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13-20, 2025
Before Bloomfield, Pittsburgh had multiple Italian enclaves now lost to history
BY: DAVID S. ROTENSTEIN
DAVID S. ROTENSTEIN
BY: LIZ JARDINI
BY: RACHEL WINDSOR
RACHEL WILKINSON
BY: DAVID S. ROTENSTEIN // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
August in Pittsburgh means it’s time for Little Italy Days, the annual four-day Bloomfield celebration spotlighting on the city’s rich Italian heritage. Bloomfield, though, was just one of several Little Italys that sprouted in Pittsburgh in the early years of the 20 th century.
Italians comprised one of Pittsburgh’s largest immigrant groups. Along with craft skills, foodways, and rich religious festivals, they also brought traditional Italian approaches to community building. Immigrants clustered together with others who spoke their language and shared their village cultures.
Pittsburgh’s Little Italys didn’t appear overnight. Some grew from inauspicious family enclaves, and took years to coalesce into more than city neighborhoods with lots of Italians living there.
The people are key, says Heinz History Center Italian American program director Melissa Marinaro. “But I also think that Little Italys have an infrastructure,” she tells Pittsburgh City Paper . “They have churches. They have small businesses. They have mutual beneficial societies. I see those three things as being core to this idea of a Little Italy because they’re replicating their infrastructure from back home.”
Little Italy Days brings throngs of festivalgoers to Bloomfield, and has become a commercialized, often polarizing event. Residents and business owners wring their hands over parking, trash, and other nuisances. Some longtime residents even leave the city each year to avoid it.
Regardless of locals’ ambivalent opinions, the August festival tips its hat to the Italian immigrants and their children who
made tremendous contributions to the city’s history, from restaurateur Frank Bongiovanni (father of Pittsburgh’s cabaret culture) to the late Pittsburgh Mayor Richard Caliguiri. They founded business and political dynasties and criminal empires.
It all began in small enclaves called borgatas. Borgata is an Italian word for a hamlet or small village. Like pasta and pizza, the borgata is an import Italian Americans have adapted to their new home. It’s still used to denote a community, though it also became the word used to describe Mafia families.
Pittsburgh’s first borgatas sprouted in the decades surrounding the turn of the 20 th century, when the city’s Italian population exploded, from 1,889 people in 1890 to more than 14,000 in 1910, according to Pittsburgh Rising, a 2024 book written by historians Rob Ruck and Edward K. Muller. The earliest Italian immigrants settled downtown in and the Lower Hill District before expanding eastward.
“Many came with skills that gave them options beyond factory work and unskilled labor,” Ruck and Muller wrote. Earlier historians described these enclaves or borgatas as “colonies.”
“Before we think about the history of Italians on the East End, the history of Italians in the neighborhood of Bloomfield, really Downtown is where we see those kernels begin,” Marinaro says.
Though Italians settled throughout southwestern Pennsylvania in coal towns and in places such as Monongahela and New Castle, these communities never developed distinct Little Italys like in Pittsburgh.
“In some of those cases, you don’t see that tight-knit urban center the way you would see here in Pittsburgh,” says Marinaro. “We’re going to have an Italian Catholic church that’s going to serve that audience. We are going to see small businesses. We are going to see clubs, and so I think that, on scale, they’re smaller.”
But Pittsburgh’s East End and Penn Hills were special cases. Italian immigrants who settled there in large numbers included stonemasons who built Pittsburgh’s waterworks and who made many of the ornate headstones found in Pittsburgh’s cemeteries. They also included gardeners, cooks, tailors, and lamplighters — people who helped feed the city and maintain the city’s infrastructure.
he began buying property on Gazzam Hill in West Oakland. As their family grew, Raphael and Rosa’s children and their spouses moved into homes that Raphael had bought or built.
Raphael and Rosa’s oldest son, Joe, grew up on Gazzam Hill. Joe Tito lived there when he went into the bootlegging business and launched one of the most colorful and impactful criminal careers in Pittsburgh history. As Prohibition wound down in the early 1930s, Joe and his brothers bought the Latrobe Brewing Company. After Prohibition,
“MY SCHOOL WAS THERE. MY CHURCH WAS THERE... MY WHOLE WORLD WAS THERE.”
Raphael and Rosa Tito were among the city’s earliest Italian immigrants. They arrived in 1888 from Southern Italy and first rented homes in Bloomfield. Raphael worked as a lamplighter, and in 1896,
they introduced the brewery’s bestknown brand: Rolling Rock.
Like many of its counterparts, the Tito enclave never grew into a Little Italy. Several homes from it still survive; in the wintertime, a few of
the hillside houses are visible from across the Monongahela River.
Francesco “Frank” Bongiovanni was another early immigrant. He settled downtown in 1904 after coming to Pittsburgh from northern Italy by way of London and New York. Bongiovanni went to work in several 6th Avenue Italian restaurants before opening his own. In 1913, he bought the popular Nixon Café inside the Nixon Theater building on 6th Avenue.
Bongiovanni knew his way around Italian cuisine and entertainment. He first cooked for Fred Colelli in a restaurant downtown near Grant Street, and, according to some sources, introduced spaghetti to Pittsburgh palates.
“Bongiovanni, too, saw American dollars in spaghetti and opened a place of his own in Fifth Avenue,” wrote newspaper columnist Charles Danver in 1932. “He had an orchestra there and he himself began to sing for the customers. Thus he became known as the ‘father of the cabaret’ in Pittsburgh.”
