick’s Day will be here soon and since who knows when I’ll have another edition of the newsletter for you, here are some awesome items you can snag from local shops for the holiday! None of these are an ad!

• Pittsburgh-Themed St. Patrick’s Day Shot and Pint Glasses by City Paper, $7 to $17

• Irish Potatoes by Pollak’s Candies, $14.95 for 15 (LIMITED TIME)

• Random St. Patrick’s Day goodies from Paddy Cake Bakery, stop in for selection and prices, but look at all the cute stuff!

• St. Patrick’s Day Cookie Box by Bethel Bakery, $18 for two dozen (but check out their entire selection of goodies for the holiday!)

• Tough Luck tee by Steel City, $36 (email sign-up to get 15% off)

• 412 Shamrock embroidered beanie by Yinzsylvania, $27.99 (use code STPADDY25 for 25% off)

• St. Patrick’s Day Cutout Iced Cookies by Pastries A-La-Carte, $57 for one dozen

• Lucky green bagels by Oakmont Bakery, $18/dozen (order starting on March 9

5. Should we erase Andrew Carnegie from Pittsburgh?

My latest column for Pittsburgh Magazine is here.

I was inspired to write on this topic when I noticed a recent local tendency to paint the legacy of Andrew Carnegie as an All Bad and something Worth Erasing. As regular readers know, I spent a great deal of time researching Carnegie, his wealth, his personal philosophy, and the true motivations behind his historic philanthropy. I distilled my 2,000-plus pages of reading on the man into this column in which I attempt to offer some balance to the debate and argue that his legacy, despite his faults, should not be erased. A snippet:

These are truly damning accounts of his words not agreeing with the truth. And so, some argue, we should erase him and no longer look to his legacy as having any worth to modern Pittsburgh. But there’s a complicating factor worth exploring: his humanity.

I’m sure you can imagine I’ve received some pushback on this, especially in this all or nothing society we’ve found ourselves in, where everyone and everything is either All Bad or All Good. But that’s simply not real life. There was good in Andrew and he wrestled with the way it butted up against what society and his poor upbringing told him was bad—wealth—for his entire life, until he finally gave it all away as he promised himself he’d do (and no, he didn’t make that promise because of Johnstown and Homestead; he made that promise years and years before those events). I’m not saying he’s All Good and should be worshipped with a golden statue. I’m saying Pittsburgh doesn’t become Pittsburgh without him and that’s a legacy worth saving from damnation. Give it a read!

6. Random n’at

Cute little tidbits for you to snack on…

• Pittsburgh historians Brian Butko and Sue Morris are out with a new book about Pittsburgh’s long forgotten Bettis Airfield. Any lover of Pittsburgh history or aviation will want to dive into this one, especially with this little back-of-the-book snippet:

  Come along as we join thousands to greet Charles Lindbergh, witness a pilot crash into a steel mill while trying to cure a passenger’s deafness, watch the National Balloon Races turn to tragedy, and see a nuclear lab take over Bettis—only to have pilots keep landing on its roadways. It’s a fun, fascinating look at the dawn of aviation in Pittsburgh.

  Hey, does crashing a plane into a steel mill cure deafness? I’m willing to give it a shot. Buy it here! Not an ad!

• You hear about people posing as police officers to commit violent crimes but I bet you never heard of a woman posing as a park police officer and then offering someone a fake job after interviewing him IN A WALMART. That is not a MadLib. The police chief offers some good advise in that interview—if your interview for a job takes place at Walmart and you are NOT interviewing to work at Walmart, you should consider that a red flag. The more you know.

• The Pitt got renewed but Pradeeps of Pittsburgh got canceled. The yinzerverse giveth and the yinzerverse taketh away.

7. That’s all!

Have a fantastic day, or week, or month or even your yearrrrrr. I’ll be there for you when the … You were singing it too, weren’t you? Be kind! Watch for the bicyclists and pedestrians! Don’t get locked into a call-and-response battle with Ed Gainey!

And be sure to get out and see my new band Innavigable Monstrosity.

We just hope the mayor doesn’t show up to heckle us or make us eat our peas.

Bye!

Thousands of pages read across three years of grad work. Hundreds of pages within dozens of papers written across all manner of historical topics. Not one single grade below an A. And now I just have one more to write, my MA thesis on Pittsburgh’s response to the 1918 pandemic. I’ve studied the outbreak for four years. I’ve read over a dozen books on it. I have ten full binders of research. I have a thesis proposal and outline and a compelling argument that shifts the historiography away from blaming the local response for our highest-in-the-nation death rate. I have my committee’s go-ahead. I have 60 days to write what will probably amount to 120 pages of work. I sit at my computer in my home office with my piping hot coffee, my dogs at my feet, a three-hour window of time at my disposal. I stare at the blank document on my screen and I just …

Holy paralysis, Batman.

So let me further avoid the thing I shouldn’t avoid and instead just continue the spiral of procrastinatory doom by checking in on my little newsletter about our little big city named Pittsburgh.

Let’s talk!

1. “How satisfied are you with your imprisonment?”

From the Surely You Can’t Be Serious file that I keep next to my I Feel Like I’m Taking Crazy Pills file — yes, I need both— comes news that the Pittsburgh Pirates have insanely emailed a satisfaction survey to a set of their fans.

As in, they are seeking to gauge how happy their fans are with the team. As in, they have finally had their last remaining marble fall out and bounce noisily away. Some of the questions that appeared on the ridiculous survey followed by gifs that represent my answers:

• Overall what is your impression of the Pittsburgh Pirates?

  

• To what extent do you agree with the following statement: The Pittsburgh Pirates as an organization care about building a winning team.

  

• To what extent do you agree with the following statement? The Pittsburgh Pirates are committed to on-field performance and improvement.

• Overall, do the Pittsburgh Pirates make you feel satisfied as a fan?

  

The amazing part? The possible answers for that last question were:

• No

• Sometimes

• Yes

Instead of:

• No

• Also no

• No, but in Spanish

• No, but to the power of a billion

This is exactly the same as a warden surveying the prisoners and then instituting a “the beatings will continue until morale improves” policy.

There is no way the responses to this survey will be taken into account to inform one single action taken by the front office toward building a winning team. Like they’re going to say, “Oh, geez! We have terrible fan satisfaction numbers because of our refusal to in any way build and maintain a winning team and to instead throw bobbleheads, free t-shirts and fireworks at them to shut them up. We better make some changes and start spending real money on being competitive!”

Instead, they will see these expected results and say, “LOL. We done already knew. But let’s continue to publicly say we are going to spend money, even though privately we will continue to issue directives that we have no money to spend on team-building and so we are just going to keep doing what we’ve been doing for decades and that is this … lose in epic last-place fashion, but it’s okay because we can now say, hey, we are trying to make fans happy and to protect the important legacy of this ball club. Just look at the fan survey we sent out. We care! Now hold still while we launch a loosely wrapped tepid hotdog at your person.”

Sell the team.

2. Playing pond lehocky and drinking Molson lebeer like a hoser lehuman

From my Your Supervillain Origin Story Options file comes this gem:

The dumbass billboard infecting our gorgeous Mt. Washington has been changed from Iron City to the national legal firm Pond Lehocky, which sounds like what an alien would call hockey while trying to pass themselves off as a French-Canadian human. “Let us go play pond lehocky! I am normal human being! Do not rip off my skin please!”

I tend to hate when advertising mars our natural landforms and major infrastructure, especially when its done by brands that don’t have an iconic connection to the city. Looking at you, Acrisure. That said, man, Pittsburgh used to be AWASH in advertising. Even on our bridges! Look at the old Seventh Street bridge around 1915:

Everything from clothing to soap to pianos to grocery stores have signs on that bridge. MADNESS. And yes, our giant beloved South Side clock used to be on a Coca-Cola billboard on the side of Mt. Washington:

So I will deal with this one single sign, but I just want to state on the record that I hate the billboard in general and the only thing that should appear at that space is trees, vegetation, or maybe a picture of a waving Fred Rogers next to “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

Lefight me like one of your french girls.

3. A yinzer award for voting

I love this. Allegheny County held a contest for local school students to design the I Voted sticker for the upcoming primary and general elections and the finalists are so great. I particularly love these four designed by 9th, 11th and 12th graders:

My gut tells me the pickle will win, but I sure do like the use of fireworks in that first one, and the pop-art feel of the last one. What a tough choice. Hell, print them all. Whoever said there can be only one, other than Highlander?

Virginia Montanez says, “There can be several.”

4. Yinzer Valentine’s Day is here

Valentine’s Day is coming up and the local makers have been busy coming up with some great stuff for you to grab for your honey. Here’s a round-up of my faves:

• Strawberries for Him from Sinful Sweets, $25.99 (pickup only, also available in “For Her” pink)

• Pittsburgh City Paper NSFW Valentine's Day Sticker Packs, $12

• Commonwealth Press Neighborhood Valentine’s Card, $4.50

• Yinzer Cards Valentine’s Conversation Hearts Card, $4.99

• North Avenue Candle Company Book-Themed Conversation Hearts Candle Tins, $15 (also available in non-book-themed tins and mini tins!)

• love, Pittsburgh Pittsburghese Conversation Hearts, (sort of a high price at $4 for 10 candies, but they’re super cute)

• Steel City Red Union Beanie, on sale for $15

• 9-piece Umber Chocolates Valentine’s Collection, pre-order, $30 (or get the huge 27-piece for $75)

Nothing is an ad! Go buy your love some goodies!

5. Random n’at

• Cranberry Township first responders went above and beyond to rescue a 600-pound donkey that had fallen into an icy pond. I love this story very much.

• I’ve been taking my teen daughter on a tour of unusual Pittsburgh shops and museums that don’t get as much attention and last week we hit up the Allentown neighborhood near Mt. Washington to visit The Weeping Glass and Dr. Tumblety’s. They are both incredible with so much cool stuff, both old and new, to look at. My daughter especially loved the impromptu tour she was given at Dr. Tumblety’s, getting to see their two rear moody bars with a secret hidden passageway. One thing I really loved was this locally handmade shawl that features an unexpected skull pattern. Classy, but spooky and they had several colors in stock in the store.

  

  Perfection. This isn’t an ad! Just a little heads up about a few cool and unusual small local shops to go visit. Next we are visiting Geology Rocks (shout-out to Ross Geller) and the Troy Hill art houses.

• Did you or someone you know lose a camera under the Clemente Bridge 25 years ago? Your developed pictures are waiting for you!

• A minority stake in the Pittsburgh Penguins is up for sale, so I’m about to GoFundMe that shit.

• From my General Rodentia Matters file, Groundhog Phil and his wife Phyllis (lol) had pups last spring and their names are Sunny and Shadow (omg, yes). I had no idea baby groundhogs were this precious:

  

  Adorable little Capybara-looking snuggle-bums. I’m now a Sunny and Shadow fan.

6. That’s all!

That’s it for this break from my bout of thesis-writing paralysis. I have about one more hour to stare at my computer and do absolutely nothing but let my eyes glaze over and my dread multiply. As for you, be kind! Don’t doom-scroll! Hug baby groundhogs! Visit more local shops! Donate to my imaginary fund to buy a stake in the Pittsburgh Penguins! Tell Bob Nutting to go hug a cactus!

And above all, be sure to get out and catch my new band Spiral of Procrastinatory Doom. We spend about an hour just staring into the crowd in terror, but then we truly do rock out.

Later!

You’ve likely seen it on social media. You create a row of 18-inch squares on the floor with some sort of visible tape. You blindfold some people and have them stand in the squares. You put on a song and tell them to do a high-step march while staying in the square. That’s it; that’s the game.

A trio of our youths (damn yutes!) went first, and did a pretty admirable job, but I was sure to trash-talk my teen nephew for ending up a full foot outside of his square. Like, tighten it up, loser!

Next up: me and two of my sisters (long-time readers know them as Pens Fan and Tina Fey). I’m especially terrible at balance and hearing when I’m blindfolded so I expected to be terrible at this game.

The music plays. I start marching, my knees coming up to my waist. I work out; I’m physically strong, so I was impressively able to wrest control of my balance. As I marched in place, I thought, “Self, you are KILLING it! What in the world!? You must have some sort of natural talent at this, or you’re in such incredible shape that you can put your foot down right next to the other one!” At this point, I could hear the dozen or so spectators in the room guffawing and I was like, wow, my sisters must suck at this. Just keep marching in place, girl. You got this. Defy the odds. Show them damn yutes their old auntie is a blindfolded-march-in-place deaf badass.

Then the music stopped and the three of us removed our blindfolds to see how we did. Internet, I had embarked on a full-scale wilderness hike. I was inches from my aunt who sat on a couch pointing and laughing at our inept butts. Tina Fey had, incredibly, managed to round a corner, so I assume one of her legs is shorter than the other. Only Pens Fan, who clearly cheated, managed to stay within spitting distance of her square. The music-keepers didn’t stop the song because it was time; they stopped the song because Tina Fey and I were about to march right into furniture and walls.

So that’s the story of how I was humbled into ruin on Christmas Day—the true meaning of the season.

Enough chit-chat! Let’s recap the best things that happened in Pittsburgh in 2024, in no particular order:

1. A beautifully executed failure; Astrobotic soars in defeat

It’s not often we can point to failure as one of the highlights of our year, but that is indeed the case when it comes to Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, launched aboard the maiden flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket on January 8. An hour after launch, a propulsion system leak ruptured the oxidizer tank, a catastrophic anomaly that meant it would not be able to land on the Moon. Rather than collapse in on themselves and go silent after years of hard work didn’t pay off, Astrobotic grabbed hold of the reins of science and shared daily detailed information on what they were learning and how they were fighting to extend Peregrine’s life. And thus, a failure that would normally have generated public finger-pointing and ridicule, was transformed by the Astrobotic attitude into a growing sense of community and hope. The public followed along each day, encouraging the team as they struggled to execute what they could of the science experiments traveling on the lander. After 10 days of control and 535,000 miles of travel, Peregrine’s mission was terminated via controlled re-entry over the South Pacific. In the aftermath, Astrobotic wasn’t weaker, but remarkably stronger from a failure that turned out to be anything but.

