Happy Wednesday!
As you know, I’m a space geek. As you know, I had to cancel on NASA when I was invited to watch a launch in Florida because my life disrespectfully went KABLOOEY right in my face back in 2019. As you know, my mother is QUITE the character, as they say. There was the time her iPhone had that once-common water bubble wallpaper and she thought she had somehow gotten actual water behind her screen so she tucked it to grave in a bag of rice on her kitchen counter for a few days. Good ole’ Dottie. Well, last week this happened:
Readers, I am nearly certain the reason she asked me this and the reason for her surprised reaction is that she thought she could just book me a gift ticket on a rocket to space with Jeff Bezos. Like, she’s probably on RetailMeNot.com looking up coupon codes (SpaceSaleOct) for Blue Origin, or Googling “need passport for space?” You gotta love it and love her.
Let’s talk Steelers first because this is Pittsburgh, where sports and weather are our main concerns at nearly any given time. And days when sports and weather INTERSECT?! Just don’t bother reporting other news; we only want to hear about the sports and the weather and the sports weather, and maybe the traffic but ONLY if a tractor-trailer spilled something funny on the Parkway like live chickens or an entire shipment of Truck Nutz.
In addition to basically forking up our whole lives, the pandemic also found a way to fork up the Steelers games. As part of their cashless and paperless COVID existence, Heinz Field no longer accepts paper tickets. As you can imagine, this made the stadium entrances run as smoothly as a Pittsburgh tunnel entrance. Lines to get in the first game were insane because of bottlenecks, and because of people who didn’t bother to or didn’t know HOW to put their mobile tickets on their phones. “I couldn’t find the slot on my phone to stick the ticket in and also, there’s water behind the screen so here is the baggie of rice if you want to just dig it out.”
The next week, the Steelers said, Listen, we get it. This is hard. From now on, pretend we are an airport and you’re coming to catch a flight and in order to get through ticketing and security, you need to arrive at least two hours early. But that didn’t work. Lines were still long and mobile ticketing was still holding things up. “I Scotch-taped my ticket to the back of my phone. Does that work?”
So last week, the Steelers took a knee in front of the fans, crossed their elbows over their bent knee, tilted their head sympathetically and said gently, “Hey, Sport. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We are gonna light some loud, colorful explosions up in the sky and that will be your cue to go find your seat. Okay, kiddo?”
Have you ever heard of anything more Pittsburgh than this? Parents tell their kids, Get home when the street lights turn on. Theaters are out here with a gentle light-flicker and a few passive aggressive throat-clearings from ushers. And the Steelers are like, KA-F--KING-BOOM, BITCHES. GET YOUR ASSES TO YOUR SEATS.
It seems so unnecessary because I feel like fans should be willing and able to, I don’t know, watch the time and head in early enough to not miss kickoff or that’s just their too bad. But also? I kinda like it and I hope the Benedum, Byham and Heinz Hall adopt this method. Attendance will skyrocket at the symphony. Pun intended.
Halloween is next week so let’s finish our deep dive into Pittsburgh’s Halloween history, specifically during the early 1900s when Halloween was not yet about candy and was instead all about pranks and massive street parties. I’m not joking. Here’s a 1913 illustration of Pittsburgh’s Halloween to help you picture it:
And here’s Fifth Avenue on Halloween, 1925 by the Press:
Now, you’re thinking how would one even get through that throng? Well, I’m going to tell you. What young Pittsburgh men would do is form what was called a “Flying Wedge.” Like in the old-timey football play it was named for, twenty or so people would form a narrow wedge, like geese do, behind one leader and then they would just charge full-speed through the crowds — knocking people down and out of their way. It was eventually outlawed by the mayor. This from the 1906 Pittsburgh Press gives a good description:
Flying wedgers were often arrested and fined anywhere from $3 to $5. And of course, The Flying Wedgers is my new band name. We play banjos. Fast.
— A common prank during the street parties was boys would get a girl to laugh and then THROW A HANDFUL OF CONFETTI OR FLOUR INTO HER MOUTH. This was a huge deal to the point that the city cracked down on it because boys would scoop up spat-out confetti and throw it into another person’s mouth. And sometimes, they would collect the spat-out confetti and RESELL IT. The 1918 flu pandemic is starting to make so much sense.