Bongiovanni quickly made enough money to move from Pittsburgh’s first Little Italy. Instead of moving to another Little Italy, he bought a home in the Knoxville neighborhood, where he b uilt a greenhouse. After Prohibition began in 1920, he added tunnels connecting the house to a garage and back alley.
“They said Italians lived there,” Mary Ann Stephens, who owns a home next to the former Bongiovanni house site, tells City Paper. “They made their liquor and their wine, and it was an underground cellar that went out the back way in the alley. There’s a tunnel in the back alley.”
A vacant lot is the only thing left of Bongiovanni’s home, greenhouse, and bootlegging tunnel.
Besides spaghetti, cabaret entertainment, and bootlegging, Bongiovanni made his mark in Pittsburgh history as a suburban roadhouse owner. His most enduring contribution might have been launching Bongiovanni’s Floating
Palace. For a little more than 20 years, Bongiovanni’s "pleasure scow" (later renamed the Show Boat after he lost it in bankruptcy in 1924) spawned sensational stories of gambling, illegal liquor consumption, illegal dancing — that was a thing in Pittsburgh — and political corruption before it sank in 1943 in the Monongahela River.
Bongiovanni didn’t have a large family, and he died relatively young at 51 in 1925. Though he didn’t build an enclave, Bongiovanni’s greenhouse connects him to Italian gardening traditions that spread throughout the city’s Little Italys.
“I always had a garden,” says Pirollo. “We love gardens. Yes, tomatoes, peppers, Swiss chard, green beans.”
Mary Pirollo’s family arrived in Pittsburgh in the first half of the 20th century. She was born in 1933 and was 19 when she came to Pittsburgh. Her family had been here for about several decades.
“My grandfather, my mom’s father, Pirollo tells CP, "He was well-to-do. He
owned the properties on the main thoroughfare and wouldn’t rent to the Italians,” Marinaro says. “So, they settled in an area that became known as Chianti Way.”
It wasn’t a name that the Italian immigrants picked, much like other derogatory names given to Black neighborhoods by white leaders. “The name was a demeaning reference to the immigrants, who made and drank their own wine and who lived in shacks,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote in a 1995 obituary of University of Pittsburgh Italian studies professor Joseph Greco. Greco wrote two volumes of poetry, in Italian, titled Chianti Way and Chianti Way II
“The ghost of the indefatigable immigrant,” wrote Greco, “is keeping vigil over the ruins of recent history, over lost tears of the late tortured Chianti Way of East Liberty.”
To city leaders, “chianti” was a slur lobbed at recent immigrants. To the Italians, wine was an important part of daily life and the Catholic religion. Winemaking, like sauce made from homegrown tomatoes, was a communal activity.
already had a house. He already had a business [as] a landscaper.”
Tending the garden, though, was more than a chore. It was tradition. “We used to can tomatoes and peppers, all that, and that’s kept in the cold cellar. Everything was kept in the cold cellar,” Pirollo remembers. “Every Italian home has a cold cellar.”
Some of Pirollo’s family had lived on Chianti Street in Eas t Liberty. It was a narrow hillside street that the city removed to create Negley Run Boulevard in the 1950s. Chianti Street got its name in 1909, when Pittsburgh City Council renamed more than 900 streets.
“River Avenue, East End, is peopled largely by Italians and it is to be known as Chianti Street, which is the name of a favorite wine among the Italians,” the Pittsburgh Press reported.
“When Italian immigrants first came to East Liberty, people of German and Scots-Irish descent
Pittsburgh’s Italian immigrants bought their grapes in the Strip District. “In Italy, we grew them,” Pirollo explains. They’d crush the grapes the traditional way by stepping on them or they’d use a grinder.
Pirollo moved to Larimer as a teenager in 1952. Her uncle, Dominic Parente, was a landscaper who owned his own contracting business. He also owned a grape grinder the family shared. “If one person had it, they would borrow it,” Pirollo says.
Bongiovanni and the Titos were not typical Pittsburgh Italian Americans. The majority of Pittsburgh’s Little Italy residents were working-class immigrants struggling to make it in a sometimes hostile and xenophobic city.
Parente helped to get Pirollo, her mother, and her brother and sister set up in a house on Hoeveler Street in East Liberty. “It kept us all together. The house was perfect, fixed,” she says. “We had everything.”
Pirollo’s extended family hailed
from Spigno Saturnia, a village between Rome and Naples. In Pittsburgh, they bonded with other Spignese in church and in the social club they founded in 1927, the Spigno Saturnia Italo-American Society of Pittsburgh.
Many Italians who had lived in the Lower Hill District moved east and south, to Penn Hills and Brookline. Larimer and East Liberty, where many Black Hill District residents moved after urban renewal began, also hemorrhaged Italian residents. In the 1960s, their homes, stores, and gathering places suffered the same fate as the city’s urban renewal machine made its way eastward.
Len Zucco’s father was a Hill District numbers writer. The Zuccos moved to Brookline when he was two years old. “We moved because of the Civic Arena. We had to move,” he tells CP . “The Italians moved to Brookline, to Beechview. Brookline and Beechview, mainly.”
Marinaro agrees that many Italians displaced from the Hill District went south. “They went into Dormont, Mount Lebanon. Some of
them went to Beechview, Brookline,” Marinaro says. “In my research, the pattern that I have seen is that they go in every direction.”
East seems to have been the most popular direction. A lot of Pirollo’s family ended up in Penn Hills. They all lived close together, just like they did in East Liberty, Larimer, and the Hill District. “There was a group like Little Italy here, all the Italians together. It was the same up there,” she says.