2. Jaromir Jagr comes home to open arms and a whole lot of mullets

Pittsburgh said her goodbyes (and certainly some said, “Good riddance, ya dying-alive jag”) to #68 over two decades ago, but the legend of Jaromir Jagr never departed the soul of this hockey town for even a moment. A door left ajar never stops begging to be flung wide open, and that’s just what the Penguins did thanks to the leadership of Kevin Acklin. Jagr’s long-overdue visit home last year snowballed, thanks to Acklin’s encouragement and doggedness, into an official jersey retirement ceremony at PPG Arena on February 18. Departed the city as a brash, youthful hockey god, he returned a graying, life-loving hockey god with an easy laugh and gentle demeanor. In an emotional, heartfelt and moving speech in front of his mother, a dozen former teammates, including Mario, and a sold-out crowd, Jagr called his years in Pittsburgh the best of his life. After watching his banner raised to the rafters, he took to the ice for warmups with the Penguins who paid tribute via lush mullet wigs. The prodigal hockey son has come home, and no matter where he goes in the world, he’ll never leave again. (Let’s not talk about the stolen bobblehead fiasco, because I still haven’t figured out what really happened there.)

3. The first class graduates from Freedom House EMT Academy

The Freedom House EMT Academy was created by the city in February in tribute to the original Freedom House Ambulance Service—a groundbreaking program that catalyzed the modern ambulance service by mobilizing trained medical professionals with skills beyond basic first aid. The original 1967 program, started in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, involved training a crew of Black residents of the Hill, and then sending them throughout the city to respond to calls and save lives. By 1970, they’d already transported 10,000 patients. The modern iteration of the program, operated by the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services as a 12-week paid training course, graduated its first class of 9 new EMTs in August. Apply here to join a new class of trainees!

4. Paul Skenes injects life into another disappointing season

After another hot start, the Pittsburgh Pirates went and Pittsburgh Pirates-ed themselves face-first into last place as only the Pittsburgh Pirates can do. But amidst the stink of decay arose one fragrant, beautiful bloom via pitcher Paul Skenes who took the mound for the first time in the majors on May 11. Despite the dismal performance of management and team over the season, Pirates fans latched onto the Skenes train and rode it joyfully, thrilling turn after thrilling turn, as the young pitcher navigated his way through a glorious rookie season that saw him named the starting NL pitcher for the All-Star game. Throughout the season, Eat’n Park introduced a Skenes Smiley Cookie, Pittsburghers delighted in the regular injection of celebrity via his girlfriend, gymnast Livvy Dunne, and fans marveled at his ability to put K after K on the board while maintaining a maturity far beyond his 22 years. By the end of his 1.96 ERA season, his selection as the NL Rookie of the Year was a given. Who knows what next season will bring for the team (lol yes we know; we actually know very much), but Skenes himself is destined to pitch himself to greatness. Pittsburgh should enjoy his time in the black and gold and be grateful that we at least had his bright star shining over the 2024 season of putrescence.

5. The Northern Lights put on a Steel City show, and then give two encores

In addition to a near-complete solar eclipse, 2024 was the year Pittsburghers saw something they would usually need to travel far north to see once in a lifetime—except they got to do it three times from their backyards! Solar storms brought the aurora to the Golden Triangle in May, August and October this year, wowing yinzers as they saw eye-popping hues of greens, pinks and purples painting the night sky (often only visible through their camera lenses). Social media streams filled with thousands of colorful photos, no two alike, and a whole lot of bucket lists got new checkmarks next to See the Northern Lights. And we didn’t even have to go to Canada to make it happen.

6. CMU announces free tuition for undergrad families earning under $75,000

Carnegie Mellon University is one of those storied institutions that is far out of reach for middle- and low-income pocketbooks unless scads of scholarship, grant and loan dollars are obtained. Following the lead of other schools, this year Carnegie Mellon announced that starting in 2025, free tuition will be offered to all current and incoming students whose families earn less than $75,000 annually. This CMU Pathway Program is designed to remove barriers for promising students who have much to contribute to science and the arts, but who lack the opportunity to do so due to financial constraints. Additionally, CMU’s commitment to relieving the debt burden for its students led them to promise that undergraduates whose families earn less than $100,000 will be offered institutional grants that will fully relieve their families of the need for federal loans. This commitment to making higher education more accessible is desperately needed and the school is setting an example that other well-endowed institutions should and will hopefully follow.

7. The City of Pittsburgh puts down the red tape and embraces the pun

It’s such a small thing, but a true injection of delightful lightheartedness into the otherwise staid red-tape world of local government deserves to be revisited as a high point of 2024. When the Senator John Heinz History Center decided to follow the “ask forgiveness, not permission” adage by installing the giant Heinz ketchup bottle removed from Acrisure Stadium, they did so in defiance of the city’s permit rules for outdoor signage. Installed on a corner of the museum, the bottle, viewed as an artifact by the museum but as a sign by the city, earned the museum a violation notice from the Department of City Planning. Rather than do the thing that local governments do—be dumb and boring and unwilling to bend even a skoosh, the City issued a pun-filled ruling on the violation in which they used every possible reference to condiments and pickles they could while granting the museum an exception, allowing the bottle to remain. Filled with dozens of punny phrases like “laid it on thick,” “passed legal mustard,” “legal bottlenecks” and “a big dill,” the ruling was pitch-perfect and worthy of being framed in the museum itself so visitors can read it in 50 years for a chuckle before teleporting themselves to a booth in Primantis.

8. Pitt tests the first vaccine targeting pre-invasive breast cancer

In hopeful medical news, University of Pittsburgh and UPMC researchers embarked this year on the first-of-its-kind test of a vaccine designed to target pre-cancerous cells in the breast before they develop into invasive Stage 1 breast cancer. Led by School of Medicine professor Olivera Finn, the trial is the result of her decades of work as well as the contributions of a full team of researchers. The team administered to patients in the trial three courses of a vaccine that will hopefully generate an immune response to the pre-cancerous cells and thus mark an important step in the broader field of cancer treatment. Seeded by a $100,000 grant from local A Glimmer of Hope Foundation and a $2.1 million gift from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the first phase of the trial was rolled out to 50 patients this year. If you have a DCIS diagnosis and are interested in the vaccine, find more info on applying to the trial here.

9. PPS completes the filtering of lead from school drinking water

It took eight years of work, but in May the Pittsburgh Public Schools met their goal of filtering lead from the drinking water in all school buildings. In 2016, recognizing replacing lead-lined piping would not be feasible, the school district instead committed to “systematically replacing every single antiquated drinking fountain with lead filtering water bottle filling stations and lead filtering drinking fountains in every school building across the district.” All told, that meant replacing nearly 1,300 fountains across 70 school buildings—a huge undertaking. The district announced the completion of this Filter First campaign in May during National Drinking Water week, and celebrated the milestone by giving free water bottles to all students for use at the new lead-filtered fill-up stations. The school sees this as just the first step in improving the safety of their students’ drinking water, with their sights set on next filtering out “forever chemicals.”

10. After 87 years, a butterfly returns home to Pittsburgh

This is a seemingly small thing, but as the butterfly effect can show, there are few small things that lack the capacity to generate ripples that can lead to big things, and that’s exactly what happened in Pittsburgh this year thanks to concerted efforts by local naturalists to plant pawpaws to increase the foliage frequented by certain butterfly species. In this case, nearly 90 years after its last sighting in Pittsburgh, the gorgeous and unmistakable zebra swallowtail butterfly has returned, a biodiversity win that illustrates how small, intentional human actions can positively impact the environment in big ways. A few pawpaws, the host plant of this butterfly species, planted locally several years ago finally generated enough of a ripple that the stunning butterfly was spotted here for the first time in 87 years, leaving behind eggs that were carefully collected and nurtured through every stage of metamorphosis. This story serves as a reminder that we in Pittsburgh should consider ourselves not just beings existing within nature, but powerful change-agents capable of using our minds, bodies, and surroundings to improve the natural world around us for ourselves and our descendants. This means refraining from littering, cleaning up litter, recycling, choosing to limit your usage of single-use plastics, planting with pollinators in mind, and supporting the organizations who are on the ground doing the clean-up work every day so that more environmental wins can be celebrated next year and onward.

That’s it for 2024! What I’ll be watching in 2025: the Black business incubator coming to the former Pitt building downtown, the recently announced first NVIDIA AI Tech Community coming to Pitt and CMU further cementing Pittsburgh as a leading tech city, the Esplanade coming to the North Shore complete with long overdue Ferris Wheel, the first impacts of the $600 million investment in revitalizing downtown Pittsburgh, and the opening of the new terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport slated for late 2025.

Happy New Year, loves!

By way of a personal update … after reading up on how important strength training is for women my age (elderly years old) and for overall brain health, I recently started going to the gym with my pilot son who is also a gym rat studying to be certified as a personal trainer. Let me tell you that nothing makes you want to fistfight one of the people you love more than life itself than hearing that person say, “Three more.”

How about zero more and I go home and sit by the fire with some snackies?

So that’s where things are with me! I’m in pain! All the time! Let’s chat!

1. Mayor O’Connor Part II?

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Burgh,

We have us a mayoral primary!

Corey O’Connor, the Allegheny County controller, former Pittsburgh council member and the son of the late Mayor Bob O’Connor, announced his campaign for mayor on Tuesday, setting up a major challenge to incumbent Ed Gainey, who already announced plans to run for a second term.

I recommend this Public Source piece for its dive into Corey’s work with the city over the years and Ed Gainey’s tenure thus far. I have to say I have been impressed with Corey for some time now, particularly as it relates to fiscal management and spending accountability, and just generally avoiding most of the drama llamas that regularly create chaos on Grant Street.

On a superficial note, Corey’s announcement invitation as seen above had a Mister Rogers-esque “M” on Mayor, but on the signage at the actual launch, it was gone from the logo. I wonder if a trademark infringement notice was the reason for its removal, but I really did like that he was using that little bit of neighborhood nostalgia.

Another cute idea would be to slant one of the letters that has a hard edge and put a little red incline car running up it. Once again, I have the best ideas. Hire me.

Anyway, while the presidential election made me want to launch myself in the general direction of Jupiter, I’m so excited to watch this mayoral race unfold over the next several months. Bring on the chaos!

2. Here an emu; there an emu; WAIT WHY ARE THERE SUDDENLY EMUS EVERYWHERE?

Remember this from a few months ago?

That emu that was just casually loitering around McKeesport like it was waiting for his friends to show up and do Jumanji-type things? Well look at this:

This is a DIFFERENT emu; this one in Chartiers, just taking a stroll and enjoying the scenery. Like the McKeesport emu, the Chartiers emu had escaped from its owner so I gotta ask, how many people in southwestern Pennsylvania own emus to the point that we can have not one but TWO emu-escape stories within a few months? Especially considering emus as a species didn’t even exist until 1995, I believe. They say.

I have so many questions. Is emu plural for emu? What do you feed an emu? Are they cute when they’re little? Has anyone ever seen a young emu much like no one has ever seen a baby pigeon (because they are spawned fully formed out of demon seed)? Do they live in a barn or in people’s houses like some kind of giant domesticated house-trained chickens? Are there regulations about how big of a bird you can keep as a pet? Are emu(s) even birds? Are birds real?

As you can see, two emus (emu?) on the loose has made me question everything I know about avian science.

Also, Questioning Avian Science is my new grunge band name. Ironically, we are very pro-vaccine.

3. Whoa, horsey!

The City of Pittsburgh’s horse-mounted division is being disbanded in next year’s budget. The unit currently consists of 1 full-time rider, 10 part-time riders, and six horses. If math was real, I’d tell you to do some napkin addition to estimate what the program costs the city for one year of operation and give me your best guess.

So do that now. Put a number in your head. Got it?

The real answer:

The city spends about $500,000 a year on the unit, which includes six horses, one full-time rider, 10 part-time riders, veterinary bills and general maintenance of the facilities.

My. Goodness! I was so far off!

This feels just like the time I learned that Lukey bought 250 garbage cans for a quarter of a million dollars because apparently garbage cans cost $1,000 each here on Planet Looney Tunes. It sounded like fiscal crazypants then and this half-a-million mounted patrol unit cost sounds like fiscal crazypants in 2024. But I admit I don’t know much about costs associated with caring for six horses and paying part time riders. Maybe this is a very normal number.

It just honestly seems like a waste of money because the other thing is this: I have never once seen a horse-riding Pittsburgh police officer in the wild outside of riding in a parade. We are seeing residential emu(s) with more frequency than we are seeing a police officer riding a horse.

Are they mostly just ceremonially riding in parades to encourage goodwill? Is it about maneuvering through traffic? We have cops on bikes, don’t we? Bikes don’t need veterinary care or food or expensive boarding. Is it about search and rescue to have a higher vantage point? May I introduce you to drones?

City finances are reportedly on the brink and I think this is a great place to make a little chop in the budget.

Now I have to figure out the gig logistics of singing lead vocals in both Questioning Avian Science and Fiscal Crazypants in the same week. I’m really in demand right now by the fake bands that exist in my head.

4. Speaking of birds and bike police and politics …

With my whole chest, I say …

5. Gird your intestinal lining

My younger twin sisters tell a story about growing up in Pittsburgh and having our family’s “special restaurant for important days” being the Monroeville Chi-Chis: apparently when they left home and entered the great big world of college in Texas, they made fools of themselves when they, in the presence of their friends, referred to fajitas as Chajitas™️, the name for the dish on Chi-Chi’s menu as seen here:

To quote this emoji … 🤣.

Their friends were probably like, “What kind of trash raccoon upbringing did y’all have up there in Pittsburgh?”

Now, I realize Chi-Chi’s downfall had to do with everyone getting dysentery and having their oxen die en masse after eating there, but I’m beyond excited by this news:

Tex-Mex fans around the U.S. are giddy over an announcement from owner Hormel Foods on Tuesday that Chi Chi’s would be making a comeback in 2025.

This excitement I feel is wholly related to nostalgia. Kind of like when the whale’s squishy tongue came back to Noah’s Ark at Kennywood. Chi-Chi’s is interwoven with so many of my most vivid childhood and teenage memories. How hard it was to walk on their slippery cobblestone-like flooring while wearing my pre-teen church heels. The dimly lit fiesta atmosphere. The fried ice cream with honey drizzle. The time the waitress accidentally dumped a full tray of margaritas down my dad’s back. Drinking Shirley Temples like the classy heel-wearing mustache-having perm-haired tinted-glasses-wearing broad I was at 13.

Remember this menu??

And go watch this old commercial! Bring it all back and I promise once it reopens, I’ll be watching myself, my oxen and, for good measure, my emu for the first signs of Chimichanga-induced dysentery.

Also, committing to playing gigs with three bands in one week might be my limit, but my country-rock band Chimichanga-Induced Dysentery is honestly ready to rock.

