It's been a long time since I rock and rolled. My body is back in Pittsburgh, but my head is still spinning somewhere at 36,000 feet; in the space of a month I've been thousands of miles to the West and thousands of miles to the East and back again in between and now. Give me a week to get it together on Eastern Daylight Time - though by then I may be on the road again. Meanwhile, there's so much going on in the Burgh that I hardly know where to start.
How about this:
Back in April I posted this little note about how the PG buried its coverage of what I thought then -- and still think -- a remarkable bit of news: The resignation of Dan Volz from Pitt's Center for Healthy Environments and Communities. Dan Volz was and remains a leading critic of the practices of the shale gas industry here in the Commonwealth. Around Oakland, I heard whispered comments that he wasn't "politic" enough in expressing his views. (Hell's bells, I thought then: the man is in the Graduate School of Public Health. If there's a credible danger to public health, I'd like experts on the subject to be broadcasting it from the rooftops.)
I've searched the archives of the PG for a follow-up account of the why's, wherefor's, and how's of that news item, to no avail. Leave it to Ira Glass and his colleagues at This American Life to do the investigative dirty work, to tell a tale not only of Pitt and Dan Volz, but also of Penn State and Terry Engelder, the faculty member there who first discovered just how much gas exists in the Marcellus Shale, and who has been a fracking booster. The program was broadcast on July 8.
Here is a link to the audio broadcast. Here is a link to a transcript.
TAL constructs a critical tale that relies more than once on inference rather than testimony. The inferences are compelling; TAL's story is persuasive.
But the broadcast features a lot of smoke but not a lot of fire. The weakness in this kind of investigative reporting is that the people that you most want to hear from are also the people who are the least likely to talk to the media about what happened.
There is more work to be done here. For the benefit of all Western Pennsylvanians, one hopes that the Pittsburgh media will step up and flesh out this story.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Leave the Gun
Once again, I've been fed a straight line that I just can't ignore.
With the Retirement of the Cupcake Class comes the Return of the Custard Class (on the sordid origins of the "Custard Class," see this moldy post, and this one), which Chris is trying to pivot into the Cannoli Class. What became of Krispy Kreme in Pittsburgh (Chris asks)? It was undone here, as elsewhere, by financial shenanigans and a shaky business model. Pittsburghers' taste for donuts -- and cannoli (careful: this is the plural; the singular is cannolo) -- endures, making these the Godparents of Pittsburgh pastries, as it were. Leave the Krispy Kreme, take the cannoli.
Say, what flavor of custard is in that cannolo?
With the Retirement of the Cupcake Class comes the Return of the Custard Class (on the sordid origins of the "Custard Class," see this moldy post, and this one), which Chris is trying to pivot into the Cannoli Class. What became of Krispy Kreme in Pittsburgh (Chris asks)? It was undone here, as elsewhere, by financial shenanigans and a shaky business model. Pittsburghers' taste for donuts -- and cannoli (careful: this is the plural; the singular is cannolo) -- endures, making these the Godparents of Pittsburgh pastries, as it were. Leave the Krispy Kreme, take the cannoli.
Say, what flavor of custard is in that cannolo?
Monday, July 11, 2011
The Protractor Puzzle
Tech culture-savvy readers know that the Managing Editor of BoingBoing lives in Pittsburgh, leading to BB-worthy posts like the following, about protractors:
Read the whole post here.
One of the oddest things I've seen since coming to Pittsburgh was a protractor superglued to the stone in my neighborhood. It turns out that there are hundreds of them cropping up, sealed to surfaces so securely that authorities intend to charge whoever is doing it with a felony. Each is penned with a unique number, and tracking them down is becoming a local mystery.
Read the whole post here.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
The Retirement of the Cupcake Class
The news broke while I was out of town, so it looks a bit like I was asleep at the blogging wheel. Plus, Chris has called for a comment. I'm still jet-lagged (thanks as ever to the Philadelphia airport - for nothing), but I'm happy to step up.
Cupcakes in Pittsburgh, at least the cupcakes that prompted the Craze of the Cupcake Class, are over. Dozen is closing.
Chris covers the critical landscape here pretty well. The only thing the cupcake fad tells us is that Pittsburgh is susceptible to marketing fads masquerading as economic development strategies, despite the region's reputation for (private) (economic) sobriety. I don't have much to add.
Except this:
I think that Chris is too quick to accept part of the blame for pushing the cupcake meme. He and I both had some fun with it, of course, but Null Space, Pittsblog, and even Post-Gazette readers were more than happy to play along. No one can tell too much about Pittsburgh by reading a couple of blogs, or even by reading a handful of pieces in the PG, but the idea of the Cupcake Class captures something real. And the response reflected that.
Cupcakes and cupcake businesses are fleeting, but the Cupcake Class is more durable. The Cupcake Class is a local version of David Brooks's "BoBos," or "Bourgeois Bohemians," the people in the region who believe that if they wish hard enough that Pittsburgh is really a thoroughly vibrant, revitalized city, and spend enough money and time at Whole Foods and the South Side Works and talk about trails along the riverfront a whole lot, then it all will really be that way. It's the Music Man's "Think Method" applied to economic, political, and cultural development. Only life isn't a Meredith Willson musical. Robert Preston walked off with Smithton's Shirley Jones, but Dozen, like thousands of small businesses before it, is in the tank.