“Back in the '60's, the City of Pittsburgh had an idea to do urban renewal,” Tony Stagno, a longtime leader of the Spigno-Saturnia club,tells CP. His uncle Frank owned Stagno’s Bakery. Its original location was behind Frank Stagno’s home.
The Spigno-Saturnia club originally occupied buildings near what’s now East Liberty Boulevard and Hamilton Avenue. “It’s gone. They took our original club, which was at the bottom of Omega Street.”
Frank Stagno’s bakery’s final location was on Auburn Street, a few blocks away from the club’s first site, before it closed.
Like Stagno, many former East Liberty and Larimer residents describe their former neighborhood in ways that echo stories told by Pittsburgh’s Black residents displaced by urban renewal. In her 2023 book, Neighborhood Girl , author Linda Schifino wrote about the profound sense of loss that she felt after visiting her family’s old Larimer Avenue homesite. She hadn’t been there in at least 30 years.
“It was painful,” Schifino tells CP “I would have been foolish to have expected it to look the same. I clearly knew it wouldn’t look the same, but I was not expecting complete devastation. Just everything gone. Just one empty space after another.”
Schifino grew up on Larimer Avenue. Her parents rented an apartment above a grocery store owned by another Italian family.
“My mom would go down to Mr. Corraza, downstairs who owned the grocery store, to pay the rent in cash every month,” Schifino says. “And she handed him the money, and he put it away. And he didn’t count it, and she
didn’t ask for a receipt.”
Growing up, it seemed like everything she and her family needed was just a short walk away. “My school was there. My church was there. All my relatives were there, my cousins, my friends, my whole world was there,” Schifino says.
There are what Schifino calls glimmers of her old neighborhood that still shine through. Henry Grasso’s sausage store at 716 Larimer Ave. was still open when she wrote Neighborhood Girl , and the sign on the façade still thanks people in Italian — “Grazie Y Ciao!” — and in English, “Thank you for 90 years.”
The store closed in 2022.
DeRosa’s funeral home on Paulson Avenue played a big part in Little Italy. “My mother and my aunts always dragged me to DeRosa’s funeral home. Not just for relatives, for neighbors,” Schifino says. She thinks she attended
as many as 50 funerals there.
“You either went to Febbraro’s or DeRosa’s,” says Stagno. “Once they went out of business, that’s when the Italians started going to McCabe’s, or even out to Penn Hills to Gross’. But for the longest time, that’s where everybody was.”
The Paulson Avenue home and funeral parlor had been in the DeRosa family since 1912. DeRosa’s was founded by Michael DeRosa Jr. His father had been a powerful political leader and bootlegger. Michael DeRosa Jr. had been an alderman who resigned in the 1930s after convictions on corruption charges. In 1990, the Friendly Rivalry Often Generates Success (FROGS) club bought the property and moved its clubhouse there. Hints from the DeRosa years include awnings leading to the main entrance and a DeRosa family crest with the initials “M.D.” carved into it.
To preserve some of the memories of erased neighborhoods, Tony Stagno and Chris Pirollo are developing a bus tour that will weave through East Liberty and Larimer. Its route includes the beloved bakery Stagno’s family owned, churches, homes, stores, and many vacant lots. It’s a race against time as many of the people who remember the old neighborhoods age and die.
“I want people to say, ‘That’s where I grew up,’” Stagno says.
“To me, the Italian neighborhood extends from East Liberty through Larimer Avenue, then on to Paulson Avenue, and to Lemington, and then up Lincoln Avenue to the city limits,” Pirollo tells CP while driving through Larimer. “Lincoln Avenue was a very mixed neighborhood of German, Irish, Polish, and Italian. But over the years, that entire corridor has seen deterioration and blight. The very house I grew up in and the very house that my grandmother, right behind us on Elrod Way … they’re destroyed. They don’t exist anymore and they’re overgrown with trees and bushes.”
hite i ht and o ort nities to own larger homes with yards
decimated Pittsburgh’s earliest Little Italys. “Part of why they’re moving north, they’re moving south, is because they’re going to areas where they can acquire property. Either a new home has been built. They can build a new home. So a lot of it is related to housing,” says Marinaro.
Many of the people who remember the neighborhoods moved away long ago. Mary Pirollo lives in a modest Stanton Heights ranch house she bought in 1970. Stagno and Chris Pirollo live in the suburbs.
loo field is the sole s r i or from a bygone era. Little Italy Days tries to keep Pittsburgh’s Italian heritage alive, though some say it misses ch o the so l that defined the city’s Italian neighborhoods. “It’s sort of become a branding thing, right?,” says Marinaro. “We brand this place as Little Italy, and it’s really focused a lot on the commercial district.”
There’s a chance places like Chianti Street, DeRosa’s funeral home, and Stagno’s bakery will be forgotten. It’s up to people like the irollos Sta nos and Schifino to ensure that Pittsburgh’s Little Italys aren’t forgotten or remembered piecemeal as nostalgia. •
More Pittsburghers want to become death doulas, but practitioners say it’s about “more than holding space”
BY: RACHEL WINDSOR // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
Americans don’t know how to die well. We plan for everything from births to weddings to careers, but when it comes to death, many are woefully unprepared.
Death doulas in Pittsburgh want that to change. According to the International End of Life Doula Association, death doulas are educators, advocates, and supporters for the dying and their loved ones.
They can help families to talk with one another frankly about death, ease the burden on caregivers by coordinating logistics, explain the dying process, provide emotional and spiritual support, and more. What they can’t do is provide medical care or medical advice.
Much like a birth doula supports the entrance into life, a death doula supports the transition out of it; but unlike birth doulas, death doulas operate largely unregulated. Even without a universal definition of what a death doula does, required certification, or standard pathway to becoming one, interest continues to grow.