We only accept payment in the form of Baja Burros™️ and churros.

6. Avenge Ann Brooks

Pittsburgh burnt down in 1845 and we don’t talk about it enough. Well, up to 1/3 of the downtown area was destroyed by a fire, to be closer to exact. Here’s a painting created by William Coventry Hall one year after the fire:

And here are a few of the headlines from the day after the fire:

Best estimates put the fire at consuming 20-26 blocks (about 56 acres). Between 975 and 1,115 buildings were destroyed with another 150 heavily damaged. Losses were about $10-$20 million in personal and property losses while 2,000 families were made homeless. It was historically and devastatingly catastrophic. The thing is that when you read about the Great Fire of 1845, you’ll often see a name mentioned as being the unwitting fire-starter who was the responsible party for all that devastation — an Irish washerwoman named Ann Brooks.

You’ll see her name invoked by journalists, popular history writers and historians. In my latest for Pittsburgh Magazine, I bust this historical myth about Pittsburgh’s Great Fire of 1845 and get to the bottom of what we really know for certain about who started the fire.

A snippet:

As for the survivors themselves, despair and anguish were quickly replaced by self-determination and energy. Just four days post-fire, the air that had echoed with the eerie clang of a warning bell and shouts of fear was filled with the staccato of nails being hammered into the beams of replacement structures. Within four months, hardworking Pittsburghers and a new influx of laborers had nearly 500 buildings up or in progress. Thus, Pittsburgh’s Great Fire gave way to a great rebuilding that erased the final remnants of a frontier town to lay a more well-planned and stronger foundation — up from which a true center of industrial might could rise.

My point in writing this piece wasn’t just to correct the historical record, but to encourage us all to remember and commemorate the Great Fire of 1845 even today, for it can be argued that Pittsburgh’s resilient ability to recover from catastrophe and setbacks— and to then build something stronger and better— had its earliest origins in how she responded to that fire.

Give it a read!

7. Don’t forget!

We are running out of shopping days until the holidays arrive, so remember to check out my annual Yinzer Gift Guide to find gifts for everyone on your list at prices that won’t get your bank account mad at you. Nothing on the gift guide is an ad! Here are just a few of the awesome things on it:

My friend bought the bracelet there for herself and it looks so stunning. And I saw on Instagram that Umber Chocolates was shipping something like 600 boxes of their chocolates today! My goodness. So be sure to hit them up soon if you’re wanting to gift their chocolates.

Check out the whole gift guide and all the linky goodness here!

8. That’s all for today!

I’m out of space, so no random little items this week. Have a fantastic week! I’ll try to get my annual “10 Best Things that Happened in Pittsburgh in 2024” published this year. Be kind! Shop local! Check on your emu! Come out and see any one of my bands!

And most importantly, when your son is helping you weight train and says “three more,” reply with…

You know the drill. Nearly all locally made. Check to see who offers free local pickup to save yourself some money. Order sooner rather than later because items sell out. If that happens, reach out to sellers; they’ll do what they can to take your money! Be sure to read the text because I hide links to other great items in their shops there. Now listen to me … don’t gate-keep this list because you’re afraid stuff will sell out; grab what you want from it and then share it far and wide so we can get as many dollars as possible into as many local businesses as possible. Spread the love.

It’s super long, so here’s a link if you’re a subscriber and your email cuts this off.

As a reminder: NOTHING is an ad and I do not accept free products in exchange for inclusion on the list. It’s just stuff I love and I think you’ll love too. Most of these makers/business owners have zero clue they are appearing on the list. Email me if links get broken. Away we go!

1. Umber Chocolates 9-piece Holiday Box, $30

Look. How. Pretty. This is my favorite kind of chocolate for gift-givingreceiving because each piece is a beautiful work of art. This 9-piece holiday collection from the local Umber Chocolates (started in 2022 by Veronica Alvarado) is the perfect hostess gift or gift for the chocolate addict in your life. It’s pretty; it’s delicious, and you don’t even need to wrap it! Just smack a bow on that sucker and you’re set. Laziness, the true meaning of the season.

2. Lucky Sign Spirits, $21 to $60 per bottle

The other true meaning of the season is alcohol and have I got a good one for you! Do you know of award-winning Lucky Sign Spirits distillery in Gibsonia? Now you do! This distillery, which also has a bar and retail store you can visit if you prefer to shop in person, has a lovely lineup of spirits to bestow upon the cocktail maker or bourbon drinker in your life. I’m particularly in love with the idea of gifting the Girty’s Run Gin to double up on the local goodness. They don’t have pictures of it up yet, but their new prohibition-themed Honest Hillbilly line sounds like a nostalgic delight!

3. SASHA and Jenna Vanden Brink Fiber + Porcelain Gold Bracelets, $44 each

I AM SCREAMING AND POSSIBLY CRYING. I can’t I can’t I can’t. Look at these locally made fiber and porcelain bracelets combining the talents of local fabric jewelry company SASHA with Pittsburgh’s Jenna Vanden Brink Ceramics. I want them all. But mostly I want to stack the latte, mint and sage and wear them everywhere. For those in your life who are more colorful, go with something like pine green, teal and sage, or mint and sage. For those who are understated, combine the metallic gold and fog. Or just grab one in their favorite color. Or if you’ve got the bank, buy like six of them and let your person mix and match. You can get the porcelain in horizontal or vertical stripe. I personally prefer vertical, but you do you!

4. Daggerfish handcrafted wilderness essentials, starting at $30

If you have a hunter, fisher, forager, camper or hiker in your life, allow me to introduce you to Daggerfish, offering handcrafted essentials for connecting to the wilderness, all crafted by hand right here in Pittsburgh from domestic hardwoods, carbon-negative cork, and vegetable-tanned leather. They have belt boxes for pet treats or lures, knife sheaths, complete field kits for fishing or foraging, fishing accessories, foraging/provisions bags of canvas and leather, made to withstand the weather. The best part is that they guarantee everything they make for life. LIFE! They just posted their rugged weather-resistant waxed canvas and leather Medium Roll Top Bag in hunter orange ($33). What a great idea to gift to your hunter!

5. 1,000-piece Pittsburgh Puzzle featuring the art of Mario Zucca, $32

Do you guys remember the artist Mario Zucca? I featured this print of his a few years ago on this list because I love it so much even if he is based in [shudder] Philadelphia. Well, Birdie Puzzles is now offering the print (and others of his) as sturdy, fun, made-in -the-USA puzzles! This is the perfect gift for the puzzler in your life, or for the whole family to work on together over the holiday break. Just don’t lose one piece like my mom and dad did over the pandemic lockdown, driving themselves crazy looking for it only to discover it in the pocket of my mom’s bathrobe weeks later. Good times!

6. Official Freedom House Ambulance t-shirt by Commonwealth Press, $25

If you weren’t aware, Pittsburgh is the birthplace of the whole idea of mobilizing trained medical professionals with skills beyond basic first aid to be first responders on ambulances. The pilot program, started in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh back in 1967, involved training a crew of Black residents of the Hill, and then sending them throughout the city to respond to calls and save lives. By 1970, they’d already transported 10,000 patients. This groundbreaking and field-changing service, which was named the Freedom House Ambulance Service, is being commemorated with an official locally printed City of Pittsburgh shirt now available via their merch collaborator and designer Commonwealth Press. I love this so much. It’s giving me feelings in my history parts.

7. Stone and Sparrow ceramic salt cellar, $28 each

I am my fanciest when I eschew the salt shaker and reach into my salt cellar to offer my culinary creations a BAM! of salt. For the equally fancy chef in your life, consider giving them this locally made ceramic salt cellar into which they can pour their kosher salt or flaked salt or coarse salt or … guys, have we gone overboard on salt types? Anyway, this perfectly tilted salt cellar from Stone and Sparrow ceramics studio will rest prettily next to the stove for easy access to season all the delicious things. The Stone and Sparrow offerings are VAST and every one gorgeous, so you’ll definitely want to poke around the whole site. I’m particularly freaking out over the espresso tumblers and the K-mugs and the constellation mugs and the and the and …

8. Commonplace Coffee’s 91.3 WYEP Mixtape Blend and Bamboo Tumbler, starting at $18.75

If you’re looking for a gift to pair with perhaps a new mug or espresso cup from Stone and Sparrow, considering giving the coffee drinker in your life (me, it’s me. I’m the coffee drinker in your life) some whole beans or freshly ground Mixtape Blend from Commonplace Coffee which benefits 91.3 WYEP, Pittsburgh’s independent music station. How cool is that? I bet you already have someone in mind for this gift, don’t you? Consider pairing it with the Commonplace Coffee 16 oz. sustainable bamboo tumbler for a complete gift and then let me know if you need my address for shipping.

9. Winter-themed candles from Wicksburgh, starting at $9

Here is a local Etsy shop chock full of affordable hostess gifts or gifts for your person who loves to warm their home with the light of candles. Wicksburgh has plenty of seasonal items, but for the winter holiday season, I particularly love these three:

• The mitten candles are only $9 each and they are adorable!

• Or grab a gift box duo featuring one shaped candle and one candle tin for only $26. You can choose Christmas Tree, Gingerbread, or Croissant.

• There are several winter holiday themed taper options, of which I’ve featured the adorable gingerbread and holly candle (only $9!). But check out the nutcracker option too.

I also love the affordable gift-boxed twisted taper candle duo in a color of your choosing for only $17 ($14 without the box). For that person who has a kickier side, the asparagus candles would be swell. I guess I am now a person who says swell. Neato!

10. Stocking Stuffers, Part I

Here is roundup of some smaller things I found that I just adore. Stickers, pins, golf tees, bookmarks and more! I just made a poem. Send money.

• Mrs. Claus Cookie Co. gift box by Sweet By Natalie, $8 (These will sell out. Only $8 and you get an adorable box of four mini cookies from a local baker in a cute themed box. There are two shipping dates still available as I type this.)

• ‘Tis the season to get pickled’ ceramic ornament by local Bizarro cartoonist Wayno, $20 (he has a whole great shop for you to poke around in)

• Whimsical paper art Night Time Lantern luminary craft by Go CARR Go, $5 (kids would love to make this and then light them up next to Santa’s cookies on Christmas Eve or on the first night of Hanukkah.)

• Garbella’s Dear Pittsburgh, I Love You enamel pin, $10 (her classic design in pin form!)

• Pittsburgh hockey and football stickers by Stark and Stanley (not local but wait until you see them all), $4 and up

• Yinz Means All Yinz sticker by Happy Lil Canvases, $5.50

• Pack of 50 Turner’s “Tea” Time golf tees, $10

11. Garbella Pittsburgh, Bridges, or Pierogi gift box sets, $50 each

I mean. Just. It’s like. I don’t. HOW DO YOU EVEN CHOOSE? Good luck, best wishes, thoughts, prayers and cookies to you who have to figure out which of these perfect gift boxes to hand to your love or to ship to the ex-pat in your life who could use a little care package of yinzerness from home. Each box includes four items and I’m particularly in love with the coffee set because you know how much I love that kitchen towel which I featured a year or so ago. But that Pittsburgh pennant mug is a delight too. Anyway, to sum up … good luck.

12. August Wilson House shop items

I’m going to update this item very soon with photos, links and prices because I really want the August Wilson House on the list. I’ve been all up in the Hill quite a bit over the last month doing research and work for the forthcoming Remains to be Seen app and a curated Hill District Black History Walking Tour. I love walking by the August Wilson House and his mother’s old house just down the block and intentionally appreciating the history of what remains and what we lost in the lower Hill redevelopment so long ago. I’ve been in contact with the House regarding their new online shop, which is just not quite yet live but will be in the next few days. Watch this space or come back here soon to check it out!

13. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Lionel Aquarium Car, $129.99 (currently on sale for $109)

I KNOW. It’s so expensive. But look at it! And it’s from Lionel. And get this, it has an internal light and THE FISH MOVE THROUGH THE CAR WHEN IT IS POWERED ON I MAY CRY. I need to go and get a whole train set just so I can put this car on it. And if I don’t see this car bustling about the Heinz History Center’s Miniature Railroad Village very soon, I’m going to write some nasty emails with the subject line “All you jagoffs.” Watch the video of the car in action and tell me you don’t just feel an internal burst of joy. Buy this for the special person in your life who has a train set that could use a little dose of joy.

14. Crocheted Fingerless Gloves, Pom Hats and Cowls from Busy Hook Happy Heart, $25 and up

This local maker has got a shop full of the coziest crocheted apparel you ever did see. You can snag one of her “ready-to-ship” items which will ship when you order, or you can plan ahead and hit the “made-to-order” section to select exactly what you want and in which colors and she will make those for you in one to two weeks, which is HECKIN’ SPEEDY for handmade items! This shop will get busy during the holiday season so if you’re wanting to gift some of her creations, jump on that ASAP. Just looking through her shop made me want to go stand around a bonfire with some boozy hot chocolate. The true meaning of the season.

15. Yetter’s Candies chocolates and boxes, starting at $15.50

You! Stop scrolling and listen to me. Yetter’s Candies in Millvale has been around for 75 years and I really want to see that tradition survive another 75, so if you’re looking for some hostess gifts or chocolate gifts that are affordable, local and delicious, AND that will help a small business survive in the world of the big box, here is where I want you to go. You can visit them in Millvale for the whole old-fashioned candy shop experience complete with vintage red stools, or shop their online catalog here. Grab some chocolate Santas, bells, coins or presents, and then buy me the chocolate-covered potato chips because those are my favorite, and then share the love all around! Toss in stockings; give bags or boxes of chocolates to your boss or co-workers, or throw them in a bowl for the holiday party! Their cute chocolate cell phone ($3.50) would be swell to toss in a stocking. Neato.

16. Noire 74 Gin by Lawrenceville’s Noire Distillery, $35, with Color Rush Rocks Glass by the Steelers, $17.95

Don’t these look great together? This is the gift for the Steelers fan in your life who is impossible to shop for. Created in collaboration with the Steelers to celebrate the 1974 team and World Series, Noire 74 Gin is distilled in Lawrenceville at the Noire distillery, Pittsburgh’s first Black-owned distillery. I love the black and white Pittsburgh map in the background of the label. For a more substantial gift, pair this with other spirits in their collection (I know labels don’t matter, but the Noire Blanc, $44, is so pretty!) or with the cool Color Rush Rocks Glasses from the Steelers official shop ($17.95 each) that looks like it was made to be given with this bottle.

