Thursday, April 30, 2015

Pittsburgh Marathon Weekend

This weekend is the annual Dick’s Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Marathon. Whether you’re participating or just in the area, you may be affected by the marathon. There will be multiple road closures throughout and surrounding the city this weekend. Make sure you know what is going to be closed and how to get around it. For more information visit WTAE.com.

Organizers have announced many street closures in downtown and throughout the city related to the 2015 Dick's Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Marathon this weekend.

Marathon events are scheduled for Friday through Sunday, the day of the marathon itself. More than 40,000 runners are expected to participate in races Saturday and Sunday.

A detailed map of road closure information can be found here. Race organizations have also provided a Guide to Marathon Sunday map, with routes in and out of the city provided.

A full map of the marathon course can be found by clicking here.

Downtown road closures will begin Friday, starting at noon on the Boulevard of the Allies, between Wood Street and Stanwix Street. This section of Boulevard of the Allies will remain closed through Sunday.

For Saturday events, North Shore and Downtown road closures will start at 7:30 a.m. and continue until noon.

For Sunday events, road closures will begin downtown at 11:30 p.m. Saturday and continue Sunday in neighborhoods throughout the city through 2:30 p.m.

Certain sections of the city will be completely closed to traffic on race day. Anyone in those areas who needs to leave during the race should consider parking elsewhere.

The race will begin downtown, near the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, and travel through the Strip District, the North Side and the West End, continuing down East Carson Street in the South Side, making its way through Oakland, Shadyside and Oakland, then through East Liberty, Highland Park and various other stops before returning downtown to the finish line.

Stay tuned with WTAE and WTAE.com on Sunday for reports from the course!

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Pittsburgh Events This Weekend

This weekend in Pittsburgh, there is something in the area for everyone. The next few days are packed full of things to do in the Pittsburgh region. For the full list head to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.


THURSDAY

Singer/songwriter Madeleine Peyroux performs at the Carnegie Lecture Hall in Oakland at 8 p.m. as part of The Andy Warhol Museum’s Sound Series. Ms. Peyroux’s work exists at the intersection of jazz, pop and blues. Beyond a wealth of original material, she also is highly praised as an incredibly insightful interpreter of a wide range of material by classic performers such as Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Bessie Smith and Leonard Cohen. The performance features songs from Peyroux’s recording “Keep Me In Your Heart for A While: The Best of Madeleine Peyroux.” The event is co-presented with WYEP. For tickets, $35, $30 members and students; warhol.org or 412-237-8300.

THURSDAY

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will present “Celebrate Wilkinsburg,” a concert honoring the history of the borough and benefiting the school district’s music programs. Led by resident conductor Lawrence Loh, the annual community engagement concert includes works by Sousa, Rossini and Josef Strauss, a medley of music by Duke Ellington, a showcase of guitarist Joe Negri, a singalong and more. The performance starts at 7 p.m. at Wilkinsburg High School, 747 Wallace Ave. $10 for adults, $5 for students, at 412-392-8991 or at the door. The orchestra’s previous Wilkinsburg concerts have raised more than $63,000 for the borough’s music programs.

SATURDAY

“August Wilson’s Women,” presented by Friends of the August Wilson Center, explores the writer’s works through the eyes of the female characters in his plays, at the AWC, 980 Liberty Ave., Downtown, at 8 p.m. Directed by Todd Kreidler, Mr. Wilson’s collaborator on “How I Learned What I Learned,” the event will feature performances by a jazz ensemble and dance and spoken word artists. The event is free and open to the public, but seats are limited, so RSVP by the end of Monday to augustwilsonwomen@gmail.com.

SATURDAY

The Aeolian Winds of Pittsburgh, women’s choir Belle Voci, Giambelli String Quartet and dancers from La Roche College will join forces to perform the music of American composer Gwyneth Walker, as part of a larger initiative to support the Pittsburgh Women’s Shelter. The multi-sensory event includes Ms. Walker’s setting of Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son,” along with her “Songs for Women's Voices” and “Sunshine State” for woodwind quintet. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. at East Liberty Presbyterian Church, but WQED-FM host Anna Singer will interview Ms. Walker prior to the concert at 6 p.m. Tickets are free at bellevocipgh.com, and donations of sheets, towels and gift cards will be accepted at the door.

SATURDAY

Brazilian pianist and composer Andre Mehmari and Tatjana Mead Chamis, Pittsburgh Symphony associate principal violist, perform a genre-bending concert at The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky St., North Side, at 8 p.m. as part of the museum's Sound Series. The event is co-presented with MCG Jazz and the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Latin American Studies. Free parking in The Warhol lot for this event. For tickets: $15, $12 members and students; warhol.org or 412-237-8300.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Craft Beer Week Kicks Off Tomorrow

Pittsburgh’s Craft Beer Week kicks off this Friday, showcasing the best of the craft brew community in the area. With over 340 events taking place over the course of the week it’s difficult to decide where to start! Many of the events are already sold out so get your tickets quick before they’re gone. For more information head to the Post-Gazette’s website and for a full calendar head to Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week’s website.


