Chris Ivey, is a Pittsburgh based filmmaker who works on documentary films around the world. For the past few years he has been documenting development and change in East Liberty. Ivey has created two volumes to his documentary East of Liberty. Here is a segment from Part II which includes interviews with different people in the area about the Bakery Square development that is taking place in the old Nabisco Building.  I saw the documentary last week during a screening at the Union Project.  I am interested to hear what other people think about the Bakery Square development.

For more information visit EastofLiberty.com

Thank you, Penguins!

Thank you, Pens fans!

The last three days have been fantastic for me and my Penguins-crazed family in more ways than one.

Shall I count them?

Two wins over the hated Rangers, a furious and awesome comeback in Game One, a stonewalling shutout by Fleury in Game Two, and an Avery beatdown to segue into the next two games in New York. (The best view of the fight is at 1:15 in the video clip.)

What more could a Pens fan ask for?

Being at the game.

Well, ok, so I didn’t get that far.

Still, in watching the game from the comfort of my living room, surround sound on full blast, it felt like I was right there amongst the crowd at the Mellon Arena yesterday afternoon. The energy was electric, the noise awesome, and the outcome outstanding.

And I was thrilled to see my prediction come true. In the waning seconds of Game Two, Sean Avery did his usual annoying play and roughly tapped Fleury on the back as he moved to the front of the crease. As play wound down, Fleury did as any goalie would do defending his turf and slapped Avery in the back of the legs. Avery turned and tried to spear Fleury and was met with the fury of Hal Gill’s fists as they came flying out of his gloves. The shining moment? As Avery hit the boards, Laraque had skated over and grabbed him just as Gill led with a right.

Make note, New York: don’t mess with the Penguins.

The hockey world sat up and took notice after last night’s shutdown of the New York trapping game. The Pens didn’t just defend against it, they practically broke it. Transitions in the center were plentiful, the energy was 100% from start to finish, and the press into the Ranger’s zone was relentless. In this game, the Penguins proved that Ottawa wasn’t a fluke.

These guys want the Cup. And you know what? Every game they play, I think the reality is that much closer.

Now the quest to find a good location to watch Game Three on Tuesday. If any of you have suggestions to pass onto your fellow fans, please do so below. Until then, keep them towels waving!

It’s Towel Time!, courtesy of Sgt. Pepperedjane

Primary Pittsburgh Project - Women in The Arts

Originally uploaded by gophotogo

There is some serendipity to blogging and my life. Today I spent some time working on the Primary Pittsburgh Project www.PrimaryPittsburgh.com which is a cross blogging project to highlight some of the great things about Pittsburgh, the stories about what is happening here that is exciting and good and bringing people to Pittsburgh. This project is running for the 5 days leading up to the Pennsylvania Presidential Primary election. Pittsburgh is receiving a ton of media attention around the election and this project is to use the blogs to get the other primary story about Pittsburgh out there.

I was not planning on writing abouther post about this symposium but as I sit here listening to this panel discussion about women in the arts in Pittsburgh the discussion is a great example of why Pittsburgh. An important part of community building is quality of life. At least 2 of the women on this panel came to Pittsburgh from other cities. They are sitting here talking about how Pittsburgh is a community where women in the arts can feel supported and are supported by other women. The arts community is just one small part of what is happening in Pittsburgh that is drawing artists to live here. The arts scene here really is not only the arts like the opera and ballet but artists on all levels. The increase in artists is an addition to thr economy. But this also contributes to making Pittsburgh a vibrant place to live. Look at events like Handmade arcade to the increase in art galleries in Lawrenceville. The quarterly gallery crawl is another great example of an arts event that is giving people a reason to spend a Friday evening downtown. While downtown Pittsburgh is not the vibrant 24 hour community the arts community in Pittsburgh is a big part of and example of why this is a great place to live.

We are looking for some new bloggers here at the Pittsburgh Metroblog.

About Metroblogging:

Metroblogging is a conversation about the city - there are over 50 city specific Metroblogs around the world. As an author you get the opportunity to write for this international network of bloggers. It is really interesting to hear what other cities are covering an occasionally we blog across cities. When you travel you can blog in another city - I blogged Hawaii last year.

If you have one of those fancy smancy cell phone cameras you can even write a blog post write from your phone.  We encourage mobile blogging - see something interesting on the street - send it in and share with Pittsburgh.

You can write about anything you want - post photos, video, a restaurant review, a rant - the possibilities are endless.

The Requirements:

• You can write about anything you want, but it must relate to Pittsburgh
• We are looking for people that will write 3 posts per week

The Rewards:  Sorry blogging doesn’t pay, yet - but this is a great way to get your name and writing out there to a wider audience.  You are also welcome to link to your website or blog on your author profile.

Want to join the fun? Questions? - email me info - at - Iheartpgh.com

Jim Russell posted a link to Dick Longworth’s interview on Chigago Public Radio about his new book called, Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism. Dick seems to be thinking about a lot of the things I have since I came to Pittsburgh more than 4 years ago. The entire center of the country seems to be slipping off the global map and losing it’s vital connections to the world, right at the moment it needs them most.