17. Waku Waku Baby Stay-on Shoes and accessories, $8 and up

I need someone to come and hold me. My whole body is squealing at how perfect these little baby shoes are. Waku Waku Baby is the handiwork of Seiko, a maker in the North Hills. She began creating stylish bibs and soft shoes for her own child and that flourished into this remarkable collection of adorable baby gear. Bows, bibs, burp cloths, soft stay-on shoes in tons of cute patterns from dinosaurs to rainbows to the moon and stars, and even loveys with sensory tags! You can grab sets, or singles, you can splurge with bib/shoe sets at $60 or you can go a bit more affordable with the $22 burp cloth set or a cute little $8 hair bow. I’m not even going to link to those individually because you need to go check out the whole shop. Grandmas are about to get calls from their banks making sure they indeed just purchase $400 worth of baby gear. Psst … also look at this and give it as a hostess gift or to whoever in your life has a sunny kitchen. It is fantastic.

18. Burghy t-shirts from PGHPrinted, starting at $16.50

Fahk ahrnd n fine daht. Hahahaha. Why is that so funny?? I showed that shirt to my son (22) and he was like, “Yeah. I need to buy that for my friends.” Which means that YOU need to buy this for the friends in your life who are not taking shit from anyone anymore. These shirts are designed by a Pittsburgher (and longtime reader) and are printed on demand, so you’ve got color options and size options and they’re priced so affordably starting at $16.50. I like the shirt showing the history of Pittsburgh’s spelling as well as the What the Frick shirt. Also check out the selection of shirts that spell out four-one-two in lots of different languages like Polish, Irish, Spanish, Welsh and more!

19. Bracelets by Paula Nettleship of Designs2C, starting at $45

Local maker Paula Nettleship uses her line of jewelry to pay tribute to her Mexican American heritage and the results are simply gorgeous. Check out her whole shop, but I’m particularly drawn to her bracelets. The three I’ve featured here are my favorites. The Floating Bracelet in Mixed Pearls ($69), Flores Bracelet with Golem beads ($150), and the The Alisa Bracelet in Matte Mix ($75). Not only are these suitable for wearing whenever, but I can particularly see any of these paired with a flowy cream-colored linen beach dress and strappy sandals worn for an evening dinner near the beach. I’m so good at this. Send me thank you cookies. Thumbprints specifically. I feel like these will sell out. If they do, email her and see what she can do to help you out.

20. Heinz Field and PPG Paints Arena coasters and trays from Wendell August Forge, starting at $50

Oooooh. These are great, right? From our very own Wendell August Forge comes these perfect gifts for the sports fan in your life who appreciates classy understated yet undeniably Burghy vibes. The arena and stadium trays come in rectangular or oval shape and can be used as a nightstand/door-side table valet or catch-all to catch loose change (what is that even?), keys, ear buds and whatnot, or they’d make great game day platters to display small bites or a cheese wedge with crackers. The trays at $50 for the smaller butler size and $60 for the Horizon size tray are the more affordable, while the Steelers Stadium Coaster Set that together make Heinz Field are pricier at $95. One thing I love about the arena trays is that the section numbers are on there, so your person can see exactly where they most love to sit to watch the Penguins take the ice. For the non-sports fan in your life, check out the Amalfi pattern in the Horizon tray for $55.

21. Baby Onesie Roundup!

Babies need onesies and babies need cute onesies so they can have major diaper blowouts in style. Here’s a roundup of some of the best I’ve found that have a Burghy connection:

• Oxytocin Factory onesie from Sorcery Science, $15.00 in a range of colors

• Welcome to the Neighborhood onesie by Heinz History Center, $19.95 (available for local pickup. I hope they get their Heinz Ketchup branded Worth the Wait onesie back in stock soon. It’s so awesome.)

• Little Pierogi by Steel City, $24 (available for local pickup)

• Dippy Onesie by Carnegie Museums, $16 (available for local pickup probably)

• Hey Yinz onesie by Rally House (not a small business but it’s so cute), $20.99

• Nebby Newbie by love, Pittsburgh, $24 (available for local pickup probably)

• Only Yinz onesie by Commonwealth Press, $20 (possibly available for local pick up at their Mt. Lebanon retail store—call them!)

22. FDP Ceramic Loose-Leaf Tea Infuser, $24 and love, Pittsburgh Yinzer Tea Set, $36

I love these two products together, so I put them together because I’m the boss around here. For the tea-drinker in your life, go local with the handmade ceramic tea infuser from FDP Studio and pair it with the sample set of 9 yinzer-themed teas from Abeille Voyante Tea Co. for love, Pittsburgh. They’ll get Black and Gold, AARRRGH-Nold, Jagoff, Nebby Chai, Bridges, love, Pittsburgh, Cultural District, Mount Washington, and Strip District blends. I do feel like $36 is a bit high for this tea sampler, but maybe you’re made of money and want to spend that much! To make this pairing more affordable, you can always just head over to Abeille Voyante and grab a few samples or an ounce of the one you think they’d like the most.

23. Three local shops for the nerds!

I adore nerds. Geeks. Dorks. These are my people. I am them. They are me. There is nothing I love more than the brain. So here are three particularly nerdy local online shops you should visit if you’re hunting for a gift for my people.

• First up are the extremely cool multi-use boxes made from vintage (sob) 3.5 inch computer disks. Kids, computer disks were these things onto which we stored stuff before the cloud. Made in Pittsburgh by the CowboyGoods Etsy shop, boxes are priced affordably at $14.49 and the best part is they come in a huge range of colors. You can even email the maker if you’ve got a specific color combo in mind. I’m thinking retro NASA colors.

• Second, hilarious nerdy holiday cards from local Etsy shop The Bird and the Bear. There are BASIC, binary, html, periodic element cards and more! When you open the computer-themed cards up, it reveals what was coded on the front, in case your nerd didn’t figure it out for themselves, but they will. Trust me.

• And finally, some truly geeked out nerd jewelry from Sorcery Science. From rocket fuel compounds to the exact molecules that make up the old book smell to the molecular structure of estrogen or caffeine or dopamine, the geek in your life can wear their love of science right on their persons, and since the prices start at only $18, this is a gift that won’t make your bank account throw tomatoes at you.

24. Amelia Kieras Handmade Accordion and Mix-Up Books, starting at $15

Here’s one for the kids! Do not be fooled. These are not ordinary books; these are works of art that will delight children as they discover all there is find inside the pages. My daughter (17 and autistic) purchased The House at the Three Rivers Arts Festival this year and loved it. These books are made by hand right here in Pittsburgh by local artist Amelia Kieras. The accordion books, such as The House and the Alphabet Book, are printed on one long sheet of paper that folds up or stretches out to reveal the big picture. It is a particularly fun journey to take through The House and then open it up to see the whole house at once. The Monsters and Marvels Mix-Up and Mix-Up at the Zoo flip books would be a sure favorite for any child as they explore all the fun combinations they can make within the pages. Add any of Amelia’s books to the treasured home library that the children in your life return to.

25. The Beanie Roundup!

Beanies are great gifts for anyone who lives where winter happens. Here are five local options that I love.

• Page’s Dairy Mart Leather Patch Beanie, $19.99

• I.C. Light Embroidered Beanie by Pittsburgh Brewing Co., $25

• Pittsburgh Golf Waffle Embroidered Beanie by Pittsburgh Clothing Co., $22.50

• Brookline Pom Beanie by Steel City, $22

• Pierogi beanie by Garbella, $25

26. Soap trays, catch-all trays and coaster sets by Reimagined Recycling, $18 and up

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Look at this! You know how I feel about litter, so I’m delighted to tell you that there is a local org, Reimagined Recycling, making some incredibly cool products using recycled plastics. These are like a Monet, as Cher Horowitz would say (“Way harsh, Tai”)—from far away, gorgeous, but when you get up close, you might find recognizable product logo remnants or tiny pieces of barcodes. The org collects #5 plastics, shreds them, and then turns them into useful products! They have other items, including earrings!, but these three are in the perfect price range for you to give an affordable gift with a very cool local Earth-loving story behind it. The soap trays come with or without drainage holes, and the catch-all trays come in two sizes and four colors. The coasters are also available in multiple color options, but I really really like the confetti look in all of these. If you’re local, you can pick your order up to save the shipping cost!

27. Four perfect gift sets you can pick up locally, starting at $20.95

Speaking of, no need to pay shipping if you don’t want to with these four perfect-for-anyone ready-to-gift sets that are available for local pickup:

• Tea candle scent sampler set from Fjord & Fable. This very cool shop has developed so many great scents for the home. Such a variety of choices can make it difficult to figure out what scent to buy as a gift. Problem solved with their three Discovery Sets ($38) which come with TWELVE sample candles in their Autumn, standard or Yule scent themes. That will allow whomever you gift the set to to figure out which scents they want to purchase in full size at their new favorite shop.

• Pittsburgh Honey offers a very nice and substantial gift pack for $50 that includes three of their honey mustards, three of their local honeys, and 25(!) honey sticks. My dad is a huge fan of local honey, so he is probably getting this for Christmas this year. Dad, if you just read that, no you didn’t.

• Grab a sampler of locally bottled award-winning oils and vinegars at Olive & Marlowe ($36). What’s great is you can choose any four of their olive oils or balsamic vinegars and they’ll package them up in a locally made wood box from BANDY Woodworks. All for $36! That’s the perfect gift for the cook or foodie in your life.

• Finally, the 5 O’Clock Somewhere set from Steel City Salt ($20.95) is a truly awesome gift. I featured this exact set once on this list, but it sold out pretty quickly, so I’m giving you the heads up that it’s in stock. It’s a great price for a fun local gift featuring a pink Himalayan salt shot glass paired with their Sriracha Salt and Lemon-Lime Sea Salt. Gift this set with a nice bottle of tequila and you’ve got an even better gift.

28. The Roberto Clemente Museum’s 3,000th hit fundraiser shirt, $35 or $30.80 with code BlackFriday12

How gorgeous is this shirt featuring Roberto smacking his 3,000th and final hit before his tragic death in service to a greater cause? It is meant to raise funds for the annual fundraising campaign for the Roberto Clemente Museum, which as you know is an independent museum built from the personal collection of Duane Rieder. If you haven’t ever visited, I cannot strongly enough encourage you to take a tour. Perhaps gift tour tickets along with this shirt to the person in your life who remains in awe of the story of Roberto and wants to see his legacy properly preserved through his museum.

29. Plants for Skin hair and skincare goods and BYOB workshops, starting at $10

Here’s a locally made personal care line that is good for all hair and skin, but it notably has a set of products specially formulated for Black hair/skin and many of their products are currently on sale! Their extremely popular Herbal Hair/Beard Growth Oil ($10) has tons of good reviews, and their body butters and lip balms make great affordable gifts to throw in a cute basket for the person in your life who needs a bit of pampering. Check out their Lavender Lip Balm, $10; Healing Body Butter, $10 or their fun BYOB workshops you can sign you and a friend up for as a gift! Drinking and making your own bath and body care items sounds like great fun.

30. Iconic moments in Pittsburgh sports 8x8 prints by Mario Zucca, $25 each

Why are these so awesome?? I can’t put my finger on it, but I love this “Spo-Mo” series by Philadelphia-based artist Mario Zucca (already featured above), illustrating eight iconic moments in PIttsburgh sports history. Shown here are Franco’s Immaculate Reception, Mario’s first goal, James Harrison’s 100-yard pick-6, Lynn Swann’s Super Bowl X catch, Maz’s walk-off World Series home run, and Troy just being Troy and doing Troy things (I believe this is supposed to be his 2008 AFC Championship 40-yard interception). Not shown are TJ Watt tying the sack record and Honus Wagner’s 3000th hit. You can grab one of these and frame it for the sports lover in your life, or grab two or three to create a series for them to hang in their office or sports-watching cave. The great thing about these is they really would work in both a professional setting or a chipped-chopped ham and Ahrn City basement setting.

31. Made-to-order Sourdough loaves and rolls from The Risen Bread Co, starting at $7

Here’s one for you WestMoCo-ers that I added to the list just this morning because my nephew brought some to Thanksgiving dinner and it was a hit. You can order fresh sourdough bread loaves and rolls made locally by The Risen Bread Co. that you then pick up each Saturday at Morris Organic Farm in Westmoreland County, a local favorite. Here’s the deal—I will do anything for jalapeño-cheddar sourdough bread. It is manna from heaven infused with the nectar of the gods. This baker’s version is seasonal and made with organic jalapeños and Somerset County’s Van Grouw Family Farm Ernajean cheddar. Order the sandwich loaf and gift it with a local shop’s tea towel and nice bottle of pure syrup as a Christmas-morning french toast-themed gift. Or order a few sets of the dinner rolls to bring to Christmas/Hanukkah dinner, or grab me 50 loaves of jalapeño-cheddar sourdough bread and just leave them at my doorstep. Contactless delivery. The true meaning of the season.

32. Collarbone Jewelry gold-toned earrings and necklaces, starting at $28

HOW. PRETTY! Local jewelry maker Collarbone has an extensive product line ranging from the understated to the funky to the adorable to the badass, and so many of them are very affordable. I love the look of these four items in particular: (Small open triangle earrings ($28), Floating Circle Necklace on Gold Chain ($45), Brass Square Necklace on Black Chain ($34), Large open drop earrings ($34). Of these, my favorite are the triangle earrings. They really would look good on anyone. For a gift that’s a bit pricier but very cool, check out their Tough as Nails and Ignite necklaces. Be sure to look at necklace length options and earring post metal options when you’re ordering!

33. Limited edition Max Wesoloski Art Prints, $30 each

I need you to go to the online store to get a better look at this Dreamer print and zoom in on the girl on the roof and whoo boy. Stunning work! Or the Pittsburgh Starry Night N@ print. It’s just magical with the soothing color palette and the swirls and the sky and the tiny buildings and bridges. Max Wesoloski is an illustrator/designer/print-maker based out of Pittsburgh whose work is truly stellar and unique. In addition to his art prints, he has a set of limited-edition gig poster prints absolutely worth checking out for the person in your life who loves live shows. His Elton John Farewell Tour Pittsburgh poster rightfully sold out because it’s bonkers, but check out the rest of his shop and gift a print to the dreamer in your life.

34. More stocking stuffers!

Here’s another set of the perfect little affordable small things to toss into a stocking.

• Pierogi Bath Bomb by Hip Modern Soap Co., $7.50

• Grinch heart soap from Hip Modern Soap Co., $8

• Heinz History Center Flavored Lip Balm singles, $4.95 or in a 3-pack, $12.95 (I mean, Heinz 57 flavored lips? YUM.)