—Halloween, 1903. Mayor Hays is being interviewed during the street celebration when a brave young lady shoves a tickler into his face. Ticklers were feathers on sticks, sold at places like Kaufmann’s, used to tickle the faces of revelers for decades in Pittsburgh until they were banned by the mayor because they were causing eye injuries and infections by transferring diseases from one eyeball to another. Conjunctivitis City. I found this 1905 illustration in The Pittsburgh Daily Post of what they looked like (heavily cropped to remove all the racist tropes):
So, yeah, that was yet another Halloween prank that was banned, much to Pittsburghers’ dismay. We got no ticklers! We got no Flying Wedges! We can’t have mouth confetti!
—Halloween, 1903 — a “masquerader” dressed as a prisoner begins sprinting through the Federal Street throng. The police give chase thinking he has escaped Western Penitentiary. Rather than reveal he is in costume, the “prisoner” runs for blocks until OVER 100 PITTSBURGHERS are chasing him through the North Side. He finally tires and reveals himself. Ell. Oh. Ell.
— Halloween, 1908 — a group of West End boys manage to move a whole-ass porch rocking chair to the top of a streetlight post. How does one even go about getting that down? I’d just leave it until it rotted away and yinzers eventually gave directions by saying, “Make a left where the light post rocking chair used to be.” Boys more regularly stole wooden gates to suspend from light posts. Here’s an illustration from The Pittsburgh Press in 1928 showing the gate and roof wagon pranks, and even a plundered cabbage (wink) being thrown against a door.
— Halloween, 1911 — boys in North Versailles UPEND AN ENTIRE OUTBUILDING in which the owner is sleeping in an effort to prevent them from tipping it over, as they successfully did the year before. The building tips over, slides down a hill and traps the owner inside. And in thirty years yinzers are still saying, “Make a right where that tipped over outbuilding used to sit.”
— Halloween, 1924 — Fed up with the yearly pranks, the burgess of Aspinwall proactively tells a group of boys to prank government officials rather than neighbors. And that is how it came to pass that the director of public safety had to exit his home via a window on Halloween when those selfsame boys tied all his doors to outdoor railings. I AM CRYING.
I’m still enjoying hunting down foreign Steelers teams and found two I want to point out amongst dozens of really awful-looking Steelers teams in all kinds of sports from hockey to baseball to cricket to something called professional floorball, which I don’t believe really exists the same way I don’t believe professional cornhole exists. Don’t email me, you enraged cornholers. Go throw beanbags in holes and pretend it means something.
First up, the Hamilton Steelers were a Canadian Soccer League team from ‘87-’91 and their colors were black and gold:
A few tasty mullets in that team photo.
Second, I just wanted to take you to Australia real quick where the Illawarra Steelers, a professional rugby team, once had an official mascot named … STANLEY THE STEEL AVENGER OH MY GOD:
He looks like the lovechild of a NASCAR driver and The Greatest American Hero. (Believe it or NOT, I’m walking…)
Now, we must ask ourselves, who would win in a fight between Stanley the Steel Avenger and Steely McBeam. I guess we’re just going to have to wait for the SyFy made-for-TV-movie to find out.
And obviously you’re aware that I’ve just changed my band name to The Enraged Cornholers. We play country rock. Angrily.
I need to tell you that hunting down these foreign teams means I’ve stumbled upon some of the most terrible Steelers shirts I’ve ever seen in my life and if I have to have eyes in my skull sockets that have seen this cursed shit, then you do too:
Some thoughts:
Coincidentally, I’m 75% witch, 23% bitch, and 2% Nutella.
That dog is going to haunt my dreams, my nightmares, my life, the inside of my eyelids when I blink, and maybe my afterlife.
If anyone can explain the “picked the right witch” shirt to me, I’d appreciate it.
The One Nation Under God shirt is the most ‘Merica Steelers shirt I have ever seen. Even an actual bald eagle would be all, “It’s a bit much. Now jimmy this netting for me so I can go meet Kody for drinks.”
Behold the most perfect description of Pittsburgh Parkway traffic that has ever been written:
@JanePitt Parkway speed limits are like bocce ball. You just try to get kind of close and everyone else tries to prevent that.Just dead center. Nail, head, hit.
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education announced last week that as part of their merger, California University, Clarion University and Edinboro University will soon be collectively known as … Pennsylvania Western University.
Pennsylvania Western University. I’m staring at this and, like, are the words out of order? Or? Is it making me think of Western Psych? I’m trying not to be the quintessential Burgher who just hates change and tells people directions by where the lamp post rocking chair used to be, but Pennsylvania Western University sounds 100 percent like a fictional school that would appear in a Batman movie. I’m going to need a minute to get used to this one.
And let’s end it there. Yinz have a great week. No mouth confetti. No flying wedges. And be sure to listen for the fireworks to tell you when your table is ready at Eddie Merlot’s.