The world only seems to be flat for those regions that are interested in actively embracing it and doing everything they can to stay actively linked to it.

Jim posted this on Rust Belt Bloggers.

Well here is something to be happy about - Pittsburgh is not on Forbes Magazine’s List of the top 10 most miserable cities. We have been talking about this article on the Metrobloggers authors list and everyone agrees that this list extra miserable because the people at Forbes put it into a slide show, instead of just giving you a list. So to save you the trouble of watching a miserable slide show, here is the list:

1. Detroit, MI
2. Stockton, CA
3. Flint, MI
4. New York, NY
5. Philadelphia, PA
6. Chicago, IL
7. Los Angeles, CA
8. Modesto, CA
9. Charlotte, NC
10. Providence, RI

Ii am not sure how I feel about the criteria of this list, it is based on a lot of economic data. I know that there are tons of people who live in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles that love it there. Check out the responses from these cities:
Los Angeles
Detroit

I write a lot of blog posts. It started with IheartPGH.com and then led to a job at Spreadshirt where I update Blog.Spreadshirt.com almost everyday. Over the past 2.5 years since I started blogging I have learned that a blog is a great tool for sharing lots of information with lots of other people. I am often asked to answer the question “why should I have a blog for my business/club/organization?” and the answer is simple, but not easy to explain.
I usually send people to this video about RSS feeds - RSS in Plain English.
It took me 5 months to understand RSS feeds, this video does an amazing job of explaining it in under 5 minutes.
Luckily the folks at Wired are on the case and have assembled an amazing graphic on this article - The Life Cycle of Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You - that shows all of the places that a blog post goes. I think that this graphic does a great job of showing how a blog can help to share your information with many different audiences.

Well I know it has been a bit since my last post here. During this Christmas holiday I discovered the Scrabulous application on Facebook and my computer time has been transformed. Instead of blogging about interesting and important news in Pittsburgh, I spend my time figuring out how to create a 50 point word out of the letters X C Y and O. I have learned lots of new (and possibly useless words) and I have almost memorized the handy list of 2 letter words. I know now that QI is a real word meaning “variants of chi” - not sure when I will need to use the word QI in a sentence or even how to pronounce QI.
If you do not have a profile on Facebook, never fear there is an online version you can play outside of Facebook at Scrabulous.com.

I wanted to write about Scrabulous and see if there was any interest in an online Scrabble tournament here in Pittsburgh. However, My word building life was brought to a grinding halt today when I received an email with a link to this article in it from one of my friends who now also loves Scrabulous too.

Facebook asked to pull Scrabulous

So the Scrabble people are feeling a little threatened by all of the Facebook word building fun. I am not sure how I feel about this. While I understand the concern, I tend to think that all of the popularity that has developed around Scrabulous has got to be good for Scrabble business. There is quite a Scrabble following right here in Pittsburgh - click here to see my post on IheartPGH about local Scrabble clubs.

Business Week had a nice story about the latest trend in urban status symbol–subways. It seems like everyone’s just got to have one and a style war is emerging as cities compete to show off the latest in design and technology. The good thing about this trend is that mass transit systems, unlike stadiums have a very long global history as amazing long term investments since they unlock the value of urban property by enabling higher density land use, which in turn means more property tax dollars.

“The world’s three largest metro manufacturers, Montreal-based Bombardier (BBDB.TO), Alstom, and Munich-based Siemens (SI) report high demand for mass transit, including tramways and light-rail systems that run both under and above ground. The global subway market was worth $9.3 billion in 2005 and is projected to grow at a rate of 2.7% per year until 2015, according to a 2007 study by the European Railway Industry Assn. Subway lines are being built or extended in 20 European cities and five Middle Eastern ones, and dozens of towns are constructing light-rail systems, reports the Brussels-based International Association of Public Transport.”
New lines are being constructed or on the drawing board in cities like Algiers, Parma, Turin, Dublin, Almaty and Dubai and some of this stuff is pretty slick. It’s even a big trend in the oil rich Persian gulf!!

“In the Middle East, congestion caused by economic development spurred the current wave of subway and light-rail construction in cities like Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Algiers. “They were rich, they could buy big cars, and suddenly they realized they could no longer drive these cars because they were stuck in traffic,” says Hans Rat, secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport, which opened a Middle East and North Africa division four years ago. At the same time a new generation of internationally trained leaders emerged, who started to measure their urban development with that of world-class cities. “They became aware these cities poured a lot of money into public transport,”

Christina Fong from CMU did a fascinating study of why people support economic and social systems in which they don’t seem to be in their immediate self interest.

“In several studies in recent years, Dr. Fong has found that for many people, achieving fairness in an economic system is almost as important as how much money they make.

The experiments she and others have done show that “income doesn’t matter as much as we think it should.”
“If only income mattered and beliefs about fairness didn’t matter at all, then you should expect to see the world that traditional economists expect you to see, which is that poor people demand redistribution [of tax revenue] and rich people oppose it.”

I personally feel that a lot of the class consciousness in the Pittsburgh region comes from the crazy belief that far too many of the areas powerful people and institutions do not play fair.