Helen Stickney, a death doula/death companion since 2017, didn’t start out in this field. “I was the typical American,” she tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “I knew nothing about death.” While working as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, she began volunteering in hospice, offering Reiki and meditation. What started as curiosity turned into a calling, and she left academia for a career in hospice administration.
“I wanted to help people die,” she says. But soon she realized that holding the hands of the dying wasn’t her job — it was the family’s. Her role was to support them, helping them navigate the murky and emotional terrain of death. After completing a doula certification program, she needed support from fellow doulas. “This isn’t some thing I want to do solo,” she emphasizes.
“PLAN FOR YOUR DEATH AND TALK ABOUT IT … NO ONE MAKES A GOOD DECISION IN A CRISIS.”
Stickney found other doulas in the area and hosted a death café — a community gathering where people talk openly about death — at her home. It’s part of a larger death-positive movement aimed at normalizing end-of-life conversations. From there, she and other death doulas formed Pittsburgh Community Deathcare (PCD), to
Above all, pre-planning is crucial. “When a loved one gets a terminal diagnosis, that’s not the time to figure that out,” she says.
Despite the rising interest, she says death doulas in Pittsburgh aren’t making a living doing this. Her group gets just three or four service inquiries a year, but they get that many calls per month from people wanting to become doulas. “It’s definitely not a career,” says Stickney.
Another PCD member, Lynne Ireland-Knight, hadn’t planned to become a death doula. In November 2018, her oldest son was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. He died in March 2021 at the age of 31.
“Promise me, Momma, you’re going to take care of yourself,” he told her. The same year he died, she earned a death doula certificate from the University of Vermont. In his honor, she created Promise Me Momma, her own doula practice.
“There can be a good death,” Ireland-Knight tells City Paper “Plan for your death and talk about it … No one makes a good decision in a crisis.”
This fall, Ireland-Knight will teach death doula education at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC). It’s the first course of its kind at the college.
The curriculum covers spiritual and emotional support, the dying process, communication, family engagement, and more. Specific modules include intro to end-of-life care, foundation of doula practices, the dying process, communication skills, practical support techniques, working with families and caregivers, and case studies. The 45-hour program begins Sept. 16 and costs $1,800. In the end,
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nstead she says t al aid tradin reso rces or serices hel those witho t financial eans recei e deathcare assistance.
y ear is it s eco in s ch a o ie white washed c te side h stle says ow an. here has the de th one She enco ra es eo le interested in deathcare to start with hos ice ol nteerin and learn what it really eans to work with the dyin and the eo le in their li es. el in so eone die is so ch ore than holdin s ace or the she says. •
Starting out with just a raised bed in Pittsburgh, the couple behind Homegrown Handgathered has built a following of millions
BY: AAKANKSHA AGARWAL // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
Silvan Goddin stands ankle-deep in the carrot bed at her shared homestead, t in a fist l o rslane wild nutrient-packed, and stubborn enough to row where nothin else will. n in tes her hands are o er owin . e t she points to lamb’s quarters, an amaranth that tastes like s inach t richer and earthier.
“We don’t grow a lot of greens in our garden,” she tells Homegrown Handgathered’s 510,000 Instagram followers on an Instrgram Reel. “But it’s not because we don’t like to eat them. There are just so many wild greens growing all over the place, it feels silly to be planting them.”
Purslane, technically a weed, she explains, is a succulent you probably already have growing somewhere near you. This huge batch popped up uninvited in their carrot beds.
tamales. They’re grinding the corn: Hopi Blue, Wapsie Valley, Painted Mountain, and Bloody Butcher varieties by hand, turning kernels into fragrant masa. They press the dough flat, pile on slow-cooked venison ribs, wrap each tamal in a husk, and stack them in heaps. Even through a screen, the scent of corn and wood smoke seems to rise up.
It’s a far cry from their first experiment in a tiny Pittsburgh community garden, when
“WE’RE BETTER STEWARDS OF THE LAND WHEN WE HAVE A CLOSER RELATIONSHIP WITH IT.”
She chops through the purslane with a knife, her mic picking up the sharp, satisfying, crunch.
“In Mexico, quelites is the blanket term for tender wild greens that are used in tons of dishes, and they often come from the socalled weeds that pop up in cultivated corn patches,” she continues. “I love that tradition of incorporating whatever green is already abundant. Why use tons of water or shade cloth to try and grow spinach in the summer, or have it shipped in from across the country, when purslane and amaranth are perfectly adapted to thrive in warm weather?”
Tossed with tomatoes, cucumbers, a crumble of feta, olive oil, lemon, salt, and pepper, the “weeds” turn into a summer salad you’d pay $17 for at a trendy farm-to-table spot. “So,” Silvan says, grinning at the camera, “get out there and eat some weeds.”
A few swipes later, the screen fills with rainbow heirloom corn. Goddin and her partner, Jordan Tony, are making homegrown
Tony first dared himself to eat only what he and Goddin could grow or forage. Their space was small — a single raised bed — but Tony figured it was worth a shot.
“It went horribly that first time,” Tony tells Pittsburgh City Paper . “We ran out of food within days.”
But what began as a personal chal lenge quickly transformed into Homegrown Handgathered, a platform now followed by nearly 2 million people across TikTok Instagram , and YouTube, where the couple shares their journey into gardening, foraging, food sovereignty, and a deeper relationship with the land.