• Handmade fabric key fobs by KGandThat, 21 available patterns, $9.56 each

• Pittsburgh Cats sticker sheet by EmilyM, $5.20 (I swear I featured these before but I can’t find it anywhere in my previous gift guides, so on it goes! They’re perfect! Check out her Pittsburgh Pals sticker too.)

• Candy cane socks by Steel City, $10 (plus a 20% discount!) and available for local pickup. They have lots of great socks.

35. Kerf wood wireless chargers, starting at $30

Chargers are ugly. They’re stupid and boring and plastic and did I say ugly? Well look at these gorgeous locally made wood wireless chargers! When I featured Kerf on this list a bunch of years ago, they were just starting out making wood iPhone cases. These days, they’ve expanded their product line to include other phones as well as things like wood AirTag holders, luxury cases that cost a small fortune, wallets, pencil cases, Apple Card cases and more. Their line of 9 wood wireless charging blocks and charging stands range in price from $30 to $130, so you can hopefully find something in your desired price range. These are truly perfect gifts for anyone, but especially those people who like their nightstand or desk to be soothing and bespoke, not full of stupid ugly boring plastic chargers. Did I say ugly?

36. Bags made from IC Light and Iron City Mt. Washington billboards, starting at $8.99

I generally eschew overtly black and gold rah-rah STILL CITY items on this gift list. They’re a dime-a-dozen in the Strip, n’at. But boy do I love this. Did you know that Pittsburgh Brewing turned old I.C. Light and Iron City billboards from Mt. Washington into limited edition bags in four sizes? I did not! Now, obviously supplies are limited and only a certain number were made, and you will not get the exact design in the picture. These are a great gift for that person in your life who is a yinzer but who also doesn’t want to walk around looking like Steely McBeam puked black and gold on them. In the Iron City red/white billboard, you can go big and grab the Billboard tote bag for $39.99. For a bag that can be used as a travel toiletries bag, go with the Iron City Billboard Medium Pouch for $24.99 or the smaller black and gold IC Light Pouch for $13.99. If you want something affordable for a stocking, snag the IC Light Billboard Penny Pouch for only $8.99. There’s even a duffle bag perfect for travel or the gym ($49.99)! Okay, brace yourselves, I’m about to put ANOTHER Pittsburgh Brewing item on the list this year …

37. University-themed Pittsburgh Brewing shirts and hats, starting at $24

Okay, so you can see why these are on this list. First, I can see Pitt students and alums wearing the shirt and/or hat around campus or on game days. As for the Tech Beer. Did you know that when Tech Beer was introduced in 1906 by Pittsburgh Brewing, students at Carnegie Tech (the future CMU) were none too happy? In fact, some were so mad they defaced a Tech Beer advertising billboard and started a letter-writing campaign that went nowhere, with only 7 letters written. The treasurer of Pittsburgh Brewing told the Press on April 14, 1906, “I expected to hire two men to open the thousands of letters it was said we would receive … and to throw them into the waste basket.” BURN! The beer stayed and become popular. For that awesome history alone, you really need to snag this gear for a CMU grad or student and then sit them down and explain the hilarious history. Email me if you want me to send you the newspaper clipping from 1906 to include in the card! (“I.C. Light Pitt Banner t-shirt, $28; Tech Beer t-shirt, $24; I.C. Light Pitt Rope hat, $29.99; Tech Beer hat, $24.99.)

38. Handmade wool felt pierogi ornaments and tree toppers by Cute as a Dumpling, starting at $12.95

I know I say this a lot but eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Look at the little mama and baby and the Polish flag and the Italian flag with the ravioli and the tree topper and the plate of pierogies and the baseball and the … These wool felt pierogi ornaments and tree toppers come in a wide variety of themes around ethnicity and even profession. They’re handmade locally here in Pittsburgh and are the perfect gift for the yinzer in your life whose tree could use a little dose of adorable huggable dumpling joy. Just go nuts.

39. Six local calendars I love for 2025, starting at $22

Calendars to tack to the wall make perfect office or kitchen gifts and are a great way to make people think about you literally every day when they look at it and remember who gave it to them. First up, the funny and arty …

Happy Lil Canvases; 2025 Pittsburgh Calendar, $28, perfectly and adorably illustrated with tons of Pittsburgh goodies, Strawberry Luna’s Limited Edition 2025 Calendar, $26, with clean illustrations in soothing palates, and Alternate Histories’ National Park Monsters Calendar, $30, with 12 bonkers hilarious fantastic nostalgic illustrations of monsters and aliens invading our national parks. And here are the Burghy photog calendars …

These are the 2025 calendars from local photographers Dustin McGrew, $29.99 (on sale for $24.89); Brad Berkstresser, $22; and Dave DiCello, $25. All fantastic, all worthy of hanging in any home or office near or far from the 412.

40. Season’s Greetings n’at!

Stop giving out boring holiday cards and grab one of these much more fun and way more yinzer options:

• Pittsburgh Jesus greeting card by Roger That!, $5 (not local but it’s so good)

• Yinzer Elf on a Shelf card by Yinzer Cards, $4.99 (check out their whole shop!)

• Pittsburgh on Ice greeting card by Go CARR Go, $5

• Channing Tatum Hanukkah card by Sapling Press, $6

• 12 Days of Yinzer Christmas holiday card by Commonwealth Press, $4.50

41. The irreverent and the just-a-little-sweary

And finally, it’s been a rough month or two for many people, and for those people, these are the gifts:

• Wicksburgh Large Middle Finger beeswax candle, $25 (small ones are only $8)

• “It is what it is and it is not great” Western Raccoon Tote by Pop of Ink, $9.75 on sale. I love it so much.

• The Last of All My Fucks coin pouch by Sapling Press, $8. Check out all the cool coin pouches in the shop!

• I’ve Been a Nebby Girl Tote by Pittsburgh Personified, $16.99

• What the Fucculent car air freshener by KGandThat, $4.79 (also in a sticker)

And that’s a wrap on this year’s Yinzer Holiday Gift Guide. Shop it; share it; buy me things from it.

Also, I’d appreciate you all sharing it on Twitter/X if you’re still over there. I abandoned my account in the Land of Hellish Blue Checkmarks last month.

Happy shopping, loves!

Hello, Pittsburgh! It is I, your magically disappearing and magically delicious writer, editor, publisher, and ignore-er of this here newsletter. Why do I forsake you thusly, you ask?

First, before we get to the life chaos, I hope you enjoyed the little Bob Ross palate cleanse. I know many of you (and me!) are reeling today. Searching for our new center in this seemingly upside-down world. This newsletter was always meant to be a space for you to exhale and decompress for a few minutes, so today seems like a good day to publish.

Chaos update! Because you care! I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t regularly getting myself into little baby projects that transform themselves into things much bigger than I expected. The little Lukey-bashing bloggy-blog turned into [gestures widely at everything everywhere], the little “let’s win this online contest to put a gaming room in Children’s Hospital” turned into a decade of bringing in-room gaming to Pittsburgh’s hospitalized kids with the Mario Lemieux Foundation (exciting news on this front soon!), my second undergrad degree turned into grad school, and now my Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen project is gearing up to become an app. App development is coming along beautifully thanks to my partners David Jardini and Harlan Shober. I’ll give you a specific update on this soon, but for now, email me if you’d like to be on the list to test the app in our beta stage (ginnymontanez at gmail).

Now, you and I have lots to discuss, so let’s forget about the chaos and let’s forget about the burn marks from our having been thusly smote, and take a few deep breaths.

Wow. Having Been Thusly Smote is possibly the best band name I have ever come up with. I might be a genius; I’m very probably going to win a Grammy. Let’s talk!

1. “Do you have a side-gig?” “Yes, chief of police.”

Remember our chief of police lol? You may have forgotten or never become fully aware of him seeing as he was hired a year ago and has now retired because he wanted to take a pay cut to work part-time as a traveling referee for NCAA games while still serving as chief. That is not a MadLib. I did not just pull some verbs and nouns out of my smote butt. This is 100 percent what happened, and by all appearances it looks like Mayor Gainey inexplicably made an agreement with Scirotto and then hid it from council. After pushback on his plans to return to refereeing, Scirotto chose to retire and was on the court just days later. Back here in Pittsburgh, city council was left trying to figure out what the hell happened.

Yet Jake Pawlak, director of the Office of Management and Budget, Chief Operating and Administrative Officer Lisa Frank and Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt acknowledged during a tense council meeting that they were aware of a deal the mayor cut with Scirotto to allow him to start refereeing again after a year.

Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, showed a video clip from Scirotto’s interview with council last year before he was approved as chief.

“I know you have committed to not pursue that profession (refereeing) while you’re here as our Pittsburgh police chief, correct?” Coghill asked Scirotto.

Gainey and Scirotto agreed behind the scenes that the two of them could discuss Scirott’s return to officiating basketball games after a year, Pawlak said.

It gets worse! In an interview on KDKA radio, Scirotto called the agreement with Gainey a “man-to-man agreement” and therefore not one the public or city council needed to know about.

Let me repeat myself, but louder this time:

Why the hell would Mayor Gainey agree to that? Why wasn’t Scirotto immediately ruled out as a candidate for the job the moment he expressed the desire to return to reffing at some point? The incoming police chief had a lot of important target priorities—controlling weekend crime on the South Side, keeping downtown safe, keeping the force accountable especially as it relates to racial profiling and de-escalation procedures, running as tight of a fiscal ship as possible while maintaining order, responding to major incidents that often arise, being that person with whom the buck stops, etc.

In a small Hallmark town called Hollyberrytree where the police chief’s office is also a Christmas tree farm and the worst criminal is whoever stole the plastic sheep from the Silent Night Bed and Breakfast’s nativity, sure, let your chief of police drive Uber on the side. Whatever. But in a city the size of Pittsburgh? Maybe don’t plan to have a side-gig that has you regularly on the road following your heart’s true passion.

By the time the bottom of this is gotten to, I imagine both the administration and Scirotto are going to come out looking even worse than they already do. Let’s hope the mayor does a better job filling the position again, or in three months you are gonna jump into an Uber on Carson at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night to find the chief of police offering you a tin of loose Chicklets and asking for a five-star driver rating.

2. Here’s one vote that went everyone’s way

We did it!

Yes, this is old news by now, but you listen here: my smote ass is playing catch-up and I have to acknowledge that this one went the way we wanted. It’s a perfect name and the merch is already badass. Look at their first scarf!

Look at the city skyline on there! When I was in Ireland, I loved seeing the locals in Dublin walking to the hurling match (look it up) in their team scarves or sitting in the pubs wearing them. It was like, okay, the stereotype is REAL. Now we get to be cute and warm and cuddly here in Pittsburgh while supporting our new professional women’s soccer team.

Also, do you think visitors from Dublin ever come to Pittsburgh and go, “These people look like they fell into a vat of black and gold paint on their way to get their mullets trimmed before heading to church for either worship, dumplings or a plank of fried fish. The stereotype is REAL!” I hope so.

3. Excuse me. You’re the WHAT window?

My pal who I only see randomly on a downtown street once a quarter for a half-second hug, local architect Bruce Chan (he who hands out meatballs during the marathon forcing runners to test their mettle to see whether they keep it down or do a Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race For the Cure sidewalk puke) is the king of Pittsburgh Halloween. Every year he comes up with the most hyper-local costume that no one outside of a 15xxx area code will understand.

One year he was the Rachel Ann Bovier billboard (all photos from his social media accounts either at Twitter or Instagram):

Another year he was the Heinz bottle being hauled away from the newly named Acrisure Stadium:

I still laugh at that one. And this year:

He has successfully gone SO hyper-local that I bet I have to explain this one to many of you. He is the butthole window from 4520 Penn Avenue near Children’s as seen here in 2023 (it has since been demolished):

He even made the tile border hahahaha. Absolutely brilliant. In keeping with this theme of hyper-local, I hope next year he goes as the Titty Sphinx.

4. It’s the most wonderful time of the yearrrrrr!

That’s right. It’s time once again for my world-famous annual Yinzer Holiday Gift Guide! It’s so popular, even Oprah is jealous. I believe this will be the 15th year I’ve put out this list, which just goes to show how old I am. As soon as I publish this, I’m going to go stand outside and shake my fist at the clouds and maybe mutter something about my lower back and the price of stamps.

This is where you come in. Email (ginnymontanez at gmail) me your suggestions for items for the list. Remember:

• Items should be locally made or produced by/for local companies.

• Pittsburgh-themed items made elsewhere are also accepted, though I usually keep these to a minimum. Maybe 1-3 on the list each year.

• Makers/sellers should be able to fill several dozen orders at a minimum because, as I said, it’s a popular list and items do indeed sell out. Especially the jewelry items I feature.

My goal is to post the list on Black Friday so that you all can shop it for Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday or Tequila Tuesday.

What? ¡Salud! to all who celebrate!

5. We’re gonna need a bigger label maker

Coinciding with this mother’s relocation to LA from Pittsburgh, Wiz Khalifa is selling his Pittsburgh mansion and it’s quite gorgeous, tons of huge picture windows and zero butthole windows. This in particular made me sit up straight and fall in love:

Why do I love this so much? It might be because I love labeling. I use my label maker all the time. I like to label tabs in my journals. I like to label my research binders. If my dogs would let me, I’d label their noses with “Boop it.” So now, Wiz has inspired me to start labeling all my doors with names and taglines. I can already picture it:

• “TEENAGERS’ BATHROOM: Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here”

• “BASEMENT: If you want the adrenaline rush of sitting on a toilet out in the open while centipedes watch you poop”

• “MOM’S CLOSET: Hope you like TJ Maxx!”

• “DECK: Domain of the Lanternfly”

• “PANTRY: Ginny, do not stand in here and consume 700 calories of random snacks 24 minutes before you go to bed like some kind of meth-crazed raccoon”

Leave me alone. This is my post-election emotional support vat of cheese balls which pairs nicely with my pre-inauguration emotional support box of wine.

Have I said ¡Salud! yet? ¡Salud!