I like Whole Foods. I think that the South Side Works is a few more wins than losses, all things considered, and I believe that the continuing transformation of the riverfronts is a great thing. But if the kernel of Pittsburgh's renewal isn't in cupcakes, which Chris and I each argued, then its ongoing potential (and unrealized) transformation isn't in the cultural extremes of upscale groceries, shopping malls, and recreational amenities, either. That transformation, if it ever comes, lies in the slow reconciliation of Pittsburgh's gastronomic and cultural mean with that of the country as a whole.
That reconciliation may appear to be sinister. Denny's restaurants is rolling out what the chain calls the "Midwestern Meat and Potatoes Sandwich," and what that means is that the fries are in the sandwich. I don't like to eat Primanti's sandwiches, but I recognize the appropriation and dumbing down of the Primanti's idea when I see it. Reconciliation means a potential loss of local distinctiveness.
And that reconciliation may be productive. The much more interesting food-oriented PG story last week was Diana Nelson Jones's report on the struggles of food truck entrepreneurs in Pittsburgh. The tale of the trucks is typically Pittsburgh-insular: would-be entrepreneurs are shut down by outdated regulations that protect incumbent businesses. If Pittsburgh really wants to get moving again economically, then Pittsburgh needs to buckle down and get serious about enacting local small-business rules that support competition. Let entrepreneurs compete. Let entrepreneurs fail. Make Pittsburgh a free market. Reconciliation may lead to market-oriented growth.
That, I think, is the last lesson of the Cupcake Class. Dozen had a cupcake truck, but Dozen's troubles in the end weren't regulatory. They were competitive. Congrats, then, to the cupcake folks, Gray and Twigg. Closing a business is traumatic, but they succeeded in failing, and by failing. New businesses come, new businesses go. Dozen showed Pittsburgh the way to its future.
What will they do next?
Cupcakes in Pittsburgh, at least the cupcakes that prompted the Craze of the Cupcake Class, are over. Dozen is closing.
Chris covers the critical landscape here pretty well. The only thing the cupcake fad tells us is that Pittsburgh is susceptible to marketing fads masquerading as economic development strategies, despite the region's reputation for (private) (economic) sobriety. I don't have much to add.
Except this:
I think that Chris is too quick to accept part of the blame for pushing the cupcake meme. He and I both had some fun with it, of course, but Null Space, Pittsblog, and even Post-Gazette readers were more than happy to play along. No one can tell too much about Pittsburgh by reading a couple of blogs, or even by reading a handful of pieces in the PG, but the idea of the Cupcake Class captures something real. And the response reflected that.
Cupcakes and cupcake businesses are fleeting, but the Cupcake Class is more durable. The Cupcake Class is a local version of David Brooks's "BoBos," or "Bourgeois Bohemians," the people in the region who believe that if they wish hard enough that Pittsburgh is really a thoroughly vibrant, revitalized city, and spend enough money and time at Whole Foods and the South Side Works and talk about trails along the riverfront a whole lot, then it all will really be that way. It's the Music Man's "Think Method" applied to economic, political, and cultural development. Only life isn't a Meredith Willson musical. Robert Preston walked off with Smithton's Shirley Jones, but Dozen, like thousands of small businesses before it, is in the tank.
I like Whole Foods. I think that the South Side Works is a few more wins than losses, all things considered, and I believe that the continuing transformation of the riverfronts is a great thing. But if the kernel of Pittsburgh's renewal isn't in cupcakes, which Chris and I each argued, then its ongoing potential (and unrealized) transformation isn't in the cultural extremes of upscale groceries, shopping malls, and recreational amenities, either. That transformation, if it ever comes, lies in the slow reconciliation of Pittsburgh's gastronomic and cultural mean with that of the country as a whole.
That reconciliation may appear to be sinister. Denny's restaurants is rolling out what the chain calls the "Midwestern Meat and Potatoes Sandwich," and what that means is that the fries are in the sandwich. I don't like to eat Primanti's sandwiches, but I recognize the appropriation and dumbing down of the Primanti's idea when I see it. Reconciliation means a potential loss of local distinctiveness.
And that reconciliation may be productive. The much more interesting food-oriented PG story last week was Diana Nelson Jones's report on the struggles of food truck entrepreneurs in Pittsburgh. The tale of the trucks is typically Pittsburgh-insular: would-be entrepreneurs are shut down by outdated regulations that protect incumbent businesses. If Pittsburgh really wants to get moving again economically, then Pittsburgh needs to buckle down and get serious about enacting local small-business rules that support competition. Let entrepreneurs compete. Let entrepreneurs fail. Make Pittsburgh a free market. Reconciliation may lead to market-oriented growth.
That, I think, is the last lesson of the Cupcake Class. Dozen had a cupcake truck, but Dozen's troubles in the end weren't regulatory. They were competitive. Congrats, then, to the cupcake folks, Gray and Twigg. Closing a business is traumatic, but they succeeded in failing, and by failing. New businesses come, new businesses go. Dozen showed Pittsburgh the way to its future.
What will they do next?
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