A New Pittsburgh Dawns

I have been traveling so much that my feet never seem to touch Pittsburgh ground these days.  You can read it in my recent blogging pace:  writing here is usually the last thing on my agenda.

But a new Pittsburgh may be dawning, and I am bound by duty to be its chronicle.  This morning, I came across a bit of news that may be all-too-familiar to the core members of Steeler Nation.  But I doubt it, and in any event it is news to me.  Today, I am thinking about Pittsburgh in a new light.  Here it is:

The Pittsburgh Steelers -- bone-crunching icon, emblem, and soul of our city-state (our wide receivers are tougher than their linebackers!  our free safety flies through the air like a streaking missile to intercept un-interceptible balls!) -- have spa days. Or, more precisely, spa nights.


From the New York Times profile of acupunturist Lisa Ripi:

She spends roughly 12 hours each Thursday treating at least 10 players at Farrior’s house, where the Steelers hold their men’s “spa night” featuring acupuncture. Ripi cooks dinner for them, and they play cards while they wait turns. She starts with nose tackle Casey Hampton at 3:30 p.m. and finishes with Harrison roughly 12 hours later.

In short, these are not your father's Steelers.

As long-time Pittsblog readers  know, I am a native Californian.  I cannot object to acupuncture.  Nor can I object to white wine and brie in at the tailgate.  Been there, done that, watched the 49ers win 5 Super Bowls.  Whatever works.

But Pittsburgh has built its modern reputation as a city on the idea that it has nearly succeeded at an all-but-impossible task:  remaking its economy as a 21st century knowledge center while preserving its 20th century mill hunk culture.  Modern Pittsburgh is smart but tough.

If, however, acupuncture is a key to Pittsburgh's success, then we're going to have to re-think that narrative.  Out with kidding/not kidding references to Steely McBeam; never again a smirking comment about Border Guard Bob.  Retro is out.

Watch out world:  The Burgh is going cosmopolitan.

Pittsburgh Livability at Risk?

Pittsburgh-area real estate prices are rising, which is a good thing when all things are considered, but relatively low and relatively stable real estate prices have long been central to Pittsburgh's ranking as a "most livable city."  (I'm happy to note that as the year approaches its end, at least one of my predictions for 2010 is on its way to being confirmed!)  Can our collective ego take that news, when it comes?

I hope so, because Pittsburgh is about to face another cultural blow.  After years of cultivating the Cupcake Class, we face the sad news that cupcakes are no longer hip.  Tasty, but not cutting edge.  The New York Times has decreed that pies are the new cupcakes. 

In the Department of Things I Didn't Know, Baked Goods Division, I learned the other day that at least one of Pittsburgh's vaunted independent bakeries produces its donuts from a commercial mix, rather than from scratch.  As a member in good standing of the Donut Division, I can confirm that the resulting products are exceptionally tasty.  But it is increasingly easy to see that the distinction between "locally produced" and "produced with substantial input from a multinational bakery supplier" is pretty thin.  Dunkin' Donuts represents a difference of degree, rather than a difference of kind.

Pies?  Inauthentic donuts?  Meaningful public/private economic development partnerships?  Apres le Cupcake may be here sooner than I thought.

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, Sunday Morning Edition

PG columnist Sally Kalson was honored the other day by the "Women and Girls Foundation" for her work in the media, so it is especially awkward to report that I ground and gnashed my teeth reading her "Snapshots of Italy" column. When smart and accomplished journalists go so far wrong -- these are local opinion leaders and reflections of the best of the rest of us -- it's easy to get discouraged about our culture and community as a whole.

The brief background is this: Sally Kalson went to Venice as a tourist, found a great personal guide to local art, and took digital snapshots of many of the paintings that she saw in Venetian museums.  All of this despite abundant knowledge of the rules that Italian museums and churches often impose on their guests: No photography allowed.

This sounds pretty innocent. American tourists have flouted local laws for generations, and civilization has not come to an end. Not only do the tourists and their photographs not do any harm, one assumes, but the local economies depend on us. Where would Italy be without hordes of shorts-and-tennis shoe wearing American families?

Moreover, Sally Kalson did the responsible thing when she returned to Pittsburgh.  She called a local expert at the Carnegie Museum of Art, wondering why Italian museums were so fussy about photography. After some head scratching, copyright was offered as the explanation, with the caveat that copyright expires after 80 years, so the Italians worry about nothing.  Sally Kalson and other shutterbugs are in the clear.

But not so fast.

