The Post-Gazette has, on Sundays, been running a feature called “The Cutting Edge”, where they post snippets from Pittsburgh-related blogs. (Yes, I still get 90% of my news on dead trees. Portable, useful for stuffing shipping boxes, and doesn’t require me to pay some silly “hotspot” to read it.) It has sunk to new lows. You may recall that Chinese newspaper that accidentally recycled a story from The Onion?. Scroll down this week’s Cutting Edge and find “One of America’s great newspapers” doing the same thing. I’d like to hope they’re just adding it in as a bit of comic belief, but the lack of framing text makes me think someone there is just plain asleep at the switch.

Not to worry, though. They’re a “manufacturer” according to state law, and thus aren’t required to pay property taxes. With all that money they’re saving, I’m sure they can put it towards finding, you know, real news to report on once in a while.

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.

So Pittsburgh beat Los Angeles yesterday…

…and no, not in sports.

According to the latest American Lung Association report - “State of the Air 2008″ - that determines the nation’s most polluted cities, Pittsburgh has been named the “sootiest in the nation.”

Wow, what an honor.

What is this, the 1970s all over again?

The category Pittsburgh claimed top spot in measures short-term particle pollution, or ’soot.’ However, Janice Nolan, the assistant vice president of national policy and advocacy for the ALA, said that “it’s not that Pittsburgh has gotten worse; it’s that Los Angeles has gotten better.”

Small comfort, that.

Oh, and she said that “if the trend continues, Pittsburgh will top two lists, and LA will only be leading the nation in ozone.”

I see. So if the Steel City just keeps status quo, then we can’t make fun of LA-ites any more for being smoggy people. Great. Not to mention that everyone else in the country will revert back to the post-70’s assumption that Pittsburgh was a dirty, polluted city.

Guillermo Cole, a spokesman for the Allegheny County Health Department, told the Post-Gazette that Pittsburgh didn’t deserve the ranking as the high soot readings come primarily from emissions from U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works. “The fact of the matter is that the ranking only applies accurately to the Liberty-Clairton area, and Pittsburgh, the rest of the county and the surrounding counties have much better air,” Mr. Cole said. “Liberty-Clairton is a unique situation. We have a large source, the coke works, sitting in a river valley, so it’s a real challenge. There’s no other area of the U.S. like that.”

The Liberty-Clairton area does not meet federal air quality standards for soot by far, but neither does the surrounding five-county metropolitan area - though soot levels are lower. Plans are in place, however, to improve the city’s overall air quality, especially for the Coke Works.

U.S. Steel has a $1B upgrade in the works for the site which will put the Liberty-Clairton area into attainment by 2015. The rest of the region should hit attainment by 2010.

Even if the area surrounding the Coke Works was removed from the data, Pittsburgh would still rank in the Top Twenty - 16th, to be exact.

So while the news is indeed hard to swallow, remember this: in traffic and commute, Pittsburgh is the fifth BEST city; L.A. is the ninth WORST. And when it comes right down to it, Pittsburghers get more quality time at home and not lodged on the Parkway inhaling exhaust. (Well, except when the “tunnel monster” is running loose.)

Commute vs. pollution? Yeah, I think Western PA wins that round.

Blast furnaces and iron ore at the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation mills, Etna, Pennsylvania (LOC), courtesy of The Library of Congress

Former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto was assassinated today at a political rally. The Metroblog in Pakistan (http://lahore.metblogs.com) has coverage of the assassination and is now warning people to stay home due to rioting in the streets.

The Los Angeles Metroblog has a post with more information and links.

Tube City tries to slap some sense into the idiots at US Steel who are making huge commitments to an industry everyone counts as dead around here. All kidding aside, the region still makes a lot of steel but the industry in the United States at least is very high tech and getting more so. The often ignored fact is that this is a highly automated business and one that no longer is a direct employer of lots of people. One big factor for the future of steel production around here is that the region is no longer well located in relation to the nations manufacturing base which has moved towards the south. The car industry in America is hardly dead, but it may be dead in the Midwest.

Current is a website and television channel. Anyone can add videos and then popular videos are shown on the television channel.

viewer-created content is tv made by anyone with a camera, drive and a story to tell

Here is a video about downtown Pittsburgh that is currently on Current.

It is your last chance to make things right with your parking tickets, the P-G informs us:

After 30 days, warrants will be issued for those who fail to contact the court. In addition to possible incarceration, defendants may also be required to pay costs associated with serving the warrant, according to Mr. Billotte.

Holy crap, you say, I don’t want to go to jail. Can’t I just pay someone off?

Yes, of course you can. Make sure the check is made out to the city, not to the police officer who cited you. The first is called a “fine.” The second is called a “bribe,” which, while effective, is technically illegal. To see if there is a summary offense pending against you, go to the web site and search your name. If it appears, there is a telephone number to call.

I went, reassured myself that the government isn’t after me, and immediately left the site, never to return.

Of course I didn’t do that. I looked up local luminaries, to see who was scoffing at the law. I didn’t find many, but City Councilor Darlene Harris is in there. So is Lawrenceville anti-crime crusader Tony Ceoffe, who was no doubt too busy crusading against quality-of-life crimes to avoid committing them. Twanda Carlisle, despite her mounting troubles with the law, managed to avoid this specific legal thicket.

I recommend everyone use this resource to first make sure that they are not in danger of imprisonment, then to joyously embarrass friends, enemies, and people you see in the newspaper.

So where does your drinking water come from?

As a water main break in Oakland this afternoon disrupted water pressure in parts of Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, and Greenfield, I began thinking about the urban watershed and where my water comes from. According to the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority’s website, there are over 1200 miles of pipe carrying water around the city. I live in Friendship, and I think we’re connected to the Garfield Heights reservoir, but I’m not certain. I’d love to see a color-coded map, showing how the water gets distributed around the city.

[Update - historical context: a map showing the affected areas when the water main broke near the same intersection, seven years ago. I imagine that similar areas are affected this time.]

Picture of Harris Grill

Originally uploaded by gophotogo

Here is a picture I took around 10:30 on Saturday night. My camera phone isn’t the best but you can see the flames on the side of the building. The area that was on fire was the fire escape. I think this was before the firetrucks arrived. We were driving down Ellsworth and knew something was wrong because so many people where standing on the sidewalk. You could feel the heat of the fire from the car.
I am amazed no one was hurt. It took about 45 minutes to bring the fire under control. At one point there were multiple firemen on the roof with axes. From the corner of Ellsworth and Maryland I could see that the TV in the bar was still on and the tiki torches on the patio were still burning.
I think the world of the owners of the Harris Grill, in a short amount of time, the turned the old Harris Grill into an amazing neighborhood establishment. The owners and staff created the type of place that you wanted to return to again and again. On Sunday, I was thinking about heading out for some mini cheese burghers, but I am going to have to wait for those to return.
I really want to say thank you to the firemen and police of Pittsburgh, this could have been a very tragic evening and I appreciated their dedication to the safety of this city. It is not often you get to witness, in person, what the firemen have to do to bring the fire under control. The entire time, there was not a sense of panic, the people on the streets were respectful of the police lines. Except for one woman who wanted me to ask the fire truck to move so she could turn her car on to Ellsworth. I am not sure what she was thinking, or if she was thinking at all.

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Living in Pittsburgh, it’s important to understand how to spot a zombie. By, the way–I have found that zombies often have a thing for flowers.