Josh Gibson Heritage Park opening

It’s been a busy summer for the Josh Gibson Foundation. Sean Gibson has arranged a full slate of events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his great-grandfather’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. On August 3rd Gibson’s Hall of Fame plaque was on display at PNC Park during that evening’s Pirates game. And the following morning the Josh Gibson Heritage park was officially unveiled over by Station Square in the South Side.

It’s been several years since the Heritage Park had its groundbreaking ceremony, so I was glad to be here for the official opening.

Sean Gibson welcomed the crowd.

Rob Ruck also offered some introductory remarks. Ruck is a historian at the University of Pittsburgh. His book Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh was a major reference for me when I was researching Pittsburgh’s Black baseball history. Ruck offered historical background on the significance of the figures commemorated at the Park, but also contextualized ongoing efforts of recognizing and memorializing Black sport history in relation to broader reckonings with racial disparities.

Finally the artworks were unveiled, beginning with the Cool Papa Bell monument. The pieces are painted bronze casts.

Finally the artworks were unveiled, beginning with the Cool Papa Bell monument. The pieces are painted bronze casts.

The marker for Cumberland Posey.

Satchel Paige.

Concluding with the Josh Gibson tribute.

Check out the Josh Gibson Foundation for additional information and upcoming events. Sean was also interviewed on City Cast Pittsburgh last month discussing the various commemorations.

OpenStreetsPGH July: East End Loop (w/ Video!)

This past weekend featured the final OpenStreets Pittsburgh event of the year. The last route of the summer was a 4.4 mile loop through the East End neighborhoods of East Liberty, Larimer, Homewood, North Point Breeze, and Shadyside.

As with the events in May and June, it was another hot and sunny summer day for cycling. I think this was the hilliest route so far and it offered a lot of variety in the topography and built features of the different neighborhoods.

My favorite part of this route was the Homewood sections, which is the neighborhood that I’ve spent the least time in out of those on the Loop.

I took the opportunity to stray away from the route and explore some of the public art and architecture in the area.

In a bit of serendipitous synchronicity I came across the Holy Rosary Church. I had just learned about the existence of this church last week while doing some research and was already planning an expedition to seek it out.

This is one of three churches that architect Ralph Adams Cram designed in Pittsburgh (there is a fourth nearby in Greensburg), along with East Liberty Presbyterian aka the Cathedral of Hope in East Liberty. So this East End Loop route ended up being a bit of a Cram Jam.

Cram supposedly considered the East Liberty cathedral (pictured below, also along the OpenStreets route) his masterpiece and “most profound spiritual experience” of his life.

To commemorate this final OpenStreets of the season (as well as my completion of the hat trick with this summer’s events) I also made my first foray into cycling videography. I felt inspired by all the Terry Barensten riding content I’ve been binging lately, but rather than splurging on a GoPro I decided to experiment with just my phone and a handlebar-mounted holder.

I had wanted to shoot the whole thing in a properly cinematic 16:9 aspect ratio but the possible configurations of phone and holder didn’t work out (except for some footage looking down over the front wheel and street which I used to bookend the video). So I opted for a Kubrickian or Errol Morris-inspired 3:3 frame. Anyway, I edited together a compilation of raw footage from the ride and slapped on some explanatory place-marking titles in iMovie. The onboard audio caught a lot of my huffing and puffing up the hills, but I don’t think there’s too much of my swearing or muttering about saddle sores in these clips.

Shots from the Block: Stray South Side Scenes

For a belated update this week I’ve assembled some random snapshots that I’ve taken around South Side so far this summer, mostly from June. The start of summer brought some of my favorite Pittsburgh weather.

The spring thaw also brought a gaggle of baby geese for our resident waterfowl, and they’ve been a regular fixture of my morning runs.

They’re cute, but they (and their leavings) can be real menaces on the trail.

Speaking of the trail, a stretch of road between Birmingham bridge and the 18th street railway crossing was recently reconfigured into a new lane-sharing pattern.

I’ve heard about this type of traffic scheme causing confusion elsewhere so I’m curious to see how it works out here.

Throughout June the neighborhood was also peppered with flyers and signs relating to the surge in gun violence the South Side has seen. There were similar issues last summer and residents have been debating how things have worsened and what can be done about it.

Local businesses have reduced their hours or even closed entirely due to violence that has become a regular weekend occurrence. Mayor Gainey even conducted a Saturday midnight walk along East Carson Street to see conditions firsthand.

The Dirty Poet posted their latest prose. They seem understandably distraught about global current events.

A suspicious early morning fire was being investigated as possible arson.

My roommate left Pittsburgh in the latter half of June. Before he moved I decided to upgrade my ride by buying his bike (he had already purchased a new model). I took my old cycle to Thick Bikes. While we waited for them to appraise the bike we stumbled across a Cornhole tournament.

I accepted the offer for my bike, figuring that I had gotten my money’s worth over the previous two years. The bike had taken me from suburban Nashville to the streets of Pittsburgh and I was happy to see it get a second life. I assumed that this photo would be the last time I saw the bike.

However, two weeks ago I came across the bike at its apparent new home just one block away from my apartment.

On my roommate’s last night in Pittsburgh we were treated to a spectacular meteorological display in the form of a rare mammatus cloud formation.

WYEP Summer Music Festival & OpenStreetsPGH June 2022

The last weekend of June was also the first official weekend of Summer, and it was a busy one in Pittsburgh. On Saturday I headed into Oakland for the WYEP Summer Music Festival.

The concert was held in Schenley Plaza. It was nearly 90 degrees fahrenheit with lots of sun. When I arrived most of the shaded areas on the edges of the plaza were occupied, so I situated myself in a sunny spot in the grass.

The infrastructure and trailers behind the stage occupied Schenley Drive.

One of the event sponsors was Pittsburgh Regional Transit, the newly-rebranded name for Pittsburgh Port Authority. Their booth with free PRT hats was very popular.

They also had one of the newly-rebranded buses on site for viewing.

The streets of Oakland had responses to the recent Supreme Court ruling.

Sunday featured the second OpenStreets event of the summer. This course ran from Market Square down through the Strip District and Lawrenceville. I rode across the Hot Metal Bridge to the northern side of the Three Rivers Heritage Trail and took it to Downtown, riding surface streets to the Square.

The crossing from Market Square to Penn Ave was regulated by event volunteers, just as last month.

From Downtown the course continued up through the Strip District.

People were still doing their Sunday morning shopping, frequently having to traverse the gauntlet of OpenStreets riders to cross the street.

Even with the Sunday shoppers the Strip District never felt as congested as South Side did last month.

One of the dismount zones was demarcated by a pair of giant purple hands.

As with previous events there was also live music throughout the course.

Helpful chalk writing alerted riders to road hazards as well as dismount zones.

The course went past Allegheny Cemetery.

The Lawrenceville Doughboy looked over the proceedings.

My ride along Butler St was invigorating not only for building the speed that I did but also for gauging what had changed and what had stayed the same.

