June 21, 2017 - Pittsburgh City Paper

Season begins Friday, June 23!

See The Frick Pittsburgh’s ad inside for details!

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

06.21/06.28.2017

Silver Screen Bazaar

EVENTS 7.21 – 5-8pm TEACHER WORKSHOP: POP CULTURE IN THE CLASSROOM Tickets $30

7.28 – 5-9:30pm FACTORY SWING SHIFT The Factory stays up late!

Free with museum admission

8.5 – 10am -12pm HALF-PINT PRINTS The Factory Free with museum admission

7.28 – 7-10pm Free with museum admission

MEMBERS ONLY:

In conjunction with the summer exhibition, Andy Warhol: Stars of the Silver Screen, we present the Silver Screen Bazaar, featuring a variety of Hollywoodrelated memorabilia and collectibles vendors. The Garment District performs a DJ set in the entrance space, and we present the Pittsburgh premiere of >HYOVS»Z ÄST San Diego Surf* (1968/1996), featuring Warhol Superstars Viva, Taylor Mead, Joe Dallesandro, and Ingrid Superstar.

The event is co-organized with local collector and producer Pat McArdle.

6.24 – 2pm Member Tour: Archives and Conservation 7.29 – 2pm Member Tour: Stars of the Silver Screen

7SLHZL UV[L [OL ÄST San Diego Surf contains adult content.

The Andy Warhol Museum receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency and The Heinz Endowments. Further support is provided by the Allegheny Regional Asset District.

Andy Warhol: Stars of the Silver Screen is generously supported by Cadillac.

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Port Authority.org 4

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

06.21/06.28.2017

06.21/06.28.2017 VOLUME 27 + ISSUE 25

[EDITORIAL] Editor CHARLIE DEITCH News Editor REBECCA ADDISON Arts & Entertainment Editor BILL O’DRISCOLL Associate Editor AL HOFF Digital Editor ALEX GORDON Staff Writers RYAN DETO, CELINE ROBERTS Music Writer MEG FAIR Interns CARLEY BONK, HALEY FREDERICK, KRISTA JOHNSON, HANNAH LYNN, JORDAN MILLER, MATT PETRAS

[ART] Director of Operations KEVIN SHEPHERD Production Director JULIE SKIDMORE Art Director LISA CUNNINGHAM Graphic Designers JEFF SCHRECKENGOST, JENNIFER TRIVELLI {CP PHOTO BY JORDAN MILLER}

[MUSIC]

Ladyfest is a 40-band-deep slap in the face that questions how any of the lady-centric bands in Pittsburgh could be ignored in favor of all-male rock gigs.

PAGE 18

[ADVERTISING] Associate Publisher JUSTIN MATASE Senior Account Executives PAUL KLATZKIN, JEREMY WITHERELL Advertising Representatives MACKENNA DONAHUE, BLAKE LEWIS, JENNIFER MAZZA Classified Manager ANDREA JAMES National Advertising Representative VMG ADVERTISING 1.888.278.9866 OR 1.212.475.2529

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[NEWS]

“You can’t forget the past, but you have to brand for the future.”

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Marketing Director LINDSEY THOMPSON Marketing Assistant LIZ VENUTO Office Coordinator THRIA DEVLIN

Pittsburgh AIDS Center for Treatment

[ADMINISTRATION] Circulation Director JIM LAVRINC Office Administrator RODNEY REGAN Interactive Media Manager CARLO LEO

[PUBLISHER]

The Pittsburgh AIDS Center for Treatment (PACT) provides continuous primary medical care and education for those who are infected with HIV or have AIDS. PACT also offers specialty services including women’s health care, Hepatitis-C care, and mental health care.

EAGLE MEDIA CORP.

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“This team means more to me than I could ever describe.”

PAGE 39

News 06 Views 14 Weird 16 Music 18 Arts 26 Events 30 Taste 33

Screen 37 Sports 39 Classifieds 42 Crossword 42 Astrology 44 Savage Love 45 The Last Word 46 NEWS

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GENERAL POLICIES: Contents copyrighted 2017 by Eagle Media Corp. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

The opinions expressed in Pittsburgh City Paper are those of the author and not necessarily of Eagle Media Corp. LETTER POLICY: Letters, faxes or e-mails must be signed and include town and daytime phone number for confirmation.

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THIS WEEK

“THIS IS OUR SECOND CHANCE AT OUR SECOND CHANCE.”

ONLINE

www.pghcitypaper.com

Last week, the Cup returned to Pittsburgh. Check out our photos from the Penguins’ Stanley Cup victory parade online at www.pghcitypaper.com.

In this issue you’ll find a photo essay of Homestead by the @SteelCityGrammers. Check out additional pictures in a photo slideshow at www.pghcitypaper.com.

{PHOTO COURTESY JAKE KLINGENSMITH}

A view of Ford City taken in 1976

City Paper’s blog PolitiCrap was named best blog at this year’s Golden Quill awards. Catch up on the latest posts at www.pghcitypaper.com/blogs/PolitiCrap.

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Our featured #CPReaderArt photo from last week is by @paulvalerio. Use #CPReaderArt to share your local photos with us for your chance to be featured next!

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LOSING THE TOWN N 1993, FORD CITY, in Armonstrong

County, lost its massive PPG plateglass factory after years of the company shedding jobs and lowering production. To replace that 200-acre facility, the town was able to obtain $12 million in funds to construct a 70,000-square-foot business incubator.

But the project didn’t go as planned: One of the original tenants went bankrupt and Ford City was eventually forced to foreclose on the property. Even with the boost it received from public and private funding, Ford City still fell victim to the narrative so common to Western Pennsylvania company towns: When the company left, the town failed to return to its peak vitality. Since then, in addition to losing the businesses incubator, Ford City has been ridiculed by the media, and its poverty, population decline and drug

problems have only worsened.

Despite these growing problems, many in the town of 2,800, just 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, remain optimistic, including a young borough councilor named Tyson Klukan. “You

Like so many former Western Pennsylvania company towns, Ford City is in dire need of a comeback {BY RYAN DETO} need optimism, but you also need energy,” says Klukan. “This is not the PPG era any more. You can’t forget the past, but you have to brand for the future.”

And what lies in store for Ford City might prove a template for the future

of Western Pennsylvania’s deteriorating rural towns. Can they come back or will they continue to decline?

At its peak, in 1930, Ford City had more than 6,100 residents. Growth was driven mainly by Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, now called PPG. “When PPG was at its height, it had 5,000 employees,” says Don Mains, an outspoken advocate for Ford City. “It was designated the largest plate-glass company in the world.”

John Ford, one of the PPG’s founders, enabled the company to reach these heights by building a compact and efficient town around the factory in 1887. In an area of less than one square mile, tidy houses were crammed together on narrow blocks; a handsome central park provided workers with green space; and a small business district supplied residents CONTINUES ON PG. 08

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

06.21/06.28.2017

June 23–September 8, 2017 Plan to spend Friday evenings at the Frick this summer!

Join us for: Free Performances • Family-friendly Activities • Wine Bars • Food and Fashion Trucks

SUPPORTED BY

The Frick is open Fridays until 9:00 p.m.

Visit TheFrickPittsburgh.org for information.

THEFRICKPITTSBURGH.ORG | 412-371-0600 | 7227 REYNOLDS STREET, PITTSBURGH, PA 15208 NEWS

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LOSING THE TOWN, CONTINUED FROM PG. 16

with bars, restaurants and shops.

Towns like Ford City were popping up all over Western Pennsylvania, and there were more than enough people who wanted to live in them. But as technology improved and business owners looked to make factories more efficient, PPG decreased its workforce, and Ford City’s population began to drop. In 1993, PPG closed its operations in the borough.

“When I was a growing up, there were still 2,000 employees at PPG,” says Mains, who is in his 60s. “And then for a generation, from 1993 on, all they saw was a rusted building.”

But while many other company towns in the region lost their company and weren’t able to find a viable replacement, Ford City was able to start a huge project just four years after PPG left. Thanks to strong backing from local politicians like then-U.S. Rep. John Murtha, and great marketing by Mains and others, the borough was able to raise $12 million in federal, state and private funds to redevelop the PPG facility into a business incubator.

“We were going to attract businesses from outside, but equally and perhaps even more [importantly], we were going to help the local businesses grow,” says Mains. “Helping local businesses grow, that

{CP PHOTO BY RYAN DETO}

Tyson Klukan in front of Ford City favorite, Stanley’s Bar and Grill

is how you create jobs.”

National media including the Wall Street Journal covered the project, and Mains says it became the poster child for former industrial-site redevelopment.

Ford City completed the project in 2004, and attracted a high-tech manufacturing company, Caracal, to fill the space.

Unfortunately, Caracal was a fairly new enterprise and went bankrupt within a few years.

For the past few years, Mains has been promoting the theory that the project was sabotaged by corrupt officials; he has repeatedly contacted regional media outlets about it, with no success. Mains, a former U.S deputy assistant secretary for economic development in the George W. Bush administration, believes that if the sabotages he alleges are revealed, the town can reclaim some of its former glory.

However, the story of the project’s downfall has been covered extensively by local and regional media, and there’s little to no evidence to support Mains’ claims. And Hobbie Webster, of the legal firm Weiss Burkardt Kramer, who investigated the case on Mains’ behalf, says the firm found no proof of his allegations. “I did not find any kind of self-dealing,” says Webster. “What I found was a project that never should have been leveraged the way it was. They were so desperate for clients. They signed up with Caracal, who didn’t have a long history, they had just been created. The recession hit and

Caracal went under.”

David Croyle, editor of the Kittanning Paper, a small independent newspaper, has been covering Ford City news for years. Croyle says Mains has a long history of community organizing in town, but can sometimes get carried away. “[Mains] is truly a visionary, but he is a loose cannon,” Croyle says.

Still, Mains’ heart seems to be in the right place, and he may be right about one thing: His town could use some positivity.

In 2008, even as Caracal was bleeding money, the community-development corporation that ran the project went bankrupt; Ford City foreclosed on the property and was even hit with a financial penalty by the Economic Development Corporation for foreclosing on the property before 2015. U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) ridiculed the town by including the project in his 2015 “Wastebook,” which documents what he says are examples of wasteful government spending. He called the Ford City project a “Bankrupt Boondoggle.”

Mains appears to be driven by stories like these. He repeatedly says he wants to “clear the town’s name,” so Ford City can move on to some of his grand plans.

He wants to turn the old Ford City High School building into a “glass college,” where student artisans can perfect their glass-making skills. And he wants to reestablish the business incubator, which he says will cause positive ripple effects of small-business growth.

And while his focus on the failed project might seem misguided, Mains recognizes it will take people with his passion to revitalize Ford City.

“Somebody has to do it,” says Mains when asked why he has been fighting for Ford City for decades.

“And usually if there is one person to get it going, there will be other people to join, I guarantee.

This is our second chance at our second chance.

Every community should realize this.

If it doesn’t proceed the way you want, go again.”

Webster feels for Mains, who is currently recovering from leukemia, but says Mains might want to consider other options for helping Ford City. “I am sympathetic to [Mains], he wants to save his town,” says Webster. “But it is not going to happen the way he wants it to happen.”

“FORD CITY IS A SPECIAL TOWN, IT IS A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH. IF WE CAN PROGRESS IN THESE AREAS, THEN WE CAN COME BACK.”

CONTINUES ON PG. 10

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

06.21/06.28.2017

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LOSING THE TOWN, CONTINUED FROM PG. 18

A new movement is already underway to improve Ford City, one that is leaving the failure of the business-incubator project and the town’s industrial past in its rear-view mirror.

Tyson Klukan is a 25-year-old Ford City borough councilor. He was elected in 2015, along with three other new councilors, and says this wave of new blood has injected a sense of hope into Ford City.

“I see it as an opportunity,” says Klukan. “We once had a thriving town and then it all went away. But now we have all this land along the Allegheny River. It’s a big opportunity.”

Klukan says the borough is looking to modernize and update its master plan and rezone large industrial swaths of the borough to attract new development.

He sees Ford City, with its cheap rent, business-friendly attitude and compact layout, as a haven for small businesses.

Longtime residents see this possibility, too. Caroline Hassa says things are already improving. “The changes are starting to happen now,” says Hassa. “Little by little, they are spiffing up the town and starting beautification.”

She recognizes the struggles are still present, though. Twenty-two percent of households in Ford City are on food stamps, and the borough has a 23 percent poverty rate, both well above the Armstrong County average.

But Hassa says a new microbrewery is moving into the middle of the borough, and she hopes this will attract residents and outsiders to shop in Ford City. She says that through cooperation, the borough can rebound.

READ MORE ABOUT FORD CITY’S ATTEMPT TO REBOUND IN THE LATEST INSTALLMENT OF OUR CITY PAPER LONGFORM SERIES at www.pghcitypaper.com.

“If the whole town comes together, we might be able to do something,” says Hassa. “We haven’t had that spirit for a long time, but it is coming back. Ford City is a special town, it is a diamond in the rough. If we can progress in these areas, then we can come back.”

RYA N D E TO@ P G HC I T Y PA P E R. C OM

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

06.21/06.28.2017

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FORCED OUT Activists call for a ban on suspensions for students in pre-K through fifth grade {BY REBECCA ADDISON} ACCORDING TO Pittsburgh Public Schools

data from the 2015-16 school year, African-American students in kindergarten through fifth grade were suspended at four times the rate of white students.

Such numbers aren’t new. Around the country, black students have long been suspended at rates disproportionate to their white peers. But now, a national movement being led in Pittsburgh by the Education Rights Network is calling for change.

On June 12, members of the Education Rights Network interrupted a meeting of the Pittsburgh Public Schools board of directors to call for action. They delivered a petition signed by more than 600 people supporting their efforts and a report analyzing suspensions in PPS during the 2015-16 school year.

“Our youngest students in pre-K through fifth grade missed 3,160 days of school in the 2015-16 school year,” said group member Bernard Isley. “This

is unacceptable. When you look at the data, you will see that Pittsburgh Public Schools is pushing our black and disabled children out of the classroom at higher rates. This denies them quality instructional time, harms our school community, and leads to disproportionate dropout rates, disproportionate incar-

The 5th Judicial District of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County Pretrial Services urges you to enjoy your weekend out in Pittsburgh but

make the right choice,

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ceration, and continues cycles of generational poverty. I believe the school board wants this change. I am here today to ask you to have the courage to take action.”

This month, PPS is considering changes to its student code of conduct. As part of that work, the Education Rights Network is calling for a ban on suspensions for minor infractions in grades pre-K to 5.

“We’ve applauded Pittsburgh Public Schools for the steps they’ve taken to remove zero-tolerance practices from the code of student conduct, but we can really no longer rely on granular changes to address the lasting harms experienced by these children,” says Cheryl Kleiman, a staff attorney at the Education Law Center. “A ban on suspensions for our youngest learners is really in the name of the ultimate goal of fostering a positive and inclusive school climate that is fair for all students.”

According to the Education Rights Network, students are often removed from the classroom for minor, nonviolent misconduct, with 65 percent of suspensions occurring due to “disruption of school.” And they say the high number of suspensions contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline that funnels black students into the criminal-justice system, and to the achievement gap between black and white students.

“Suspensions not only hinder a student’s academic progress, but they impinge on the development of positive

teacher and peer relationships,” says Kleiman. “They also delay the proper identification and provision of specialeducation and related services for students with disabilities. School is a place where students are required to be by law, so we should be creating supports to respond to the behavior of young children that is developmentally appropriate.”

Ruth Howze, another member of the coalition, is a permanent PPS substitute teacher and a mother of four. As a teacher in the classroom, and a mother whose now28-year-old daughter was suspended several times as a child, Howze has seen this issue from both sides.

“It’s sickening if you look at the number of days that have been missed,” says Howze. “You can’t imagine how hard it is for me as a teacher to catch up a kid who has been out of school for one day, let alone for three or five days. In addition to the new work they have when they come back to school, they have all the old work they missed.”

As of April, four states and 10 school districts around the country have implemented policies limiting suspensions.

For example, an Oregon law passed in 2015 limits out-of-school suspensions and expulsions for students in fifth grade or lower to three circumstances: “non-accidental conduct causing serious physical harm to a student or school employee, if student conduct poses a direct threat to health and/or safety of students or school employees, or when the suspension or expulsion is required by law.”

“We have to put a plan in place that no kid will be suspended for minor infractions in grades K-5 and if not K-5, then K-3. We have to start somewhere,” Howze says. “We’re not talking about the kids who are violent, throwing a chair or throwing their bookbags. There are many schools that are imposing suspensions off the cuff.”

At last week’s board m e e t i n g , m o s t s c h o ol directors agreed the district’s suspension rates are too high, but they didn’t all agree that a ban would be the best solution.

“From the data, you can see the impact suspensions are having. … Kids are getting suspended from kindergarten,” said school-board member Thomas Sumpter.

“Some board members hope [the ban] is put in place by next school year. Some feel it might take longer than that. Today is the first day in the discussion.”

“WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE KIDS WHO ARE VIOLENT, THROWING A CHAIR OR THROWING THEIR BOOKBAGS.”

RA D D I S ON @ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM

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[PITTSBURGH LEFT]

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{BY CHARLIE DEITCH} I FEEL A BIT hypocritical when I write

about the problems with expanded gambling in Pennsylvania. Because I freaking love to gamble.

I’ve played poker since I was 9 years old. I play fantasy sports. Las Vegas is absolutely one of my most favorite places on this planet, and an annual trip there is something I look forward to.

However, I have a different feeling when it comes to expanded gambling in states like Pennsylvania. Places where casinos are located near residential neighborhoods.

Places where the dreams of striking it rich can be played out 10 minutes from your house. Places where it’s too easy to spend your paycheck on the dream of big bucks.

It’s become too easy to lose your money, and that’s what I have a problem with.

