Burgers and milkshakes. The phrase itself elicits glossy-eyed nostalgia, memories of backyard lunches in the summer, the smoky scent of the grill and the crack of a wiffle bat. BRGR — in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood — strives to transport cold-hearted foodies back to simpler times. Embracing a compromise between highbrow and lowbrow cuisine, BRGR …
3:44. I can tell time. I have been able to tell time for a long, long time. Time will tell, they say, time will tell—just what? I want to know just what. Will it tell me I am just a passing phenomenon? That I’m suffering from deeds done in a past life? And that’s exactly …
The first portion of this saga described my youth circa the 1950’s, in a California border town called El Centro. The story continues but is only the beginning of life as we knew it in this cozy agricultural oasis. At some point in the late 1950’s, a feeling of foreboding came over me and our …
Sasha Sings The Laundry On The Line by Sean Thomas Dougherty BOA Editions Paperback, $16.00 ISBN 9781934414392 Published September 2010 Many years ago, I was driving down a street with a friend, a geneticist who used to play cello in a symphony. It was spring. I mentioned how beautiful the blossoming pear trees were. He …
On March 24 and 25, No Name Players presented SWAN Day 2011: A Celebration of Pittsburgh’s Women Artists, a multimedia, multigenre event, at the New Hazlett Theater on Pittsburgh’s Northside. The Hazlett, one of a growing number of artistic and cultural venues on the Northside, is located inside an historic gray stone building with graceful …
I’m on the train to my home city, traveling east rather unsteadily through the flooded marshlands. I’m reading a strange little book I found on my daughter’s shelf a few hours ago—Soulstorm, a collection of short stories by Clarice Lispector (1925-1977), translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin, and first published in 1974. I’ve never …
3:31. It is Sunday and I still know my date of birth: 7/3/55. And the D.O.D? Tomorrow, a month, a decade away? My shadow is giving off black reflections and my words are just black reflections. Create scenes, one friend advised. Scene I. Being Choked to Death. Scene II. The Body Bag, nails driven into …
You wouldn’t normally compare Pittsburgh’s East Liberty to Buenos Aires. But, if you imagine a Buenos Aires whose magnificence was marred throughout the 19th and 20th centuries by struggles for independence, changing demographics (due to massive immigration) and corruption, you can begin to see the ties between them. The East Liberty YMCA, a near-derelict building …