City Scenes: Allentown ride & Black Forge Coffee House

Recently Black Forge Coffee announced they would be closing their Allentown location at the end of this month. To commemorate the closing I’m sharing a throwback to a cycle trip I took to the coffee shop this past Fall.

Back in October my roommate and I decided to christen the Fall with an impromptu weekday afternoon bike from the South Side to the Black Forge Coffee House up in Allentown. We rode on 18th St out of South Side Flats before switching over to Brosville St for the ascent up the hill. It was very steep and hard going, but the route also yielded some dynamite views of South Side and Downtown Pittsburgh.

We ended up walking our bikes for the second stretch because it was such an arduous climb. Once we reached the top and the ground leveled out we were practically at our destination.

Black Forge Coffee House has a dark, heavy metal-influenced, occult-ish aesthetic (their logo features the “BF” initials rendered in style of witchy sigil that evokes both pagan symbols and Chaos Magick sensibilities).

Though the shop evidently always sports a grim and ghoulish look, they seemed extra-bedecked with dreadful decorations in anticipation of the approaching Halloween holiday.

We set up at a table next to a large front window overlooking the intersection of Arlington and Warrington. It was a great vantage spot to watch the streetscape, and we also had a clear view of the Cathedral of Learning looming in the distance.

After some cursory historical research we realized that this intersection was the former location of the Knoxville Incline, one of Pittsburgh’s historic inclined railways. This one previously connected Allentown and the South Side. The image below combines a photo I took on the day of our visit with an archival photo of the Knoxville Incline.

When we left the coffee shop we traveled back down Brosville St, this time riding instead of walking. It was one of the most harrowing experiences I’ve yet had cycling, as the steep grade had me traveling at greater speeds than I’ve previously achieved on my bike. It was exhilarating, and we paused for more photos before traveling down 12 St back into South Side Flats.

Pirates Drone Show June 2022

Following their evening game on Friday June 3rd the Pirates held their first-ever drone show. This inaugural promotion had been touted by the local press as “something different” for Pittsburgh crowds who are accustomed to traditional fireworks shows which the Pirates typically put on several times each season. (Years before moving to Pittsburgh I had heard that the inclusion of “sky flowers” to mesmerize zombies in George Romero’s Land of the Dead was a sly yinzer allusion to Pittsburghers’ predilection for fireworks displays, though I remain unconvinced.)

I went to check out the drone show, my first time back to the stadium since opening day. The Friday game was well-attended but did not seem as crowded as the home opener. For instance, I was finally able to grab a spot at the Bullpen Bar this time around. I still think it’s a great place to watch the game, with the added bonus of being able to look directly down into the bullpens (as well as listen to young fans queued up at the fencing constantly call out to the relief pitchers for souvenir baseballs). The view got even better after the sun set behind the grandstand.

I also got to check out some of the new ballpark features that I had missed on opening day. These oversized bobblehead statues hadn’t yet been installed back in April.

The heads really do bobble, by the way.

I also really liked this Warhol-esque Pops art behind centerfield.

After the game concluded fans concentrated in the grandstand for better views of the drone show. (You can also spot the sliver of the moon in the top of the frame.)

The drone display began with the unmanned aerial vehicles slowly rising in uniform rows from the riverwalk. The backdrop of the downtown skyline was particularly colorful this evening due to many of the skyscrapers featuring rainbow colors to commemorate Pride Month.

The show proper started with the sounds of a classic Greg Brown walkoff call from some previous game broadcast, with his trademark victory announcement of “Raise the Jolly Roger!” The drones assumed the form of a waving Jolly Roger flag, and from my location almost seemed lined up with the stadium flagpoles.

From there the soundtrack transitioned to a sort of ragtime version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and the drones formed a revolving baseball emblazoned with the Pirates logo.

One of the novel features of the drone display was the ability to depict shapes that had movement or seemed to interact with each other, like a ball sent flying by a swinging bat.

The next section of the show featured imagery from Pirates franchise history, such as the iconic image of Steve Blass’ leap and Manny Sanguillen’s raised arms from the Pirates 1971 World Series victory.

A representation of Roberto Clemente tipped his cap to the crowd.

From more recent Pirates history, the fan-favorite Cueto moment from the 2013 Wildcard game was a particularly funny inclusion (and yes, the ball did fall from the hand).

The final section of the show spotlighted local Pittsburgh iconography, starting with one of the famous incline cars.

The iconic Kennywood arrows above a rollercoaster.

And finally some straight-out Pittsburgh love.

OpenStreetsPGH May 2022

Following several years of always being out-of-town or otherwise unable to attend an OpenStreets Pittsburgh session, last summer I returned to the city just in time for the sole event of 2021. I wrote about my experience cycling across the Mon to Hazelwood for that event around Mill 19 last summer. This year the organization is back to a full summer schedule with dates scheduled for May, June, and July. The inaugural route this summer ran from Downtown to the South Side, with the South Side terminus located nearby to where the Birmingham Bridge intersects Carson Street, which is practically at my front door. So on the last Saturday of May my roommate and I pedaled out onto Carson to join the crowds gathering to enjoy a day of (mostly) car-free streets.

After a week that was frequently overcast and occasionally rainy, it was a gorgeous Saturday. The day also provided a reminder of the importance of applying sunscreen: had I known I was going to be out and about for nearly five hours in vigorous sunshine, I might’ve prepared better. The route officially opened at 10 AM and, as with the Hazelwood event last summer, the streets steadily grew more populated over the course of the day. Below is a snapshot of the scene along Carson Street in the afternoon.

Among the various venders and activity stations scattered along Carson Street, stalwart South Side cycle shop Thick Bikes had a dedicated event area where visitors could ride a unicycle, drink a beer, and listen to live music.

We stopped a while to listen to the music, but did not take our chances on a unicycle.

Further down Carson we reached one of the great crossings of the route: the 10th Street Bridge. Unfortunately none of my photos can do justice to the experience of the actual crossing, which I can only crudely convey as both “cinematic” and “immersive.”

On the downtown-side of the expanse we approached the ostensible highlight of the entire course: what the OpenStreets web site described as “a magically car-free Armstrong Tunnel.”

The passage through the tunnel did indeed seem magical, in the sense of feeling out-of-the-ordinary to the point of nearly being otherworldly. During our initial transit the traffic was light enough to offer plenty of breathing room. On subsequent traversals the navigation around other moving bodies was a bit more harrowing, especially during the darkened portions of the tunnel where visibility was very low (an effect compounded by my sunglasses). While I was somewhat exacerbated by having to maneuver around perambulators and pram-pushers during these latter runs, I was also tempted to dismount and join these pedestrians who were savoring their time in the tunnel, walking through and examining the details of the wall tiles, inspecting the graffiti, etc.

The tunnel opened up on Forbes Avenue, emptying us out onto the streets of Downtown.

There were a couple of traffic crossings facilitated by event volunteers and city workers on the way to the Downtown-end of the course. Even during our first transit in the morning the streets on the Downtown side seemed more populated.