And now, facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall, our state legislators are about to make it even easier to lose your cash in the name of revenue generation. Expandedgambling bills have already passed in the state house and the senate. The bills would allow you to play casino games like poker, blackjack and slots, lottery games and fantasy sports from the comfort of your home. Additionally, one version of the bill would allow bars and restaurants to install their own video-gambling terminals like slots and video poker, and would permit gambling at airports.

If this gambling bill passes, you won’t have to make the onerous three-minute trip to the North Side to gamble. Christ, you won’t have to even put on pants in order to lose your shirt.

None of these gambling options are good, but the worst in my experience are the terminals in bars and restaurants. Increased access is the obvious problem, but in places like West Virginia, expanded gambling like this over the years hasn’t just resulted in a casino on every corner; it’s resulted in several on every block. I wrote about this issue in my very first City Paper cover story, in 2005. Slot machines were put into every business imaginable, from car washes to ice-cream shops.

During that time, I met a Weirton, W.Va., activist named Jody Kraina. She was fighting for reforms to the state’s gambling laws.

She got nowhere fast. But she knew what she was talking about.

“Look at Pennsylvania,” says Kraina, spokesperson for Weirton-based RAGE (Residents Against Gambling Establishments).

“They’re sitting where West Virginia sat years ago, allowing slots to help save racetracks. But they need to look very closely at where we are now. Once you allow those things in here, it’s ‘Katie bar the door.’”

It took 12 years, but her premonition came true. Also, I wonder whether Kraina even realized the heights that expanded and online gambling would reach in cashstrapped states. Gambling halls in Pennsylvania once seemed like they would never materialize, but in 2004 in-state gambling was approved. Also since then, a lot of legislators have changed their tunes on gambling. Even “Self-Righteous Mike” Turzai is coming around, and he was staunchly against the first round of gambling legalization. Maybe he’s had an honest change of heart — or maybe his former chief of staff Krystjan Callahan, who is now a lobbyist for the gambling industry, has. Do with that information what you will.

But the reality is, the state needs revenue from somewhere, and Republicans are against raising traditional taxes to take the burden off Pennsylvania’s hard-working families. Instead, they’re going to impose huge taxes on expanded gambling, and charge the suppliers of that service. Except they’re not.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo have done extensive research on the impact that gambling has on lower-income individuals. They began studying the issue when the Buffalo Creek Casino was being planned for construction in an area with high poverty rates. Among the findings: “Populations already facing high poverty rates and inequalities, such as African Americans, have higher rates of problem gambling.” A 1994 study of Wisconsin gamblers found that “53.7 percent of casino gamblers had an income below $30,000 per year, with 37 percent below $20,000 per year and 13.7 percent below $10,000 per year.”

So what does that mean? It means, in essence, that expanded gambling is a tax.

It’s a tax on our poorest citizens. But this isn’t the kind of tax that is likely to keep Pennsylvania’s long-time legislators from getting re-elected. It’s not a larger sales tax or an income tax, so most people aren’t going to make this an issue come election time. Expanded gambling is a safe bet for our state legislators; they’re essentially playing with what is known in casino parlance as “house money.” It’s the rest of us who are going to crap out.

YOU WON’T HAVE TO EVEN PUT ON PANTS IN ORDER TO LOSE YOUR SHIRT.

C D E I T C H @ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM

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Sat., June 24 Dahntahn Roberto Clemente Bridge Registration 6 p.m. | Walk 7 p.m.

Costume Parade 8 p.m.

Don your black and gold and join us – because Bark in the Park is now Bark N’at!

This Pittsburgh-themed party has gone to the dogs. Our walk, concert and costume contest n’at are sure to leave your tail wagging. So no matter which neighborhood you’re from, redd up, grab your pooch and we’ll see yinz at Bark N’at.

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News of the Weird

S E N D YO UR WE I R D N E WS TO W E I RD N E W S @ E ART HL I NK . N E T O R WWW. NE WS O F T HE WE I R D. C OM

{BY CHUCK SHEPHERD}

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VINTAGE HOME DÉCOR ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES GARDENING FURNISHINGS & ART KITSCHY GIFTS

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The New York Times reported in May that the “sophistication” of Google’s and Facebook’s ability to identify potential customers of advertisements is “capable of targeting ads ... so narrow that they can pinpoint, say, Idaho residents in long-distance relationships who are contemplating buying a minivan.” Facebook’s ad manager told the Times that such a description matches 3,100 people (out of Idaho’s 1.655 million).

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From the abstract of California State Polytechnic assistant professor Teresa Lloro-Bidart, in an April academic paper, comparing behaviors of native-California western gray squirrels and disruptive (to residents’ trash cans) eastern fox squirrels: “I juxtapose feminist posthumanist theories and feminist food study scholarship to demonstrate how eastern fox squirrels are subjected to gendered, racialized and speciesist thinking in the popular news media as a result of their feeding/eating practices [and] their unique and unfixed spatial arrangements in the greater Los Angeles region ....” The case “presents a unique opportunity to question and re-theorize the ontological given of ‘otherness’ that manifests in part through a politics” in which “animal food choices” “stand in” for “compliance and resistance” to the “dominant forces in [human] culture.”

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Organizers of northern Germany’s Wacken Open Air Festival (billed as the world’s biggest metal-music extravaganza) expect the 75,000 attendees to drink so much beer that they have built a nearly four-milelong pipeline to carry 105,000 gallons to onsite taps. (Otherwise, keg-delivery trucks would likely muck up the grounds.) Some pipes were buried specifically for the Aug. 3-5 festival, but others had been used by local farmers for ordinary irrigation.

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Smooth Reactions: (1) Robert Ahorner, 57, apparently just to “win” an argument with his wife, who was dissatisfied with their sex life, left the room with his 9 mm semi-automatic and fired four shots at his penis. (As he said later, “If I’m not using it, I might as well shoot it off.”)

Of course, he missed, and police in Elkhorn, Wis., said no laws were violated. (2) In a lawsuit filed against an allegedly retaliating former lover, Columbia University School of Public Health professor Mady Hornig said her jilted boss tried repeatedly to harm her professional standing, even twice calling her into his office, dropping his trousers, and asking her professional opinion of the lesion on his buttock.

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Convicted murderer John Modie, 59, remains locked up (on an 18-to-life sentence), but his several-hours-long 2016 escape attempt from Hocking (Ohio) Correctional Institution wound up unpunishable — because of a “technicality.” In May 2017, the judge, lamenting the inflexible law, found Modie not guilty of the escape because prosecutors had, despite numerous opportunities, failed to identify the county in which Hocking Correctional Institution is located and thus did not “prove”

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that element of the crime (i.e., that the court in Logan, Ohio, had jurisdiction of the case). (Note to prosecutors: The county was Hocking).

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Bluffs Called: (1) In May, Charles Nichols III, 33, facing charges in Cheatham County, Tenn., of sex with a minor, originally was tagged with a $50,000 bail — until he told Judge Phillip Maxie to perform a sex act upon himself and dared Maxie to increase the bail. That led to a new bond of $1 million, then after further insubordination, $10 million, and so on until the final bail ordered was $14 million. (2) Jose Chacon, 39, was arrested in Riviera Beach, Fla., in May after allegedly shooting, fatally, a 41-yearold acquaintance who had laughed at Chacon’s first shot attempt (in which the gun failed to fire) and taunted Chacon to try again. The second trigger-pull worked.

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Drugs — Is There Anything They Can’t Do? (1) Sheriff’s deputies in Dade City, Fla., nearly effortlessly arrested Timothy Brazell, 19, for trespassing in May. Brazell (high on metham-

phetamine, he said) attempted to commandeer a stranger’s car by hot-wiring it, but only by uselessly connecting the wires of a voltage meter —and even though the key was already in the car. According to the owner, the door lock was jammed on the inside, and Brazell could not figure out how to open it. (2) On May 19, Carl Webb and his wife left a nighttime barbecue festival in downtown Memphis and headed home.

They drove 14 miles on an interstate highway before a police officer pulled them over to ask whether Webb knew there was a body on his trunk. The man was clinging to the lip of the trunk but was still unconscious (from drinking) and had to be jarred awake.

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In May, Douglas Goldsberry, 45, was charged in the Omaha, Neb., neighborhood of Elkhorn with paying prostitutes to do his erotic bidding (“75 times” he used them, according to a police report) — to strip, baring their breasts while standing on the front porch of his neighbors across the street while Goldsberry watched and masturbated.

WAYNOVISION

NOMINATE. VOTE. CELEBRATE.

Pittsburgh City Paper’s Best Of Pittsburgh nominations start Wednesday, June 28th Get ready to nominate your local faves at pghcitypaper.com/bestof2017

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LOCAL

LISTEN AS YOU READ: SCAN THE CODE FOR OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST, A SOUNDTRACK TO THE STORIES IN THIS SECTION, OR VISIT WWW.PGHCITYPAPER.COM/BLOGS/FFW/

BEAT

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BALANCE IN BLOOM

INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

C. FRIEND, THE PETALS, LUXURY MACHINE, CAROL BLAZE, PACHYDERM 7 p.m. Thu., June 30. Mr. Smalls Theater, 400 Lincoln Ave., Millvale. $10.

412-821-4447 or www.mrsmalls.com

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EMPOWER

CHORDS {BY MEG FAIR}

I

The Petals {PHOTO COURTESY OF SARAH FRIEDLANDER}

The first single from The Petals’ sophomore album, Meld, is titled “What If Being Dead Sucks?” It’s a good question — what if there’s no afterlife? Or there is, and it’s nothing special?

“I wanted to write a song from the perspective of someone who had taken all the steps [to commit suicide] and realized in a comedic way, you know, what if it is worse than I am already,” says frontman Aaron Sheedy.

That sense of existentialism runs throughout Meld. Other tracks, like “Save Yesterday,” build on this feeling, such as when Sheedy sings, “Angry tired hopelessness / it does exist / you do exist.”

Sheedy notes that he often workshops lyrics until he doesn’t “sound like a phony saying them.”

The band came together about a year ago, stemming from Sheedy’s solo project of the same name. Now, he’s joined by drummer Colin Humphrey, guitarist Mike Heitzenrater and bassist Daniel Grushecky. With a fleshedout lineup, there’s a new sense of balance to the band’s sound. The dreamy, oftenreverbed guitars are brought back to earth by the feet-on-the-floor rhythm section. It’s a sound the band calls, half jokingly, “ambient groove,” with the guitars providing the former and the rhythm section the latter.

But “ambient groove” could also refer to the experimental structure of the songs.

The songwriting has an improvisational, meandering feeling to it, without veering into self-indulgent long-windedness.

There’s often a push and pull to the songs, an explosion followed by restraint — slow, melancholy guitar on its own, then the whole band comes in at once.

The Pittsburgh-based band’s influences include the likes of The Antlers and Elliot Smith. Its own sound, however, leans sometimes toward the lilt of a slow Velvet Underground song, and at other times, toward the almost-surf-rock of Mac DeMarco. The band also ventures into the psychedelic, with distant, overlapping voices, frantic guitar and high-pitched violins.

Meld is due out June 30, with a tour in the works for September. Death might suck, but being alive and listening to The Petals ain’t half bad.

T’S A FESTIVAL that requires five months of planning by a small team of volunteers — a labor of love that occupies the space between day jobs and sleeping hours. Organizers coordinate venues, plan lineups and prepare for the party. This particular party is Ladyfest, an annual tradition in the city of Pittsburgh that sets out to give non-male musicians the attention they deserve.

The first Ladyfest occurred in Olympia, Wash., in 2000. Since then, Ladyfests have popped up all over the world, including here.

On a day-to-day basis, the lineups for most of the shows in this city generally feature all-male bands. When you combine that with the fact that there are a significant number of bands in this city that include women and gender non-conforming people, the realization is enough to induce a full-on hissy fit.

This year, Ladyfest is a 40-band-deep slap in the face that questions how any of the lady-centric bands in Pittsburgh could be ignored in favor of all-male rock gigs.

It’s the perfect event for promoters to figure out what acts they’ve been missing in their lineups.

The weekend festival consists of five shows featuring bands spread across five venues in Lawrenceville, Bloomfield and Polish Hill. The event will showcase a mix of local artists and touring acts, who elevate and celebrate the vast non-male talent in the DIY scene.

This year, Jen Sabol (of Brazilian Wax and Aloe) and Steph Flati (of The Lopez) are at the helm of Ladyfest, working with a team of volunteers. “We absolutely couldn’t do this without the awesome volunteers at the actual festival,” insists Sabol.

For the 2017 event, Flati and Sabol started planning at the beginning of Feb-

06.21/06.28.2017

{CP PHOTO BY JORDAN MILLER}

Pittsburgh band Rue plays Ladyfest on Sun., June 25.

ruary. Flati jokes that Sabol is the Excelspreadsheet master, with her printed set lists and to-do lists. It’s a lot of work for two people, but the pair doesn’t seem to mind.

“If you want to see something done and done right, you’ll do it yourself,” says Flati. “But I definitely don’t want to think about how many hours we put into this.”

The two often get together at Hambone’s to post a few bands onto the Facebook event page; send out info to performers; and coordinate venues and lineups. They

have done this weekly in the five months leading up to the event.

The operation is small, but mighty, and worth the effort; money raised from Ladyfest benefits the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh. In addition to the show’s door revenues, some venues donate space or rent it cheaply to help out the cause. Last year, organizers raised $2,200 for the shelter.

In addition to raising money for vulnerable women in Pittsburgh, the festival is a reminder of the non-male

musical talent Pittsburgh has to offer.

“This fest aims to ‘showcase underrepresented populations,’ as Boston’s Ladyfest puts it,” says Sabol. The goal of Ladyfest is much the same as the annual Promoting My Sisters showcase presented by local artist Dr. HollyHood, an occasional CP contributor. HollyHood’s mission with PMS is to point out that booking an allmale hip-hop show is a conscious decision to ignore the many talented female MCs, poets and artists around the ’Burgh.

“I never book shows that are all-male ever, and it’s not even something I’m doing on purpose, at least not consciously,” says Flati. “Those are just the bands that I like, want to book, want to see and want to play with.”

“I recently booked a show that was Leggy from Cincinnati, Reign Check and Brittney Chantele. Somehow none of them had met before the show,” explains Flati. “It was awesome to see them connect and be excited about each other’s art.

We want Ladyfest to be that on an even bigger scale.”

“Building community is important to us,” adds Sabol. “Pittsburgh is small, but people get comfortable in their niche scenes and cliques. I do it myself, but it’s nice to break down those walls and meet new people.”

This style of networking goes a long way toward fostering cross-genre relationships. It leads to more vibrant mixedgenre shows and helps draw new crowds to bands they haven’t seen before. In addition to cross-pollinating scenes, it gives those underrepresented artists a space to build friendships, coalitions and support one another.

This is especially important across age groups. Pittsburgh’s music communities have a tendency to be split along age lines.

The college-age scene and older punk community rarely cross paths.

A shortage of all-ages venues also restricts involvement from high schoolers.

So Ladyfest helps kick down those walls. WolfBlud, a band of high-school girls who absolutely shred, will kick off the entire weekend at The Shop.

They’ll play alongside Pittsburgh’s heavy hitters, like the noisy, abrasive and delightfully fun Trash Bag, who will be playing its final show at Ladyfest.

Revolutionary artist and activist Blak Rapp Madusa returns to the show, as well as political songstress Liss Victory.

Bringing performance art and music together for the first time at Ladyfest is Other Girls, a group that uses wearable

LADYFEST 2017 FRI., JUNE 23 The Shop 6:30 P.M. 4314 MAIN ST., BLOOMFIELD. $5. ALL AGES WolfBlud • Mani Pedi Lorenzo’s Oil • Vytia Late • Trash Bag

Gooski’s 10 P.M. 3117 BRERETON ST., POLISH HILL. $5. 21 AND OLDER Old Game • Love Dumpster Reign Check • Spinster Soft Gondola {CP PHOTO BY ERIC CASH}

SAT., JUNE 24

Blak Rapp Madusa

SUN., JUNE 25

Cattivo 7 P.M. 146 44TH ST., LAWRENCEVILLE. $10. 21 AND OLDER Blak Rapp Madusa • Samm Bones Working Breed • The Telephone Line OTHER GIRLS • Garter Shake Iris Creamer • Brazilian Wax Murder for Girls • The Lopez Blue Clutch • Swampwalk Sound Elevator

sculpture, outfits which also respond to its music.

Coming down from Buffalo, N.Y., is the spicy, trans-feminist queercore band Tina Panic Noise; producer, rapper and songwriter Creamer is traveling from Providence, R.I., to join the festivities. Samm Bones, from Alaska, kicks off the Saturday show at Cattivo.

Rue, performing at Spirit for the final show of Ladyfest, is a local outfit that makes prolific and satisfying twee. Its catchy melodies marry with smart, honest lyrics to make for some serious ear worms that feel as warm as a hug from a dear friend.

Although the fest is ambitious and the volunteer work is immense, it pays off. The Women’s Shelter receives donations from a well-arranged festival, and the artists get to perform in a space where they’re fully appreciated and celebrated by an excited audience.

“The weekend is absolutely crazy and stressful,” says Flati. “But it felt so good last year after spending so much time planning, and seeing how much fun everyone was having at some really great shows.”

Hambone’s

Spirit

10 A.M. 4207 BUTLER ST., LAWRENCEVILLE. FREE. ALL AGES

3 P.M. 242 51ST ST., LAWRENCEVILLE. $7 (INCLUDES PIZZA SLICE). ALL AGES

Brittney Chantele • Molly Alphabet Liss Victory • Tai Chirovsky f i g • Fat Ida Jenny Morgan • Dori Cameron AllegrA • Midge Crickett Timbeladies outside concert at 2:20 p.m.

The Rents Bitter Whiskers Sun Hound Tina Panic Noise Rue Dinosoul

FULL

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“IT’S NICE TO BREAK DOWN THOSE WALLS AND MEET NEW PEOPLE.”