6. Random n’at

• So much space stuff is happening lately in Pittsburgh! A lunar rover that will soon be on the moon is currently on display at the Moonshot Museum on the North Side! In what I am calling a shout-out to me, we are getting a Moon tree from seeds flown aboard the Artemis launch I witnessed in 2022! It will be planted near the Observatory! And students from CCAC had one of their experiments on space fungus blasted to space on a SpaceX rocket! Wow, I apologize for all the exclamation points, but at the same time, I do not apologize at all. !!!!!!!!!!!*

• In a move sure to piss off a bunch of weirdos, downtown Pittsburgh is getting additional public restrooms! No longer will you have to desperately hunt for a restroom for you or your child. This is a very very good thing, but I look forward to your emails explaining to me why it is actually a bad thing to give human beings appropriate places to pee and poop. I will carefully file those emails away with the ones you sent about how banning plastic shopping bags in Pittsburgh made you boycott Giant Eagle.

  

  Now, before you get upset, I assure you I labeled my shredder with a “T” for Trash. My filing system works.

• The second of two sheep that ran away from a Plum farm was recently found standing at the gates of hell, or “the ramp to Route 28” as it is sometimes called. The best part, other than the sheep being reunited with his owner, was the way he was found—via a post on the “Don’t Wait on 28” Facebook group that said, “If anyone is missing a goat, it is chilling on the off-ramp of Route 28 at the Tarentum exit.” This is like that time that pig got out of his room and walked down the Parkway West. That is also not a MadLib. It really happened and it gave us one of the best headlines ever.

  

Eat your heart out, sinkhole bus.

*Somewhere, my mother just said, “Finally, she understands how to use punctuation properly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

7. That’s all!

That’s a wrap on this long overdue edition of Pittsburgh nonsense. Take care of yourself! Get out there and keep your mind focused on the real world and real, tangible experiences and moments and people and friends! Check in on all your people! Share a few vats of cheeseballs and boxes of wine! Use exclamation points without apology! Be kind! Volunteer! Read a good book! Read my book, you jags! Email me gift suggestions and let me know if you want to beta test the app! Have a great week on purpose and I’ll see you back here when I see you back here.

Also, I’m not sure yet, but the Meth-Crazed Raccoons might be opening for Having Been Thusly Smote this week. I’ll keep you posted. It just depends on if we all sober up from all the “emotional support” we’re ingesting.

¡Salud!

Isn’t it crazy how time works? Like, here’s a day, then very quickly, it becomes the next one of those, and then once you get seven of them, a week is gone and you blink and a month is gone and before you know it, it’s September and you haven’t published your newsletter in a month and a presidential candidate is on your TV screaming “THEY’RE EATING THE DOGS” right at your face. Whew!

Let’s talk. Oh, wait. First … BOOM! Politics!

Okay, now let’s talk.

1. Put my youth in the time capsule, while you’re at it

Speaking of time, let’s talk about time capsules. When I think about opening time capsules, I’m imagining pulling out things like a newspaper about the moon landing, or a reel of old film or a set of faded black and white photographs, or a matchbook from the Eisenhower administration or a collection of things that look like Richie Cunningham* once owned them, like high tube socks. Really old shit.

Well, recently, Youngwood opened a time capsule to celebrate their 125th anniversary and one of the things they pulled out was …

Grab your cute cottage cheese butt and hold on for dear life …

Some paper items … were damp and worse for wear when they were revealed to those attending the capsule’s opening and other festivities at the borough complex timed for Youngwood’s 125th anniversary. The item that was a true puzzle was a VHS tape sealed in a plastic bag.

Excuse me while I shrivel up and just die.

A time capsule with a VHS tape inside?! Am I that old?! Granted this was only a 25-year time capsule, but still. My gut instinct tells me that no time capsule in existence should have something in it that was a part of MY ADULT YEARS. I don’t know if this is an indictment of my age or of Youngwood opening their time capsule way too early, but either way, I won’t stand for it.

Regardless, attending the ceremony was Marilynn Beck Brown, Class of 1949, who is in her early 90s. She said:

At high school dances … “They played songs where you could understand the singer.”

Marilynn, I get it, girl. ENUNCIATE YOUR WORDS, right?

In grade school, Brown dreaded fire drills, when the students practiced escaping from the second floor using a tunnel-like chute.

Excuse me?? Do you mean to tell me that we could have been launching ourselves out of second-story windows via chute all this time instead of running down stupid stairs in a spiral?

How far we have strayed from the light of God.

Regardless, the real moral of the story is this: The minimum number of years I say a time capsule should be closed before it may be opened is 50, otherwise you didn’t create a time capsule, you just boxed up some stuff for a while. I should not have plastic storage totes from Hills Department store in my basement that are older than your “time capsule.”

That’s church. Leave an offering on your way out. And by “offering” I mean “several cookies.”

*If you had to Google Richie Cunningham, I hate you a little bit. Damn yutes.

2. It’s a bird. It’s a pla— Oh, shit. No. It’s a huge bird.

I need to show you a picture. Please look at this. It is vitally important.

I think I speak for everyone when I say …

Just scream-laughing at this because THAT is an emu on the loose in … no, not Fayette County, but, man, that was a good guess, you!

McKeesport!

An emu. Wandering. In McKeesport. Here’s another screencap:

That is one determined emu. Walking like, “Damn it, Shiela. I am late for the bus. This is serious. I have bills to pay.”

Dawson did what almost everyone would do when confronted by a large Australian bird: "I had my son get my phone and I instantly started recording," she said. 

“Almost everyone”? Dear reader, I know the pictures and video make me laugh, but, were I, your trusty news correspondent, to encounter a stray emu in the wilds of McKeesport, in my brain I would say, “Gin, that is an emu. Emus are not cassowaries who will literally knock you over just so they can claw out your intestines before stomping your brains out of your ear.” But in my heart, I would say, “Girl, it’s too big a bird to find roaming outside of Sesame Street. Run screaming or kill it with fire before it eats your innards.”

The biggest bird I’m willing to encounter outside of the Aviary is MAYBE a wild turkey and even then I would be calculating the best way to murder it using everything I learned from Kung Fu Panda when it came flying for my eyeballs.

The McKeesport emu was eventually reunited with its owner. So that’s a sentence I just typed.

I am already at a dilemma here. Is my new band Richie Cunningham’s Tube Socks or McKeesport’s Wandering Emu? And we’re only on item number two! This city is crazy.

3. [Whips open trench coat] “Can hizzoner interest you in a 13-inch Macbook?”

Bill Peduto’s Twitter account got hacked a week ago by someone who is now using it to sell laptops supposedly autographed by him for charity.

People really do suck.

Now, part of the blame here might rest with Twitter because you can’t even get cell phone text two-factor authentication unless you pay for it. Ick. But also, do you think his password was MayorSanta412 or BikeLaneBilly or DarleneHarrisRodeAnElephantLOL?

I still can’t believe that was real life. Put THAT picture in a time capsule, my God.

4. A Death Stare Under the Death Stairs: The Virginia Montanez Story. Coming soon to Lifetime TV*

Fodor’s has a lovely article praising our historical and numerous city stairs, which the author refers to as “death stairs.” It really is a nice look at our city and our character, enough so that I’ll forgive the writer for saying we call it “the ‘Burgh.” We are certainly not so fancy as to use the apostrophe (aka “God’s comma” h/t Psych) before the B. Hell, you’re lucky we even capitalize the B.

Moving on. My first reaction to the term “death stairs” was to say both “valid” and also “hyperbole much?” But then I attended my first official Allegheny Cleanways volunteer cleanup with my sister a few weekends ago. Along with other volunteers, we were to spend two hours cleaning beneath and around the Watt Street steps in the Hill District. I grabbed my gloves, grabbed my garbage bin, headed up the overgrown hillside alongside the stairs, bravely pushing aside plants that I was at least 82 percent sure weren’t poison ivy, and got to work.

Hi-ho! Whistle while we work! Hi-ho-hi-ho-hi-ho! Wonder if that’s poison oak? Hi-ho!

The third thing I went to pick up was a plastic water bottle under the stairs. I reached down, grabbed it and HELLO. THERE WAS A SNAKE NEXT TO THE BOTTLE AND I NEARLY TOUCHED IT. Not a tiny little garter snake, mind you. An actual snake, coiled up, with ARTWORK ON IT. Patterns. I don’t know much about snakes, but what I do know is that snakes that have tattoos want me to die via their toxic venom.

My exact reaction to the snake, which I swear flipped me the finger before hissing and meandering away, was to give my soul permission to vacate my body. “Go toward the light, baby girl. It’s over for us.” Then my corpse screamed.

My sister, who was deep in the brush on the other side of the steps, popped her head up like a suddenly alert meerkat all, “We runnin’?” and I had to force myself to calm down as the other volunteers looked over to see what the hell I was carrying on about. I bravely called, “Just a snake. I’m okay! All good!” But inside, for about an hour, I said …

That is a direct quote, btw.

But! I powered on and we left the stairs and the surrounding area much cleaner than we found them (hauling away bottles, cans, glass, shoes, tires, etc.), during which I only encountered one other little danger noodle too small for tattoos. My sister and I then went to our homes, showered, checked ourselves for ticks (none), and decided we definitely want to keep helping with the cleanups.

Man, did I digress. Why do you read this nonsense of mine? Anyway! Let me sum up. Fodor’s called Pittsburgh’s steps “death stairs” but in a good way. I almost got murdered by a snake underneath a set of those stairs, in a bad way. And finally, you should help by volunteering for a cleanup soon, in the best way!

If I can do it, you can do it. And maybe I’ll see you there. I’ll be the one all…

* If you’ve not read my debut novel yet, I use this joke more than once except it’s “ABC Afterschool Special” and it still makes me laugh. Buy my book, jags, since I never make you pay for this nonsense of mine. 235 reviews at 4.56 stars when not a one of them was a giveaway book means I can promise you it’s good and you’ll love it.

5. Random n’at

Let’s wrap it up with the short stuff!

• Paul Skenes has his own Garbage Pail Card now and it’s a delight!

  

• The lanterflies are so bad they’re showing up on the radar which explains what last week my weather app said, “Possible drizzle” and I looked outside, saw the sun and said, “Definite bugs.”

• KDKA set up a camera near a specific playground-adjacent stop sign on the South Side and of the 33 cars that passed by, only 3 stopped. The city stated they are aware of the issue, but, "We don't do things emotionally; we do things based on the data," said Olga George, the press secretary for the mayor's office. Okay, here’s the data: 30 out of 33 cars rolled through the intersection. I am so good at math, and you should see me do data. The best they’ve ever seen. They say.

• Mars Area High School got a new mascot and it’s not a Martian but rather is … did you already let go of your butt? Get it in hand again …

  

  

  It’s a boxing planet, you guys. For the team name which is The Fightin’ Planets. And yes, they’re using God’s comma because they’re fancy. Go watch the whole video of the planet doing its thing. I think I love it.

6. That’s all!

Have yourself a fantastic week or two or three on purpose! Enjoy the beautiful weather that is September in Pittsburgh! Be kind! Don’t litter! Stop parking in the bike lanes! Slow down in construction zones!

And most importantly, watch out for emus out in these city streets.

I heard they joined up with the city snakes with one goal in mind.

To make me cry.

Bye!

I took a little break from this here silly newsletter just because I was busy living and enjoying my summer. Summer is generally my least productive time simply because I’m too outside to get much done indoors. Yes, I could take my laptop onto my deck and write instead of sitting out there reading all the books on my to-be-read list, but I simply choose not to because I’ll be starting real work on my grad school thesis in a week, so I’m enjoying all the downtime I can until then.

This morning, it’s a bit chilly, so I’m in my actual office and you get a newsletter!

Let’s talk! Also, it’s pretty photo-heavy, so you may need to click a link at the bottom to read it all.

1. Fancy pants and a jaw that could cut glass

Here’s the thing about Pittsburghers: we will call it North Ver-SALES but don’t you DARE mispronounce Duquesne or we will mock your inelegant ass.

Case in point, when Google Maps’ voice navigation originally pronounced it “Fort Due-KES-ney Boulevard” (rhymes with Kenny Chesney). Man, I almost wrecked my car the first time I heard that. Like, would you like a Natty Ice with your Twinkie, Google Maps? Class it up a bit! It’s Due-KANE. Now tell me how to get dahn North Ver-SALES from the Norside, ya jag.

Here’s a fun little video making the rounds of a person being asked to pronounce Duquesne and … failing like Google Maps:

When he said “douches me,” I legit …

I must say though, as a historian, it’s wild to me that we ever named things after the Marquis Duquesne. As a reminder, the French, seeing the writing on the wall, burned and abandoned his namesake fort rather than stay and fight for it and yet we named a bunch of stuff after him—a name associated with “the enemy” as seen here in John Forbes’ November 1758 letter explaining the fall of Fort Du Quesne, as it was often stylized:

He wasn’t lying about his health; he died just months later. Also, I’m going to start signing my emails with, “My health is still delicate. With sentiments of respect I remain yours, etc.”

This is THE Duquesne by the way:

His full name is Michel-Ange Duquesne de Menneville, which is pronounced Señor Fancypants.

Okay, so I’ve just returned from down a history wormhole trying to figure out why the University of the Holy Ghost felt the need to rename themselves to Duquesne University and it’s a fun one! As found in the book The Spirit That Gives Life: The History of Duquesne University, 1878-1996, apparently it boiled down to the fear of “the holy ghost” being desecrated in “newspaper language.” The author goes on:

“Perhaps some faculty members were horrified by the prospect of sports headlines with titles such as “Holy Ghost Whips _____” or worse, “______ Whips Holy Ghost.”

I’m picturing a headline like PANTHERS WHIP HOLY GHOST. It probably didn’t help that at the same time they were the University of the Holy Ghost, there was a scandal involving a similarly named sect that generated headlines like this one from the Post-Gazette in 1911:

I can see why they realized pretty quickly they needed a new name. So why did they pick Duquesne?

Eh. Queen Aliquippa would like a word. Maybe you want to say “first EUROPEAN settlement,” but even that wasn’t technically Fort Duquesne— it was Fort Trent/Fort Prince George. Look at me, picking historical nits like a nitpicker. At any rate, the local penchant for naming things Duquesne seems to have been a later nineteenth century thing, which was far enough removed from the 1750s for people to disassociate the name with failure or enemy or general fancy-panted loserdom.

History is fun!

Also, did you know the Duquesne Dukes’ mascot is now a top hat-wearing blue lion?? What happened to their old mascot which I assume was actually named Señor Fancypants?

He looks like the lovechild of Gaston and Steely McBeam. Don’t email me.

2. Click here for … ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

I hate the PLCB as much as I hate the PA Turnpike Commission. If I run for governor it will be on a platform of abolishing them both and also figuring out a way to make Pittsburgh’s tunnels three lanes instead of two. My campaign slogan will be Montanez: Destroying what needs destroyed.