The Downtown terminus of the route was at Market Square, at the base of PPG Place and in the shadow of the Highmark building and Gateway Center. We surveyed the various booths and picked up some OpenStreets merch.

On our return trip from Downtown back to South Side my roommate and I both noticed a fountain in a courtyard that we hadn’t seen before. The fountain is in the courtyard of the Allegheny County Courthouse, and even though I have been in that complex multiple times (for various purposes of varying pleasantness) I had never noticed the fountain. Evidently many other riders were making a similar discovery on this Saturday afternoon, as several cyclists joined us in deviating from the route for a photo-op.

Back in the South Side we found Carson Street significantly more crowded than we had left it. Close to home we stopped and watched a stilt-wearing street performer’s show. He had amped-up energy and was doing great crowd work, but we decided to leave after he kept deferring his promised knife juggling routine.

We made the trip back Downtown. After arriving in Market Square we decided to continue on to the Point. This involved leaving the closed-streets car-free course and entering actual downtown traffic, which was a first for me. But it was a quick trip along the bike lane past the Gateway T Station and over to Point State Park. Once arrived at the central fountain we found that many other cyclists had decided to travel the extra distance.

From this point we decided to ride back to South Side along the river trail, cycling up to the Hot Metal Bridge to cross back over the Mon. We then made the round trip from South Side to Downtown and back a third time. All told we rode for nearly 20 miles and 5 hours. As I said before, it was a good reminder of the importance of sunscreen.

Maine Relations

For the first time in many years I took a proper trip during the annual academic spring break this past March. Obviously the past two years were disrupted by the pandemic, but even before that I had become accustomed to spending that week recuperating at home (or working my way through student papers). But this year I wasn’t just looking to shake off the covid blues, rather I was determined to make good on a promise to visit two of my dearest friends.

These friends are two of my closest relationships from grad school and from Pittsburgh in general, and in addition to having shared a lot of great times they were also a vital source of support when I was struggling through both professional and personal hardships. In March 2020, just days before our school’s spring break for that year, the Covid-19 threat materialized as a true public health crisis. Campuses around the country began canceling in-person classes for the remainder of the semester and our university soon followed suit. We gathered at my friends’ apartment (I was living just down the hill in their same neighborhood at the time) to toast our newly extended spring recess, playing a round of the Pandemic board game which was intermittently interrupted by breaking news reports: Tom Hanks had contracted coronavirus; the NBA season was canceled; President Trump was announcing travel restrictions. For the next couple of weeks I would periodically trek up the hill to visit my friends, my face covered with a makeshift bandana as I surveyed eerily empty streets. As we processed this unfolding new reality and discussed quarantine plans my friends assured me that I would be welcome in their home during the crisis, that I was officially part of their pandemic social bubble. This was tremendously important to me as I would otherwise be braving the lockdown alone in my basement studio apartment.

I ultimately decided to leave Pittsburgh to stay with my family for what I thought would be a fortnight at most. On the day I left I visited one half of this friend pair in the bakery he worked down the street. He gave me some pastries for my drive and I gifted him all the toilet paper I had in my apartment (these were the days of the great toilet paper run, when bath tissue was a highly valued commodity). Before I left the bakery there was a pregnant pause in place of a parting embrace, but there was a new strong sense of maintaining physical distance. My friend said something like, “What if this is the last time we see each other?” I replied something along the lines of, “Don’t worry, it won’t be.”

My stay in Nashville was gradually extended until it became indefinite. I kept in touch with my friends to see how they were faring, and after a few weeks got news that one of them had received a post-doc appointment and they would be moving to Maine. We continued to keep tabs long distance with occasional Zoom calls to catch up. Nearly 18 months later I was moving back to Pittsburgh, and in addition to other reasons this return took on a melancholic poignance in part because my friends would not be there.

In the past year my friends have continued to have major changes in their lives: finishing their PhDs, welcoming a new baby, and most recently the news that would be leaving Maine for jobs in Virginia. With their move coming up this summer I took the opportunity during spring break to see their new family addition and also where they’ve been living for the last two years. After assuring me that I should not feel obligated to visit and that their current parenting duties did not offer much in the way of excitement, I told them I was committed and they were evidently and heartwarmingly excited.

I had already made my Maine travel arrangements when my grandmother died in April. So I would now be going to Tennessee for the funeral and then immediately embarking on my Maine trip. I didn’t sleep the night following the funeral due to my extremely early departure time out of Nashville the next morning, so I was exhausted on multiple levels when beginning the next leg of my journey. I took off from a pre-dawn Nashville and landed in La Guardia on a gray and rainy New York morning. Then it was on to Pittsburgh where I would cool my heels in the airport for several hours.

I was feeling fatigued and nigh delirious as I tried to find ways to pass the time at the PIT airport (I even ate some Primantis). There was a prevailing sense of liminality, being in between journeys, and having arrived back at my point of departure but not going home, remaining in the liminal space of the airport. I started exploring the airport and at one point took an escalator to an area I had never been in before. It turned out to be the location of PIT’s Interfaith Reflection Room. The room was unoccupied so I spent some time taking in the space. Among other religious objects there was a shelf with a selection of devotional or sacred texts representing a variety of faiths. I picked up the resident copy of the Bhagavad Gita and flipped to a random page for some inspiration before leaving.

When I finally departed from Pittsburgh it was back to La Guardia where I had been only hours earlier. Conditions in New York had cleared up since that morning.

I also got to take in aerial views of the New York nightscape when continuing on to Maine by way of D.C.

Upon arriving in Bangor around 1 AM I was reunited with my friend whom I had last seen in the Pittsburgh bakery during the pandemic outbreak. We stood there in the cold remarking on the unbelievable fact that it had been nearly two years to the day since we’d last seen each other, and we finally shared the embrace that had been deferred that day in the bakery.

In Tennessee it had truly felt like spring, with temperatures getting into the 70s F. But in Maine it was still winter, with cold temperatures and ample snow. It was my first time being in this part of the world (my previous experiences of New England did not extend any further north than Boston) and I had not packed appropriately since I had to pack warm weather and funeral clothing in the same small bag that I was carrying on to Maine with. It was cold but also beautiful: the nights were truly dark in a way that felt like a distant point on the globe, and the days frequently featured layers of fog hovering over the frozen ground. I had been looking forward not only to taking in the general environs but especially to visit some of my friends’ favorite haunts from their time in Maine, and to enjoy some local fare. The first place they took me was the Eagle’s Nest, their favorite local spot for lobster rolls. (In addition to being my inaugural visit it was also the baby’s very first restaurant experience, and he was a trooper.)

The small restaurant features a picture window overlooking the Penobscot river, which was still littered with ice floes this time of year.

Despite the soy face in this photo, I assure you that it is lobster in the roll, and it was delicious.

Our next outing involved a drive out to Bar Harbor, a New England resort town that only existed for me as a vague spatial imaginary in the same vein as Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard. In addition to reuniting with my friends and meeting their baby I was also excited to reconnect with their fur baby who sat with (on) me for the drive.