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LET S GET ’

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Xenia Rubinos

UNDEFINABLE ART {BY MEG FAIR} XENIA RUBINOS makes genre-defying

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Just Summer! is part of the Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s East Liberty LIVE! series.

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music that doesn’t sound like anything you’ve ever heard before. The first time I heard “Hair Receding” was absolutely mind-bending. The suspenseful, melodic track off 2013’s Magic Trix somehow seamlessly fuses elements of progressive punk, gospel-driven synth sounds and an element of improv. It’s gritty but tender, huge but intimate.

“I tell people I’m a songwriter. I’ll tell people that my last album [Black Terry Cat] was heavily influenced by hip hop and jazz and rhythmic music,” says Rubinos. “Working in these old genres is really limiting for a lot of people, not just myself.”

“Musicians now have access to basically all the music ever created and can listen to any of it at any time, so obviously influence is going to be fragmented. Using the same genre names for the last 10 years is kind of old, and it’s kind of weak,” adds Rubinos.

She is not in the business of telling people what kind of music she makes.

That’s for the music writers and scholars to sort out.

But as it turns out, this is a tough task for writers. Magic Trix was lazily handed the genre marker of “Latin,” without acknowledging the presence of punk and jazz sewn into the compositions. Black Terry Cat is a little more than a year old, and that record shows more elements of jazz and hip hop, but the punk flame from the first album is present as well.

Although it’s hard to pin down, one thing is certain: Xenia Rubinos’ music is

good, compositionally smart and refreshingly different.

When CP chats with Rubinos by phone, it’s just before she leaves to tour with her band. She’s been spending the past few days running errands, writing a lot and rehearsing.

“I try to sleep in a lot, eat well and take it easy before tour starts. But usually the last few days are a flurry of practices, and I just end up leaving for tour tired anyway,” says Rubinos, with a laugh.

Her band is now a trio: Rubinos is at the helm with her vocals and piano, joined by a bassist, who also plays a synthesizer, alongside her longtime drummer, Marco Buccelli. It’s a locked-in version of the quartet on the first Black Terry Cat tour, but an expansion of the original two-piece setup for Magic Trix.

XENIA RUBINOS 8 p.m. Mon., June 26. Club Café, 56 S. 12th St., South Side. $10.

412-431-4950 or www.clubcafelive.com

In the year that Black Terry Cat’s been out, the album has gotten a new life.

“It’s continued to resonate and take on new meaning, as I’ve played it and gotten to tour on it,” says Rubinos. “I had all these plans about how I was going to perform this record live, and when I finally started touring in the fall, I realized that a lot of the songs I thought would present themselves in this soft, smoothed-out way, I naturally performed in a more aggressive, in-your-face way.

“It reminded me of who I really am and where I’m coming from, and it continues to change every time I play it live.”

M E G FA I R@ P G HC I T Y PA P E R. C OM

OUD ENOUGH {BY MIKE SHANLEY}

TICKETS ON SALE JUNE 23!

#FarmAid2017

Tomchess

The guitar might be the most fashionable string instrument to wield, but historically, it has nothing on the oud.

The 11-string instrument was depicted in artwork that can be dated back as far as 3,000 B.C. Although it has Arabic origins, Western musicians have become familiar with its exotic, unamplified sounds in both traditional music and contemporary hybrids. In the 1960s, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, a bassist with Thelonious Monk, played oud on his own Jazz Sahara album, and sat in with John Coltrane on his Village Vanguard recordings. This weekend, three different oud players spotlight their own unique approaches to the instrument.

New York-based musician Tomchess plays a blend of jazz and Arabic music. He studied the Near Eastern and North African styles of oud-playing, but improvisation factors heavily into his style. Accompanied by bass and drums, his folk-like melodies become a springboard for rich solos. His rhythm section sounds like it’s simply holding down the fort, but upon closer examination, its foundation is built upon rhythms that keep shifting time signatures.

Aside from his work as a leader, Tomchess has played with heavy jazz musicians like saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson.

The undercard features Pittsburgh’s King Fez, who has been playing around the city for four years, often accompanying belly-dance performances. The group’s oudist, David Hart, plays an electric oud, which sometimes gives it a twang similar to a classic surf-rock guitar, without sacrificing any of its traditional “wooden” qualities.

Also on the bill is Tom Moran, who first made a name for himself with his slashing guitar-work in The Five, in the early 1980s.

He later played dark country music in The Deliberate Strangers, utilizing both electric and acoustic strings. He has built several of his ouds, and draws on Middle Eastern, Indian and West African music in his approach to songwriting.

WILLIE NELSON • NEIL YOUNG • JOHN MELLENCAMP DAVE MATTHEWS WITH TIM REYNOLDS Jack Johnson • Sheryl Crow • The Avett Brothers • Jamey Johnson Blackberry Smoke • Valerie June • Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real Insects vs Robots

Farm Aid 2017 is an all-day food, farm and music festival for the whole family!

Bring your family and friends to our HOMEGROWN Village where you can dig in and learn about soil, water, food and farming. Our HOMEGROWN Concessions® feature family farm-identified, local and organic food and drink. Enjoy the taste of local fruit from our HOMEGROWN Youthmarket, staffed by young people involved in agriculture.

Saturday, Sept. 16, 2017 @ KeyBank Pavilion Get tickets Friday, June 23 at 10 a.m. at LiveNation.com, all TicketMaster locations or by calling 800–745–3000.

Join us on the #Road2FarmAid today and be entered to win Farm Aid 2017 prizes!

INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

WWW.FARMAID.ORG/CONCERT FOR MORE INFO.

TOMCHESS with KING FEZ and TOM MORAN 8 p.m. Fri., June 23.

Hambone’s, 4207 Butler St., Lawrenceville. $10. 412-681-4318 NEWS

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{PHOTO COURTESY OF JEN ROSENSTEIN}

CRITICS’ PICKS

The Regrettes

[FESTIVAL] + SAT., JUNE 24

If you’re one of the sorry souls who thinks funk is exclusive to the 1970s, then you can get lost. Or just go see Water Seed, the New Orleans-based funk band which often uses the hashtag #futurefunk to describe itself.

The latest album, We Are Stars — with cover art like something straight from Boney M — features danceable funk, but also melancholy gospel-tinged songs. There’s even a track called “Funktimus Prime.” If that doesn’t appeal to you, find a doctor who’ll figure out why you don’t like good music. Catch the band tomorrow at Spirit, with local soul/hip-hop cover band Trio+ and DJ Selecta. Hannah Lynn 8 p.m. 242 51st St., Lawrenceville. $10. 21 and older.

412-586-4441 or www.spiritpgh.com

It almost feels like a glitch that Pittsburgh has so many free summer music festivals, but who’s complaining? As always, the WYEP Summer Music Fest, at Schenley Plaza, features an expertly curated lineup, including the extremely likable blues/soul of Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, the soul/funk of Pittsburgh-based The Buckle Downs, and the blues/funk of The Marcus King Band, hailing from South Carolina.

Also featured at the fest are local teen bands Night Frog, The Fortunates and Tupelo and Jeremy. This is a great week for appreciating teen musicians who are better than you! HL 3-10 p.m. 4100 Forbes Ave., Oakland. 412-3819131 or www.wyep.org Summer

{PHOTO COURTESY OF RENEE ROSENSTEEL}

[FUNK] + THU., JUNE 22

[COUNTRY] + FRI., JUNE 23 Rockingham is BJ Barham’s first release outside his day job fronting the equally alt-country American Aquarium. On it, he croons about his grandpa’s exhausting years working at a tobacco company, and the small North Carolina town where he grew up. It all feels a little like when someone is wearing a pair of Levis, and you can’t tell if the hole in the knees is from heavy wear or if the jeans were sold that way.

Barham’s stop at Club Café tonight is part of his whirlwind 48-state tour, but the other 47 states don’t have Paul Joseph, frontman of Pittsburgh rock band Wine and Spirit, opening. HL 8 p.m.

56 S. 12th St., South Side. $15. 412-431-4950 or www.clubcafelive.com

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Music Festival

[ROCK] + SUN., JUNE 25

Teens these days! All they care about is their phones and selfies and the Kardashians and making great music and politics and standing up for their rights and ... wait, what? Teenagers now, as they always have, are making art that challenges the pea-brained adults who talk down to them. It’s not even surprising that Lydia Night, lead singer of The Regrettes, is 16, because the group’s songs are filled with a distinctly adolescent energy that’s angry but hopeful, like wanting to die and having greasy hair but also throwing the finger to everyone telling them they can’t.

Also playing Mr. Smalls is local punk band Brazilian Wax, which is filled with self-described “menstrual-fueled fury.” Aren’t we all? HL 7:30 p.m. 400 Lincoln Ave., Millvale. $10-12.

412-821-4447 or www.mrsmalls.com

diesel C LU B | LO U N G E

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6/22 | 7:00 7: 00 PM | AA JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Jack’s Shadow, Amoeba Knievel, Joanna Lowe & Sweetheart Of The Barricades.

Ballroom. 6:30 p.m. North Side.

412-904-3335.

JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Tres Lads. 9 p.m. Warrendale.

724-799-8333.

MR. SMALLS THEATER. John Paul White w/ Lera Lynn.

7 p.m. Millvale. 412-821-4447.

THE SHOP. Ladyfest Pittsburgh 2017.

Bloomfield.

412-951-0622.

ROCK/POP THU 22 DIESEL. Otherwise w/ Through Fire, Righteous Vendetta & Alter the Design. 7 p.m. South Side.

412-431-8800.

JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Brett Staggs & the Daylight Moon.

8 p.m. Warrendale. 724-799-8333.

REX THEATER. Tropidelic w/ Stationary Pebbles & Keystone Vibe.

8 p.m. South Side. 412-381-6811.

FRI 23 BAJA BAR AND GRILL. No Bad JuJu Band. 8 p.m. Fox Chapel.

412-963-0640.

BALTIMORE HOUSE. The GRID. 8:30 p.m. Pleasant Hills. 412-653-3800.

CRAFTHOUSE STAGE & GRILL. Totally 80s. 9 p.m. Whitehall.

412-653-2695.

FAIRWAYS LOUNGE. E Z Action Band. 9 p.m. Braddock.

412-271-0506.

GOOSKI’S. Ladyfest Pittsburgh 2017. Polish Hill. 412-681-1658.

HAMBONE’S. Tomchess, King Fez & Tom Moran. 8 p.m.

Lawrenceville. 412-682-4318.

& Apostle of Solitude. 9 p.m.

Bloomfield. 412-682-0320.

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. TheCAUSE w/ Women On Top. Ballroom. 7:30 p.m. North Side.

412-904-3335.

JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Ferris Bueller’s Revenge.

9 p.m. Warrendale.

724-799-8333.

MR. SMALLS THEATER. Saved By The 90’s.

8 p.m. Millvale.

412-821-4447.

SMILING MOOSE. Pop Punk Night. www. per a p Last Sat. of every pghcitym .co month, 10 p.m.

CATTIVO. Ladyfest South Side.

Pittsburgh 2017. 7 p.m.

412-439-5706.

Lawrenceville. 412-687-2157.

THE VALLEY HOTEL. CLUB CAFE. Mutlu. 6 p.m.

King’s Ransom. 9:30 p.m.

South Side. 412-431-4950.

Jefferson Boro. 412-233-9800.

DIESEL. Landon Tewers, World WALNUT STREET. Jam War Me & Wide Awake. 7 p.m.

On Walnut. A benefit South Side. 412-431-8800. for the Cystic Fibrosis DOWNEY’S HOUSE. Verdict.

Foundation. 7 p.m. Shadyside.

8:30 p.m. Robinson. 412-489-5631.

412-321-4422.

GOOSKI’S. Matt King & The Dukes of St. Clair w/ Weird Corners.

9 p.m. Polish Hill. 412-681-1658.

BAJA BAR AND GRILL. HOWLERS. Wretch, Lo Pan, Argus ITHR3. 2 p.m. Fox Chapel.

412-963-0640.

CLUB CAFE. Halo Circus w/ Allison Iraheta. 7 p.m.

South Side. 412-431-4950.

HAMBONE’S. Ladyfest Pittsburgh 2017. 10 a.m.

Lawrenceville. 412-681-4318.

HOWLERS. The Well, Cruces & CANT. 7 p.m. Bloomfield.

412-682-0320.

THE R BAR. Billy The Kid & the Regulators. 6 p.m. Dormont.

412-942-0882.

SPIRIT HALL & LODGE. Ladyfest Pittsburgh 2017. 3 p.m.

Lawrenceville. 412-586-4441.

OF “THE PLOT IN YOU” 6/24 | 7:00 PM | AA

alleghenycounty.us/summer 6/29 | 7:00 PM | AA

FULL LIST E N O LIN

SAT 24

June 23 U.S. Army Field Band Jazz Ambassadors - America’s Big Band (Big Band/Patriotic)

7/ 1 | 7:00 7 00 PM | AA

v I B RO K InG S

20TH ANNIVERSARY/REUNION SHOW 7/8 | 7: 00 PM | 21+

7/ 13 | 7: 00 PM | 18 +

SUN 25

June 25 Orkesta Mendoza with special guests Beauty Slap

MP 3 MONDAY

{PHOTO COURTESY OF KELLY CARTER}

LEFTFIELD

8/3 | 7:00 PM | AA

All concerts are free and begin at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.

8/7 | 7:00 PM | AA

MON 26 CLUB CAFE. Xenia Rubinos.

7 p.m. South Side. 412-431-4950.

8 /8 | 7: 00 PM | 21+

Food trucks and Hop Farm Brewing Company craft beer at all concerts beginning at 6:00 p.m.

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Portait People, Silver Car Crash, Magnolia & Tremoravia. Speakeasy. 7:30 p.m.

North Side. 412-904-3335.

JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Fine Line. 7:30 p.m. Warrendale.

724-799-8333.

MR. SMALLS THEATER. Thursday ft. mewithoutYou & Big Jesus. 7 p.m. Millvale.

412-821-4447.

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MUSIC

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for tickets visit DIESELPGH.COM or Dave’s Music Mine (southside)

JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. 8 p.m.

Warrendale. 724-799-8333.

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FAREWELL TO RACHEL B SHOW

8 /25 | 7: 00 PM | 21+

WED 28

ARTS

8/ 18 | 7:00 PM | AA

3WS

1801 e. carson st | pittsburgh |412.481.8800

CONTINUES ON PG. 24

NEWS

7/20 | 7:00 PM | AA

(Ranchera/Indie Rock)

TUE 27

Each week, we post a song from a local artist online for free. This week, it’s new music from LEFTFIELD, the highly skilled MC/producer duo of Reason and DOC LVLY. “Agency,” featuring LKHD and Rhetorical Artz, serves as a good introduction to the act’s earnest, old-school mentality and crisp, smart production. The album is Learned Process — go find it. Stream or download “Agency” at FFW>>, the music blog at pghcitypaper.com.

7/ 14 | 7:00 PM | AA

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CONCERTS, CONTINUED FROM PG. 23

DJS THU 22 BELVEDERE’S. DJ hates you 2.0 & DJ killjoy. 80s. Lawrenceville.

412-687-2555.

MR. SMALLS THEATER. Centrifuge Thursdays. At the Funhouse.

9 p.m. Millvale. 412-821-4447.

PERLE CHAMPAGNE BAR. Bobby D Bachata. 10 p.m. Downtown.

412-471-2058.

FRI 23 ANDYS WINE BAR. DJ Malls Spins Vinyl. 5 p.m. Downtown.

412-773-8884.

BELVEDERE’S. DJ admc. Cali hip hop. Lawrenceville. 412-687-2555.

THE FLATS ON CARSON. Pete Butta. 10 p.m. South Side.

412-586-7644.

ONE 10 LOUNGE. DJ Goodnight, DJ Rojo. 9 p.m. Downtown.

412-874-4582.

RIVERS CASINO. DJ Digital Dave.

8:30 p.m. North Side. 412-231-7777.

ROWDY BUCK. Top 40 Dance.

10 p.m. South Side. 412-431-2825.

RUGGER’S PUB. 80s Night w/ DJ Connor. 9 p.m. South Side.

412-381-1330.

SAT 24 BELVEDERE’S. DJ admc.

Legends of NY hip hop. 10 p.m.

Lawrenceville. 412-687-2555.

DIESEL. DJ CK. 10 p.m. South Side.

412-431-8800.

MIXTAPE. DJ Antithesis. ‘The 1990s

(& a bag of chips)’ dance party.

Last Sat. of every month, 9 p.m.

Garfield. 412-661-1727.

PERLE CHAMPAGNE BAR. DJ Tenova. ladies night. 9 p.m.

Downtown. 412-471-2058.

ROWDY BUCK. Top 40 Dance.

10 p.m. South Side. 412-431-2825.

TUE 27 THE GOLDMARK. Pete Butta.

Reggae & dancehall. 10 p.m.

Lawrenceville. 412-688-8820.

MOONDOG’S. Mahajibee.

8:30 p.m. Blawnox. 412-828-2040.

SAT 24 JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Stevee Wellons Band. 7:30 p.m. North Side.

412-904-3335.

MOONDOG’S. Studebaker John & the Hawks. 8:30 p.m. Blawnox.

412-828-2040.

SUN 25

WED 28 THE GOLDMARK. Pete Butta & Preslav. Top Dollar Dancehall. 10 p.m.

Lawrenceville. (4120-688-8820.

MR. SMALLS THEATER. Snakehips. 7 p.m. Millvale.

412-821-4447.

SMILING MOOSE. Rock Star Karaoke w/ T-MONEY. 9:30 p.m.

South Side. 412-431-4668.

THE R BAR. Billy The Kid’s American All-Stars. 7 p.m.

Dormont. 412-942-0882.

JAZZ THU 22

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Roger Humphries Jam Session.

Ballroom. 8 p.m. North Side. 412-904-3335.