Soon after that experiment, the couple doubled down on calorie-dense crops like chickpeas and heirloom flour corn, learned to grind their own cornmeal for tortillas and tamales, and began to study the region’s wild foods, from pawpaws to black walnuts, while sharing every triumph and failure online.
From the beginning, they documented it all
their own corn, pawpaw custard pies, wild mushroom ragù.
Another series, Dealing With the Abundance, showed how to turn mountains of cucumbers into fermented pickles or grind acorns into flour for pancakes.
As their following grew, so did their impact. Followers from as far as Australia wrote to say they had planted their first gardens, tried pickling for the first time, or tasted pawpaws because of the couple’s videos. Many described their content as the push they needed to reimagine what a backyard, or even a balcony, could produce.
By 2024, their audience had grown to over 845,000 on TikTok, 566,000 on YouTube, and more than 500,000 across Instagram and other platforms. According to Goddin, they remain committed to making growing and foraging food accessible to people who don’t own land because “for so long, that was us.”
Meanwhile, their Pittsburgh backyard was overflowing. So Tony and Goddin bought land with two other families near Bolivar in the Laurel Highlands. “We couldn’t have done this alone,” Tony says. “But together we were able to buy the farm, split the land, and build a shared future.” Their days now are filled with composting, setting up Hügelkultur beds, harvesting chickpeas, and experimenting with heritage grains.
in photos: the muddy hands, the first scraggly harvests, and every small, stubborn victory.
“At first, I was just posting for our friends,” Tony says. “But then it kind of blew up. People wanted to know how we were doing it, down to the smallest detail.”
That question—how to live off the land, even in a city—is what drives the couple’s work to this day.
Both trained biologists, Goddin and Tony first met in a college community garden in North Carolina. They instantly bonded over a shared “curiosity about the natural world, the interactions between plants and insects and the soil, and all of that. Being a gardener is a lot like being a scientist,” Goddin tells City Paper. “You set up experiments, manipulate a few variables, and then let nature take the lead. You observe. You adapt. You
fail and try again.”
Tony and Goddin moved to Pittsburgh in 2015, drawn by Tony’s family roots and the city’s surprisingly rich green infrastructure. “I didn’t know much beyond what we learned about Andrew Carnegie and the steel boom in history class,” Goddin says. “But I really like the laid-back culture here, and right off the bat, I loved that there are a lot of green spaces and agricultural things happening in spite of its very industrial past.”
They applied that mindset to their East End backyard, packing every square foot with fruit trees, berry bushes, medicinal herbs, and pollinator plants. Meanwhile, Tony’s experimental videos gained traction. In their Living Off the Land Challenge series, they documented weeks eating only homegrown and foraged food: loaded nachos made from
“Leaving behind the perennial fruit trees and berry bushes we planted in our Pittsburgh yard was hard,” Goddin says. “But we’re happy they will go on to feed other people, and we’re excited to be able to expand in a way that wasn’t possible in the city.”
On the homestead front, the summer garden — and their lives — are in full bloom. Tony’s prized three sisters patch of flour corn, beans, and squash is thriving, while Goddin has “been on a real pickle kick lately and has two giant crocks of pickles fermenting right now.” They had a glut of cucumbers to deal with, a good problem to have.
They’ve already begun trading seedlings and produce with their neighbors, slowly weaving themselves into their new rural community. They’re also in talks with nearby CSA farms about growing specialty crops like mushrooms, heirloom beans, and heritage corn.
Their first book, Homegrown Handgathered: The Complete Guide to Living Off Your Garden , distills their philosophy
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into a hybrid of practical instruction and storytelling, with chapters on everything from pawpaw foraging and fermentation to building wildlife habitat.
“We wanted it to share the joy that gardening can bring to your life,” Goddin says. “You can look at it through a history or anthropology lens, like how humans shaped and created these foods that we eat every single day. And of course, you can also get into the nitty-gritty science, like how the roots are interacting with the icro es in the soil or all the di erent insect life present in a garden.”
At the core of their work is a philosophy they call “honorable harvesting,” inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass. “It’s a name for a concept in a lot of Indigenous American cultures that we should have a reciprocal relationship with the world around us, especially with the things that sustain us, and express gratitude,” Tony says. “So in a foraging example, if we frequent a particular fruit tree every year, we should say 'thank you' by planting some of her seeds to grow
elsewhere, or making sure the area around her is protected from development or contamination.”
They see this as intertwined with food sovereignty: the belief that everyone deserves the right to healthy food and the knowledge to grow it. “We’re better stewards of the land when we have a closer relationship with it,” Goddin says. “And it’s good for our minds and bodies, too.”
Despite the move, their ties to Pittsburgh remain strong. Tony’s family lives in the city, and the couple plans to host seasonal workshops, foraging walks, and farm-to-table dinners where ests can taste o r corn tortillas and wild mushroom stews cooked o er a wood fire.
Now, as they build the infrastructure of their homestead, Tony and Goddin envision a future rooted in reciprocity, between people and the land, and between neighbors who share what they grow.
“The more people fall in love with the plants around them, the more they’ll want to protect them,” Goddin says. “That’s how we all get rooted together.” •
August 23rd Saturday at 9 am - 1 pm
We Magee nurses want more time with our patients and they want more time with us — that’s why we’re fighting for a union
BY: LIZ JARDINI // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
I’m passionate about being an obstetrics nurse at Magee, the hospital where I was born, and where I get to care for my hometown. I want to spend my entire career here, but I am no longer sure that will be possible. Many of us have sought greater investment in professional standards for nurses and bedside care, but UPMC administration has insisted there’s not enough money “in the budget” to make the improvements we need.