It was decidedly the off-season in Bar Harbor: streets and sidewalks were mostly vacant, and the majority of shops were closed up with signs posted saying "see you in the summer."

A few places were open for business, including Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium. It was far too cold and blustery for ice cream to be appealing but we popped in to get coffees and pick up some fudge for later in the trip.

The Ben & Bill’s workers were wearing t-shirts that advertised “lobster ice cream” which I assumed to be a cheeky joke. Upon inquiring, however, we learned that it was very much a real offering.

They offered us a sample of the lobster ice cream and of course we had to try it. (In this next photo it’s the ice cream tub with the lobster claw on top.) It was good, with more of a buttery flavor and a hint of lobster aftertaste.

Despite the cold and strong winds it was an otherwise beautiful day and easy to imagine the town bustling during the warmer months.

In any place I’m drawn to reading the local culture as expressed in graffiti tags and stickers on street signs. One of the local voices that stood out to me in Bar Harbor was DADBODY who was well represented throughout the main drag. (When I had been in Nashville the previous week my mom gave me updates on VERN, a graffiti name that appears frequently on highway overpasses and road barriers in the area. It’s a name we had noticed during our travels when I was still living there and so mom likes to give me updates on when VERNs have been painted over or when new ones appear.)

We continued along into Acadia National Park which has been one of my friends’ favorite natural refuges during their time in Maine. It did not feel like a beach day to me (my first experience of New England beaches was cold and did not offer much in the way of shelling or sea life), but we had a picnic lunch on the sand anyway.

My friend has a personal code where if he visits the beach, he doesn’t leave until he has had his feet in the ocean. In his mind, he hasn’t properly been at the beach unless he’s been in the water. In this cold weather I thought his creed seemed extreme but I was eventually won over by his logic. When would I next have the opportunity to take a dip in Maine coastal waters? We doffed our footwear and waded into the surf.

It was frigid but invigorating.

Further into the park we visited the iconic Bubbles.

Back in town my friends took me to some of their other favorite local fixtures, including Mason’s brewpub.

It was an opportunity to enjoy some more local grub and pick up additional merch to commemorate my trip (check out the newly acquired Bar Harbor sweater).

We also stopped by some Bangor landmarks such as Stephen King’s house. I had expected it to be a nondescript residence but was pleasantly surprised.

On the final night of my visit we had a night in where we played a game of darts and also got in a round of Pandemic to commemorate one of our last times together two years earlier.

My departure from Maine was another pre-dawn flight. We said our goodbyes and I wished my friends well with this next chapter of their lives. And we traded admonitions to not let another two years go by before we were together again.

A Summer School Playlist

To commemorate the start of the summer school session, here’s a playlist of songs. I’m deeply indebted to my much-more-musically-inclined-brother-in-law Ben for sharing so much great new music during our time in the mountains this past week (not to mention his generous sharing of his family’s cabin, his inherited collection of audiocassettes, and his love of 90s Kevin Costner movies). I also want to offer apologies and appreciation for Mark Fisher’s KPUNK playlists. The result of this inaugural effort is an experimental earsore: some autobiographical navelgazing, some lame gestures toward a topical time capsule, a few efforts at thematic resonance, and some shameless incorporation of recent earworms. Here is the set as a YouTube playlist, and the tracklist is below:

1. Billy Bragg, “To Have and to Have Not”

2. Pedro the Lion, “Indian Summer”

3. Built to Spill, “Rearrange”

4. Jimmy Cliff, “The Harder They Come”

5. Kae Tempest, “More Pressure”

6. Digable Planets, “La Femme Fetal”

7. Brooklyn Funk Essentials, “The Revolution Was Postponed Because of Rain”

8. Jimmy Driftwood, “He Had a Long Chain On”

9. Dakh Daughters, “When I Was Thirty Six”

10. Pussy Riot, “Police State”

11. Randy Newman, “It’s Money That I Love”

12. Stereolab, “Ping Pong”

13. NOFX, “The Marxist Brothers”

14. Le Tigre, “Get Off the Internet”

15. Jeff Rosenstock, “Polar Bear or Africa”

Thanatopsis in Paris, TN

In March I traveled to Tennessee for my grandmother’s funeral. This journey involved convening with my immediate family in Nashville before continuing on for the funeral itself in the town of Paris, TN.

I previously wrote gushingly (and verbosely) about Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas after seeing the film for the first time. The film’s evocative imagery and thematic depth profoundly moved me, but it also struck a particular personal resonance due to my own history with Paris, TN. Like the titular Texas town of Wenders’ film Paris, TN also bears nomenclatural relation with a more famous namesake. The Parisian connection is played up by iconographic allusions throughout the Tennessee town.

In the film, the character of Travis is preoccupied with the town of Paris, TX in part because he believes that he was conceived there, that the place represents the point of origin for his entire existence. Travis also remarks upon the significance of his having been named there by his parents, and there is a throughline in the film relating to the power of naming to fix identity and direct destiny. Paris, TN has played a similar role in my own biography as the place my progenitors hailed from as well as the source for my given and family names. The town thus held special fascination for me growing up by representing both geographic and nomenclatural points of origin for my sense of self.

Paris, TN has always existed as a realm of ghosts in my life, a point of convergence between the land of the living and domain of the dead. This stems in part from its status as a quasi-mythic location in my personal history, a place that was unknown to me but featured prominently in family stories in which I heard my relatives give intimate accounts of people I had never met. It was also the location of family burial plots, a place I seemed to only visit for the purposes of attending a funeral or holding vigil at a gravesite. When I was younger I mostly reckoned Paris as the place where I saw my own name engraved on tombstones.

Paris still is this place, of course, as this most recent visit attested. It is still the place of small hillside cemeteries where I contemplate the grave markers of my forebearers amidst a backdrop of industrial pork processing plants. It is a place for reconnecting with the past, both personal and otherwise. I’ve obviously traveled to Paris for funerals on prior occasions but on this visit my family and I lingered a while after to visit other sites in the town. I’d always known that my southern family roots had instilled in me an abiding love for fried catfish, but I didn’t know how prominently catfish were featured in landmarks and other iconography around Paris, or that the town bills itself as home of the world’s largest fish fry. I also learned about Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic, and its outsized role in the area’s economic history.

The eulogies at my grandmother’s service reminded me of all the countless threads that make up the tapestry of a person’s life, and provided me with a poignant recollection that I come from a lineage of teachers and preachers, a recognition that broadened my typically myopic perspective on the daily travails of my professional work to a more encompassing sense of purpose and human endeavor. Of course, this lineage is not exclusively constituted by teachers or preachers but includes also farmers, butchers, and mail carriers, amongst other occupations. I’m grateful for a place (and the attendant times) that provides a space for such reflection and introspection, and thankful in particular that in Paris, TN the landmarks of my family history are not found solely in graveyards.