RILEY’S POUR HOUSE. Jazz Happy Hour w/ w. w w JAMES STREET paper Martin Rosenberg. pghcitym GASTROPUB & .co 5:30 p.m. Carnegie.

SPEAKEASY. The Funky 412-279-0770.

Miracle. Speakeasy. 8 p.m.

VALLOZZI’S PITTSBURGH. North Side. 412-904 -3335.

ST. THOMAS A BECKET CHURCH. Eric Johnson. 5:30 p.m.

Downtown. 412-394-3400.

Shot O’ Soul. 7 p.m. Jefferson Hills.

BLUES THU 22

FULL LIST E N O LIN

412-655-2885.

FRI 23 ELWOOD’S PUB. Jack of Diamonds. 8:30 p.m. Rural Ridge.

724-265-1181.

FRI 23 ANDORA RESTAURANT - FOX CHAPEL. Pianist Harry Cardillo & vocalist Charlie Sanders. 6:30 p.m.

Fox Chapel. 412-967-1900.

SAT 24 BACKSTAGE BAR AT THEATRE SQUARE. Jeremy Fisher Jr and Joe DeFazio. 5 p.m. Downtown.

412-325-6769.

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Tony Campbell Jam Session. 5 p.m. North Side.

412-904-3335.

THE MONROEVILLE RACQUET CLUB. Jazz Bean Live. 7 p.m.

Monroeville. 412-728-4155.

TRAX FARMS. Roger Barbour Band.

12 p.m. Finleyville. 412-835-9250.

“The Weekend” Mabel

“Bedroom” Lecrae

MON 26 HAMBONE’S. Ian Kane, Ronnie Weiss & Tom Boyce. Jazz Standards, showtunes & blues. 6:30 p.m.

Lawrenceville. 412-681-4318.

JERGEL’S RHYTHM GRILLE. Slippery Rock Jazz. 7 p.m.

Warrendale. 724-799-8333.

TUE 27

“I’ll Find You”

Camila Cabello

“Crying in the Club”

RILEY’S POUR HOUSE. Jazz Happy Hour w/ Martin Rosenberg.

5:30 p.m. Carnegie. 412-279-0770.

WED 28 RIVERS CLUB. Jessica Lee & Friends. Last Wed. of every month, 5:30 p.m. Downtown. 412-391-5227.

BEER HEAD BAR. Eclectic Acoustics. 8 p.m. North Side.

412-322-2337.

CLUB CAFE. BJ Barham. 7 p.m.

South Side. 412-431-4950.

PARK HOUSE. Lonesome, Lost & Foggy. 9 p.m. North Side.

412-224-2273.

SAT 24 MUSIC TO MY EAR. Heather Kropf.

12:30 p.m. Ross. 412-223-9747.

THE SHARP EDGE CREEKHOUSE. Tracy Lee Simmen. 7 p.m. Crafton.

412-922-8118.

SUN 25 TUPELO HONEY TEAS CAFE. Fern Hollow. 10 a.m. Millvale.

412-821-0832.

WED 28 ALLEGHENY ELKS LODGE #339.

Pittsburgh Banjo Club. 8 p.m.

North Side. 412-321-1834.

PARK HOUSE. Shelf Life String Band. 9 p.m. North Side.

412-224-2273.

WHEELFISH. Jason Born.

7-10 p.m. Ross. 412-487-8909.

REGGAE THU 22 PIRATA. The Flow Band. 9 p.m.

Downtown. 412-323-3000.

06.21/06.28.2017

SZA

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Paul Keys Band.

Ballroom. 6 p.m. North Side.

412-904-3335.

ROCKS LANDING BAR & GRILLE. Tony Campbell, John Hall, Howie Alexander & Dennis Garner. 7 p.m.

McKees Rocks. 412- 875- 5809.

FRI 23

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

Here are four songs that CP photo intern Krista Johnson can’t stop listening to:

SUN 25

ACOUSTIC

24

HEAVY ROTATION

SAT 24 THE R BAR. The Flow Band.

9:30 p.m. Dormont. 412-942-0882.

WED 28 HIGHMARK STADIUM. Dirty Heads & SOJA. 5:30 p.m. Station Square. 412-381-6811.

COUNTRY FRI 23 JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Cash Unchained.

Ballroom. 7 p.m. North Side.

412-904-3335.

CLASSICAL FRI 23

BEETHOVEN. 2:30 p.m. Heinz Hall, Downtown. 412-392-4900.

OTHER MUSIC THU 22 LINDEN GROVE. Karaoke. 8 p.m.

Castle Shannon. 412-882-8687.

RIVERS CASINO. Rebecca Kaufman & the Groove Doctors.

7 p.m. North Side. 412-231-7777.

FRI 23 LINDEN GROVE. Artistree. 9 p.m.

Castle Shannon. 412-882-8687.

RIVERS CASINO. Hewlett Anderson Duo. 9 p.m. North Side.

412-231-7777.

CLASSICAL MUSIC UNDER THE STARS - OPERA IN BLOOM. An evening of classic operatic arias & musical theater under the stars w/ a preview of Pittsburgh Festival Opera’s Summer Season feat. excerpts from Handel’s Xerxes, Richard Strauss’ Intermezzo, Dwayne Fulton’s A Gathering of Sons, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, more. 7:30 p.m. Chatham University Eden Hall Campus, Gibsonia. 412-365-1335.

HONECK CONDUCTS BEETHOVEN. 8 p.m. Heinz Hall, Downtown. 412-392-4900.

SAT 24

SAT 24

BRICOLAGE. Neil Byrne & Ryan Kelly of Celtic Thunder. 7 p.m.

Downtown. 412-566-1000.

HONECK CONDUCTS BEETHOVEN. 8 p.m. Heinz Hall, Downtown. 412-392-4900.

SUN 25 HONECK CONDUCTS

JAMES STREET GASTROPUB & SPEAKEASY. Travlin’. 8 p.m.

North Side. 412-904-3335.

RIVERS CASINO. The Clintones.

9 p.m. North Side. 412-231-7777.

STAGE AE. The Clarks. 6:30 p.m.

North Side. 412-229-5483.

MON 26 BRICOLAGE. Neil Byrne & Ryan Kelly of Celtic Thunder. 7 p.m.

Downtown. 412-566-1000.

TUE 27

WED 28 LINDEN GROVE. Oldies Night. 7 p.m.

Castle Shannon. 412-882-8687.

What to do IN PITTSBURGH

June 21-27 WEDNESDAY 21

With special guest Lyndsey Smith & Soul Distribution.

Over 21 show. Tickets: ticket web.com/opusone. 8p.m.

Tigers Jaw

REX THEATER South Side.

412-381-1681. With special guests Saintseneca & Smidley.

All ages show.

Tickets: ticketfly.com or 1-877-4-FLY-TIX. 8p.m.

guest Beauty Slap. Free show.

For more info visit allegheny county.us/summer. 7:30p.m.

THE CLARKS STAGE AE JUNE 24

MONDAY 26

FRIDAY 23 235

Xenia Rubinos

Station Square Summer Jam ft.

Rusted Root

Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty

CLUB CAFE South Side.

412-431-4950. With special guest Gena y Pena. Over 21 show. Tickets: ticketweb.com/ opusone. 8p.m.

BESSEMER COURT Station Square. With special guest Nox Boys. All ages show. Free show. 7:30p.m.

THE FRICK PITTSBURGH Point Breeze.

For tickets and more info visit thefrickpittsburgh.org.

Through Sept. 10.

TUESDAY 27 Free Throw

DVE Comedy Festival BYHAM THEATER Downtown.

412-456-6666. With special guests Colin Quinn, Kevin Brennan, Robert Kelly, Rachel Feinstein & Bill Crawford.

Tickets: dve.com. 8p.m.

Snowball Day CARNEGIE SCIENCE CENTER North Side. For more info visit carnegiesciencecenter.org.

10a.m.

Train

THURSDAY 22

KEYBANK PAVILION Burgettstown. With special guests O.A.R & Natasha Bedingfield. All ages show.

Tickets: livenation.com.

7:30p.m.

Gary Pratt

THE PALACE THEATRE Greensburg. 724-836-8000.

All ages show. Free show.

6p.m.

SATURDAY 24

Vinyl Sunday

Kaiju Big Battel: Multiple Choice Versus

CLUB CAFE South Side.

412-431-4950.

AUGUST WILSON CENTER Downtown. 412-456-6666.

Tickets: trustarts.org. 8p.m.

PULCHRA Lawrenceville.

Free event. Art by Steav Kim, Music by Two Tall Twins. 8p.m.

Dierks Bentley

The Clarks

KEYBANK PAVILION Burgettstown.

With special guests Cole Swindell & Jon Pardi.

All ages show.

Tickets: livenation.com. 7p.m.

STAGE AE North Side.

With special guests Meeting of Important People & Paul Luc. Tickets: ticketmaster.com or 1-800-745-3000.

Doors open at 6:30p.m.

‘Pursuit’ art by Steav Kim

Strip Search 2017:

SMILING MOOSE South Side.

412-431-4668. With special guests Homesafe, Heart Attack Man & Yrs. All ages show. Tickets: ticketfly.com or 1-877-4-FLY-TIX. 6:30p.m.

Sammich Showdown Food Festival

Kenia

21ST AND SMALLMAN STREET Strip District.

Free event. 12p.m.

AGNES KATZ PLAZA Downtown. 412-456-6666.

Free show. 5p.m.

SUNDAY 25

Thursday MR. SMALLS THEATRE Millvale. 412-421-4447. With special guests mewithoutyou & Big Jesus. All ages show.

Tickets: ticketweb.com/opus one. 8p.m.

Allegheny Summer Concert Series: Orkesta Mendoza HARTWOOD ACRES PARK Allison Park. With special

$88

+tax

omer t s u c - n ew al* -

i - spec

Call today to set up your appointment Residential & Commercial Gift Cards Available phone. 412-542-8843 www.littlegreenmaidservices.com

We’re more than just cleaning. * $88 new customer special includes two professional maids, cleaning for a two hour maximum with our environmentally friendly cleaning products.

NEWS

+

* Homes that have 3 or more bedrooms or require a more involved cleaning will fall under the $88 new customer special, or $20 an hour after the first two hours.

MUSIC

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25

MANY CHARACTERS ARE STUCK DEFINING THEMSELVES BY WHAT THEY ARE NOT

[DANCE]

ALTER EGOS

INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

STROKING ITS EGO Thu., June 22Sun., June 25. fireWALL dance theater at Carnegie Stages, 25 W. Main St., Carnegie. $10-20. 724-873-3576 or www.firewalldance.com

26

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

{BY BILL O’DRISCOLL}

[BOOK REVIEW] Elisa-Marie Alaio of fireWALL dance theater {PHOTO COURTESY OF DOUGLAS DUERRING PHOTOGRAPHY}

Elisa-Marie Alaio says she recently returned to Pittsburgh after a brief stint in Los Angeles with a mission: to take full ownership of fireWALL dance theater and bring it to a wider audience. fireWALL was founded in 2013 as the resident dance company of Carnegie’s off the WALL Performing Arts Center. Alaio is its artistic director and choreographer, and a dancer. While she says the company will always perform there, she says she saw the potential for more after touring its last production, Eff.UL.Gents, to New York in November. For the moment, however, Alaio and company continue their relationship with off the WALL by mounting their latest production, Stroking Its Ego, on the center’s Carnegie Stage, with four performances June 22-25.

The hour-long Stroking Its Ego, choreographed

by Alaio, was inspired by the music of Brooklyn-based singersongwriter Allan Rayman. “I discovered his music about a year-and-a-half ago and really connected to it,” says Alaio.

“His words are very poetic, and [the feel] of his music is exactly how I like to dance it.”

The work features eight dancers, two men and six women, including Alaio.

With arrangement help from PJ Roduta, Alaio chose 14 songs from Rayman’s two albums as the work’s soundtrack, as well as providing its loose narrative and emotional arc. Added to that are voicemail recordings from Roduta’s girlfriend, Inga, that act as a thread connecting the work’s three sections, each titled after lyrics in Rayman’s songs. The first section, “Killing My Lonely,” is an exploration of ego and the different sides a person can have. The second, “Pussy Is Power,” is not a feminist manifesto, says Alaio, but rather a celebration of being feminine. The work’s final section, “Welcome to the Circle,” features the dancers sharply dressed and moving through powerfully athletic choreography tied to the music.

Alaio, who has a background in burlesque, says Stroking Its Ego, like fireWALL’s past few productions, will push the boundaries of sensuality and eroticism without being salacious. “I’m a woman and appreciate women’s physiques and like to show that in my works,” says Alaio.

OUTSIDERS

{BY STEVE SUCATO}

Author Geeta Kothari

I

N “HOME Is Another Country on TV,” a story in Geeta Kothari’s solid debut collection, the narrator begins by recalling two 14-year-old girls who committed suicide by laying on railroad tracks. She addresses an unnamed friend:

Their hands were still together, afterwards, and you ask me why, as if I have the answer. I hear the desperation in your voice, and I wonder what exactly you don’t understand, what it is you want me to remember, and why you think that will make you feel better. You were there too, you saw what I saw, and for ten years, we have not talked about it.

And now the decision of two little girls with black hair, brown skin, and parents who speak a labored English, makes you pick up the phone and ask me for answers I do not have.

“Answers I do not have,” questions never asked, questions unanswerable

06.21/06.28.2017

— these constitute a motif in I Brake for Moose and Other Stories, Kothari’s collection recently released on locally based Alleyway Books. Kothari, nonfiction editor of the venerable Kenyon Review and director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Writing Center, offers 11 stories in a brisk 148 pages. Most revolve around either immigrants or first-generation U.S. citizens: people who feel more or less outside the mainstream of North American life.

I BRAKE FOR MOOSE AND OTHER STORIES

BY GEETA KOTHARI Alleyway Books, 148 pages, $16.95

Many characters are stuck defining themselves by what they are not. Maya, in “The Spaces Between Stars,” is a young Indian-American woman, easily overwhelmed, married to blond, omnicompetent Evan; she awkwardly attempts a fishing trip,

won’t go skiing with his family, and takes solace in the company of the auntie who raised her. In “Small Bang Only,” Milo, a refugee from the former Yugoslavia living in New York City, is an unemployed engineer crushed by the departure of his wife, who’s moving on with a career as an interpreter; he draws purpose only from an act of petty terrorism he’s recruited to commit. Meena, in “Foreign Relations,” is a doctor in New England, but her life revolves largely around a stalky obsession with a blond, blueblooded male former colleague who mysteriously quit the hospital. (It’s a romantic comedy in reverse, blended with a meditation on privilege.)

Some aspects of Indian-American life in I Brake for Moose, such as the role of arranged marriages, are by now familiar dramatic material, but Gothari offers amusing twists: When Meena writes to family in India, for instance, she conveniently withholds details about changing seasons because she believes her aunts will be less likely to husband-hunt for her if she lives “in a place where it is winter

[PODCASTS]

MOVING AHEAD {BY MATT PETRAS}

Marta on the Move {PHOTO COURTESY OF ROB LARSON}

all the time.” Gothari also explores such fresh cultural terrain as, in the title story, the deglamorized life of indie-rock-band girlfriends on the road in Maine. “Our job is to wait,” notes the narrator, an IndianAmerican grad-school dropout whose role is complicated when the Indian-American lead singer (who’s not her boyfriend) comes on to her.

Gothari writes in a smooth, straightforward style, and doles out relevant information like diamonds, only as necessary.

She pushes this technique hard in the unsettling “Missing Men,” told from the perspective of an African-born woman who’s working to cover up both her own scandalous past and the arrest of her newspaperpublisher boss in a post-9/11 terror sweep.

In the Trump era, this story about the tenuousness of immigrant life is especially resonant.

A standout, both stylistically and in terms of quality, is “Border Crossing,” in which a woman leaves her husband to visit his mom in Canada: “She knows you’re a jerk, I can tell by the questions she doesn’t ask.” It’s four pages of delightful snap and snark. Gothari also ranges to depict a Canadian kid looking to become a flight attendant as a way out of his small town (“Flight Attendants Take Your Seats”) and a woman trying to get her mother to move in the wake of a deadly virus, against a backdrop of bombings and policestate quarantines (“Waterville”).

While many of these stories end hopefully, there’s also a sense of fate at play, and many, including the bittersweet brothers-and-sisters sketch “Dharma Farm,” conclude on a note of irresolution — so many unanswered questions, some never explicitly asked. In “Her Mother’s Ashes,” Gothari depicts a preschool teacher struggling to tell her American charges a story about her recently deceased mother’s childhood in India, and adds the woven-in saga of a 1,200-pound man that has fascinated the children; the juxtaposition is poetically potent. Similarly so “Home Is Another Country on TV,” where those teenage girls’ double suicide prompts the narrator’s abiding guilt over a sweet, morose Chinese-American kid she knew in college who probably killed himself. During a party, he waited for her on a rooftop; she never went back, but she’s still waiting for answers.

D R ISC OLL@ PGHC ITY PAP ER.CO M

NEWS

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MUSIC

KINETIC

NO HELL

One of Pittsburgh’s more prominent podcasts, Marta on the Move, marks its third anniversary next month. The podcast, produced in her Crafton home by Marta Napoleone Mazzoni, covers anything and everything that interests her, from her trip to Morrocco to the Netflix show Stranger Things. And people listen.

Mazzoni, a sales manager for Aldo’s Food, a wholesale distributor owned by her family, launched Marta on the Move (www.martaon themove.com) in July 2014 in DIY fashion. “I figured it out completely on my own,” says Mazzoni. She had a lot to learn — not just how to be an engaging host and insightful interviewer, but also technical tasks like audio editing. “I just stumbled through it like anyone else would,” she says.

Most episodes feature a guest, and these have included local bigwigs like Bill Peduto, and national celebrities including Alec Baldwin. She says the podcast now receives 1,500 to 2,000 downloads a month.