So my coworkers and I were stunned to learn that our hospital made over $345 million in profits for fiscal year 2024, making Magee the third-most-profitable hospital in the state. That’s why we are forming our union: to make sure UPMC invests more of its giant profits in frontline staff, so we can give our patients the time, education, and attention they require.
But because UPMC does not suffi ciently value its veteran nurses, many of them have left, and we lack the kind of mentorship that helps support and retain newer nurses like me through challenging times.
The truth is, we’ve known all along that UPMC has the resources to make urgently needed improvements: we can all see the expansion, the execu tive salaries, the shiny branding and
“WE’VE KNOWN ALL ALONG THAT UPMC HAS THE RESOURCES TO MAKE URGENTLY NEEDED IMPROVEMENTS.”
I’ve been a registered nurse for a few years now and work in labor and delivery; triage, which is like our emergency room for pregnant moms; and the high risk antepartum unit, which treats mothers experiencing severe complications leading up to their births. We care for some of the sickest patients from all over Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, New York, and Maryland.
Our patients trust us to support them during the most important and vulnerable moments of their lives. The key to our ability to provide the highest level of care is time. The only way to have more time is to have fewer patients to care for. The National Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses has set staffing standards based on measuring patient outcomes. But too often, we fall short of those standards.
Nursing is hard work physically, mentally, and emotionally. When we have enough time, we can do a better job of monitoring our patients, coaching them, and teaching them about how to care for their baby and their own body. We can reassure them when they need it most and provide comfort when they experience the loss of a newborn.
advertising, the private jet. It comes down to who is calling the shots about the budget, and right now, it’s largely in the hands of the board. UPMC has 24 board members, and they are mostly a collection of real estate, banking, and other executives. Only two physicians are on the board, and only one of them is based in our state.
For years, nurses have raised our concerns through every channel available within the hospital. But we’ve come to realize that the only way to ensure UPMC invests more in direct patient care is for frontline nurses to have a seat at the decision-making table. United together, we will negotiate a union contract that makes it possible for us to remain in this profession we love and provide the very best care to our community. •
UPMC nurses will hold a union vote Tue., Aug. 19 and Sat., 23. Liz Jardini is a registered nurse at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital and was born and raised in Pittsburgh.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SHORE FIRE MEDIA Yo Gabba Gabba! Live at Stage AE
MUSIC • OAKLAND
Calliope House presents The Grass Gals. 7 p.m. Schenley Plaza. 4100 Forbes Ave., Oakland. $15 suggested tip. All ages. calliopehouse.org
Disney Descendants/Zombies: Worlds Collide Tour 7 p.m. PPG Paints Arena. 1001 Fifth Ave., Uptown. Tickets start at $53. ppgpaintsarena.com
Skull Fest 7 p.m.
Continues through Sun., Aug. 17. Multiple locations, Lawrenceville. $175. skullfestpunk.com
Vintage Base Ball Day 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village. 401 Meadowcroft Rd., Avella. Included with regular admission. heinzhistorycenter.org
DRAG • STRIP DISTRICT
XXX-MEN: An X-Men Variety Show Brunch. 12 p.m. Doors at 11 a.m. City Winery. 1627 Smallman St., Strip District. $15-20. citywinery.com/pittsburgh
Mammal Skull Identification with Char Ross. 1 p.m. Millvale Community Library. 213 Grant Ave., Millvale. Free. Registration required. 18 and over. millvale.librarycalendar.com
Lydia Rosenberg: lawn. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Continues through Sept. 14. Wood Street Galleries. 601 Wood St., Downtown. Free. trustarts.org
Front Porch Theatricals presents Sunday in the Park with George 7:30 p.m. Continues through Sun., Aug. 24. New Hazlett Theater. Six Allegheny Square East, North Side. $30-50. newhazletttheater.org
Back-to-School “Blast O ” with JADA House 2:30-5:30 p.m. Mill 19. 4501 Lytle St., Hazelwood. Free. All ages. jadahouseinternational.com/calendar
CP ILLUSTRATION: JEFF SCHRECKENGOST Skull Fest
Screeching Weasel with Hayley and the Crushers and Raging Nathans. 8 p.m. Doors at 6 p.m. Jergel’s Rhythm Grille. 103 Slade Ln., Warrendale. $43.65-55.65. jergels.com
Get your decks in order for the Steel City Spectacular Magic: The Gathering Convention at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Players of the popular card-based roleplaying game will battle across several tournaments for a chance to win cash prizes. Attendees can also meet artists, vendors, and content creators at this tabletop gaming event. 5 p.m. Continues through Sun., Aug. 17. 1000 Fort Duquesne Blvd., Downtown. $40-112 to play. Registration required. excaliburevents.net
THEATER • NORTH
Yo Gabba Gabba! Live 6 p.m. Doors at 4:30 p.m. Stage AE. 400 North Shore Dr., North Shore. $55-68. promowestlive.com
The School of Drag Showcase. 6 p.m. Doors at 5:30 p.m. The Andy Warhol Museum. 117 Sandusky St., North Side. $5, free for kids. warhol.org
Iron Horse Theatre Company presents a truly Pittsburgh tale with Coach and Mrs. Jago . Described as “a play of western Pennsylvania people, by a western Pennsylvania person, and for western Pennsylvania people,” the two-act drama follows a high-school football coach whose marriage su ers after he loses his job and his drinking problem worsens. 7:30 p.m. Continues through Fri., Aug. 22. 348 Maplewood Ave., Ambridge. $18-20. ironhorsetheatrecompany.com
Sketch Lab Report Vol. 2. 8 p.m. Arcade Comedy Theater. 943 Liberty Ave., Downtown. $20. arcadecomedytheater.com
RACE • HILL DISTRICT
Historic Hill 5K. 8:30 a.m. Centre Avenue and Crawford Street, Hill District. $27.50. Registration required. historichill5k.com