An urban media tour of the South Side

With the weather warming up crowds have returned to the outdoor patios on my block and elsewhere along Carson Street, and I’ve recently returned to the trails and even brought my bike out of its winter hibernation (I’ve continued to be flummoxed by the pervasive road construction and sidewalk closures, however). In honor of the seasonal thaw and with optimistic anticipation for the coming summer I decided to revisit one of my first South Side sojourns. These photos were taken during an afternoon walk I took last July shortly after moving to the neighborhood. A theme soon developed where I was documenting multiple dimensions of the urban mediascape of South Side. Many of these sites have changed in the intervening months so this post is a bit of a throwback (as well as a nostalgic reminiscence of better sidewalk accessibility in the neighborhood).

I’ll start with the billboard in the above photo. I glimpsed the sign while driving in on my move-in weekend, and I assumed it was an advertisement. Revisiting it on foot I found that it was not a straightforward commercial message but some sort of mysterious campaign. Unfortunately the QR code was defunct so I was unable to determine its purpose. Nevertheless it was an intriguing twist on the traditional landscape of urban signage, with the QR code representing the multiple levels of technologically-mediated modalities and ways of interfacing with the built environment in contemporary urban space.

In terms of more traditional urban media, this July walk was the first time I had been to the WYEP Community Broadcast Center, the Bedford Square home of 91.3 WYEP. WYEP is a great local radio station (and overall community asset) and has been a core part of my personal Pittsburgh media experience since I first arrived in the city. Even when I was temporarily relocated to Nashville during the pandemic I still woke up every day to WYEP’s Morning Mix thanks to the ability to stream the station on my smart speaker. I’ve always appreciated that Pittsburgh has a solid homegrown radio station and am glad that we now share a neighborhood.

Prior to the advent of radio broadcasting, performance spaces and venues constituted key fixtures of urban media. As a major nightlife and entertainment district, South Side has traditionally been strong in music venues and concert spots (the neighborhood is comparatively lacking in my personal favorite urban media places, namely movie theaters and bookstores). One of the most prominent music venues in the area during my time in Pittsburgh has been the Rex Theater, an historic vaudeville house that later became a movie theater before finally transforming into a concert hall. The Rex closed permanently in September 2020 amidst hardships wrought by the pandemic. In July 2021 – the same month as the afternoon walk documented herein – it was announced that the space would be reopening as a music venue under new management and a new name. On the day I took these photos, however, the facade still looked shuttered, with the box office windows plastered with posters and flyers.

Speaking of papered-over windows: on the opposite side of Carson Street the historic Schwartz’s Market featured signs advertising notably anachronistic grocery prices.

The storefront had been made over as a filming location for a League of their Own television show that was shooting that week.

Finally, as I arrived back home, I checked the status of the mural that I had seen progressing since moving to the neighborhood. I didn’t spot the artists this day, but as identified here beside the mural it is a collaboration between Shane Pilster and Max Gonzales, who I would later meet and get to learn more about this specific project.

Pirates 2022 Home Opener

The Pittsburgh Pirates held their home opener at PNC Park on April 12th. First pitch was scheduled for 4:12 PM, a deliberately specific start time that sought to establish hometown Yinzer synergy with the 4/12 game date and Pittsburgh’s 412 area code. I had been eagerly anticipating opening day since I hadn’t attended a Pirates home opener since 2019. When I saw the crowds thronging to the stadium I realized that I was not alone: the pandemic-wrought disruptions of the past two seasons meant that no one had been able to enjoy a proper opening day game in Pittsburgh for three years. It was also a gorgeous afternoon with ideal weather for taking in a baseball game, considerably warmer than the chill and windy conditions during the 2019 home opener.

In addition to the return of a full capacity home opener this opening day game was also the debut of numerous new additions and renovations that were made to PNC Park during the offseason. Dubbed “fan experience enhancements,” these changes not only included the usual change up of concession offerings but also some significant alterations to the physical spaces of the ballpark itself. The physical modifications were made in coordination with Janet Marie Smith, a ballpark designer who’s overseen similar projects at Baltimore’s Camden Yards as well as Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium. During press previews of the renovations Smith described PNC as “one of the most iconic ballparks in the U.S.” and described some of the changing fan behaviors and expectations that the additions aim to accommodate.

The new stadium features are encountered before even entering the ballpark. New commemorative monuments have been installed along the riverwalk that separates PNC Park from the Allegheny in the form of oversized baseball sculptures featuring the names of notable players and hall-of-famers. The monuments not only recognize storied players from throughout the Pirates long history but also include players from Pittsburgh’s most prominent Negro Leagues teams, namely the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords.

I’ve previously written about Negro Leagues commemoration at PNC Park, and my chapter in the Urban Communication Reader Vol. IV focuses on various failures or frustrations of memorializing the history of Black baseball in Pittsburgh (one of the significant examples from PNC Park being the former Legacy Square installation). With this history in mind I appreciated the new (and ostensibly permanent) commemorative markers that honor this legacy. Yet amongst these welcome efforts the Pirates organization once again found frustration in its attempts at Negro Leagues memorialization when a large bobblehead-style statue of a Black baseball player was rejected prior to its installation in PNC Park. After images of the statue appeared online some social media users remarked that the likeness evoked legacies of racist caricatures.

Aside from the baseball monuments the Pirates also installed large sculptures of retired player numbers along the rampway that connects the riverwalk to the northern terminus of the Clemente bridge and PNC Park’s Center Field Gate.

Speaking of the Center Field Gate, visitors entering PNC Park through this portal will almost immediately encounter the most significant physical alterations to the space of the ballpark. The areas around the outfield have been substantially renovated to feature new seating areas, hightop tables with patio umbrellas, and two new concession stations. In addition to providing great new spaces for watching the field these areas also open up new vistas of the ballpark.

In the area that previously housed a small, standalone security outpost building there is a brand new bar concession (sponsored by Fatheads Brewery, which also hosts one of my go-to South Side spots).

As the name suggests, the Fathead’s Bullpen Bar also features an extended drink rail directly overlooking the bullpen. I think this is an especially neat addition, as previously the area above the bullpen was rather heavily policed by the resident security staff who often shooed away peering fans. It’s a nice addition that affords a wholly unique perspective for watching the game yet I have to imagine that this privileged position will regularly feature “spirited” patrons heckling hometeam and visiting relief pitchers alike.

The outward-facing side of the Bullpen bar is festooned with Pirates banners and features the same stellar city views that this part of the ballpark has always provided.

Also in this outfield area is Manny’s BBQ, which is not a new concession but rather a longtime favorite for food offerings at PNC. Nevertheless, it did receive some updates including oversized reproductions of baseball cards from throughout the career of the restaurant’s namesake Manny Sanguillén. I had often heard that Manny himself could sometimes be found manning the stand, but this opening day visit was the first time I actually witnessed such an occurrence. In the photo below you can see Manny in the lower left corner greeting fans beneath some of the new baseball card features.

There are new commemorative and decorative installations throughout the ballpark, such as these vintage-style Pirates pennants and “Let’s Go Bucs” signage.

Some additional commemorative features are still in the works, as evident by the “coming soon” banner along this new Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame wall.

The game ended shortly before sunset, and the long shadows and suffused light on this opening day made me think of the final game of the previous season last October.

