Ten months ago, I quit smoking. It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. You wouldn’t think so, because quitting something is all about not doing something, and procrastinators like me find it extraordinarily easy to not do things.

But those Cholinergic receptors that form ligand-gated ion channels in cells’ plasma membranes are powerful little buggers. They make you do funny things, like strangle a hobo with his own pants for a puff of his savory dog-end*.

I didn’t actually do that, but I did develop a strong dislike of the smell of cigarette smoke, a dislike that began as a dislike for the smell specifically while I was eating.

And although the state legislature has passed an inherently anti-freedom, anti-smoking law, it won’t start forcing business owners to stop people from smoking for a few weeks yet, you should still know your options. If you’re like me, and you’d rather eat a meal without people smoking around you, you can do things the old fashioned way and vote with your wallet.

Despite its misleading name, SmokeFree Pennsylvania is not in the business of distributing gratis tobacco products. They’re much more concerned with giving customers the ability to find those restaurants that are capable of making the to-smoke-or-not-to-smoke decision on their own without government influence - and they’ve given you a handy guide to it. I give you a direct link to their restaurant and bar listings, but only so you don’t have to suffer through their pro-ban boostering on the front page, since it’s perfectly possible to be against a behavior and still support another person’s right to do it.

* that’s a British term for a cigarette

I’m still at camp, and happened to stop at a local gas station up here on the mountain, and as I wandered back to the cooler to grab some iced tea I was distracted by something shiny. And while this is not a new occurrence, I was startled for a bit. I was looking at what is apparently the official snack of Pittsburgh 250.

And since I didn’t have my camera with me, nor could I find a picture of it anywhere in cyberspace, I went back and bought a bag for research purposes…yeah research.

Sadly though, they cost $2.59, nine cents over the anniversary year, but I guess we can’t have it all. Anyway though, it’s fun to see how far the celebration spreads, even up here to a mountain, where I’m about three miles from the next state.

When I get back from camp, I’m really excited to join in the festivities as the city ramps up for the celebration, we’ll have to see what other products join in as well, and of course, what else makes its way up here.

PopCity Media has a nice little video about the arts festival I thought it was worth sharing here.

Nine days after it was announced, and almost a week since the letters began to appear on our skyline (read the story here), the USX tower still provides a Pittsburgh MadLib.  Now granted, the first day I saw the letters, I was a little confused and did not make the connection that there should be an “M” in the middle of “UP   C,” but I’ll chalk that up to my brain not quite firing on all cylinders that early in the morning.

 Anyway, I snapped these pictures, more updates to come as work progresses, and if I ever find myself in a place to see the third side of the building.

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

Google Street View has been discussed in this space before, since Pittsburgh is one of the few cities to have it. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a way for people to look at urban topography from the sidewalk - a human’s eye view, which is a far more useful navigational tool than a bird’s eye view.

The Boring family is suing Google for driving into their private driveway and including the resultant images in its searches. They might actually have a case, since the Smoking Gun shows how intrusive Google’s camera car appeared to be (in these pictures, specifically).

The legal side isn’t what interests me. Instead, we look to the Associated Press’s article about the invasion of privacy suit, which makes great pains to blast the Boring door wide open with information freely available on the Allegheny County website!

Anybody interested in purchasing property in the area knows about the utility of the county’s real estate website. There is far more information there than a series of multi-angle photographs, as the Associated Press indicates in its coverage. It makes one ask the question, possibly to oneself or even possibly to others: is it ok for the government to compile and offer this kind of information to anybody, instantly, and yet not ok for a private company like Google to take pictures of somebody’s front yard?

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.

The bizarre schemes of politician’s and their rent seeking pals don’t get much stranger than what’s going on in Atlanta, where serious proposals are out there to directly use school funding to subsidize economic development in a depressed area around a sports stadium. The idea that the stadium might itself be a major factor holding back the development of the area comes up.

“Redevelopment around a sports venue can be tricky. Stadiums attract large crowds on an infrequent basis who stay for short periods of time and cause traffic congestion. That kind of activity cannot support neighboring businesses, and it can make living near a stadium a hassle.

“Sports venues alone are just big black holes that have the ability to depress the neighborhoods in which they’re in,” Stanford University economics professor Roger Noll told the trade magazine Retail Traffic.

Noll, the co-author of “Sports, Jobs and Taxes: the Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums,” said in an interview that for redevelopment to succeed, traffic has to be managed through mass transit and by providing multiple ways in and out.”

One major problem is the opposing needs of the team ( like a huge supply of parking) and the requirements of the community for density and walkable streets. The result is that contruction subsidies for the stadium are not the end, but the begining of the spending since more and more money needs to be spent to mitigate the stadiums “black hole effect” on the community. Replacing over 40 acres surface lots with garages is going to cost a bit.

Thanks for using my economic development tips.

I have not yet read the book Root Shock which attempts to explore the damaging effects of urban renewal in communities like Pittsburgh’s Hill and Newark’s Central Ward.

“Here are the men that alter their neighbor’s landmark…, shoulder the poor aside, conspire to oppress the friendless.

Reap they the field that is none of theirs, strip they the vineyard wrongfully seized from it’s owner….

A cry goes up from the city streets, where wounded men lie groaning.”

The book of Job as quoted by Jane Jacobs.

Notice that at no point–does the mayor mention that the “development” being discussed is on land stolen and extorted from it’s original owners and the community they were part of.