That’s right. I dropped “to be” … ON PURPOSE.

So the PLCB is an especially hated enemy of mine. There’s no reason for them to still exist and the sale of wine and liquor should be privatized and it should actually have happened a long time ago. Remember when instead of just letting grocery stores sell wine, they put wine vending machines in Giant Eagle that were the size of carwashes and the machine had a little drawer into which you deposited your virgin sacrifice? I might be misremembering that. But the point is, they always make everything very hard or very dumb or very slow because they are the government running something that shouldn’t be their job to run. So here’s some news:

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board announced Tuesday it will open a limited-release lottery giving state residents and licensees a chance to purchase 1,252 bottles of rare whiskeys. People can opt in to one or more lotteries through the Limited-Release Lottery website until 5 p.m. Friday.

As of this writing, when you click on that link it takes you to …

Because of course. We deserve better. We deserve to be PLCB-free. We deserve to buy whatever the hell liquor we want from whatever the hell seller we want. We deserve Two-Buck Chuck! We deserve Montanez! Vote early and often. I totally plan to bus people in. You can’t even believe it. They say.

Boom! Politics!

3. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t

Someone on Twitter/X shared the application they received for employment at one of Pittsburgh’s restaurants and well, yikes:

Okay, so they are essentially saying that if you are a restaurant worker not working, then why are you a lazy ass? We only want to hire people who are working so that we know you aren’t going to quit on us and leave us floundering for staff. So you better be working if you want to apply to work here!

Let’s say you’re working. Whew. You’ve passed the first question. Let’s look at the next one:

Oh my.

I’m not saying wanting this kind of information from prospective hires is wrong, but the METHODS. The derision is just dripping off of every word. As a reminder, I co-owned restaurants with my ex for a number of years. I get the staffing difficulties in that industry and they’ve been exacerbated since the pandemic, but this is a bit much. There is no reason to include this kind of derision in an application. You simply need to ask for a job history and if you see they’re switching jobs every eight weeks, don’t hire them. Or simply say, “Please explain any gaps in your resume,” and if the response doesn’t tickle your fancy … don’t hire them. Or if you think they might be a good fit, bring them in for an interview and ask them to explain gaps in their resume or why they aren’t working and if you don’t like their answers, DON’T. HIRE. THEM. You are responsible for the hiring of 100 percent of the people that you hire. I’ma get that on a pillow.

This application language is meant to be a derisive preemptive broad-stroke scolding of every applicant, likely borne out of frustration, but it serves less to attract the kind of people you’re looking to hire and more as an indictment of the workplace culture into which they are about to step. So you might as well watermark this application with a big red flag.

The end.

4. Shenderovich, Shenderovich and their cute little plastic toot-toot car

One of my favorite little shops to feature is Pittsburgh’s Happy Lil Canvases behind which you’ll find artist Jess, who always has new ideas popping up on her Threads account. Some of her latest are so good and I really hope they hit her shop soon.

First up, a slinky PRT bus took out a porch in Homewood because it had to stay true to its PRT bus penchant of getting themselves into as weird of situations as possible whether that be swallowed by a sinkhole or dropped by a falling bridge. This one was the result of a police chase gone wrong, sending the bus careening off course and into a home where thankfully the resident was uninjured and hopefully will be getting himself a whole new porch. Jess responded with …

I can’t stop laughing. Also, I can’t even imagine sitting in my living room when suddenly … BUS. Only in Pittsburgh.

You aren’t a Burgher until you’ve been at an event and the Shenderovich twins saunter in like they own the place. It’s quite a sight to behold. Jess drew them in a Fisher-Price Cozy Coupe Car and it’s glorious:

Then there’s her set of Pittsburgh Hot Wheels, including my two favorites:

The Buggy one is great too. Go see them all. Also, remind me to eventually write my longer argument that the reason we call them buggies here in Pittsburgh has to do with how coal cars were called buggies and we took that from the mines and mills and started calling shopping carts that. In this white paper I will …

One that IS on her shop for purchase are these hilarious Burgh-themed Happy Little Bunny stickers:

Not an ad! I just love her creative brain. And remember, you aren’t IN tunnel traffic; you ARE tunnel traffic.

I’m definitely getting THAT on a pillow and maybe my gravestone.

5. Random n’at

The short things that I don’t wish to make long things so you can mountain these molehills yourself if you’d like. Verbing weirds words.*

• Environmental groups engaged in clean-ups dredged our rivers and quickly retrieved over 50,000 pounds of car parts and tires but zero B-25 bombers. It’s out there somewhere, just waiting for us to find it.

  

• A portion of the Parkway East will close for 25 days next year, so this is your early warning to probably move before then.

• It’s probably not good when you can see through your roads, so this is your regular reminder to always hold onto your butt while driving in Pittsburgh. You never know when a road might swallow you, or a bridge might yeet you.

• Kennywood might be for sale, so who is going to get the Kickstarter going so we can just buy it for ourselves?

• Speaking of selling, Giant Eagle’s Get-Go locations are for sure sold and they just didn’t exist long enough for me to care much about them because I generally don’t form emotional attachments to gas stations because I am a reasonable adult. Let’s not talk about my emotional attachment to a specific brand of ketchup though.

• There are a handful of tickets left for the September 3 Allegheny Cleanways benefit dinner at Alta Via in Bakery Square. So make it a date night and come see me and we will eat delicious food and drink delicious cocktails and fight Pittsburgh’s litter problem together!

*TM Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes

6. That’s all for today.

Have a great week or two! Watch for kids and buses and bikes and motorcycles! Respect the bike lanes and do not ever park in them, you jags! Stop naming things Duquesne!

Come out to see my new band Señor Fancypants. If you’ve never heard mariachi songs in poorly pronounced French, you are in for a TREAT.

Chat soon!

My health is still delicate. With sentiments of respect I remain yours, etc.,

V.

Oh, wait! One thing. Last week my dad and I were driving to Cranberry and were chatting about places to get local produce when I picked up something in his yinzer accent that I never noticed before … tah-MAY-tah.

Gonna need you all to let me know if this is a Ginny’s Dad thing or a yinzer accent thing, because Ginny’s Mom doesn’t say it like that but she also has more of a Clairton/Welsh flavor of yinzer accent compared to my Dad’s Bridgeville/Syrian flavor. I’m starting to think maybe there’s more than one yinzer accent?

Ok, NOW, let’s get to it.

1. “Hold my Ahrn while I do a single push-up”

When I think of cities that have a fit population, my brain goes to LA and Miami with their fitness-obsessed populations shimmying their tight bodies into tiny swimwear they wear year-round the way some yinzers wear their “good” Steelers jerseys. (“If it’s good enough for the end zone dahn Heinz Field, it’s good enough for Gram’s funeral.”) I think of New York City where perfect-bodied movers and shakers pour themselves into the ugliest outfits that ever cost a semester’s tuition. Or those 2%-body-fat granola people up in Portland eating their bowls of birdseed and four blueberries before patting their concave bellies all, “So filling!” What I don’t think of when I think of a fit population is Pittsburgh, PA, USA. But …

For the 17th year, the American College of Sports Medicine released its American Fitness Index rankings of the 100 largest cities in the United States and Pittsburgh finds itself near the top of the list. The ACSM Fitness Index used 33 evidence-based indicators that determine health behaviors and outcomes and Pittsburgh landed at 17 on their rankings.

To quote Lionel Richie …

I mean, I can’t be alone in being shocked by this, can I? My disbelief, and Lionel’s, sent me to the data to figure out how we ranked so high, and it actually makes sense. Here’s the short of it: we take average care of ourselves compared to other cities, and our air is way more murderous, but we have more options for being active than other cities do.

The index takes an average of two numbers to figure out where each city ranks. When it comes to the first category, personal health, Pittsburghers are at a much more believable 44 out of 100 cities. That’s honestly closer to where I expected us to come out on such a list—not the worst; not the best; near the middle … kind of like my baked goods. In fact, the data show we stay right around the 100-city average when it comes to exercise, public transportation use, sleep, smoking, healthy eating, obesity, stroke, diabetes, etc.

Keeping that 44 out of 100 in mind, in the second category, community/environment, we come in 5th place out of those 100 cities. Whoa. How? Mostly our parks put us over the top. The percentage of Pittsburghers who live within a 10-minute walk from a park is crazy high—91%, when the average is 71.4. Our “walk score” is also much higher than the average, and our availability of every kind of recreational facility from basketball hoops to tennis courts is moderately higher than average. As far as I can tell though, this part of the index didn’t measure the usage of these facilities as much as it did the availability and ease of access, so it makes sense that we ranked so surprisingly high—we are HAVERS, maybe not so much USERS. Kind of like you and your Instant Pot.

So the lessons are this, Pittsburgh:

• We are fortunate to have plenty of community options to greatly increase our health, but we’ve got to use them more if we want to become healthier.

• At the very least, wear a collared shirt under your Steelers jersey if you’re planning to sport it in the same room as an occupied casket.

That’s just good advice all around and should be embroidered on a pillow.

2. When your backup needs a backup

We all know the sign on Kennywood’s Racer warning you that if you stand up, you will find your head separated from your body and it will probably hurt.

We’ve all grown up fully aware of this danger with this ride and we’ve all wondered why that sign is there. Who stood up and what happened? Is the person who stood up the kind of person who uses a hairdryer in the bathtub despite explicit warnings not to be that achingly stupid? Anyway! This week a new danger was revealed when an image circulated showing that a portion of the coaster looked like this …

To quote Lionel Richie …

Listen, this is how Ginny Montanez fixes things; this should not be how an amusement park fixes things! At no point in time should the phrase, “That oughta do it,” be uttered when it comes to a roller coaster support beam of any kind no matter how backup they are to the main supports. Have we learned nothing from NASA regarding redundancies and anomalies and the Swiss cheese model of accident prevention?

Of course there are people arguing that this was fine the way it was since it had never had a problem before even though this looks exactly how some MacGyvers in Fayette County keep their rickety-ass porches from falling off their houses. To you optimists I say, “Can I introduce you to the original Fern Hollow Bridge? It is in a grave, so wear your best Steelers jersey.” Everything is fine until it isn’t and if you want people to feel safe riding a roller coaster, at least hide the beams that look like this.

Kennywood did shut the ride down and do just that after being ordered to modify it by the state who also determined the ride was safe regardless because it was just backup support—which is still crazy to me but I’m no structural engineer. You can see a picture of the improved beam support here, which honestly may just be a facade covering the original hilariously scary-looking support, but at least we can all ride the coaster not having to look at a beam supported by two random cinder blocks and prayer.

Don’t stand up!

3. I believe the kids are alright

Plum High School did a super cool thing this year, allowing incoming driving seniors to donate to Make-A-Wish in order to be allowed to paint their assigned parking spaces at the school. Trib journalist Brian Rittmeyer paid the parking lot a visit and found some awesomely creative spaces! Here we have Sheetz, Monopoly and my beloved Cobra Kai.

As Lionel says …

There are more pictures to be found on Brian’s Twitter/X account and in this article he wrote for the Trib. It mentions that three students combined their spaces so that they could paint Despicable Me Minions and I need to see that. Someone get over there and snap a pic for me as ASAP as possible. I love this kind of creative energy and that the kids take it so seriously. More schools should do this, perhaps for local nonprofits making big local impacts—hint: Mario Lemieux Foundation!

Make it happen!

4. Some fantastic news about Pittsburgh history

I want to update you on something I’m directly involved in outside of stalking the downtown streets and reducing the pigeon population one verminous asshole at a time (don’t email me PETA; I am serious).

As you know, I built and launched the Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen website over a year ago knowing full well that such a map/photo history of still-visible artifacts from long-gone structures/events made much more sense as a mobile app. But I am me, and as a person who used to text her bestie Alfred/Woy the Butler all, “I EDITED ONE TINY THING ON A WIDGET AND MY BLOG SLAPPED MY FACE AND BURST INTO FLAMES. CALL 911!” I simply did not have the technical know-how or time to figure out how to turn it into an app. So I forced myself to be content with just the site.

Enter Pittsburgh’s own David Jardini, who manages to successfully straddle the space between business and history. His love and knowledge of Pittsburgh history (he has a PhD in history from CMU) drove him to reach out to me and within days we had partnered up with Penn State grad/engineer Harlan Shober to build a Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen mobile app!

We are in the early stages of planning and organization and will need your help as we go along. For now, if you have anything you’d like me to think about or any ideas you have for the three of us, don’t hesitate to reach out! Also, I remain open to user suggestions for items to add to the map.

Speaking of, I just added an item to the map. The original doors from the St. Francis Hospital School of Nursing which eventually became the East Wing of the main hospital. Details and photos are inside the map!

How cool is that? You’ll see a cross standing between the two doors in the image on the right but I haven’t yet found a photo of the cross on or inside the building. Working on it! Shout out to reader Jennifer K. who let me know about these.

5. Have dinner with me!

Alta Via in Bakery Square is hosting a benefit dinner for Allegheny Cleanways on September 3 and I’ll be there and will be giving some brief remarks about the litter and illegal dumping problem in Pittsburgh/Allegheny County.

It’s going to be a fun evening of delicious Alta Via food, drinks, and more. I’m even bugging some of my local company pals to donate sustainable items to give to the diners as a thank you for joining us. There are only 40 spots available for the dinner and a bunch have already sold, so if you want to join us, be sure to grab tickets quickly at this link here. As a reminder, Allegheny Cleanways is the organization on the ground each week cleaning up our land and rivers. Just two of their recent cleanups removed 600 pounds of trash from one set of city steps and over 1,000 pounds of trash from an illegal dump in Hays Woods. Here are pics from those cleanups.

I serve on their board’s development committee as an independent member because I care very deeply about this problem and want to support those who are making the city more beautiful and heathy for us all. Please come! We will hug!

Also consider volunteering for one of their upcoming cleanups.

6. Random n’at

• Pittsburghers who have brains understand how bike lanes improve our city in multiple ways, so it’s important that if we commit to creating this sort of infrastructure that we ensure they are respected. THAT MEANS STOP PARKING YOUR VEHICLES IN THE BIKE LANES, YOU ENTITLED JAGS. Recently I started following the automated Dash Cam 311 account on Twitter which shares photos of what Pittsburgh bike riders’ Dashcam.bike cams (this is a local company) are reporting regarding bike lane obstructions and IT. IS. CRAY-ZEE. Stop it stop it stop it. Lionel Richie is disappointed in you. Not an ad!

• I had no idea until recently that the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has a mascot and that it is a library card named Andrew CARDnegie. I am fully in love with this.