As we were informed last year, the Roberto Clemente Bridge is currently closed for renovations and will remain inaccessible for the remainder of this season. While the bridge itself may not officially be part of the ballpark, it is an indelible feature of the overall PNC Park panorama and common accessway to the stadium. As such, traversing the bridge is closely connected to the entire game day experience for many visitors. On my way to the game I took the T to the North Side station (something I hadn’t done in years). When leaving I joined the crowds crossing the 7th Street Andy Warhol Bridge. While adjusting to this detour I wondered about the fate of another iconic feature of a Pirates home game experience: the “Sax Man,” AKA Reggie Howze, the Hill District native who has been playing saxophone on the Clemente Bridge before and after Pirates games since 1998. To my delight, Mr. Howze was indeed posted up on the sister bridge providing exit music for the departing fans.

Beyond Crisis Creativity conference & Carrie Furnace Visit

Last month I was pleased to participate in an exciting un-conference that took place at the University of Pittsburgh. Sponsored by Pitt’s Global Studies Center, the Global Academic Partnership Conference: Beyond Crisis Creativity: Imagining New Futures Through Art and Youth Activism brought together artists, scholars, and assorted urban interventionists from Pittsburgh and around the world for a dynamic international dialogue.

The first event I was able to attend was a screening of Style Wars, a classic documentary on early hip hop culture that provides street-level perspective of the burgeoning graffiti scene in 1970s and 80s New York. This was my first viewing of Style Wars and it clearly belongs in the pantheon of essential visual archives of urban subcultures.

The screening was followed by a discussion with Shane Pilster and Max Gonazales, two prominent Pittsburgh graffiti writers and arts educators. I’ve been familiar with different aspects of their respective works for nearly the entire time I’ve been in Pittsburgh, but this was my first opportunity to meet them. During dinner that evening I had to restrain my overenthusiastic impulses to ask about the Pittsburgh graffiti scene and quiz them about various local writers whose names I’ve noticed over the years. I also got to them that I live next to one of their recent mural collaborations in the South Side that they completed last summer.

The next day began with a panel on the theme “Creative Industries and Urban Development in Global Contexts: Tourism, Gentrification, Heritage Work, and Social Justice Advocacy in Urban Arts.” I was delighted to get to meet my recent collaborator Ricardo Klein from the University of Valencia who was attending remotely from Spain, and to make the in-person acquaintances of Ligia Ferro from the University of Porto and Amanda Boston who joined Pitt’s Department of Africana Studies this year.

That afternoon featured a visit to the Carrie Furnaces, a national historic landmark and relic of Pittsburgh’s industrial heyday that is a locus of post-industrial reuse and arts initiatives. This was another example of a local site which I was long-familiar but had never previously visited. Before touring the grounds our group assembled in a massive warehouse space. Prior to the area’s redevelopment into a historic and cultural site, this space was a derelict and decomposing shell which attracted urban explorers and adventurous graffiti writers. Today the building has been renovated with a new roof and lighting, and the walls are covered in paint from both invited muralists as well as regular contributions from the arts workshops that are hosted in the space.

The rest of the grounds are impressive for the awesome post-industrial relics as well as the variety of artwork that has proliferated on the site.

Before leaving we were invited to try our hands at applying spray paint to the walls in the art workshop space. This was yet another first for me so I gave it a shot. After writing my name a few times I declared that I had exhausted my imaginative capacity. Some of the seasoned writers asked if I ever doodled, and when I replied in the affirmative they recommended that I just try some designs that I would typically scribble on a piece of paper. So I came up with this alien/spaceman figure. (I also painted the heart with arrow seen to the right of my name in the photo below, and was commended on my hand control…I did think the heart turned out well.)

Road Blocks: Mobility & Sidewalk Accessibility in Pittsburgh's South Side

When I moved to Pittsburgh’s South Side last summer I found it to be a dramatically different experience compared to my years living in the city’s East End neighborhoods. Most notably the entirety of South Side Flats seemed imminently accessible, with the major thoroughfare and commercial core of East Carson Street providing a walkable central corridor through the dense and dynamic neighborhood. I also immediately took advantage of the neighborhood’s unique mobility infrastructure including the nearby river trail, dedicated bike lanes, and ample neighborways. However, for the past several months more and more of my daily traversals through the neighborhood have featured scenes like the one pictured in the above photo.

Pennsylvania publications recently marked the beginning of “PennDOT construction season” with the release of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s 2022 budget. But here in the South Side it has felt like an uninterrupted construction season from last fall all through the winter. Some of this has to do with an apparent modernization project that has been taking place all along Carson Street: a block-by-block construction effort that has seen the upgrading of street corners to feature more even pavement and new curb ramps, as well as the installation of new traffic lights. In the photo above you can see a newly-installed yet-to-be activated traffic light alongside an existing fixture.

The above photo shows the view of Carson at 23rd Street as seen from my apartment. The median embankment was constructed last fall. You can still see the faded paint lines of the crosswalk that enabled protected traversal over Carson until it was disrupted by the new median. There is now a crosswalk that allows pedestrian traffic to continue along Carson across the South Side terminus of the Birmingham bridge, however this crosswalk wasn’t constructed until a couple of months after the original crosswalk was disrupted. Accordingly, for several weeks pedestrians on this block were confronted with the dilemma of either forging into traffic to navigate the newly impeded crosswalk, or doubling-back to cross over at the end of the block. From my vantage point I watched as numerous pedestrians – including people in wheelchairs or using crutches – opted to step into the line of traffic in order to continue their progress.

The road work along Carson and adjoining streets has been incessant for the past many months. Although I am free of physical impairment and able to negotiate these disruptions with relative ease, I have been frequently frustrated by my inability to to maintain uninterrupted progress in my journeys and particularly mindful of the inconveniences experienced by people with lesser mobility than myself.

Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure was founded in 2017 under the Peduto administration. From my perspective, the department’s title and mission statement have always reflected a capacious understanding of “mobility” that not only considers the needs of physical movement but also attends to the broader spectrum of social and economic mobility. There is much about the DOMI mission and purview that I support. As stated on the department’s website, DOMI evinces several “mobility principles.” One of these principles is that “all trips less than 1 mile are easily and enjoyably achieved by non-vehicle travel.” After months of mounting frustrations with my own daily peregrinations, I decided to document a short and simple journey that I make on a weekly basis in order to illustrate how my experience falls short of DOMI’s stated goals.

The nearest grocery store to me is only 0.3 miles from my apartment (one of the many mobility advantages that I have enjoyed in this neighborhood). I make the trek to the grocery once a week, traveling on foot. For the past several months my travel along this route has been fraught with impasses and obstructions. So I documented my experience last week in order to illustrate the degree of difficulties encountered during a single, simple journey. All of the following photos were captured last Saturday, April 2nd. It is worth noting that the various hindrances documented herein stem from a variety of sources: not only city projects but also private construction. Furthermore, the street closures and sidewalk disruptions along Carson and adjoining streets are subject to rapid change from day to day, however they have been a persistent presence in aggregate for several months. These pictures are therefore indicative of the range of obstacles to mobility and accessibility encountered during a short walking journey on a recent afternoon.