Mazzoni says she started the podcast in part to revive “the lost art of communication.”

Her approach is conversational. Recently, in the 83rd episode, she sat down with beloved WQED producer Rick Sebak. As she delved into his background, listeners were treated to sides of Sebak they perhaps didn’t expect, as he discussed everything from his favorite cupcake in Pittsburgh to his one-time aspiration to become a cartoonist. The two shared laughs as they talked in her home.

“They’re really off-the-cuff, candid and comedic,” she says of her interviews.

Recently, she did a live show as a part of Move X Create, a local event that encourages creative thinking and includes meditation and yoga. “It was a nice opportunity for adults to take a break from everything they have to do as adults,” Mazzoni says.

Her July 3 episode features Rico Gagliano, co-host of public radio’s nationally broadcast Dinner Party Download. That show is one of two (along with podcast The Nerdist) that initially got her into podcasting. The July 3 episode includes tips for new podcasters; Mazzoni was excited to speak with someone who has left such a mark on her. “That meant a lot to me,” she says.

The enthusiasm she brings to her show is palpable. “I don’t know what you’re getting out of it, but I know what I’m getting out of it,” she says.

THEATRE COMPANY

A Pittsburgh Premiere Jun 16–Jul 2, 2017 New Hazlett Theater, Northside

HELL

Directed by Andrew Paul Starring David Whalen

NO!

Production Sponsor Richard E. Rauh

TH E

C H R I ST I A N S For tickets, call ShowClix at 1.888.718.4253 or visit Kinetic Theatre online at www.kinetictheatre.org

by Lucas Hnath

VERSU

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FOOD F TRUCKS T

MONSTER

TRIKE NIGHT

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{PHOTO COURTESY OF ROCKY RACO}

David Whalen (left) and Joshua Elijah Reese in The Christians, at Kinetic Theatre

[PLAY REVIEWS]

GIVEN SUNDAY {BY BILL O’DRISCOLL}

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06.21/06.28.2017

IN LUCAS HNATH’S exceptional 2014 play The Christians, the pastor of a contemporary megachurch announces that there is no hell. Then all hell breaks loose. Associate pastor Joshua, upset with Pastor Paul’s abrupt declaration that the devil is fake and everyone gets into heaven, quits and forms his own church. Church elders fret.

And then people start questioning Pastor Paul’s motives.

The Christians, getting its Pittsburgh premiere at Kinetic Theatre, is a serious, respectful inquiry into the nature of belief, a question here posed as “Can Christianity survive without hell?” But Hnath tells the story, and frames his characters, so as to draw in nonbelievers too. Pastor Paul is sincere but quite slick, perhaps suspiciously so. Associate Pastor Joshua is the fiery, seemingly unbending traditionalist. Everyone struggles.

In The Christians, Hnath — a rising star lately known for his multiple-Tony nominee A Doll’s House, Part 2 — breaches the wall between characters and audience in a novel way: From Pastor Paul’s full-length opening sermon on, we’re addressed as though we’re parishioners. This includes the characters’ constant use of microphones throughout these intermissionless 90 minutes, even during scenes taking place in private. (Is Hnath suggesting that everything the characters say is “public,” or might as well be? Or is it just that the characters themselves see it that way?)

Kinetic’s production, directed by artistic director Andrew Paul, transforms the New Hazlett into a blandly welcoming

nondenominational sanctuary, complete with three-person choir singing cleverly curated classic hymns. Pittsburgh favorite David Whalen is riveting as Pastor Paul, the would-be theological radical who says that suffering is the distance between people, only to learn that greater proximity is no barrel of monkeys either. Whalen gets outstanding support from Joshua Elijah Reese (as Joshua), Mindy Woodhead, Robert Haley and Gayle Pazerski.

THE CHRISTIANS continues through July 2. Kinetic Theatre at the New Hazlett Theater, 6 Allegheny Square East, North Side. $20-40.

888-718-4253 or www.kinetictheatre.org

Whom does God speak to? And what if he tells two of his conversational partners contrary things? How would having no hell change our idea of heaven? Is heaven a place we should even be able to imagine? And most importantly, why do people believe what they believe? The Christians succeeds both as engrossing entertainment and as food for philosophical thought.

D RI S C OL L @ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM

BUZZ KILL {BY TED HOOVER} YOU CAN’T ACCUSE Sarah Ruhl of a slack

imagination. She’s jammed enough stuff into In the Next Room or the vibrator play (now on stage at Throughline Theatre Company) to power four or five normal plays.

We’re somewhere in the late 19th century, where Dr. Givings has invented a machine to cure women of “hysteria.” Given the sexual weirdness of the time, neither he

nor his patients realize that what the doctor has invented is a vibrator, or that he’s bringing the women to orgasm.

Or try this: In a highly stylized and theatrically charged landscape, a young woman, Catherine, relentlessly rattles the bars of convention, searching for her purpose in the world.

Then there’s this: A Victorian wife and mother is slowly grasping that the reason her marriage is lifeless might be her unexplainable “interest” in other woman. Or you could follow Elizabeth, a black housemaid whose newborn has just died and is coerced into serving as a wet nurse for a wealthy white family. And I haven’t even mentioned a passionate and achingly blocked artist, traveling the world seeking his muse.

There’s chatter about art, science, grief, electricity and, above all, 19th-century women’s sexuality and the way women and men navigated it.

Whatever great intentions Ruhl (and Throughline) have with this 2009 play, it’s all for naught. There’s just too much going on, with Ruhl tilting at every windmill in a 50-mile radius. Instead of focusing on one story — and one style — she runs herself, and us, ragged with her scattershot delivery.

Every character is in a different play, and

it would take a Herculean effort on the part of any director to get each actor working together in the same style. Throughline director Abigail Lis-Perlis doesn’t seem to bother with playing style, or clarity, and leaves a highly disjointed cast fending for itself.

time. Not deep. A bit cheesy. Fun. It’s no surprise that the one-act evolved from a dinner-theater show before hitting it off off-Broadway in 1997. The six characters famous in the American version of the game Clue (Cluedo in its native United Kingdom, where it was developed by Anthony and Elva Pratt in the late 1940s) are fleshed out and in full voice. Relatively speaking. They’re still very two-dimensional, like so many of the inhabitants of whodunits in the intra-war “Golden Age” of mystery fiction.

The musical (book by Peter DePietro; music by Galen Blum, Wayne Barker and Vinnie Martucci; lyrics by Tom Chiodo) doesn’t really have a plot. The eight-person ensemble (nine counting on-stage musical director and pianist Brian Buckley) trots through a series of songs about betrayals, murderous ambitions and other lighthearted entertainments.

The ever-dependable Nathaniel Yost leads the way as host/victim Mr. Boddy.

Then there are the usual suspects, of varying repulsiveness. Tonilyn Longo Jackson, as the sultry Mrs. Peacock, belts out her secret to success, “Once a Widow.” Samantha A. Camp, as housekeeper Mrs. White, embodies a dictionary illustration for the word “slovenly.” Katheryn Hess (Miss Scar-

IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY continues through Sat., June 24.

Throughline Theatre at the Henry Heyman Theatre, 4301 Forbes Ave., Oakland. $15-20. 800-718-4253 or www.throughlinetheatre.org

Moira Quigley’s start as Catherine is a bit rocky, but by evening’s end is powerful and moving. And Ricardo Vila-Roger has the thankless task of playing Dr. Givings, who’s not so much a character as the sketch of one. But Vila-Roger brings a rewarding, forceful conviction.

I N F O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M

KILLING TIME {BY MICHELLE PILECKI} CLUE, AS A GAME, is timeless. Clue: The Musical, produced by the Summer Company and directed by Justin Sines, is a good

let) seems more ingénue than temptress. Of the male guests, Col. Mustard (Rocky Gettel, ladling campiness) exudes unrepentant macho; Mr. Green (Tom Strauman) ditto for slime; and Prof. Plum (Joel Ambrose) is so supercilious he even has a man bun.

Completing the cast, we go beyond the original game for the unnamed Detective.

Sort of a lady version of comedian Arnold Stang, Jill Jeffrey dominates the second part as she trades barbs with suspects and steals the spotlight with stage business. The best part of the evening is her tango with Ambrose, “Seduction Deduction,” as they beguile each other with literary quotations (a ploy actually used by Golden Age author Dorothy L. Sayers — coincidence?).

CLUE: THE MUSICAL continues through Sun., June 25.

The Summer Company at Genesius Theater, Duquesne University, Uptown. $6.50-16.50. www.thesummercompany.com

While Clue: The Musical occasionally lags (the list of weapons becomes an annoying mantra), there are chuckles, bright colors (set by John E. Lane Jr., costumes by Jeffrey) and a prize if you play the game and win.

I N F O@ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM

INNOVATIVE. INTIMATE. 4 0 TH SEASON

“Tingled with raw energy!”

– Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Thru JULY 23 Discover Strauss JULY 20-23

“Takes imaginative flight...ventures into provocative territory...”

Four days of exciting events and the PA premiere of INTERMEZZO

– Pittsburgh Tatler on SONS, on stage thru July 8 only!

“If I loved you...” - Rodgers & Hammerstein Revue Some Enchanted Sunday Evenings!

June 25 & July 2 in the restored barn at Snuggery Farm, Sewickley Heights with gourmet BBQ prior.

Vintage Car Rally on July 2 July 9 & 16 in Shadyside

Experience world-class performances in unique and intimate venues. On tour around Pittsburgh and at Winchester Thurston, Shadyside.

The Three (Counter) Tenors - Fri., June 30 Daphne Alderson sings Leonard Cohen - Thurs., July 13 Mozart by Moonlight - Wed., July 19

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FOR THE WEEK OF

06.22-06.29.17 Full events listed online at www.pghcitypaper.com Warning: If you are someone who likes narratives to make sense, takes things literally, or is otherwise averse to pop surrealism, the June 24 Multiple Choice Event Series might truly drive you insane. Of course, that could be a good thing: Kaiju Big Battel: Multiple Choice Versus, at the August Wilson Center, is headlined by Boston-based performance troupe Studio Kaiju, whose shows are basically professional-wrestling tournaments staged with combatants

who are incredibly silly versions of creatures from classic Japanese monster movies. In a ring strewn with miniature cardboard skyscrapers, people in big funny foam costumes, representing characters like Kung Fu Chicken Noodle, Sky Deviler, Dusto Bunny and Uchu Chu the Space Bug, clobber each other; the story has something to do with an evil mad scientist named Dr. Cube who wants to rule the world. (Kaiju started in the 1990s; it used to be a Boston-only thing, but now it tours.) “Kaiju” means “mysterious beast” in Japanese; one combatant is a giant hamburger with bear limbs. Like we said, don’t try to figure it out.

Multiple Choice is the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust series that on a given Saturday night lets you enjoy one of three recreational options, or any combo thereof. On June 24, you can Kaiju it up, but you can also partake in a party featuring Monster Trike Night, with adult-sized tricycles available for racing around a flat track, against other visitors and against the clock.

The evening’s possibilities also include a fleet of outdoor food vendors. To sum up: If you want to Kaiju, arrive before 8 p.m., and pay $25, then stick around for the other stuff. Or pay $5 and just do Monster Trike Night and food trucks. All options are all-ages.

{ART (DETAIL) BY CAROL SKINGER}

^ Sat., June 24: Carol Skinger

thursday 06.22 ART It’s a big weekend for one of Pittsburgh’s biggest photographers, as Mark Perrott continues his half-century career with not one but two gallery openings. Tonight, Signs, with work by Perrott and Chuck Biddle, opens at Concept Art Gallery, spotlighting old-school movie marquees, steel-mill signage, coastal motels and more. And if you’re up for a road trip, on June 23, Erie Art Museum opens Ancient Ink, Perrott’s solo exhibit that extends his four decades of documenting tattoo parlors, tattoo artists and tattooed people. Ancient Ink focuses on graying and inked baby boomers, with large-scale photos, and interviews, of a World War II-era Navy vet, a retired Cleveland cop, a former steelworker and more. Bill O’Driscoll Signs reception: 6-8 p.m.; exhibit continues through Aug. 26 (1031 S. Braddock Ave., Edgewood; free; www.conceptgallery.com). Ancient Ink: Exhibit continues through Jan. 28 (411 State St., Erie, Pa.; 814-459-5477 or www.erieartmuseum.org)

BY BILL O’DRISCOLL

Story to White Whale Bookstore. “In the face of virulent anti-Islam discourse, Moghul treats Islam as a source of personal redemption and as a force for good in the world,” wrote Ausma Zehanat Khan in a glowing review for The Washington Post. Moghul, the son of immigrants, has contributed to outlets including CNN and The Guardian.

Matt Petras 7 p.m. 4754 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. Free.

412-224-2847 or www.whitewhalebookstore.com

friday 06.23 FESTIVAL Monster fans rejoice — the Monster Bash returns to Mars’ DoubleTree Hotel for its 20th convention. This three-day event is packed with guests who have had a big impact on classic monster films and television shows. For instance: Ricou Browning, now 87, the original gill-man during the underwater scenes from 1954’s The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

There are movie screenings and a slew of vendors.

MP 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Also 8 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Sat., June 24, and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun., June 25. 1 Bigelow Square, Mars. $20-55. 724-238-4317 or www.monsterbashnews.com

WORDS 8 p.m. Sat., June 24. 980 Liberty Ave., Downtown. $5-25. 412-456-6666 or www.trustarts.org

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

Haroon Moghul, a writer and public figure, brings the tour for his nonfiction book How to Be a Muslim: An American

06.21/06.28.2017

^ Tue., June 27: Margo Jefferson

it’s gonna be a

Cantastic r e Syouurmfavm orite Belgian beers, Now in Cans

!

^ Sat., June 25: yART Sale

COMEDY Colin Quinn knows why the country used to feel less divided. “Arizona and New York didn’t know each other. The internet got invented, and, ‘Oh, my god, there’s states like that?’” Quinn, late of Saturday Night Live and Comedy Central’s Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn, tops the bill at this year’s DVE Comedy Festival. Also performing tonight at this Byham Theater showcase are Kevin Brennan, Robert Kelly, Rachel Feinstein and hometown kid Bill Crawford. BO 8 p.m. 101 Sixth St., Downtown. $56. www.trustarts.org

saturday 06.24 ART Looking at Fox Chapel-based Carol Skinger’s artwork, you may start to see some familiar sites. While her watercolor and gouache paintings often employ an abstract style, many depict landmarks from places like Squirrel Hill and Sewickley. A new solo {ART BY MARK PERROTT} ^ Fri., June 23: Ancient Ink show, at Cooper Siegel Library, includes 40 paintings; Skinger will attend today’s opening reception. MP 2-5 p.m. Exhibit continues through Nov. 8. 403 Fox Chapel Road, Fox Chapel. Free. 412-828-9520 or www.coopersiegelcommunitylibrary.org

ART In October, Silver Eye Center for Photography shuttered its longtime home on the South Side; save one off-site exhibition, we haven’t heard much from the group since. That’s because it’s been busy preparing its sleek new home in the Penn Avenue arts corridor. Tonight, Silver Eye holds its (re)Opening Celebration, complete with refreshments, a photo booth and dancing. (VIP tickets are sold out.) The event doubles as a preview for the space’s inaugural exhibit: Past Present Future: Western Pennsylvania’s People and Places, a showcase of landscapes and CONTINUES ON PG. 32

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SHORT LIST, CONTINUED FROM PG. 31

EVERYONE IS A CRITIC

^ Sun., June 25: OpenStreetsPGH

EVENT:

“SUPER. NATURAL.” glass-art exhibition at Phipps Conservatory, Oakland

David Blaine is set to perform a new trick, his greatest yet: touring North America. The famed magician and endurance artist comes to the Byham Theater on his 40-city tour. No two shows are said to be the same, so audiences can expect something unique. Blaine is known for everything from head-turning illusions with playing cards to feats like being buried alive for days, and holding his breath for more than 17 minutes. MP 8 p.m. 101 Sixth St., Downtown. $39.50-75 (VIP tickets available). 412-471-6070 or www.trustarts.org

sunday 06.25 OUTDOORS

Debra Francis, 55, a banker from Franklin WHEN:

Tue., June 13

This is my first time [at Phipps Conservatory]. We came to Pittsburgh to see the Hall and Oates concert, so I decided that we would come here first and spend the afternoon and then go to the concert. A friend of mine that I work with said she came here on Mother’s Day and was going on about it. [The “SUPER. NATURAL.” sculptures] are extravagant — they’re just, they’re beautiful. They look like real flowers, you can hardly tell that they’re just glass. There was one that I took a picture of and it’s actually red, and then it looks like there are some blooms that have been popped open. Really pretty. You never see anything like this. Especially where I’m from. I’m from Franklin, so we don’t get to experience things like this often.

B Y M ATT P ETRAS

PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

People have been merrily biking the Great Allegheny Passage, or sections of it, for years now. If you’re not among them, today’s GAP Bike and Lunch is a good excuse to try out the scenic, 150-mile path that runs from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Md. Join Venture Outdoors in Boston, Pa., a Youghiogheny River town a few miles from McKeesport, for a 30-miles-total out-and-back ride, followed by lunch at a local restaurant. The minimum age is 12. BO 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Boston, Pa. $29. www.ventureoutdoors.org

tuesday 06.27 WORDS Margo Jefferson is a former Newsweek associate editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for the New York Times.

But lately, she’s better known as author of Negroland, her 2015 memoir about growing up as part of Chicago’s black social elite.

The book, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, was widely hailed for its insights into race and privilege in America. Jefferson, who’s based in New York, visits City of Asylum tonight to read from Negroland at Alphabet City. The event is free, but registration is suggested.