Pittsburgh Is a Feeling: 5 Short Films From Studio Ragheb. 6-8 p.m. Bottom Feeder Books. 415 Gettysburg St., Point Breeze. Free. bottomfeederbooks.com
National Thrift Day Block Party. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Thriftique. 119 51st St., Lawrenceville. Free. All ages. ncjwpgh.org/thriftique
A Tokyo factory worker’s side hustle has disastrous consequences in Cloud, the latest film from Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Harris Theater screens this tense thriller about a reseller whose shady dealings on the black market results in a coordinated online campaign to take him down. Don’t miss this new work from the celebrated director of Cure and Pulse 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Continues through Thu., Aug. 20. Harris Theater. 809 Liberty Ave., Downtown. $10-13. trustarts.org
MUSIC • ALLISON PARK
Smash Mouth. 7:30 p.m. Doors at 6 p.m. Hartwood Acres Amphitheater. 4000 Middle Rd., Allison Park. Free. alleghenycounty.us
ART • BLOOMFIELD
I Believe I Know 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Continues through Sept. 19. Tomayko Foundation. 5173 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. Free. tomayko. foundation
MUSIC • MCKEES ROCKS
Silversun Pickups with Girl Tones
8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. Roxian Theatre. 425 Chartiers Ave., McKees Rocks. $34-60. roxiantheatre.com/shows
TUE., AUG. 19
SUN., AUG.17 MON., AUG.18
MUSIC • DOWNTOWN
John Shannon’s Adventure Time
5 p.m. Agnes Katz Plaza. 667 Penn Ave., Downtown. Free. trustarts.org
MUSIC • ALLENTOWN
Blind Equation with fallingwithscissors, Spear of Cassius, Kaiba, and foreverforaday. 7 p.m. Doors at 6 p.m. Little Giant. 100 Asteroid Way, Allentown. $15. littlegiant.io
FILM • ALLENTOWN
Bad Movie Bingo: Masters of the Universe 7:30 p.m. Doors at 5 p.m. Bottlerocket Social Hall. 1226 Arlington Ave., Allentown. $5. bottlerocketpgh.com
MUSIC • NORTH SIDE
Puddled, Slot, The Petals, and The Zells. 8 p.m. Doors at 6 p.m. The Government Center. 715 East St., North Side. $10. thegovernmentcenter.com
IN The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: NO. GD-25-7149, In re petition of Erin Kavanshansky, parents and Legal Guardians of Paul Gabriel Kavanshansky for change of name to Paul Gabriel Bott. To all persons interested: Notice is hereby given that an order of said Court authorized the filing of said petition and fixed the 3rd day of September, 2025, at 9:30 a.m, as the time and the Motions Room, City-County Building, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the place for a hearing, when and where all persons may show cause, if any they have, why said name should not be changed as prayed for
IN The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: NO. GD-25-005939, In re petition of Diana Funaro for Change of name to Diana Valentino. To all persons interested: Notice is hereby given that an order of said Court authorized the filing of said petition and fixed the 3rd day of September, 2025, at 9:30 a.m, as the time and the Motions Room, City-County Building, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the place for a hearing, when and where all persons may show cause, if any they have, why said name should not be changed as prayed for
IN The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: NO. GD-25-005938, In re petition of Izabella Funaro, for Change of name to Izabella Valentino. To all persons interested: Notice is hereby given that an order of said Court authorized the filing of said petition and fixed the 3rd day of September, 2025, at 9:30 a.m, as the time and the Motions Room, City-County Building, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the place for a hearing, when and where all persons may show cause, if any they have, why said name should not be changed as prayed for
IN The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: NO. GD-25-6560, In re petition of Natalie Newland, for change of name to Natalie Weeks. To all persons interested: Notice is hereby given that an order of said Court authorized the filing of said petition and fixed the 20th day of August, 2025, at 9:30 a.m, as the time and the Motions Room, City-County Building, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the place for a hearing, when and where all persons may show cause, if any they have, why said name should not be changed as prayed for
IN The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: NO. GD-25-6561, In re petition of Jake Emmett Kline for change of name to Jake Emmett McGreal. To all persons interested: Notice is hereby given that an order of said Court authorized the filing of said petition and fixed the 20th day of August, 2025, at 9:30 a.m, as the time and the Motions Room, City-County Building, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the place for a hearing, when and where all persons may show cause, if any they have, why said name should not be changed as prayed for
Mylan, Inc. seeks Manager, Business Analysis (Canonsburg, PA) to support Global Medical function w/ focus on reqts understandng & IT delivery of Global/local IT prjcts/ systs for Medical Biz. Understand medical biz process & IT reqts & documnt process workflow & reqt specs. Telecommutng permitted from anywhere w/in US. Reqs: Bach degree or foreign equiv. in Comp Engg, IT, CS, or a closely rltd tech field & 5 yrs exp in postn o ered or rltd, incl. 5 yrs exp w/: capturng & analyzng pharma biz reqts & translating into Techno-functional spec docs to dzn, build & test info syst; assessng GxP & Non-GxP status of info systs to be built & applyng appropriate CSV qualfctn & validation processes; implementation of IT tools used in pharma industry for managng customer data & documntations, Health Care Practitioner engagement, med web portals dvlpmt, syst integration & data migrations; softw. tools Veeva CRM & Vault & implementing for pharma company/client & rlvnt data migrations; testng tools for IQ/ OQ/PQ & electronic doc review approval tool; & preppng & presentng syst demos, trainings, prjct status, & risks to global & local Med Biz & IT leaders. To apply go to www.viatris.com/en/careers, must ref postn title.