Upon leaving my apartment I head east along Carson Street following the most direct route to the grocery store. I encounter my first obstacle as soon as I reach the end of the block: the sidewalk on the opposite side of 24th Street is inaccessible.

It may be hard to believe, but this configuration is actually more forgiving than it had been in the past. For several weeks previous the fencing extended all the way to the edge of the sidewalk, forcing persistent pedestrians to step out into the street to continue their travels. The fencing has recently been moved toward the mid-point of the sidewalk, however the placement of temporary signage and permanent presence of light poles and trees makes this sliver of sidewalk treacherous for any traveler, not to mention unsurpassable for individuals using wheelchairs or other mobility aids.

So, stymied at the very first street crossing along my journey, I turn right on 24th Street. The next potential passageway that would enable me to continue toward my destination is Carey Way, an alleyway that bisects the block. However, due to this building construction that has enveloped the entire area, the alley is also blocked off. So I continue to Sarah Street, only to find that the sprawling construction has also claimed the sidewalk on this side of the block.

As I’ve been doing for the past three months or so that his fencing has eliminated the sidewalk, I travel into the street to circumvent the obstruction, hewing as close as possible to the chain-link barrier and hoping that approaching vehicles offer ample leeway as they pass. After negotiating the lane of oncoming traffic and navigating around the parked cars that stand between me and the curb, I am back on the sidewalk. This reprieve is short-lived, however, as halfway down the 2500 block of Sarah Street there is a sudden interruption of the sidewalk in front of a house that is being renovated.

I carefully tread along the narrow berm of the curb with arms outstretched, like a gymnast traversing a balance beam, and continue my harrowing journey to the market. Thankfully there are no major obstacles for the remainder of my transit (if we are overlooking the radically uneven sidewalks along Sarah Street, where the alternating concrete and brick surfaces are routinely broken up by the subterranean courses of tree routes). Finally I arrive at the grocery and complete my shopping for the week. For the journey home I have no desire to retread the hazardous path that brought me here, so I eschew the Sarah Street exit and depart from the Carson Street entrance instead. Immediately upon exiting the store I am confronted with a construction sign admonishing me to cross the street, as the sidewalk up ahead is apparently closed.

However, upon turning right to follow the direction indicated by the arrow on the “sidewalk closed” sign, I see that the opposite corner is itself inaccessible, cordoned off by construction cones and temporary barriers.

Unable to follow the construction sign’s directive to cross the street, I continue along Carson Street back toward home. Sure enough, at the end of the block the way becomes impassable.

As you can see in this photo, every corner of this intersection was marred by construction impediments.

Once again I venture into the street and precariously brave oncoming traffic, having been left with no other viable alternatives along my route. I make it only to the end of the next block before encountering the next roadblock.

Again stepping off the curb into the street, I walk around these obstructions to return to the initial obstacles that I first encountered along my short journey.

These photos attest to the wildly inaccessible conditions that I encountered during a very short walk on a recent weekend afternoon. In stark contrast to DOMI’s mobility principles, this 0.3 mile journey was far from easily and enjoyably achieved. As mentioned earlier, this snapshot of a recent afternoon captures street conditions that have been rapidly and continuously fluctuating, and indicate both private and city construction projects. However, what I believe these photos make abundantly clear is that the sidewalk conditions in South Side have been absurdly inconsistent, and the maintenance and mobility and accessibility in this neighborhood has fallen far short of reasonable standards.

Mobility for Who? Pittsburgh Mobility Report

I’ve been deep in the weeds with a writing project — as well as dealing with all the other stresses of life and getting through the winter — so activity at the blog has unfortunately been sparse. However I wanted to make my regular weekly update with some further news about mobility in Pittsburgh (one of the blog’s favorite subjects as late). This Thursday (Feb. 17th) there will be a panel discussion with members of Pittsburghers for Public Transit and Tech 4 Society to discuss the current status of mobility initiatives in the city. From the news announcement:

“Under the Peduto administration, Pittsburgh has poured taxpayer funds and time into private mobility techology, while failing to prioritize core infrastructure needs such as sidewalks, bus shelters - even roads and bridges. High tech investment has also driven gentrification and displacement to transit-poor areas, exacerbated by acute lack of affordable housing.

Transit accessibility is an equity issue. SPIN scooters, autonomous vehicles, sidewalk delivery robots, and other technologies have all been touted by Pittsburgh leaders as increasing mobility access for residents. These technologies are often inaccessible to many who need transportation most: senior citizens, the disabled, youth, families, low-income people, the unbanked. As Mayor Ed Gainey steps into office, now is the time to revisit decisions to invest limited city resources into inaccessible technologies. ”

More details on the meeting and how to attend are available here.

Black History Month in Pittsburgh

Black History Month is well underway and the city of Pittsburgh has spotlighted some local resources for commemorating Black history in the region. The City is hosting an exhibition of Charles "Teenie" Harris photographs in the City-County building through the end of the month. And Visit Pittsburgh has assembled a handy guide to local events and archives.

Bridges, Biden, and the Sublime Object of (Pittsburgh) Infrastructure

Last Friday President Joe Biden stopped in Pittsburgh in order to use some of the Steel City’s post-industrial transition into technology research and development as the backdrop for a speech about the Infrastructure Bill. News of Biden’s visit only broke the day before, and the timing seemed coincidental for me personally because Biden was to deliver his remarks at Mill 19, a redeveloped tech office-park in Hazelwood that has featured in my research for several years and that I’m currently writing about (and also visited during Open Streets last July). The timing of the President’s Pittsburgh pit-stop would end up proving much more coincidental, however, when the Fern Hollow Bridge that traverses a ravine in Frick Park in between the neighborhoods of Squirrel Hill and Regent Square collapsed around 6:00 AM Friday morning, just hours before Biden was scheduled to touch down in the city. No one was killed in the collapse, though the loss of a major thoroughfare will pose ramifications for mobility and accessibility in the city for a long time.

The timing of the collapse seemed like an unwelcome surprise engineered by the Cosmic Coincidence Control Center (although I saw several Twitter users deduce that the bridge failure was a false flag event designed to further Biden’s radical-left agenda; a conflux of phantasms). Throughout the news coverage journalists and other commentators made the absurdly obvious observation that the bridge failure underscored the importance of funding for infrastructure maintenance. The impotence of these assertions is only exacerbated by the preceding months of political discourse that hinged upon the necessity of public infrastructure investment so that, you know, bridges don’t collapse.

Biden visited the collapse site prior to his speech and talked with the local officials and first responders who were on scene. It seems that one of Biden’s aides included the trivia about Pittsburgh having more bridges than any other city in the world into his briefing; Biden repeated the factoid throughout the day. I lost my bet that Biden would refer to his credentials as a “bi-partisan bridge builder” in his remarks, but I did correctly predict that he would trot out the well-worn anecdote about “going to the McDonald’s parking lot to use the WiFi” that seems to feature in every single one of Biden’s infrastructure stump speeches. 