BO 8 p.m. 40 W. North Ave., North Side. Free. 412-435-1110 or www.alphabetcity.org

OUTDOORS A distinct pleasure of last summer was the quiet, unhurried view of Downtown from the West End Bridge made possible by OpenStreetsPGH. Once again today, the event’s City of Bridges Route closes streets to car traffic for three miles, from Market Square and through the North Side to the West End. Bring your bike, skates or walking shoes, and look for free fitness classes, arts activities and more along the way on the Bike Pittsburgh event. BO 9 a.m.1 p.m. Free. www.openstreetspgh.org

wednesday 06.28 COMEDY

ART Not a yard sale, and not an art sale: This is a yART Sale. This event, held on the lawn of Pittsburgh Center for Arts, features more than 70 local artists selling a wide variety of items: “pottery, photographs, jewelry, fabric, glass, paintings, and more!” There will also be food trucks, like PGH Crepes and Stickler’s, as well as handson activities for children, like screen-printing hosted

by Conor McGrann, for which kids should bring their own T-shirt or tote. MP 6300 Fifth Ave., Shadyside. Free.

412-361-0873 or www.center.pfpca.org

06.21/06.28.2017

> Wed., June 28: Doug Stanhope

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portraits of the region spanning a century from more than 40 artists, from icons like W. Eugene Smith, Esther Bubley and Duane Michals to contemporary artists. BO General admission: 8-11 p.m. 4808 Penn Ave., Bloomfield. $25. 412-431-1810 or www.silvereyecenter.org

Doug Stanhope describes his fan base as “school shooters who didn’t have bullets”; he recently told The Daily Beast that he’s “more of an outlet than a comic.” So if you’re a fan, you probably already know that Stanhope’s at the Pittsburgh Improv tonight.

If you’re not — but you’re ready for a comedian who’s as proudly vulgar as he is wickedly smart — here’s a good chance to check out this gravel-voiced, drinkin’ and smokin’ cult favorite, who’s as good a socialcommentary ranter as anyone in the business. BO 8 p.m.

166 E. Bridge St., West Homestead. $35. 412-462-5233 or www.pittsburgh.improv.com

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GOOD INGREDIENTS IN TASTY COMBINATIONS AND LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

KAFFEE TALK {BY BILL O’DRISCOLL} Kaffeehaus Café held its grand opening June 10, and it was an auspicious start.

The corner coffeehouse in Deutschtown was “just bombed” with customers, says Tammy Waraks, co-owner with her husband, Chris. The Spring Hill couple — he’s in real-estate development — “really did this for the community,” she says.

The modestly sized café, located inside a former barbershop across the street from Deutschtown’s firehouse, has a few tables, a patio and its own small parking lot. Slats from vintage wooden cherry crates tile one wall. Tammy Waraks and her son, Chris, staff the counter.

“I love to cook,” says Tammy Waraks, who makes everything from the chicken-salad sandwiches to pecan-pie muffins and single-serving cherry pies on-site. Chris handles beverages sourced from Allegheny Coffee & Tea Exchange, including a specialty: nitro coffee and tea, cold-brewed for 20 hours and served on tap, with a creamy head.

Kaffeehaus is open 6 a.m.-2 p.m.

Tuesday through Friday, and 8 a.m.2 p.m. on Saturday. While the few blocks surrounding the café (which sits just east of I-279) have their share of vacant and run-down buildings, customers seem undeterred. Even the second official day of business saw a steady stream of morning visitors. One was Lana Shaftic, a counselor at nearby Schiller Elementary School. “I come by [this corner] all the time. I was like, ‘I’ll stop by today,’” she says. “I’ll spread the word.”

{CP PHOTO BY VANESSA SONG}

Little Ray’s Fat Burger with bacon, American cheese, fried egg, crispy potatoes, lettuce, tomato and Thousand Island dressing

CAFÉ STOP

DRISCOLL@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

{BY ANGELIQUE BAMBERG + JASON ROTH}

1022 Chestnut St., North Side.

412-720-2051

F

the

FEED

The reality of a weekly ly CSA box: What can I make with these random items piling up in my fridge? Onions, ons, potatoes, fennel — and soon, so many peppers, ers, squash and tomatoes. es.

Soup is always a cheat, at, but it’s summer, so fire up the grill for veggie kebabs. abs.

Skewer everything g and grill. (Harder veggies can an be parboiled or half-baked first.)

Season as you cook — dry spices or a sauce. Throw it over rice and it’s a meal.

ROM A popular place to buy specialty foods, the Strip District logically evolved into a popular place to eat them. Lunchtime options run the gamut from humble pizzerias, street vendors and inexpensive international options to full-service foodie destinations.

But if you’re in the Strip in the morning?

Breakfast has always been the province of diners, those traditional bastions of belly-busting griddled farm food and bottomless cups of coffee.

Until, in a tiny storefront carved out of what used to be Alioto’s Produce, a little bakery opened and then added some breakfast service. It was eventually supplanted by Café Raymond, a fully fledged source for take-out or sit-down breakfast and lunch. With counter ordering and table service, Café Raymond was, and is, suited

to the Strip’s casual vibe and crowded weekend scene. But with items such as croissants and field-greens salads, it fills a different niche than your favorite greasy spoon. Raymond’s signature dish is its blueberry-ricotta pancakes, always offered alongside specials so tempting, they make decision-making difficult.

CAFÉ RAYMOND 2009 Penn Ave., Strip District.

412-281-4670 HOURS: Tue.-Sat. 8 a.m.-3 p.m.; Sun. 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m.

PRICES: $7-11 LIQUOR: None

CP APPROVED About a year ago, Raymond moved down the street into a brand-new building

that had sat empty for years before finding a suitable tenant. It could hardly be a better fit for the café: The interior, while still cozy, finally has some elbow room, and an upper-story balcony forms a roof over sidewalk tables which, while still pressed by shoppers, at least can accommodate a few more plates than before.

The fare remains the same, but the wall-mounted menu has stretched to fit the bigger wall. Breakfast is still a halfdozen plates and eight sandwiches, but burgers, previously a Thursday specialty, are now offered every day. There’s one simple burger option and nine fancy ones, including one with coffee-crusted bacon and a rather astonishing burger topped with bacon, egg, potatoes, and Thousand Island dressing. Jason was enticed by the bistro burger, topped with, CONTINUES ON PG. 34

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CAFÉ STOP, CONTINUED FROM PG. 33

Destination

412-252-2877 Check us out @ frontporchgrille.com

yes, bacon and red-wine-braised onions, plus garlic aioli and spinach. The onions were the heroes of this concoction. Rich and slightly sweet, their flavor was pervasive without hiding the tasty aioli, nicely complementing the spinach.

Angelique indulges in a pastrami sandwich perhaps once a year, so she was gratified when the one she ordered at Café Raymond was really, really good. The stack of juicy sliced meat was thick, but not ridiculously so, allowing the toasted rye, melted Swiss, field greens, tomato, onion and grain mustard all to contribute their wonderful, well-balanced flavors and textures to the absolute and utter pleasure that was this sandwich.

Both the burger and the pastrami came with deeply browned roasted potatoes in big chunks, well seasoned with cracked pepper and a hint of rosemary. The inside of the potatoes was properly fluffy, but the crust was a tad tough, perhaps due to our arrival shortly before closing time. They were still pretty great.

Back to breakfast. Raymond offers eight different breakfast sandwiches (most on croissants), but on the sweet side, just two options (other than pastry): French toast, and the popular blueberry-ricotta pancakes. The French toast was made from house-made challah — in our opinion the best bread for the job — and slathered with a strawberry compote and whipped cream.

The visual was spectacular, but the texture fell short. The thick slices of challah were so thoroughly saturated with batter as to be soggy inside, as if undercooked, and even the outer areas lacked the lightly crisped edges that set French toast apart from mere pancakes. The compote was brilliant, however. Angelique, in particular, has always favored gilding her French toast with jam or preserves rather than syrup, and in this regard, Café Raymond played directly to her desires.

Raymond’s blueberry-ricotta pancakes must have their devotees to retain top billing on the menu, but we found them in need of improvement. While they were thick, suggesting plenty of rise, the ricotta seemed present in pockets rather than being integrated into the batter, causing portions of the cakes to be heavy and wet. Its flavor brought on divided opinions at the table: Those who aren’t fond of ricotta found it too forward, while ricotta-lovers hardly noticed it. But everyone agreed that the blueberries were scanty.

Even if the Café Raymond’s hallmark breakfast treat failed to live up to the hype, our sandwiches left no doubts as to this establishment’s strengths: good ingredients in tasty combinations and location, location, location.

INF O @PGH C IT YPAPE R . C O M

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06.21/06.28.2017

[PERSONAL CHEF]

NEW ORLEANS BBQ SHRIMP {BY TALLULAH E. POODLE, CHEF OF TALLULAH’S POP-UP AT SONNY’S TAVERN} You will no doubt notice that there is no grill or barbeque sauce involved in making this “barbeque shrimp.” Like many things in New Orleans, it’s a bit of a mystery how this iconic dish got its name. We do know that the chef at Pascal’s Manale, in NOLA, invented the dish in 1953. Today, it is served all over. This is my version — a go-to preparation when a friend or family member would pay a visit with a sack ack of fresh shrimp caught that day. y.

INGREDIENTS • 2 pounds head-on, wild-caught Gulf shrimp (less flavorful made with headless shrimp and don’t use peeled shrimp) • 1-1½ sticks good butter • About ¼ cup spice mix comprised of 3 tbsp. paprika, 1 tbsp. garlic powder, 1 tbsp. onion powder, 1 tbsp. oregano, big pinches of thyme and basil, ½ tsp. orange peel, and as much cayenne, salt, black pepper, white pepper and bay leaf as you like.

• A few dashes Worcestershire sauce • A few dashes Louisiana hot sauce • ¼ of an orange • 3 lemons INSTRUCTIONS Melt the butter over medium-high heat in a cast iron or other heavy-bottomed pot that will hold all the shrimp. When butter is nice and foamy, stir in half or more of the spice mix; for a very intense sauce, use all of it. Cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly, until it becomes fragrant (careful not to burn!). Add in the Worcestershire and hot sauces. Squeeze in orange juice and the juice of half a lemon. Turn the heat to high, and throw the shrimp in all together. Stir immediately to coat them in seasoned butter; then stir about once every minute until just pink and cooked through, about 5-7 minutes. Do not overcook. Remove from heat; shrimp will keep cooking in residual heat. Squirt all over with the juice of one lemon. Serve over grits or with French bread and lemon wedges. To make a meal, add a simple green salad. Don’t forget to suck the good juices from shrimp heads and enjoy plenty of ice-cold beer alongside. Serves two very hungry or four moderately hungry people.

INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM

Tallulah’s Pop-up is open 7 p.m.- 12:30 a.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and 8 p.m.-1:30 a.m. Fridays at Sonny’s Tavern, 630 S. Millvale Ave., Bloomfield. Catering also provided. www.tallulahsnola.com.

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MEXICAN RESTAURANT & BAR

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FRIDAY, JUNE 23RD LIVE MUSIC

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{CP PHOTO BY KRISTA JOHNSON} N}

Craig Mrusek demonstrates the importance of the garnish. h

[ON THE ROCKS]

THE IMPORTANCE OF GARNISH “Always assume that the customer may eat the garnish” {BY CELINE ROBERTS} “COCKTAILS ARE a perishable, in-the-mo-

ment thing,” says Craig Mrusek, bartender at Station and cocktail writer (pen name Dr. Bamboo) for Bachelor Pad Magazine.

Bar visits with Craig (you may have seen him behind a number of bars, including Verde and Tender) are a lesson in attention to detail; not only to what’s in the glass but what’s on top of it. Garnish is one of the first things meant to draw the customer’s attention. It’s a highlight of the experience, providing a little panache. Mrusek believes that these last little moments of care in placing the garnish can be the key to a great drinking experience. In terms of time spent, he says, “The rewards far outweigh the efforts.”

There are three reasons to garnish a drink: visual appeal, aromatics and, potentially, as an edible endof-drink treat. Firstly and most obviously, garnish can really boost the eye-candy aspect of a well-made cocktail. Mrusek, who’s also an illustrator, tries to balance the color, spacing and proportion when choosing garnishing components. He opts for contrasting and complementary colors over monochrome, and often takes a more aesthetic approach to the placement of elements. He does admit that proportion goes right out the window when it comes to tiki. “You can put a party store on a tiki drink,” he says.

Aromatics are also important. This is the reason bartenders smack mint between

their hands (please stop yelling “smack that” at them) and rub lemon peel over the rim of the glass. These techniques release oil, allowing the garnish to express and add another component. Much of flavor expression is based on what people can smell (try holding your nose next time you eat something). And the way humans process smell is strongly linked to our amygdala and hippocampus, two brain areas that process emotion and memory. This makes smell a powerful tool in the kit of any bartender.

Finally, there’s the fact that garnish can be delicious. “Always assume that the customer may eat the garnish,” says Mrusek.

Feel free to crunch into that cucumber wheel. So help me, I will dig that Luxardo cherry out of the bottom of my glass.

Conversely, a wilted, unbalanced or subpar garnish can tarnish a drink as much as it might have helped it. “If you’re willing to put something on there that doesn’t look good, to me that says you don’t care,” says Mrusek, “If I’m someone who’s coming into a bar willing to pay 10, 11, 12 dollars for a drink, the garnish better be spot-on.” He does, however, make exceptions. He acknowledges that much of the time, customers completely disregard the garnish, and that each person has specific preferences. Environment also matters. “If you’re working at some bananas volume bar on Carson Street, I don’t expect you to do that,” he says, laughing.

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BOOZE BATTLES {BY CELINE ROBERTS}

Each week, we order the same cocktail at two different bars for a friendly head-to-head battle.

Go to the bars, taste both drinks and tell us what you like about each by tagging @pghcitypaper on Twitter or Instagram and use #CPBoozeBattles. If you want to be a part of Booze Battles, send an email to food-and-beverage writer Celine Roberts, at celine@pghcitypaper.com.

THE DRINK: RUM: DAY AND NIGHT

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Maggie’s Farm Rum Distillery

DiAnoia’s Eatery

3212A Smallman St., Strip District

2549 Penn Ave., Strip District

DRINK: Eric Stratton INGREDIENTS: Maggie’s Farm white rum, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, basil, cucumber syrup, soda and cucumber garnish OUR TAKE: For a daytime refresher, sipping this rum cocktail is like a stroll through a verdant garden. Cucumber and basil provide heavy vegetal notes as well as heady aromatics. Lemon juice brings a bright lift to the mix, complemented by the bubbles from the soda.

DRINK: Smallman Jabroni INGREDIENTS: Maggie’s Farm La Revuelta Rum, Campari, Punt e Mes vermouth, cold-brew coffee, orange peel OUR TAKE: This rum cocktail hits all the after-dinner notes squarely. Campari helps to soothe the stomach, while coffee gives you a second wind for the rest of the night.

A good balance of the vermouth, rum and coffee creates strong cocoa notes, with a touch of bitterness that lingers on the palate.

Check out our

Animal Issue

Learn more about Pittsburgh’s food scene on our podcasts Sound Bite and Five Minutes in Food History online at www.pghcitypaper.com.

coming out June 28th!

Presented by:

One Bordeaux, One Scotch, One Beer Hazedelic Juice Grenade New England Style IPA, Grist House Craft Brewery $6/pint “It hits on so many cylinders right now, because it’s warm and this is a very seasonal beer. The haziness and light citrus are perfect to complement the weather.”

RECOMMENDED BY SARAH, BARTENDER AT GRIST HOUSE

Hazedelic Juice Grenade is available on draft at Grist House Craft Brewery, in Millvale.

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

06.21/06.28.2017

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

“IT KINDA TAKES YOUR BREATH AWAY.”

{BY AL HOFF} The gulf between the affluent and the ordinary, the careless and the careful, the destroyers and the nurturers, gets a run through the wringer in one comically tense dinner party, in Miguel Arteta’s social critique Beatriz at Dinner.

Salma Hayek as Beatriz

In Los Angeles, Beatriz (Salam Hayek) works as an holistic massage therapist at a cancer clinic; she’s a spiritual, empathic soul, keenly attuned to the suffering of people and animals. Her car breaks down on a side job — providing a pre-party massage for Cathy (Connie Britton) at her oceanside mansion — and Cathy invites her to stay. The other guests include Cathy’s uptight husband (David Warshofsky); an up-and-coming business couple (Jay Duplass and Chloë Sevigny); and the internationally famous real-estate developer Doug Strutt (John Lithgow) and his third wife (Amy Landecker).

Strutt is a braying ass, and everybody cheerfully goes along with his mildly offensive behavior. But Beatriz pushes back, querying Strutt about his projects and their impacts on people and environments, and sensing — in her woo-woo way — that he is a familiar malevolent force. (“I know you,” she tells him, while struggling to articulate how.) The booze continues to flow, Cathy’s attempts to smooth over the awkwardness get strained, and Strutt purposefully provokes Beatriz, taking her disdain for proof of his superiority.

The film is written by Mike White, who collaborated with Arteta on Chuck and Buck and The Good Girl, and it bears the hallmark of his unique cringe-y wit. Strutt reads a list of joke titles for his autobiography — “Life Is a Game and Guess Who Won,” “Get Out of My Way, Asshole” — and everybody laughs because they are actually true.

Beatrix is enjoyable in its manner — the actors are great, and it’s fun watching the characters’ “polite” masks slip. Yet, it feels obvious — too simply good vs. evil, without any shades of gray — and not as provocative as it wants to be. (White’s HBO series Enlightened tackled similar themes and offered wonderfully complicated characters.) And tonally, Beatrix is slightly off: The sharpness of the satire is undercut by a strident and eventually defeating earnestness. Starts Wed., June 28. Manor

Diving right in: Kate (Claire Holt) and Lisa (Mandy Moore)

SHARK WEAK {BY AL HOFF}

J

UST WHEN you thought it was

safe to go back in the water … here comes Johannes Roberts’ watery-peril thriller 47 Meters Down.