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EPS US, LLC’s Pittsburgh, PA, o ice seeks a Consultant to be responsible for working with new and existing EPS clients to deliver integrated technical and workflow solutions. Apply at: https://recruiting.ultipro.com/EPR1000EPSUS/ #CONSU002185.
Mylan, Inc. seeks Manager, IT Audit (Canonsburg, PA) to lead & conduct SoX compliance & syst implementations reviews, & various IT rltd audits across tech platforms rangng from apps, network, & infrastructure. Telecommitng permittd 3 days/wk. Domestic & intern’l travel req’d up to 25% of the time. Reqs: Bach degree or foreign equiv in CS, IT, Mgmt Info Systs, or rltd & 5 yrs’ exp in postn o ered or rltd in IT compliance/audit, incl. 5 yrs’ exp w/: IT general & app control reviews; review of & testing around 3rd-party attestation (SOC) reports; applyng knwldge of IT general control framework, COBIT, COSO, ITIL methodologies, Sarbanes-Oxley reqts & IT Auditing standards & practices; applyng knwldge of biz processes incl. order to cash & procure to pay; reading & interpreting complex biz &/or tech spec docs incl. IT policies & procedures, biz process docs & other policies & procedure docs rltd to various audit areas; & auditng ERP systs, SAP, Linux, Unix, & Oracle. Must have one of the following professional certs: CA, CPA, CISA. Go to viatris. com/en/careers, must reference position title.
time 7p.m.-8:30p.m.
A happy guy who loves good food, great conversation, and even better company — just looking for someone who enjoys the same interests! Give me a call at 412-313-4320 —and if I miss your call, leave a message and I’ll get back to you soon!
THE BOARD OF PUBLIC EDUCATION of the SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PITTSBURGH ADVERTISEMENT FOR BIDS
Submit sealed proposals to the Facilities Department, Pittsburgh Public Schools Service Center, 1305 Muriel Street, Pittsburgh PA 15203 until 2:00 p.m. D/EST on 15 August 2025 for:
REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS (RFQ) FOR ARCHITECTURAL AND ENGINEERING SERVICES FOR 2026-2027 A/E ON-CALL SERVICES
RFQ/P is available at the Pittsburgh Public Schools website, https://www.pghschools.org/community/ business-opportunities/rfps or by email request to LFornataro1@pghschools.org, at no charge.
We are an equal rights and opportunity school district.
THE BOARD OF PUBLIC EDUCATION of the SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PITTSBURGH
ADVERTISEMENT FOR BIDS
Sealed proposals shall be deposited at the Administration Building, Bellefield Entrance Lobby, 341 South Bellefield Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15213, on Tuesday, August 19, 2025, until 2:00 P.M., local prevailing time for:
• Chilled Water Plant Upgrades
• Mechanical, Electrical, and General Primes
Project Manual and Drawings will be available for purchase on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, at Modern Reproductions (412-488-7700), 127 McKean Street, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15219 between 9:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M.
The cost of the Project Manual Documents is non-refundable. Project details and dates are described in each project manual.
We are an equal rights and opportunity school district.
BY BRENDAN EMMETT QUIGLEY // BRENDANEMMETTQUIGLEY.COM
1. Party girl?
5. Length of time
9. Ignore texts/ emails/calls/etc.
14. Wheel holder
15. Sign of a saint
16. Relaxes
17. Start of a coin flip call where the outcome is fixed
19. Je Tweedy’s band
20. Carpenter ___
21. Music purchases that come with download codes
22. “Yucky!”
head rotation
47. Slice of baloney
48. Charge from an idling cab
52. Butterfingers
53. Kings grp.
56. Rose oil
57. Some IG poses with pouty lips
60. “Same here”
61. Arthur who raised a racket
62. Pitcher’s error
63. Eye problems
64. Vibes
65. Brewery installations
13. General ___ chicken
18. Luge cousins
23. Fingerprint mark
24. Fricassée or goulash, e.g.
26. Sta symbol
27. Muse depicted with turtle doves by her feet
28. Bill of The Rolling Stones
29. Eternally
30. US city nicknamed “Oil
Capital of the World”
31. Circular lines?
32. Movie-set light
Bobby
39. French 101 verb
41. Styles worn by Art Garfunkel and Bob Dylan
42. Unbending
44. Turn things around?
45.
24. Locked in 25. Consumed
26.
Start the job
33. Farmyard measurements
34. It’s not mine
35. High point of an Austrian vacation?
37. Diner side
38. Olfactory hint
39. Get your story straight?
40. Spot in the living room?
41. Sydney Sweeney has great ones
42. Dumps
43. Sailing vessel whose sails are aligned with the keel
46. Bird with 270º
1.
That’s a laugh
2.
Beasts on a farm
3. Box spring support
4. Coach Lasso with a “Believe” wall poster
5. Words on a FedEx slip
6. Boxer’s mitts?
7. UB40 singer Campbell 8. Number of Grammys Queen won 9. Baubles 10. Pompadour or qui 11. Viking Ship Museum city 12. Min. divisions
33. Snake in some hieroglyphics
36. Score board nos.
38. Black Panther
1 - 22!
BEST OF PGH Voting round will be open Aug. 1 - 22! You can even cast a new vote every hour of the day! show your Pittsburgh favorites that you care!