Locally the Fern Hollow bridge collapse was seen as a call to action, even as experts advised that it will take far more than the Infrastructure Bill to address all of the region’s outstanding issues. It also sparked reflection on previous instances of infrastructural deterioration and breakdown.

At the beginning of this month I wrote about the inauguration of new Pittsburgh mayor Ed Gainey and the legacy of outgoing mayor Bill Peduto through the lens of mobility infrastructure. I highlighted Peduto’s choice to describe his place in Pittsburgh history as “a bridge over troubled water.” Immediately after the collapse of this troubled bridge last week the incident was politicized as residents sought to assign blame. Many assigned fault to Peduto: some ascribed the collapse to Peduto’s choosing to fund police over infrastructure (Peduto has been very active on Twitter discussing the collapse and responding to other users); others claimed it was the result of diverting money to bike lanes (this is incredible but true…the goddamn “bike lane” discourse lives on!).

The excited murmuring over Pittsburgh infrastructure that the Fern Hollow collapse incited seems like a locally-inflected variant of the politicking that played out in national discourse over the past many months. Even the signifier “infrastructure” has become as ubiquitous as its signified, just part of the background of everyday life. Something that you tend to take for granted and overlook until it breaks down or fails. The constant repetition of this word, the application of its meaning to a vast array of potential interventions, indicate a “sublime” aspect of infrastructure as both materiality and discourse. In a material sense the all-encompassing and pervasive nature of our infrastructural environments suggest an inexorable sublimity.

And in this recent political discourse – whether on the national or local level – the way the term is operationalized and the various ideological investments revealed in these debates illustrate how infrastructure may function as sublime objects, imagined as the satisfaction of our desires.

The Medium play at Pittsburgh's City Theater

This past weekend City Theatre in Pittsburgh’s South Side began staging The Medium, a performance inspired by the work of Marshall McLuhan.

The production was developed by New York-based SITI Company beginning in 1993 and was first presented at City Theatre in 1996. This means that The Medium was created during a unique moment in McLuhan’s legacy, in the early days of the Internet when technological optimism predominated and McLuhan’s media theory was retrieved for its perceived explanatory power. This was the era in which WIRED magazine named McLuhan the patron saint of the Internet Age, and even published dialogues with a McLuhan simulacrum. 

I was interested in the play for a number of reasons, one of which was the opportunity to see McLuhan’s persona and ideas remediated in a new form. The mediation of McLuhan’s figure (as a personality, not just his ideas) is part of what drew me to his theories in the first place. I first remember being introduced to McLuhan as a college undergraduate in a Communication Theory course. When we got to the class covering McLuhan the professor included a range of pop culture artifacts to illustrate the public impact that McLuhan’s media notions had. We read the transcript of the scene in which he cameos in Annie Hall, listened to a cowboy-style song called “The Ballad of Marshall McLuhan”, and watched some sort of choreographed performance on the theme of “the global village” that I haven’t been able to find online.

The mediation of McLuhan is of course a testament to his ability to tap into the zeitgeist of the emerging electronic media age and the sixties counterculture trends with his “far out” media guru proclamations. It is an idea of McLuhan, rather than McLuhan’s ideas, that has proliferated so vastly through pop culture. The “global village” has currency as a buzzword or marketing slogan. And “the medium is the message” has endured not only for its neatly encapsulated central insight but its form illustrates its key idea: an ideal soundbite perfectly attuned to transmission in the electronic media age, a precursor to theories of memetic cultural transmission.

So I went for the first night of preview performances of The Medium, not really knowing what to expect. In that way the performance unfolded as a pleasant surprise, and I was thoroughly engaged for the duration. One of the first things that struck me was the impact of hearing words and phrases that I was familiar with, but hearing them delivered as dramatic performance for the first time. The primary way that I’ve interfaced with McLuhan’s work is literate, through reading books and essays. While watching the play I realized how powerful and evocative it was to hear this words about oral culture, or speech as the primary mode of communication prior to the phonetic alphabet, or how the hot ear is hyperaesthetic compared to the cool eye, in the form of live performance rather than on the printed page. In fact it seems like a necessary way of engaging with his ideas in as many different mediums as possible, to experience how the content is transformed when the form of delivery is changed. The play also does a great job of evoking the all-at-once-ness of acoustic space through the repetition of phrases and instances of overlapping dialogue.

It was a really cool way of revisiting and engaging with McLuhan’s legacy, and the performance is particularly well suited for playing with his ideas about spoken communication and oral culture. I had wondered beforehand how “intellectual” and distanced a play based on McLuhan’s ideas might be, but The Medium was engaging throughout due to the excellent performances and a dynamic choreography and physicality.

MLK Day 2022

It’s a snowbound Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Pittsburgh (as it is in many places impacted by Winter Storm Izzy). In recognition of the holiday I wanted to share a community callout recently posted by Public Source. The authors pivot from Ed Gainey’s recent inauguration as mayor to reflect on some lesser known Black leaders in Pittsburgh’s history, and ask readers to submit suggestions for other forgotten stories of Black Pittsburgh that deserve a spotlight. I learned a lot from the article and look forward to seeing what other stories come out of this community callout.

Shots from the Block: First snow of 2022

My new year started off with some wild weather. I rang in the new year in Nashville where I was visiting my family for the holidays. The weather on New Year’s Day was warm (nearly 80 degrees fahrenheit) and brought the first tornado warnings of the brand new calendar year. Coincidentally this happened to be the first Saturday of the month, which is when tornado sirens are regularly heard in the afternoons for the area’s monthly siren testing. Yet when the sirens sounded on this particular afternoon it was not a test but rather the real deal.

When I first went to ride out the pandemic with my family in March 2020 I arrived just weeks after a tornado outbreak wrought severe damage in Nashville. And just last month the city was skirted by the tornado that devastated communities in Kentucky. So it was a disconcerting start to the year. I helped my mom bring in Christmas decorations and patio furniture that could be turned into projectiles by the high winds. We were watching live weather updates on TV when the tornado sirens sounded, and we sought shelter in a small closet under the stairs. When it felt safe enough I went into the front yard and watched the dark, swirling clouds moving swiftly past.

On the following day the weather turned cold again. I was scheduled to fly back to Pittsburgh that evening and while I was waiting at the gate heavy snow began falling outside the windows. My return flight was eventually scrapped and rescheduled due to staffing shortages, presumably a consequence of the mass weather-and-covid-related flight cancellations that had been wreaking havoc on major airports. I returned to my family’s home to stay the night and enjoy the belated wintery weather. With the new paint job on my mom’s house the nighttime scene looked particularly monochromatic.

The snowstorm that had snarled traffic of all kinds from Atlanta up to D.C. had missed Pittsburgh, so when I finally made it back to the city it was cold but clear. Snow finally began falling this past Thursday evening.

From the alley behind my building I spotted assorted birds of paradise bedecked by the freshly fallen snow.