Let's start with the small stuff: copyright. The idea that copyright expires after 80 years -- if in fact that's what someone at the Carnegie Museum of Art said -- comes from the same hat full of copyright myths as "everything on the internet is in the public domain." It is simply not true.

But copyright in the original paintings is not what is driving the "no photo" philosophy. Anyone who traveled to Europe in decades past and took photographs of Old Masters in galleries across the Continent knows that. The copyright status of paintings produced three and four centuries ago has not changed in the last 20 years. The paintings themselves are in the public domain -- because they were never protected by copyright in the first place.

What has changed, instead, is some basic economics. Museums need money.

The "no photo" philosophy is, as one might suspect after a bit of reflection, designed to protect the monopoly that the museum or church has on reproductions of its treasures. Buy the official print or the guidebook in the gift shop or online; don't take home your personal souvenir. One might think that it is silly to apply the rule to tourists with pocket-sized digital cameras, but a growing number of tourists don't have pocket-sized digital cameras. They have full-sized digital SLRs that are often indistinguishable from professional equipment, at least on casual inspection, and that produce images that can be used to produce saleable art reproductions. An inconsistently-applied, overbroad "no photo" policy is easier for some museums to announce and pursue (through modestly paid guards) than a "no professional photography for commercial use" policy -- though some musuems follow the latter approach.

What's at stake here isn't really any one tourist's desire -- self-ingulgent but understandable -- but the fact that museums often don't make enough money from admission prices and memberships to fund their operations. In the US, where most large art museums are private, the difference has to be made up via endowments and philanthropy. Endowment income has dropped; philanthropy is on the ropes. In Europe, most large art museums are state-owned. If state support comes via appropriation, that state support is also eroding.  Where state support comes via local tax systems (as they are, I believe, in some Italian communities), the tax base is suffering. The new economy of art reproductions and licensed images is essential to keeping many museums afloat, because traditional sources of museum support are no longer always up to the job.  And art museums are valuable, and important, to society as a whole.

Go to the gift shop and buy the expensive guide, in other words, and you help keep the museum alive. Ignore the gift shop and substitute your own private snapshots for the licensed alternative and you save a small amount of money -- money that in isolation the museum likely won't miss but money that in the aggregate is critical to the institution.

I should note that this economic perspective applies quite directly to the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.  Even if they choose to permit photography, Pittsburgh's museums are quite happy to sell you posters and guides and would be quite unhappy if that revenue declined.

People who take photos of artworks even when they are told not to do so are free riders in a classic sense: folks who focus on their short-term private benefit and who ignore the long-term structural costs that they and people like them impose.  It is an economic critique, not a moral critique; free riders are not bad people.  They are rational and reasonable people in many and perhaps most cases.  But they may not be "big picture" people; they may have incomplete information, incorrect information, or limited ability or willingness to process accurate information.

Individual free riders shouldn't bear all of the responsibility here; acquiring good information can be really hard -- as Sally Kalson discovered when she called the Carnegie Museum of Art and was told something that is flat wrong.  When museums -- Italian or American -- pummel their patrons with "no photo" policies that seem unreasonable on the surface, they do those same patrons a disservice by failing to explain the implicit economics at work.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.  Our collective ignorance of that principle is on display all the time in Pittsburgh and beyond, all around us; it is a useful guide not only to personal behavior but to public policy problems.

Pittsburgh's pension liabilities, anyone?

What He Said

Pop City has a nice little essay up on the importance of entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh - and on what a true entrepreneurial economy looks like. 

Moving forward, we must avoid the temptation to pick the "one approach that works best." The reality is, you have to do a lot of things well. One of the strengths of Pittsburgh is that we have not put all of our eggs in one basket. The failed efforts to consolidate economic development has left us with a dynamic and flexible eco-system akin to a cloud-sourcing network for entrepreneurial support.

Times have really changed around here when this sort of thing - which I entirely agree with - has become not only the conventional wisdom, but the conventional wisdom that someone other than a pointy-headed academic is willing to say publicly.  I wrote essentially the same thing way back in 2005 -- here, in the Post-Gazette, which was a modestly edited version of something that appeared first on the blog.

Five years ago, that PG op-ed attracted a lot of interest from people in town, movers and shakers, investors and economic development leaders, entrepeneurs and innovators -- who said to me, just about to a person, "thank you for saying what I can't say publicly myself, but what needed to be said."

If it can be said publicly now -- can it? -- then Pittsburgh has indeed made progress.