In it, two sisters are vacationing in Mexico. Kate (Claire Holt) is lively and fun; Lisa (Mandy Moore) is bummed, having just been dumped by her boyfriend for being boring. At a bar, they meet a couple of cute local dudes, who suggest an excursion on their buddy’s boat, which has a submersible shark cage.

Kate and Lisa make the obviously bad decision to board the sketchy-looking Sea Esta, suit up in scuba gear and climb into the rusty shark cage. (Best rationalization Kate offers Lisa: “Think of the photos.”)

The cage is lowered 5 meters into the sea; it’s all fun and fish, and one gal enthuses: “It kinda takes your breath away.” (Some foreshadowing just swam by.)

Then the cable breaks, and the cage and the shrieking women in it plunge to

the ocean floor, 47 meters down. (For those who can’t metric: 47 meters is 51 yards, or half the length of a football field.) This is a crisis of multiple anxieties: in a cage … deep underwater … running out of air … sharks nearby. (It had me recalling the Irwin Allen classic Airport ’77: hijackers seize a 747 … crashes in the Bermuda Triangle … sinks to ocean floor … Olivia de Havilland and other aging stars running out of air …)

47 METERS DOWN DIRECTED BY: Johannes Roberts STARRING: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Matthew Modine

In their cage, the ladies freak out, calm down, solve some problems, freak out some more, talk about relationships (yes, really) and so on. Roberts does a pretty good job of making this watch-

able, when you consider the cinematic drawbacks of murky water, two actors wearing masks, and a gimmicky, predictable set-up.

Because as soon as the action drops, thinking folk are back to pooh-poohing this film’s plot-happy disregard for basic knowledge about marine biology, physics and how life is at 47 meters below the surface. (Nobody mentions how much colder the water is.) Gigantic sharks come out of nowhere — boom! They take a nibble on a human, then disappear, like expensive guest stars who can’t be in every scene.

But look, this isn’t “Sharks Do Shakespeare.” The film does deliver tension (double this if you are claustrophobic); a couple of legit scares; some light grossout material; Chekhov’s spear gun; and a final reel you can talk about. It’s summer, and if seeing a kinda-dumb shark-freakout movie sounds good, then book this 90-minute cheapie cruise.

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day and Sunday have highlighted Made in PA programs. The opening-night feature film is A Fancy Piece of Homicide (7:30 p.m. Fri., June 23), a noirish thriller from local filmmaker Joseph Varhola; it stars Bingo O’Malley as a retired detective attempting to sort out a mysterious episode from his past. June 23-25. Father Ryan Arts Center, 420 Chartiers Ave., McKees Rocks. Passes $10-20. www.pghindie.com

FILM CAPSULES CP

= CITY PAPER APPROVED

NEW BABY DRIVER. Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) directs this crime thriller about a heist that goes badly. Ansel Elgort, Lily James and Jon Hamm star. Starts Wed., June 28

TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING, JULIE NEWMAR. Three drag queens (Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo) get standed on a cross-country trip when their car breaks down. Beeban Kidron directs this 1995 comedy. This is a Wiggtrax Live Riff screening. 10 p.m.

Fri., June 23. Row House Cinema

MONTEREY POP. Woodstock gets all the press and nostalgia, but this three-day 1967 music festival, held in Monterey, Calif., was just as defining, culturally and musically. The Monterey International Pop Festival offered a diverse lineup, with performers representing pop, folk, soul, rock and world music. Among the acts: The Who, The Byrds, Ravi Shankar, Hugh Masekela, Simon and Garfunkel, The Mamas and the Papas, and, in powerful performances that jump-started their careers, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. (Fun moment: Mama Cass Elliott in the audience, jaw-dropped as Joplin wails it out.) Also significant for the time: The concert was filmed, by documentarian D.A. Pennebaker. The success of the film paved the way for later cinematic concert documentaries such as Woodstock and Gimme Shelter (capturing the disastrous music festival at Altamont). The newly restored film is back in theaters for its 50th anniversary. Starts Fri., June 23. Harris ROUGH NIGHT. Here’s the thing about Rough Night, the new girls’-weekend-turns-into-ahide-the-body-of-the-dead-alleged-sex-worker film, from director Lucia Aniello (mostly known as a writer/producer/director of Comedy Central’s Broad City): It’s not horrible. It’s an OK raunchy, unapologetically R-rated comedy that provides a few good belly laughs.

Such films arrive every summer to watch in between super-hero films. But with this cast of comedic heavyweights — Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Kate McKinnon, Zoe Kravitz and Ilana Glazer — Rough Night could have been Superbad, but instead ends up as The Night Before. There just isn’t much for these fine actors to do, though Bell and, especially, McKinnon actually save it from being truly horrific.

This movie should be piss-your-pants funny.

Instead, my pants are dry and I had a low-tomoderate good time. (Charlie Deitch) TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT. Giant car-like robots fight each other in Michael Bay’s actioner — something about the “hidden history of Transformers on Earth.” Mark Wahlberg stars; Anthony Hopkins and Stanley Tucci also stop by. In 3-D, in select theaters

REPERTORY DOLLAR BANK CINEMA IN THE PARK. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Wed., June 21 (Schenley: Flagstaff Hill), and Fri., June 24 (Riverview). The LEGO Batman Movie, Thu., June 22 (Brookline); Fri., June 23 (Arsenal); and Sat., June 24 (Grandview).

The Jungle Book, Sun., June 25 (Schenley Plaza); Tue., June 27 (West End/Elliott Overlook); and Thu., June 29 (Brookline). Airlift, Wed., June 28 (Schenley Park: Flagstaff Hill).

Films begin at dusk. Free. 412-255-2493 or www.citiparks.net THE FITS. Anna Rose Holmer’s debut feature is a coming-of-age story unlike most.

For starters, it zeroes in on girls, and AfricanAmerican girls at that. It eschews conventional plotting and dialogue for an almost dreamlike examination of one girl’s uneasy transition

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH. In this 2001 film, director John Cameron Mitchell stars as Hedwig, a transsexual rock performer who relates her story of a failed relationship, and of the ex-lover who stole her songs. June 23-29. Row House Cinema

The Fits

THE BIRDCAGE. Robin Williams and Nathan Lane star in this 1996 comedy, directed by Mike Nichols, about an older gay couple who pretend to be straight in front of their son’s fiancée’s conservative family. June 23-29. Row House Cinema FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES. Toshio Matsumato’s stylish black-and-white 1969 film loosely re-sets Oedipus Rex among the demimonde of Tokyo’s gay and drag-queen scenes. In Japanese, with subtitles.

June 23-29. Row House Cinema JAWS. Steven Spielberg’s aqua-thriller terrified beach-goers in the summer of 1975, when it unspooled the tale of a great white shark eating swimmers along the Atlantic seaboard. Richard Dreyfus, Robert Shaw and Roy Schneider hit the waves to capture the man-eater: They’re gonna need a bigger boat, and you should see this on a bigger screen. It’s still lots of scary fun. Starts Fri., June 23 (Hollywood). Also: 7:30 p.m. Wed., June 28 (AMC Loews Waterfront). (AH)

CP

Rough Night

A Fancy Piece of Homicide, at Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival

from tomboy to adolescent woman.

Eleven-year-old Toni (Royalty Hightower) spends her free time at the community center, where her older brother leads her through boxing training. (The film was shot at the Lincoln Community Center, in Cincinnati’s West End.) Then Toni becomes entranced by a drill-dance squad practicing down the hall, and joins the team of teenage girls.

Soon after, members of the dance crew suffer “fits” — episodes of shaking and fainting — which become the source of speculation among the girls: Is it the center’s water, the intensity of the dancing, or some sort of psychosomatic viral trend (one girl posits it might be a “boyfriend disease”). Meanwhile, Toni struggles to find a balance between the easy athletic-oriented camaraderie of the boys and the fraught, intense relationships of the girls; she flirts with “girl” things like ear piercings and giggling episodes of dress-up.

The film — just 70 minutes — is provocative and even haunting in its presentation. There is very little dialogue — the first third of the film has almost none — and like the old Peanuts TV cartoons, there are virtually no adults (and when there are, we only hear their muted voices). The building — and its empty halls and rooms which Toni roams — is its own character: Which room holds the future? And Holmer films Toni engaged in trance-like behaviors that speak to those disorienting years between childhood and adolescence.

The film will be too oblique and open-ended for those who like tales to be direct and tidy; the meta-

phor of the fits themselves is fairly fluid, though I read them easily enough as markers of both transition and a desire to belong. There is bittersweetness and joy in Toni’s journey, navigating uneasily from Team Boy to Team Girl. Life in Team Girl has its terrible costs and compromises for a bright, selfassured tomboy, but also offers meaningful rewards like friendship and shared emotional experiences.

Through Sat., June 24. Harris (Al Hoff)

06.21/06.28.2017

THE GOONIES. A treasure map! A spooky cave!

A group of kids embark on an adventure in this 1985 comedy from Richard Donner. 7:30 p.m. Wed., June 21. AMC Loews Waterfront. $5 THE PITTSBURGH KID. The Lawrenceville Historical Society presents this 1941 boxing melodrama, directed by Jack Townley, and starring Billy Conn, the pugilist from Pittsburgh. A 20-minute highlight reel of Conn’s 1941 championship bout with Joe Louis will also be screened. A panel of experts — Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports writer; Tim Conn, Billy Conn’s son; Conn biographer Paul F. Kennedy; and Bucky Palermo, Golden Gloves champ and wrestling/boxing referee — will be on hand to provide commentary. 7 p.m. Fri., June 23. Row House Cinema. $15 (tickets at bit.ly/billybilly) PITTSBURGH INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL. The annual Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival offers three days new films — 59 selections in all, mostly short narrative and documentary works. Both Satur-

PURPLE RAIN. If you’ve never seen this deliriously demented autobiographical vanity production about the Rise of Prince on the big screen, consider making a date for the Hollywood’s eighth annual Purple Rain movie party. All his purple majesty’s highlights — riding his motorcycle, pitching a hissy fit, bleating out the title song and getting upstaged

by Morris Day, deserve to be writ large. And after Prince’s untimely death last year, it’s apt to be laughter tinged with tears. Albert Magnoli directs this 1984 cheese-o-classic. For the festivities, there will be Prince-related artwork on display, Prince-inspired concessions, and assorted merchandise. Dress for fabulousness, ’cause baby, you’re a star. 8 p.m. (door at 7 p.m.) Sat., June 24. Hollywood PINK FLAMINGOS. It’s been decades since its outrageous debut, but there’s still squirms left in John Waters’ 1972 hilarious homage to/send-up of the filthiest people on the planet (or, minimally, the greater Baltimore area). Some shocks have paled or been chitchatted to death; others remain jaw-dropping. How actually funny the film is probably depends more on your taste for shock humor. One delight amidst all the flat “acting” is Divine, whose believable character seems so genuine, both in outrageousness and warmth. This film rests in great part on her ample form. June 24-29 Row House Cinema (AH) THE KILLERS. Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner star in Robert Siodmak’s broody, dramatically shot 1946 crime pic, adapted from Ernest Hemingway’s short story, about a double-crossing hoodlum waiting for his killers. As part of the Noir Night Out event, chili (veggie option), beer, grilled hot dogs and assorted fixings will be available outside the theater. Ticket ($15) includes film, food and two beverages (beer from Church Brew Works, or soft drinks). 7 p.m. (doors at 6 p.m.) Sun., June 25. Hollywood

“WE HAVE PLAYED ABOVE EVERYBODY’S EXPECTATION OF US.”

HISTORY LESSONS This week in Pittsburgh Sports History {BY CHARLIE DEITCH} A look back at events that you’ve either forgotten about or never heard of in the first place.

JUNE 22, 1908 The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Honus Wagner notches his 2,000th hit at Exposition Park, against Cincinnati.

JUNE 22, 1984 After losing a reported $10 million in their first and only season, the Pittsburgh Maulers play their last game in the USFL, shuttering the franchise thereafter.

JUNE 23, 1919 In a rematch two years in the making, welterweight fighter “The Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb earns a 10-round “newspaper decision” over opponent Mike Gibbons. A newspaper decision occurred if a fight was ruled a “no decision.” The sportswriters in attendance would come to a consensus on a winner and print the decision in their papers the next day. {CP PHOTOS BY BEN POPE}

JUNE 23, 2004 President George W. Bush gives the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Latrobe-based golfer Arnold Palmer.

“For all who love the game of golf, and for those who love to see it played, there has never been a sight in the game quite like Arnold Palmer walking down the fairway toward the 18th green,” Bush said at the ceremony.

JUNE 24, 1933 Just two months past his 21st birthday, in a game against the Dodgers, Pirates shortstop Arky Vaughan becomes the youngest player to hit for the cycle.

JUNE 24, 1999 Just two years after he retires as a player, Mario Lemieux’s plan to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins out of bankruptcy is approved by a U.S. District Court judge. When he returns to the ice, in 2000, he becomes the first player-owner in NHL history.

JUNE 27, 1967 The Odd Couple, starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, films a scene for the movie prior to a Pirates-Mets game in New York’s Shea Stadium. The script called for Pirates star Roberto Clemente to hit into a triple play. However, Clemente refused, calling it unbelievable.

Bill Mazeroski does it instead.

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The Pittsburgh Passion saw their championship hopes come to an end with a 45-0 loss to Chicago.

ROUGH ENDING E

VANSTON, ILL. — The rain fell harder with each passing minute as the Pittsburgh Passion huddled in the aftermath of their loss in the second round of the Women’s Football Alliance Division I playoffs on Sat., June 17.

The scoreboard showed the damage, a 45-0 Passion loss to the host Chicago Force — until it was finally turned off. The few fans in attendance were gone; the Force players were gone. The stink of a dead animal outside the stadium fence hung in the air and the once-distant bolts of lightning grew nearer.

And still the Passion huddled.

Finally, no less than a half-hour later, the team broke its circle.

“This team is like a family to all of us, and a lot of us are going to be done after this season, retiring and whatnot, and nobody wants to be done,” tight end Laura Baden told City Paper on the field after the game. The Shaler resident, who has retired, fought her emotions after her final

WFA game. “This team means more to me than I could ever describe.”

It was a rough end both for Baden and to the Passion’s season; the Passion (7-3) were thoroughly outmatched by the Force (8-1). Less than four minutes in, a 56-yard run set up a short touchdown plunge that gave Chicago a 7-0 lead and set the tone for a lopsided affair.

Young Pittsburgh Passion team takes a hard playoff loss in Chicago {BY BEN POPE} The host’s defense suffocated Pittsburgh quarterback Janice Masters and kept explosive receiver Angela Baker mostly contained, while Chicago running back Kristy Moran totaled 251 yards and two touchdowns offensively.

An 85-yard punt return for a touchdown in the waning seconds of the first

half gave Chicago a 31-0 halftime lead and took any remaining hopes of a dramatic comeback out of Pittsburgh’s mind. In the second half, the Passion were able to find more room to move offensively. But the team failed to convert on several trips inside the Force’s 40-yard line, and ultimately saw its season end in a shutout.

“It’s a hard one to swallow,” Baden said. “We have all the tools, we have all the athletes [that we need]. A few things went wrong as far as timing … but you can’t blame a loss on that stuff — that scoreboard does not show our talent, does not show the kind of season we had.”

Pittsburgh coach and co-owner Teresa Conn, however, brushed aside any suggestion of disappointment about her team’s elimination prior to the league championship, which will be held in Pittsburgh on July 21.

“We have so much youth, and I’m very much looking forward to the future,” Conn said. “I am pleased with our season CONTINUES ON PG. 40

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ROUGH ENDING, CONTINUED FROM PG. 39

Pittsburgh Passion running back Gabrielle O’Neil gets snagged by Chicago defensive back Nicole Matheson.

What have you always wanted to know about Pittsburgh?

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because I know that we have played above everybody’s expectation of us.”

The Passion didn’t lose at home all season, going 5-0 at West Allegheny’s DeMichela Stadium — including last week’s 34-14 first-round win over Atlanta.

“THAT SCOREBOARD DOES NOT SHOW OUR TALENT, DOES NOT SHOW THE KIND OF SEASON WE HAD.” In fact, prior to Saturday’s rout, the Passion were just a few breaks away from an undefeated record. Their two losses — May 13 at Boston and May 27 at Washington, D.C. — were by a combined six points, a drastic contrast to the team’s dominant wins this season like a 65-17 demolition of Baltimore on April 8, and a 72-6 beatdown of Detroit on April 22.

They did it all with an inexperienced, makeshift roster that entered the season with tempered expectations. Janice Masters replaced longtime quarterback Lisa Horton under center, the running-back corps was revamped as well, and 10 of the 11 defensive starters were either rookies or playing in new positions, Conn said.

The Passion nevertheless relied on its small group of veterans for stability — veterans like Kim Zubovic, a member of the team for more than a decade, on the defensive line.

“I’ve been with the team for 13 years and the message hasn’t changed: It’s teaching life’s lessons through sports,” Zubovic said. “We just keep delivering

Pittsburgh wide receiver Angela Baker gets tackled after a catch.

the message to the younger ones and it doesn’t take them long to pick up on it.”

As the team, huddle finally broken, migrated toward the bus Saturday, the raindrops masked the tears on at least a few faces. Baden — reflecting on her career with the Passion — could hardly forget that message.

“You can’t get the sisterhood anywhere else like you can here,” Baden said. “You’re fighting so hard for the person next to you, and if you can’t do your job, they get hurt.

This sport, it’s shown me that I am a lot stronger than I ever thought I was.”

I N F O@ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM

Ben Pope is a student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a sportswriter at The Daily Northwestern.

[THE CHEAP SEATS]

PARADE GROUNDS {BY MIKE WYSOCKI} ACCORDING TO the City of Pittsburgh, 650,000 people crammed into Downtown on June 14 to celebrate the Pittsburgh Penguins’ fifth Stanley Cup win.

This second-consecutive Cup makes the Pens one of the most successful American sports franchises of the past 50 years.