You may not know which of 340-plus events you’re going to attend yet during Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week, but you can know a few that you aren’t attending during the promotion that kicks off Friday.

One event — Commonwealth Press’ Beer Barge beer fest-on-a-Gateway Clipper boat this Saturday, April 18 — sold out immediately.

But there still are more beer happenings than humanly possible to attend between Friday and April 26, during which time the non-profit Pittsburgh Craft Beer Coalition is publicizing events at area breweries, distributors and restaurants and bars.

At a media day last week at Penn Brewery, Andy Kwiatkowski, who’s president of the nonprofit Pittsburgh Craft Beer Alliance and head brewer at Hitchhiker Brewing, gave a shout-out to a couple of special events. One is the first Brewer’s Olympics to be held April 26 in the parking lot at Millvale’s Grist House Brewing Co. Brewers from there and 15 other regional breweries will compete in various beer-themed “feats of agility, strength and stamina.” Spectators pay $15 and get a souvenir glass for tasting brews from all of them. Proceeds go to help Titusville’s Blue Canoe Brewery, which is closed but rebuilding after a March 17 fire. Get tickets at2015brewersolympics.simpletix.com.

Mr. Kwiatkowski also mentioned another “Blue” event — Homestead’s Blue Dust’s Bikes, Brews and Oyster Fest, held under the Homestead Grays Bridge on April 25.

But you’ll find events and brews of every hue across the region, from Erie to Slippery Rock to North Huntingdon. Many events will feature the eight-plus “collaboration brews” that teams of brewers made together. In addition to those that we wrote about in this space last week, Erie’s Lavery Brewing Co. did two others: a Berliner weisse with North Country Brewing Co. and a Bavarian black ale with North Huntingdon’s Full Pint Brewing.

Tonight is the release of the collaboration beer Caliente Pizza & Draft House in Bloomfield brewed with East End Brewing Co. On Friday, Caliente Pizza & Draft Houses in Bloomfield and Hampton will pour eight collabs.

You can meet the brewers at many events. Carnegie’s 99 Bottles on April 21 will present a brewer from Full Pint and Dave Cerminara of Carnegie’s Apis Meadery with several of their brews along with some from Zelienople’s Shu Brew, including those three brewery’s collab, Shu Full of Bees double India pale ale. (The three also did a bottled barleywine, Glutenous Maximus, that Shu Brew is releasing Friday.)

Other places will debut their own collab brews, including Homestead’s Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, which, with help from the Strip District’s Milkman Brewing and West Newton’s Bloom Brew, made a light American ale brewed with flavored tortilla chips that Rock Bottom has dubbed Ghoul Branch Burritos. Head brewer Brandon McCarthy expects that it’s not a beer one would like to drink all night, but he believes a lot of people will want to drink one. “It’s weird, but it’s good.”

The same could be said about some Craft Beer Week events, which range from simple tappings, tap takeovers and tastings to beer-and-food pairings, beer brunches and full beer dinners and more, at a wide range of venues.

At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Lawrenceville’s Row House Cinema will present the Pittsburgh premiere of “Blood, Sweat, and Beer: The Movie,” a craft-beer-industry documentary that features Braddock’s The Brew Gentlemen Beer Co. as well as Maryland’s Backshore Brewing Co. The theater will present that and other beery movies all week, along with tastings in the new tap room of the adjacent Atlas Bottle Works (rowhousecinema.com).

Thursday, April 9, 2015

The Undead Take Over Pitt

Zombie culture will never die in Pittsburgh, and the uprising of the undead recently at the University of Pittsburgh can testify to that. Marked by their red bandanas, students posing as zombies chased those participating humans who had yet to be “infected”. This past Monday, only two “survived” the outbreak. Go to The Pitt News to read more about the undead swarms.


A group of humans raced across campus on Monday, a rainy April night. They tried to avoid swarms of zombies while attempting to reach a safepoint. Only two survived.

This isn’t a scene out of the latest horror film.

This dash from Posvar Hall to the OC Parking Lot on Allequippa Street was the final event in the Humans vs. Zombies(HvZ) games, which the Pitt Urban Gaming Club organizes annually.

Although HvZ players frequently infect Pitt’s campus with the zombie virus, Oakland isn’t the only yinzer home for zombies to roam. In the half-century since serving as the location for director George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968, Pittsburghers have remained fascinated with the undead. From zombie games to zombie walks to zombie stores, the city may bleed black and gold, but it lives on brains and gore.

Welcoming more than a few stragglers with arms outstretched, Pittsburghs annual zombie festival and walks often have record-breaking turnouts, such as “The It’s Alive 2007 Zombie Fest” in the Monroeville Mall, which set the Guinness World Record for the “Largest Gathering of Zombies.”