  

  Someone let him run the pierogi race alongside Mrs. T’s runners at the next Pirates game. In fact, why aren’t there guest mascot racers all the time? I want to see Iceburgh violently checking Chester Cheese into the outfield wall. I want to see Steely McBeam trying to use his steel beam* to smack the purse right out of Jalapeño Hannah’s hands. Give the people what they want.

• Someone left a bottle of OxiClean on Billy Mays’ Pittsburgh grave and his son shared a photo of it on a now-viral Twitter post. Amazing.

• Rivers Casino employees are lobbying to prohibit smoking in their place of work, and I’m going to say this: I will never understand how smoking is still permitted in casinos in particular. Absolutely bonkers because people will still gamble even if they can’t smoke; I swear it on Billy Mays’ spotless grave.

• I did a fun 15-minute interview with City Cast Pittsburgh about my recent column busting the myth you’ve all been told about Pittsburgh losing and gaining back her H. Listen here! If you haven’t read the column yet, that’s here. I have two other recent columns I have to chat with you about. Maybe next edition I can squeeze those in.

*not a euphemism

7. That’s all!

I have so many other things I need to still share with you and some cool Pittsburgh products I’ve discovered recently, but I’m out of space and time as per my usual, so I’ll pick it up here for the next edition which you will get when you get and you won’t throw a fit. Be kind! Respect the bike lanes no matter how you feel about Bill Peduto! Buy my book!

I totally thought I was making up the word verminous, but, turns out, it exists! So you better believe my band this week is the Verminous Assholes. We are once again opening for the only other profanely named band in the Burgh—the Bastard Bearded Irishmen. Bring your fainting salts and clutching-pearls.

You’re gonna need them.

Not much. I stay busy. I’m really enjoying my summer. I’m taking just one grad class in preparation for a fall semester that may destroy my soul leading up to a spring semester that may bury me so deeply that even a zombified-Ginny could never make it back to the surface.

I’ve been catching up on my reading. I’ve been taking small trips with my teen daughter to visit shows and museums in Columbus, Richmond, and Philadelphia so far. I swim in my sister’s pool. I catch the local exhibits, festivals and shows. Try restaurants new to me and old favorites. Try to be inspired to write a second novel.

Summer Ginny is happy and relaxed and has low anxiety. Autumn Ginny? You’re gonna hear her screaming all the way out in Coraopolis and your dogs are gonna FREAK.

Let’s talk, first about some heavy stuff and then we’ll get into the fun stuff!

1. The Hillman family’s links to slavery

There aren’t a whole lot of options open to you when it is written that your family fortune was amassed in part due to ancestral usage of slave labor. This is the situation in which Pittsburgh’s philanthropic Hillman family recently found themselves thanks to a new book arguing for slavery reparations. The book, The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations by journalist David Montero, spends a considerable amount of words tying the modern Hillman fortune to slavery (yes, I purchased the book; you can read a breakdown of what he reveals about the Hillman ancestors here.)

In the book, Montero mentions that the Hillman family never responded to his requests for comment; as far as I can tell, they maintained this silence until the book was published recently and local media outfits began seeking comment. Their response was partly good and also, eh, not good.

The good part, which is the second half of the statement:

“For generations, the Hillman family and their foundations have had a long enduring commitment to supporting our diverse community through philanthropic giving and civic engagement. Since the 1950s, they have had a direct role in supporting many organizations and causes that benefit Black communities. This commitment is borne from a sense of trust, friendship, and mutual respect. They are proud of their contributions and relationships and plan to build on both for generations to come.”

Good. But let’s jump back to the first paragraph of their statement:

“Without question, slavery was a tragic part of American history. Regrettably, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ancestors of the Hillman family were among the hundreds of thousands of people whose businesses relied on the labor of enslaved people."

Let me unpack for you why I view this to be a problematic response:

• A minor quibble before I get to the bigger issues: “Regrettably” is not the same as an expression of active regret. In the same way the Hillman family is tied to their ancestors in this shameful way, many modern Americans are tied to enslaved ancestors in a heartbreaking way. Those ties don’t simply snap as people die; legacy ripples long after in good and bad ways, and the fact is, the money the Hillmans enjoy today exists in part because of slavery. It’s okay for them to say, “We acknowledge and deeply regret the actions of our slave-owning ancestors whose wealth laid the foundation for our modern endowments.”

• “Were among” “people whose businesses relied”: the passivity here serves as an attempt to remove the agency of the Hillman ancestors to install them as passive players in a story in which they were active and willing participants. And worse, this statement says that it wasn’t Hillman ancestors that relied on the enslaved laborers, it was their businesses, you see. It wasn’t that Hillman ancestors enjoyed personal freedoms, comfort and prosperity afforded to them by the wealth generated by enslaved laborers, it was THE BUSINESSES that benefitted from this enslavement. A better statement maintains the active voice and directly implicates the real players who were actually driving the plot that robbed other players of their agency via enslavement, turning them into the victims of the story.

• “ancestors of the Hillman family were among the hundreds of thousands of people”: How unnecessary. Whether they intended it to or not, here’s how this statement reads: Hey, it wasn’t just us who were amassing wealth by enslaving other humans! It was lots of other people! In fact, I’ll ballpark it for you! HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS. And we were just one family. It reads to me as an attempt to inject even the smallest rationalization into a statement that called for none because there is none. We are long removed from the attempted justification phase and are now in the phase of determining whether past wrongs were ever truly righted, and if not, how to go about it—perhaps reparations, as argued by the author and others, or planned giving to Black groups and communities, as argued by the Hillman family in this statement.

I am not here to argue for one or the other; that debate is a long way from being settled. I am here to say the statement given to the media by the Hillman family fell far far short of adequate. And they deserve to be called out for it.

From now on, I hope they will remove any HINT of rationalization from any statement ever given on this matter, and having done that, they will go back through it a second time to remove any passivity that was injected in loyalty to ancestors whose slave-generated legacy money they continue to enjoy. Then once those things are gone, recognize that that same ancestral pull also exists between modern-day Black Americans and their long-gone enslaved relatives. From this state of mind, they can then ask honestly, how do we respond sincerely and have we done our earnest best to repair the damage, even if we didn’t create it ourselves?

I don’t know what the answers are, but at least those questions will generate progress.

2. Let’s just fight

Today in “stupid hills to die on” is the forthcoming 2025 redesign for the Pennsylvania license plate.

Let me show you the old one versus the new one:

As you can imagine, everyone loves this new design and there is no debate whatsoever and unicorns are soaring over the mountains, farms and hills of Pennsylvania pooping actual rainbows of love and harmony and Skittles.

Of course that’s not true. What’s true is that there are people that like it and there are people screaming of Pittsburgh erasure. People screaming it’s too Philadelphian. I guess those are kind of the same thing? Others say the design looks like a fourth-grader made it in MS Paint, which, no. The CURRENT license plate, however, definitely looks like something a monkey made in Microsoft Word in five minutes all …

Then there’s City Paper’s Colin Williams who went on a screed about the new plate, claiming Gettysburg has more treasured historical significance than the bell, that most people west of Harrisburg don’t even feel a “scintilla of identification with the poorly made bell,” that the design is akin to trying to represent all of Pennsylvania with the Cathedral of Learning (lol not even close; sit down with this), that red, white and blue are “played out,” that the slogan “let freedom ring” doesn’t work because the bell is “forever silenced” (also lol) and is a “hackneyed symbol” (like how? What? How? WHAT?) that will do little to get people to visit the state. In tweeting out the link to the op-ed, City Paper called the license plate design “tired jingoism.”

Oh for crying out loud.

I get that it’s probably just click-bait, and that I fell for it, but still, even in this our modern political age when patriotism has been weaponized within the political thunderdome, this reaction to what is actually a perfectly fine plate design is simply bonkers.

The old plate design wasn’t just hilariously bad, it was mostly meaningless and completely hidden by anyone who had a license plate frame, leaving nothing but a white plate and blue sans-serif numbers and letters. Now we will have a new plate that points to how Pennsylvania was INDEED where this whole American experiment was born. Be that we all feel somewhat on the verge of that experiment failing on us for one reason or another, this plate is fitting. “Let freedom ring” should not be viewed as simply a callback to a storied past; it is a present-tense declaration and should be viewed as a call to action that enmeshes our Commonwealth’s historical moral center with a continual effort to be/become a state where freedom flourishes, not a state where we try to swim against the tides of progress.

The historian in me wants to remind you (and Colin) that Pittsburgh and other parts of our state were dangerously close to being part of Virginia rather than Pennsylvania, so much so that Fort Pitt for a time was overtaken and renamed Fort Dunmore. Had that happened, we would not have our cherished legacy of a free-state city that became famed for its vitriolic hatred of slavery, but would have instead belonged to the state with the most slaves, fighting eventually not for the Union, but the Confederacy.

Why didn’t we become Virginia? Mostly because of a little thing called the American Revolution, which connects to the Liberty Bell, which once hung in Independence Hall and which, by the way, was first called the Liberty Bell by slavery abolitionists. Full circle! The Liberty Bell indeed checks all the boxes and it applies to the whole state on several levels, and if you don’t think it does, you haven’t bothered to learn your history outside of a few Google searches you did in service to bias. The new plate is well-designed, eye-pleasing, uses a serif font reminiscent of those seen in our most treasured historical documents (see Steelers block numbers to understand why font matters), and the cream color does a nice job of suggesting history too. My only quibble is that it doesn’t illustrate the entirety of the bell; not sure why they cut part of it off.

That said, it’s still just a license plate and a few “Welcome to Pennsylvania” signs. If you’ve ever ever ever ever ever made a decision to visit a state based on the design of their license plate, I’m gonna need you to leave the room before your lying ass growing Pinocchio nose shatters a window.

That is until Texas’ license plate changes to, “Death awaits.”

Speaking of a democracy …

3. Let’s just vote

As I told you in a previous edition, the Riverhounds are creating a professional women’s soccer team based in Pittsburgh and the vote is now open to choose the name of the team!

Your choices:

Some strong choices here. Let’s discuss them:

• While Confluence would make us all drunk all the time from playing my confluence drinking game, it would also be a hell of a team to have to create a mascot for, right? Can’t be a pirate, because we already have those. I don’t think a keelboatwoman would be striking too much fear in the hearts of opponents. I guess you could go with a river monster of some sort, which would be badass. Oooh, maybe a B-52 ghost bomber pilot??

• Renegades is my least favorite because it calls to mind the Steelers too much for me. Not to mention that there is a youth hockey team here called the Ice Renegades. So yeah, no to this one. You are the weakest link, goodbye.

• Riveters is my favorite. It gives Rosie the Riveter female-strength vibes but can also translate into some badass Flashdance-type vibes while allowing a play on the word riveting. The name also pairs syllabically well with Riverhounds.

  

  Is syllabically a word even? Let’s say it is.

• Strikers works on several levels from soccer strikers, to striking metal while it’s hot which links nicely to our industrial past, but I don’t love it as a name for a Pittsburgh team because it makes me think too much of labor strikes. This may just be because I recently spent a heck of a lot of time researching Pittsburgh’s labor history. Either way, meh to this.

So my choices in order are Riveters, Confluence, Strikers, and Renegades.

Go vote here! You have a week left. If Renegades or Strikers win, in the words of Prince Humperdink, I shall be very put out.

Don’t disappoint me, farm boy.

4. Let’s just not pack grenades in with our underwear

I have said this here a kajillion times but you’re going to hear it again … I once had a pair of tweezers confiscated by the TSA. TWEEZ. ERS. What can you even do with tweezers except groom someone against their will?

And you know what that did to me in a post-9/11 world? It made me extra extra cautious about being exactly sure what I can and can’t carry or pack when I’m traveling by air because the rules always change.

My ex-husband would regularly stress me out with the stuff he would shove in our luggage for our regular trips down to Mexico to visit his family. Once he packed into our suitcase a black box of a car part that had wires and shit coming out of it so his father could repair the family car for cheaper than he would purchasing the part in Mexico. I took one look at this thing that was about three modifications away from being a whole ass bomb and I said, “You are brown and therefore we are for sure going to be in airport jail by 4 p.m.”

Guess what? Nothing happened. The bag arrived in Mexico with no issues. But still, I continue to take the time to make sure I know the current rules. For my trip to Ireland, I made sure the scissors I packed had blades smaller than one inch because I didn’t need some 1.3 inch blades being the reason I got pulled out of line and scolded for being secretly murderous.

And there’s this:

Two grenades were found in a checked bag at the Pittsburgh International Airport on Tuesday morning. 

Now, surely these were like play grenades, right? Or decor made to look like grenades for people with terrible decorating taste? No, as seen in this pic from the TSA, they were actual grenades:

Thankfully they were inert, but here’s the thing, doofi, no, you can’t take even inert grenades on a plane and common sense should tell you why!

So you’re wondering why this dude thought this was okay and wouldn’t set off 700 bells and whistles and alarms and dogs? Did he even bother to take two seconds to Google it?

Friends—out there driving off cliffs hoping you’ll follow them, and telling you to take grenades on a plane.

Unbelievable.

Anyway, I’m off to Google, “Okay take protein powder luggage or TSA think cocaine?”

5. Random n’at

• My musician pal Randy Baumann of the DVE Morning Show (and a whole lot of do-gooding on behalf of local sick children), has an album out and it is so good and I’m not just saying that because he’s my friend. Strong vocals that stand out in the foreground of catchy songs. As the yutes say, “isa bop.” Did I do that right? My favorite songs are When a Man’s Down and Home Again. Go give them all a listen wherever you get your music these days including Spotify and Apple Music and more. Not an ad!

  

• Public Source’s followup to the hilariously bad Pittsburgh-bashing piece by the animal psychic/astrologer comes from a professional writer who returned for a class reunion after being raised here and moving away 40 years ago. It’s worthy of a read to see how it looks to those who left and thought they never wanted to look back.

• A local shirt that is new to me and I just love it so much comes from Steel City.

  

  The way I cackled*. Not an ad!

• Next week I’m going to try to find the space and time to really dive into the history behind my latest for Pittsburgh Magazine, which I shared last week. In the meantime, if you haven’t yet, read it here. A peak:

  

  *Title of my future memoir and my gravestone epitaph

6. That’s all!

That’s all for this week! Be kind! Buy my book! Don’t melt in the heat! Don’t litter! Watch for bike riders! Git a hoss! I have no band name this week because you should just go listen to Randy’s album!

See you soon and let freedom ring!