Hashtags like #BurghProud, #PensParade and #BacktoBack began trending as fans celebrated the city’s 13th world title since 1967. The fact is, we are winners and winners get parades; losers don’t get parades unless they’re being chased out of town for being losers.

So, in honor of the Penguins’ fifth Stanley Cup, here are five of the winningest sports cities and five of the worst.

{CP PHOTO BY JORDAN MILLER}

Evgeni Malkin poses with fans during the Penguins’ 2017 Stanley Cup parade.

The Best New York has 21 world championships in the past 50 years, but it has eight franchises. A third of the championships come from the Evil Empire known as the Yankees. The Islanders won four Cups, and the Giants have four Super Bowl rings. We must respect the Giants because Tom Brady would have seven titles if not for them. The Knicks have won twice, but not since Nixon was president; the Mets have two rings, but none in 31 years; the Jets have one, thanks to Beaver County’s Joe Namath; and the Rangers won the Stanley Cup just once in 77 years.

Boston is a winner whether we want to admit it or not. On 19 occasions the city has stopped complaining bitterly about something to enjoy a parade. The Patriots have five and the Red Sox and Bruins have won three each. The Celtics are kings of the city with eight trophies in 50 years and another nine before that.

Los Angeles has sung “We Are the Champions” 18 times, but it took eight franchises to get it done. Eleven of those belong to the Lakers; the Dodgers and the Kings chipped in two each, and the Ducks and the Angels got lucky once each.

Pittsburgh has had 13 parades with just three teams. That’s not counting the Mazeroski World Series that happened nearly 60 years ago. My favorite stat, though, is that while Pittsburgh

currently has the 26th largest metro area in the country, it has the fourth-most championships. We have the highest parade-to-person ration in the nation, if that’s a thing.

Chicago has two more teams than us, but two fewer titles. The Bulls’ Michael Jordan is responsible for six of those, with assists going to Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, our goodwill ambassador to North Korea. The Blackhawks have recently become winners, with three Cups this decade, but the city’s other teams don’t routinely bring pride to the Windy City. The Bears have one Super Bowl, the Cubs have one title in the past 109 years, and the White Sox have one World Series in 99 years.

The Falcons had a 25-3 lead in the Super Bowl and still lost. The Braves’ 1995 world title happened only because they faced an even bigger loser, the Cleveland Indians.

Cleveland winning an NBA world

championship last year removed their biggest-loser status. Congratulations.

Just like Phoenix and Atlanta, the city has won only once since 1967. But at least Cleveland now has competitive teams (besides the Browns). Just this year they lost both the NBA Finals and the World Series.

Thanks to the Twins, Minneapolis has had two victory parades, but the most recent was 26 years ago. The Vikings lost four times in the Super Bowl in the 1970s (once to the Steelers) and the North Stars went to the NHL finals once (and lost to the Penguins).

Houston, we have a loser. Houston is tied with Tampa and Toronto as the fifth-biggest loser in sports. All three cities have three teams and two world championships. Houston grabbed two NBA titles while Jordan was retired (or suspended for gambling). The Astros have been to only one World Series, and lost to the White Sox. The stupidly named Texans never win, and the Oilers came up dry every year they were there.

Toronto had two from the Blue Jays in 92-93 and that’s it. The Maple Leafs and Raptors also never win. Tampa got lucky once with the Lightning, and once with the Buccaneers.

I N F O@ P G H C I T Y PA P E R. C OM

WE HAVE THE HIGHEST PARADETO-PERSON RATIO IN THE NATION, IF THAT’S A THING. The Worst

Phoenix has four times more franchises than championships.

The only time the city ever went out and bought a shirt with the word “Champions” on it was in 2001, when the Diamondbacks upset the Yankees. The Suns, Cardinals and Coyotes (are they even still a team?) have never won anything. Imagine how much that Santonio Holmes Super Bowl catch must haunt them in their nightmares.

Even though they haven’t won much, Atlanta is prolific at losing. The Hawks went 40 seasons without advancing to the second round of the playoffs.

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1. Fall back from the beach 4. The mark “v” in string music 9. Trapper’s catch 13. Shakespearean lament 15. Gas-X alternative 16. Role that Peter Fonda combed over 17. Young zebra 18. Become a contestant 19. Heavy base supporting a statue 20. Smug 23. Like students that still have naptime 24. Megan Boone’s “The Blacklist” role 25. They’re sometimes blocked online 28. “I Am the Walrus” persona 32. Knuckle to the head 34. Crunchy sandwich, for short 36. Sweet froyo topping 38. New, in Nicaragua 39. Expression of great approval, on-line 43. Gruesome 44. Sax object?

45. Cam Newton stat 46. Winking phrase 48. Massive impasse 51. Actor Bentley of “American Horror Story”

52. Concealed carry lobby 54. Gulf of Mexico, to many 56. Cold pressor test measurements 61. Golf’s Aoki 64. BYU’s location 65. Dog that appears to be 20% tongue 66. Funeral flames 67. Concentrated beam 68. ___ Crossing 69. Key song?

70. Make, as an effort 71. Pre-barbecue application

DOWN 1. Per unit 2. Soft fly 3. They’re found in between alleys 4. Company with a “Become a Driver” section on its website 5. Bottled (up) 6. Muddy spa treatment 7. “Inside The NBA” analyst 8. Weakened from overuse 9. ___ platter (Chinese appetizer) 10. Right-angled annex 11. Wreath in Waipahu 12. Tithing amount 14. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

author Larsson 21. Cardiologist’s machine 22. Layer with a hole 25. Sci-fi character who wants to believe 26. Flopped, likely 27. Theater count 29. May, say 30. Concentration focus 31. “Jurassic Park” costar 33. Common pronoun 34. Legally 35. Sitcom starring a comic with an identical-sounding first name 37. Well aware of 40. Humor

41. Singer Menzel 42. Get dressed, with “up” 47. Baseball rarity 49. God of reggae 50. Put in ___ word for 53. One of thrash metal’s Big Four 55. Affected goodbye 56. Valentine’s text 57. Valentine’s gift 58. For all time 59. Work with mail 60. Hungarian’s neighbor 61. Hoppy brewpub selection 62. Moog product 63. Be another way? {LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS}

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FOR THE WEEK OF

Free Will Astrology

06.21-06.28

{BY ROB BREZSNY}

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Now that you’ve mostly paid off one of your debts to the past, you can go window-shopping for the future’s best offers. You’re finally ready to leave behind a power spot you’ve outgrown and launch your quest to discover fresh power spots. So bid farewell to lost causes and ghostly temptations, Cancerian. Slip away from attachments to traditions that no longer move you and the deadweight of your original family’s expectations. Soon you’ll be empty and light and free — and ready to make a vigorous first impression when you encounter potential allies in the frontier.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I suspect you will soon have an up-close-andpersonal encounter with some form of lightning.

To ensure it’s not a literal bolt shooting down out of a thundercloud, please refrain from taking long romantic strolls with yourself during a storm.

Also, forgo any temptation you may have to stick your finger in electrical sockets. What I’m envisioning is a type of lightning that will give you a healthy metaphorical jolt. If any of your creative circuits are sluggish, it will jumpstart them.

If you need to wake up from a dreamy delusion, the lovable lightning will give you just the right salutary shock.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Signing up to read at the open-mic segment of a poetry slam? Buying an outfit that’s a departure from the style you’ve cultivated for years? Getting dance lessons or a past-life reading or instructions on how to hang-glide? Hopping on a jet for a spontaneous getaway to an exotic hotspot? I approve of actions like those, Virgo. In fact, I won’t

mind if you at least temporarily abandon at least 30 percent of your inhibitions.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I don’t know what marketing specialists are predicting about color trends for the general population, but my astrological analysis has discerned the most evocative colors for you Libras. Electric mud is one. It’s a scintillating mocha hue. Visualize silver-blue sparkles emerging from moist dirt tones. Earthy and dynamic! Cybernatural is another special color for you. Picture sheaves of ripe wheat blended with the hue you see when you close your eyes after staring into a computer monitor for hours. Organic and glimmering! Your third pigment of power is pastel adrenaline: a mix of dried apricot and the shadowy brightness that flows across your nerve synapses when you’re taking aggressive practical measures to convert your dreams into realities. Delicious and dazzling!

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Do you ever hide behind a wall of detached cyni-

get your yoga on!

cism? Do you protect yourself with the armor of jaded coolness? If so, here’s my proposal: In accordance with the astrological omens, I invite you to escape those perverse forms of comfort and safety. Be brave enough to risk feeling the vulnerability of hopeful enthusiasm. Be sufficiently curious to handle the fluttery uncertainty that comes from exploring places you’re not familiar with and trying adventures you’re not totally skilled at.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars,” writes Jack Gilbert in his poem “Tear It Down.” He adds that “We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows.” I invite you to meditate on these ideas. By my calculations, it’s time to peel away the obvious secrets so you can penetrate to the richer secrets buried beneath. It’s time to dare a world-changing risk that is currently obscured by easy risks. It’s time to find your real life hidden inside the pretend one, to expedite the evolution of the authentic self that’s germinating in the darkness.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): When I was 4 years old, I loved to use crayons to draw diagrams of the solar system. It seems I was already laying a foundation for my interest in astrology. How about you, Capricorn? I invite you to explore your early formative memories. To aid the process, look at old photos and ask relatives what they remember. My reading of the astrological omens suggests that your past can show you new clues about what you might ultimately become.

Potentials that were revealed when you were a wee tyke may be primed to develop more fully.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):

schoolhouseyoga.com gentle yoga yin yoga ÁRZ \RJD meditation

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I often ride my bike into the hills. The transition from the residential district to open spaces is a narrow dirt path surrounded by thick woods on one side and a steep descent on the other. Today as I approached this place there was a new sign on a post. It read “Do not enter: Active beehive forming in the middle of the path.” Indeed, I could see a swarm hovering around a tree branch that juts down low over the path. How to proceed? I might get stung if I did what I usually do.

Instead, I dismounted from my bike and dragged it through the woods so I could join the path on the other side of the bees. Judging from the astrological omens, Aquarius, I suspect you may encounter a comparable interruption along a route that you regularly take. Find a detour, even if it’s inconvenient.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I bet you’ll be extra creative in the coming weeks.

Cosmic rhythms are nudging you toward fresh thinking and imaginative innovation, whether they’re applied to your job, your relationships, your daily rhythm or your chosen art form. To

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER

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take maximum advantage of this provocative luck, seek out stimuli that will activate high-quality brainstorms. I understand that the composer André Grétry got inspired when he put his feet in ice water. Author Ben Johnson felt energized in the presence of a purring cat and by the aroma of orange peels. I like to hang out with people who are smarter than me. What works for you?

ARIES (March 21-April 19): There are places in the oceans where the sea floor cracks open and spreads apart from volcanic activity. This allows geothermally heated water to vent out from deep inside the earth. Scientists explored such a place in the otherwise frigid waters around Antarctica. They were elated to find a “riot of life” living there, including previously unknown species of crabs, starfish, sea anemones and barnacles. Judging from the astrological omens, Aries, I suspect that you will soon enjoy a metaphorically comparable eruption of warm vitality from the unfathomable depths. Will you welcome and make use of these raw blessings even if they are unfamiliar and odd?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I’m reporting from the first annual Psychic Olympics in Los Angeles. For the past five days, I’ve competed against the world’s top mind-readers, dice-controllers, spirit whisperers, spoon-benders, angel-wrestlers and stock-market prognosticators.

Thus far I have earned a silver medal in the category of channeling the spirits of dead celebrities. (Thanks, Frida Kahlo and Gertrude Stein!)

I psychically foresee that I will also win a gold medal for most accurate fortune-telling. Here’s the prophecy that I predict will cinch my victory: “People born in the sign of Taurus will soon be at the pinnacle of their ability to get telepathically aligned with people who have things they want and need.”

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): While reading Virginia Woolf, I found the perfect maxim for you to write on a slip of paper and carry around in your pocket or wallet or underwear: “Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.” In the coming weeks, dear Gemini, I hope you keep this counsel simmering constantly in the back of your mind. It will protect you from the dreaminess and superstition of people around you. It will guarantee that you’ll never overlook potent little breakthroughs as you scan the horizon for phantom miracles. And it will help you change what needs to be changed slowly and surely, with minimum disruption.

What were the circumstances in which you were most amazingly, outrageously alive? Testify at FreeWillAstrology.com.

GO TO REALASTROLOGY.COM TO CHECK OUT ROB BREZSNY’S EXPANDED WEEKLY AUDIO HOROSCOPES AND DAILY TEXT-MESSAGE HOROSCOPES. THE AUDIO HOROSCOPES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE BY PHONE AT 1-877-873-4888 OR 1-900-950-7700

Savage Love {BY DAN SAVAGE}

I am a 34-year-old straight woman. I’m monogamous and have an avoidant attachment style. I’ve been seeing a guy I really like. He’s just my type, the kind of person I’ve been looking for my whole life. Thing is, he’s in an open relationship with someone he’s been with for most of his adult life.

He was sneaky — he didn’t reveal he was in an open relationship until the second date, but by then I was infatuated and felt like I wasn’t in control of my actions. So what I’ve learned is that poly couples often seek out others to create NRE or “new relationship energy,” which may help save their relationship in the long run. I was deeply hurt to learn about NRE. What about the people who are dragged into a situation by some charmer in an attempt to breathe new life into a stale relationship? I feel like no one cares about the people on the side, the ones who might be perceived to be cheating with someone’s partner, as some sort of competitor, a hussy. How can I reconcile the fact that I’ve fallen for someone who sees me as a tool to be discarded once the excitement wears off? I know we all have a choice, but we also know what it’s like to be infatuated with someone who seems perfect. I feel like such a loser.

SOBBING HERE AND MAKING ERRORS

like Veaux says, but the stigma is a violation, too.

Waiting to disclose your partner, kink, HIV status, etc., can prompt the other person to weigh assumptions and prejudices about poly/kinky/poz people against the living, breathing person he or she has come to know. Still, disclosure needs to come early — within a date or two, certainly before anyone gets fucked — so the other person can bail if poly/kinky/poz is a deal breaker.

As for that new relationship energy stuff …

“There are, in truth, polyamorous people who are NRE junkies,” said Veaux. “Men and women who chase new relationships in pursuit of that emotional fix. They’re not very common, but they do exist, and alas they tend to leave a lot of destruction in their wake.”

But your assumptions about how NRE works are wrong, SHAME. Seeing your partner in the throes of NRE doesn’t bring the primary couple closer together; it often places a strain on the relationship. Opening up a relationship can certainly save it (if openness is a better fit for both partners), but NRE isn’t a log the primary couple tosses on the emotional/erotic fire. It’s something a poly person experiences with a new partner, not something a poly person enjoys with an established one.

And there are lots of examples of long-term poly relationships out there — established triads, quads, quints — so your assumption about being discarded once NRE wears off is also off, SHAME. There are no guarantees, however. If this guy were single and looking for a monogamous relationship, you could nevertheless discover you’re not right for each other and wind up being discarded or doing the discarding yourself.

I’m going to give the final word to our guest expert …

“Having an avoidant attachment style complicates things, because one of the things that can go along with avoidant attachment is idealizing partners who are inaccessible or unavailable,” said Veaux. “That can make it harder to let go. But if you’re radically incompatible with the person you love, letting go is likely your only healthy choice. Good luck!”

TWO PEOPLE CAN BE ABSOLUTELY CRAZY IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER AND STILL NOT BE GOOD PARTNERS.

“One of life’s hardest lessons is this: Two people can be absolutely crazy in love with each other and still not be good partners,” said Franklin Veaux, coauthor of More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (morethantwo.com). “If you’re monogamous and you meet someone you’re completely smitten with who isn’t, the best thing to do is acknowledge that you’re incompatible and go your separate ways. It hurts and it sucks, but there it is.”

This perfect, sneaky guy who makes you feel like a loser and a hussy? He told you he was in an open relationship on your second date. You knew he wasn’t “your type” or “perfect” for you the second time you laid eyes on him, SHAME, and you needed to go your separate ways at that point. And I’m not buying your excuse (“I was too infatuated!”). What if he had revealed that he was a recreational bed wetter? Or a serial killer?

Or Jeffrey Lord? Or all of the above? Surely you would’ve dumped him then.

Veaux advocates ethical polyamory — it’s right there in the title of his book — and he thinks this guy did you wrong by not disclosing his partner’s existence right away. “Making a nonmonogamous relationship work requires a commitment to communication, honesty and transparency,” said Veaux. “Concealing the fact that you’re in a relationship is a big violation of all three, and no good will come of it.”

I have a slightly different take. Straight women in open relationships have an easier time finding men willing to fuck and/or date them; their straight male counterparts have a much more difficult time. Stigma and double standards are at work here — she’s sexually adventurous; he’s a cheating bastard — and waiting to disclose the fact that you’re poly (or kinky or HIV-positive or a cammer) is a reaction to/work-around for that. It’s also a violation of poly best practices,

I’m gay and married. My husband regularly messes around with this one guy who treats me like I’m a cuckold. He will send me a pic of my husband sucking his cock, for example, and a text message meant to degrade me. But I’m not a cuckold, and I don’t find these messages sexy. My husband wants me to play along because it gets this guy off. Advice?

CAN’T UNDERSTAND CUCKOLD KINK

It depends, CUCK. If you’re upset by these messages — if they hurt your feelings, are damaging your sexual connection to your husband, are traumatizing — don’t play along. But if you find them silly — if they just make you roll your eyes — then play along. Respond positively/abjectly/insincerely, then delete. Not to please the guy sending the messages (who you don’t owe anything), but to please your husband (who’ll wind up owing you).

On the Lovecast, Michael Hobbes on gay, middleaged dating: savagelovecast.com.

SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET AND FIND THE SAVAGE LOVECAST (DAN’S WEEKLY PODCAST) AT SAVAGELOVECAST.COM

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