Meg O’Malley, a writer for the website Popular Pittsburgh, said the festival’s success inspired cities worldwide to host similar events and compete to have the most undead in one place.

“People [in Pittsburgh] get creative,” O’Malley said. “I’ve seen guys with pipes through their heads, and it looks real.”


Since they have to go to class inbetween roaming through moonless nights, the HvZ players may skimp on the costumes, but they make up for it with competition.


Players must buy their own equipment, and show up to battle in camo gear, packing the latest nerf gun models, according to club president Todd Silber.


“Players are engrossed in these games,” Silber, a senior majoring in philosophy, said. “We rarely see them take this casually.”


Students are eligible to play HvZ after they pay a $2 registration fee for a red bandana to mark their participation in the game.


The games begin with three designated zombies who wear their bandanas on their heads. Their ranks grow when they tag other players with their hands — which, according to the rules, “infects” them. Only a handful of players, typically less than 10, make it to the end without being tagged.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

"Orange is the New Black" Star Visits Pitt

On Monday, Laverne Cox visited the University of Pitt to speak about her experiences as an activist for the transgender community and as a transgender woman herself. Cox spoke on being bullied as a child and the struggles she faced moving into adulthood. If you missed her speaking at Pitt, you can catch her on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black on June 12th. 
 
Laverne Cox’s identity — and her pronoun — are feminine, and she’s proud of both.

Cox, an activist and actress on the hit Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black,” spoke to about 500 attendees at Alumni Hall about her experiences as a transgender black woman Monday. Pitt’s Rainbow Alliance hosted the event that drew crowds of students outside the building more than two hours before its 7:30 p.m. start.

Cox spoke about her experiences from childhood to adulthood, including her time in school and church. She also discussed her spirituality, her gender transition and dealing with her mother’s acceptance of her gender.

“My femininity could not be contained,” Cox said, referring to her time in school.

One of Cox’s idols is abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who declared in her historic speech at the 1851 Women’s Convention, “Ain’t I a woman?” Cox repeated those words Monday as her own rally for her femininity.

Allie McCarthy, president of the Rainbow Alliance at Pitt, said they booked Cox to speak because of her role as an LGBTQ activist.

“We chose Laverne Cox because she has done a tremendous amount of activism for the trans community,” McCarthy said. “Although our mission is primarily to serve the queer community at Pitt, it is extremely important to us that all people hear about struggles that queer people have so that we can make an inclusive environment for all.”

Sounds Like Treble, a female a capella group on campus, Sarita Brady, a Pitt student reciting their own poems, and performers from the Vagina Monologues, a production the Campus Women’s Organization hosts annually, opened with performances before Cox greeted her audience.

As a child, Cox hadn’t discovered her true self, she said, and was bullied in school regularly.

“From preschool up until high school, I was bullied every day,” Cox said. “It was terrifying. I was scared out of my mind.”

Cox had a tremendous amount of shame about who she was.

Her teachers exacerbated the problem, she said. One teacher told Cox’s mother that “her son [was] going to end up in New Orleans in a dress if we [didn’t] get him in therapy right away.”

Her teacher was partially right — Cox sported a vibrant blue dress while addressing the audience.

“I didn’t feel safe at school, I didn’t feel safe at home, but where I did feel safe was my imagination,” Cox said.

In her imagination is where she began to discover her love of dancing, she said, which, starting when she was young, helped her discover her femininity even more.

Once she felt comfortable enough, Cox’s talent for dancing led her to dance studio, where she studied hip-hop and tap dance, rather than ballet, which her mother said was “too gay.”

“I believe that if we can find something we are truly passionate about, it can save lives,” Cox said.

Cox then spent time at the Alabama School of Fine Arts before eventually moving to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, a place where she grew into herself.

“For me, New York City represented a place of ultimate possibility, not only for my professional aspirations, but in pursuit of becoming more myself,” Cox said.

As Cox talked about her experiences from childhood to adulthood, applause shook the auditorium. Cox balanced her discussion of serious issues by also making light of her negative experiences, evoking smiles and laughter from the crowd.

“I bought my clothes from Salvation Army or Goodwill because it was all I could afford,” Cox said. “I called it my Salvation Army Couture, or Salvation Armani.”

Jokes aside, Cox also spoke about a need for transgender equality. Freshman Caroline Krueger said this is why she went to see Cox.

“I’m a huge fan of Laverne and ‘Orange Is The New Black,’ and since I’m also taking a Sociology of Gender class this semester, I really wanted to hear Laverne’s opinions,” Krueger said.

Cox educated the crowd about the distinctions and differences about gender identity and sexuality, as well as advocated for justice for all oppressed social groups, not only transgender people.

Despite her oppressors and those who have insulted her in the past, Cox said she has finally realized that if someone can look at her and tell that she is transgender, it is not only a good thing, it is beautiful.

“Success really is the best revenge,” Cox said.
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